Nicky Haslam: The Documentary by Hannah Rothschild

Hannah Rothschild

A Darling - that's an Arcatiste angel - tells me that one of Lord Rothschild's brats, writer/producer/director Hannah Rothschild, is making a documentary of one of Madame Arcati's Favoured Few, Nicky Haslam. Isn't that exciting? Hannah is a Gemini, btw, born on May 22, 1962, so we're virtual twins.

Aren't you, as a dumb unthinking atheist, with your picked-up godlessness cos you read it in a manual someplace, intrigued that two Geminis born within hours (Mercurial time, however) of each other should share an interest as singular as Nicky? No? Well, fuck you then.

My Darling writes in his encrypted message: "The only time I've ever seen Haslam was in the beer garden at South Central in Vauxhall. I thought he was talking to a glamorous woman until my friend pointed out that she had shovel hands and an uncommonly large Adam's apple." Goodness, and I thought April Ashley lived in the south of France - John Prescott's a friend of hers, incidentally.

Last year, Hannah raised the odd eyebrow still capable of such athleticism by appearing to contribute to a book titled Corfu the Garden Isle, compiled by Count Spiro Flamburiari. The Rothschilds are usually shy of publicity, see. A 2008 report in the virtually invisible online newspaper, The First Post - managed last I heard by an ex-Telegraph diaspora - suggested this was a "new book": yet according to Amazon.co.uk, the title was released as recently as 1994 (and a secondhand copy is available at a bargain basement £136.17 as I write). Perhaps someone could elucidate.

Nicky Haslam

In the book Hannah - whom David Hockney immortalised in a portrait - says of the Rothschilds' villa on the island: "Until the early Nineties, a huge searchlight placed above Aghios Stephanos searched the night water looking for escaping Albanians. Ships and pleasure craft straying into Albanian waters were apparently shot at. Following a drunken lunch my godfather Tremayne Reynell took up a dare to collect an Albanian pebble in a small sailing dinghy. We all watched in terror as the small craft tacked back across the straits waiting for a clatter of bullets to rip through the tiny sail and her captain. He made it back and with the pebble."

Frankly, Hannah (recently appointed by the PM as a trustees of The National Gallery for four years) and Nicky are made for each other. Fish, why didn't you tell me of this development? I am most displeased.

For more about Hannah, see her website.