Richard Dennen: Crotch-gawping in the company of Prince William

Richard Dennen

"Please can we have more aristos in Tatler and stately homes," writes in Alastair, an Arcatiste with a strange fetish for Old Etonian upperclass males. "Anyone know anything about Richard Dennen who writes for Tatler and has a column in the Evening Standard X."

What is there not to know about Richard Dennen? The twerpy poppet is quotidian tour guide to his own private Norfolk. Though he admits to 28 he is probably north of 30 and his journalistic achievements can be attributed only to a preponderance of homophobes in the British media (or merde as the French and English aristos call it). Let's just say Dennen is his cock-cunting editors' revenge on their readers.

I fancy he is the spawn of an unlikely knee-trembler between Nicky Haslam and Liz Jones at a Bessborough House shindig: if he put on 50 years and 50 pounds he'd make the perfect mongrel mini-me. His grail is a juicy boyfriend (forever elusive) sought within the crotch-gawping party environs of Prince William or the PM's father-in-law: take away the last two and all you've got left is a desperate tart divining solace in the smartest urinals.

One piece of advice to Dennen on his hopeless love life arrives from Josh Hunt who wrote a much more interesting gay column for the late freebie thelondonpaper. On the So So Gay blog he writes: "To be honest, spilling your guts about your personal life in the paper can make said life pretty hard to manage. My love life has improved greatly since the demise of the London paper, so I'd be loath to go back to writing in a freebie again (and I'm getting on a bit). I do however continue the column as a smaller scale blog - check it out at gayabouttown.com."

So there you are, Richard. Your SatNav to a happier life (and ours) awaits unwrapping. Meantime, Dennen's literary style critiqued. And if that sounds irksome then catch up with the weirdo Tatlersnob.

Rachel Johnson's A Diary Of The Lady: Masterly at the authorial hand-job

Over the weekend Rachel Johnson was canny enough to send me a fan letter in which she told me I was mentioned in her book A Diary of The Lady: My First Year as Editor.

I had wondered whether Madame Arcati might make an apperance in her pages because I'd earlier this year described The Lady as 'the cunties' weekly' in a short piece about the magazine's readership and masturbation. But I'm adept at delaying gratification myself: I fancied I might happen on my name years hence as I leafed through a dog-eared copy in a secondhand book store (in Arundel perhaps).

This fancy was discarded instantly on receipt of Rachel's email: Madame Arcati is responsive to stroking, and judging by the contents of her book, she is masterly at the authorial hand-job.

If you don't know or care, Rachel is the editor of The Lady magazine, once an incarnation of all things nanny-ish and scone-ish. Then she barged in with her Sunday Times ponciness and pals and imported nasty things such as 'lady gardens' (pubes) and erections (euphemism: 'Everests') - these alone from a Jilly Cooper Jump!extract. The Lady's venerable owner Mrs Budworth regularly channels outraged reader reaction, calling Rachel a 'monster' and 'sex-obsessed'. This is all splendid for Rachel's CV.

Now, I said I'd review her book but in all honestly it's too late for that. A Diary came out in late summer. Instead, I have a few observations to make which touch upon my own preoccupations. What is first so striking about her day-to-day life at her mag, described with staggering frankness, is the evident ghastliness of many of the London writers and editors she encounters and of whom Madame Arcati has already demonstrated an insightful and notorious dislike.

For instance, you may think unwarranted my occasional barbs at AA Gill's prolific and dyspeptic smugness. Yet dip into this book and witness him, with Rod Liddle, mocking Rachel at a party for being dumped by their cash cow, the Sunday Times. The paper's editor John Witherow dumps her after promising he wouldn't - then thoughtlessly rubs her nose in it later by praising her replacement as 'grrrreat!' William Cash - he of the sad heiress-wives fixation - staggers about drunk at a party feeling sorry for himself and volubly moaning that no one of his generation (ie his Oxbridge milieu) has done anything worthwhile, including Rachel's husband Ivo. Even the down market Kelvin MacKenzie pops up in Rachel's office and fills it with his special mix of noxious methane.

Nicholas Coleridge, the world's worst novelist and the MD of Condé Nast, comes across as a gracious and generous house host, even if one who insists on memorialising, in annotated albums, his every social interaction with those deemed sufficiently important. I read elsewhere he also collects animal corpses: all this is beyond anal, doncha think?

In the (Boris) Johnsonian tradition, the slights, betrayals and insults (and there are many more) are borne lightly by our heroine. She'd be perfect in a war. But she too is not averse to gross insensitivity. I'm not sure Roger Lewis will have been entirely happy to be described as the least attractive writer she's ever met, as he name-drops Michael Winner at their first meeting. And I can't imagine what the daughter of Rachel's predecessor, Arline Usden, must have felt to be characterised as a rather hapless and hopeless member of staff. Indeed many contributors will have delighted in Rachel's grouchy view of a lot of the journalism submitted (each piece requiring the effort of eight emails on her part) after fulsome and luvvie-ish encouragement.

As for Lady Antonia Fraser... well, she always looks slightly appalled anyway.

In other words, A Diary of The Lady is entirely riveting. Any student contemplating a life in journalism (high end, facile) should get this book for Christmas - as a warning. Robust souls may relish the rough and tumble, and Rachel makes for a marvellously blithe dame (in the Eton College sense). Oh, and Madame Arcati gets her name-check on pp 261-262: if there were an index, I'd be under M for masturbation.

One last thing. How can Rachel Johnson have lived as widely and well as she has and not know who Duncan Fallowell is? She should search him out on Madame Arcati: I think even Mrs Budworth might approve of him.

Rachel Johnson film on The Lady, knitting and chutney - click here.
Rachel's website

Zac Goldsmith: Saving the world on one cigar at a time?

Observers of the new Tory MP for Richmond Park, mega-wealthy Eton reject, former non-dom and recent divorcé, Zac Goldsmith, have long been amused by his championing of green causes while he puffs on scraggy roll-ups.

Still, at least he's not some ghastly holier-than-thou prig. When you're said to be worth an estimated £300m, and are young, tall and handsome, and the brother to Jemima Khan, it's as well to flaunt your human weaknesses, if only to neutralise the bitter envy of paupies.

Perhaps partly to this end, I understand Zac used regularly to drive from his home in Richmond to Jermyn Street to buy a single cigar at Davidoff of London. His preference was to shop when the 'glittery' store had the Closed sign up, in the manner of Michael Jackson and Princess Diana at Harrods.

My well-connected informant reports that when it was suggested to Zac that he might want to buy a box of cigars in order to save on the petrol he appeared underwhelmed. This I think not unreasonable on health if not environmental grounds. It is entirely possible that he could not trust himself with a whole box in a 24-hour period. Was it not Mark Twain who once said, 'I have made it a rule never to smoke more than one cigar at a time.'?

How much Zac's enforced rationing reduced his carbon footprint I cannot imagine, but the more mathematical among you with time on your hands may fancy the challenge.

Of course my spy may have just dreamt all of this up on the grounds of envy. In these times of neo-Old Etonian English governance, class warriors are enjoying an alarming resurgence.

Joanna Lumley: Labour's last card against this goddess of AOL torture

The government is of course very foolish to upset Joanna - "Ayo Gurkhali!" - Lumley (again) over the Gurkhas. On Monday (or today if you're reading this on Monday; or yesterday if Tuesday, etc) she will single-handedly hammer the last nail into the Labour coffin. I had hoped Labour would scrape home but I see now all is lost, thanks to Joanna.

As I write she is, as Lady Penelope once was, an untouchable national treasure, the embodiment of the upper class geist that is about to repossess the Brits for the umpteenth time through the 19th Etonian PM (to-be) aka the half-wit former PR David Cameron.

Foreigners should understand that the Brits like the taste of upper class asshole: it's part of the ingrained cuisine (pause to spit out hair strands, inter alia, unsweetened by absence of bidet). They adore modulated vowels for it plays to the national Capricornian desire for hereditary privilege and power as expressed in sound and deportment and approved antecedents (cue: spires).

There is however one card left for Labour to play against the Nepalese goddess Joanna. It's called the AOL card. For years, Joanna's voice has been used to annoy AOL subscribers with an unwelcome welcoming message and the lie "You've got email". It's a lie because AOL users are blighted with this message whether they have email or not. Worse, she is the voice of "You've got company (bang)". It is another lie. The subscriber does not have any online company. It is just a noise-message intended to piss one off as the odd unfortunate ejaculates over the keyboard.

Somebody at AOL actually sat down one day and said, 'Oh, let's see how we can really piss off our customers. Great! Get Joanna Lumley to tell them over and over again that they have company (bang)'. It was marketing by irritation, as practised by those confuse.com TV ads, and others. The intention is to batter you into brand-recognition compliance through torture, a sort of extraordinary rendition for the sofa- (or swivel chaired-) bound.

Of course the goddess hadn't a clue she was just a tongue puppet for these wicked corporate shenanigans. She read the messages off a sheet and collected her substantial cheque. She gave no thought to the possibility that her voice would become one of the most detested sounds on the internet. Like the late Leni Riefenstahl, she is the creative incidental to the cultural foulness. For a goddess, Joanna is peculiarly stupid.

Joanna should be publicly reviled by Labour as a modern-day Lord Haw-Haw, as the expression of something noxious, whether witting or not. She should have foreseen this horror. There is not a day that passes by that I do not wish this ghastly woman some dreadful end for the earache and the headache and the ultimate heartache.

How to turn her off

William Cash: Cruelly betrayed by his London Evening Standard!

Treachery is the coin of newspaper life. But the London Evening Standard's disloyalty to its regular (former?) contributor William Cash is breathtaking. An Arcatiste tells me that a few days ago its City Spy column suggested that William's wealth magazine Spear's hadn't paid some of its writers "for months".

It claimed, "one contributor, fed up with the weeks of waiting, used to go and plonk himself in reception until a cheque materialised."

I am sure an embittered and penniless celebrant of "high net-worth individuals" fed this tale to Spy. Amused followers of Cash will be surprised the paper ran it. For years he has filled pages and pages of ES Mag with his homages to the super-rich - interviews, marital memoir, dispatches from obscure parts of Europe and reports from tax havens with lovely beaches and aristo memento mori - so for his journalistic home from home to stab him in the back like this is nothing short of scandalous.

We must await further news of his magazine's financial status. In the meantime I must add that I have in numerous posts cautioned him against making an altar to money: friendships forged in the world's gilded slops melt away at the first hint of impecuniosity. It is my karmic duty to repeat this message over and over again - I think I must have been the loaded Imam of the Nizārī Muslims in a previous life.

Josh Spero of Spear's: 'As for my bed, I did just kick a banker out'

Josh Spero, senior editor and website editor of Spear's. Click here for its website

Leathered Arcatistes will know that Madame Arcati has been most teasing of the publisher, editor and journalist William Cash. His writings, for instance, in ES Magazine are characterised by an extraordinary fixation on the super-wealthy and their gilt-edged micro-habitats: others might call this fixation his specialism. Inevitably, he owns and edits the quarterly Spear's magazine - itself a respected bible for the world's mega-monied.

Remotely, astrologically and Twitterly I have struck up a fleeting acquaintance with William's wife Dr Vanessa Neumann - an intriguing socialite whose chart reveals both a committed humanitarianism and a taste for sensation.

Now, remotely, I have made a connection with Josh Spero, senior editor of Spear's, and I couldn't resist asking him to talk about his work - and what it is like to work for William Cash.

Josh Spero! Hello. You're the senior editor and website editor of Spear's magazine - which means you work for one of Madame Arcati's frequent targets of interest, William Cash. Tell me about Spear's - it's all about wealth and the wealthy isn't it?

Hi, Madame - I liked your latest incarnation on Broadway - Angela Lansbury doing a turn. Spear's is about wealth but it's much more than that - people want authoritative intelligence about and analysis of global finance and the best writers on art, luxury and travel. Combined with our trademark witty style, it's the whole package.

What in Spear's terms is the minimum worth of a wealthy person?

We usually say £3 million - but anyone who's interested (wealth-regardless) can subscribe or read all our content plus blogs on spearswms.com

Spero/Spear's: do you think your name had anything to do with your appointment? And tell us briefly about yourself - are you innately interested in the wealthy? Where else you have worked and who shares your bed at night.

The name is a happy coincidence; I always think that being edited by William Cash and worked on previously by Sophia Money-Coutts is more apt. It doesn't go unnnoticed, tho'. The wealthy are interesting because - like any anthropological group - they have their own customs, hangouts and events, and it just happens that to observe them in their natural habitat you go to Berkeley Square, not Borneo.

My first job in journalism was hateful nightshifts on the Independent, after which (as the saying goes) I went freelance and wrote for the Guardian's ArtsBlog for a while. Then I met William at a party, freelanced for Spear's for a year and came on board permanently last July. It was July 14, Bastille Day - except this time I felt I was storming the fortress of the rich *on the side of* the rich.

As for my bed, I'm wretchedly single, tho' I did just kick a banker out. (This wealth thing is getting to me.) If any man considers himself eligible, my email's not hard to find.

And what do you do precisely? What time do you start work and end?

9-6 Monday-Thursday writing for, editing, commissioning the magazine and running spearswms.com with its blogs, newswire, party pics and all else. But a journalist's work continues in the evening - all the events (as fun as they are) are business as much as pleasure.

Tell me of the most interesting story Spear's has run of late.

There's Conrad Black's diary from jail (http://www.spearswms.com/good-life/diary/4411/exclusive-conrad-blacks-jail-diary.thtml), which got into the Sunday Times - he's unrepentant and on the verge of being proved right. Christopher Silvester wrote about what the wealthy should do when they're arrested, which is looking likely after l'affaire UBS.

William Cash

What's William Cash like - I mean is he hands-on? Does he rage and storm about as many editors do? Or is he an ocean of calm? Does he have an eccentricty? Anna Wintour I hear chucks coins from her purse into her wastepaper basket.

William doesn't rage or storm - he prefers to get things done. I've learnt a lot about how to run a magazine from him. He has, tho', been known to come in two days before going to press and say, I've commissioned this piece... He also says 'unacceptable' a fair amount.

Does William know you're doing this interview? I've been quite naughty about him in the past. Did he say, "Be careful of that crazed blogger Madame Arcati"?

He doesn't know, but that's because we've been mid-office-move for a fortnight so I've been working from home. I don't think he's ever issued a fatwa in your honour.

Who do you think is the best writer on the subject of money and wealth - best in the sense of style and accuracy? And who is the best connected?

John Arlidge is Spear's Chancellor of the Excessive - he's a whiz on luxury - and Stephen Hill is our prescient, acerbic economic commentator (http://www.spearswms.com/spears-world/salon/stephen-hill/). I have to mention Anthony Haden-Guest (http://www.spearswms.com/search/?search=haden&x=0&y=0), our arts editor, who is a legend both sides of the Atlantic and one of my favourite writers. William has some pretty good connections - you say 'Do you know someone who...?' and he invariably does.

What were you doing in Switzerland the other day?

I was interviewing the CEO of Hublot watches in Geneva. It's my second visit there this year, after Design Miami/Basel and Art Basel. It's nice but I'm a London boy through and though - it was way too small.

One of my beefs is that too many magazines and newspapers are preoccupied with wealth and status. Taking your Spear's cap off for a moment, what do you think?

Definitely. If you talk about wealth and status, don't fetishise them, which is the mistake most papers make - they can be serious objects of study and comment too.

William got back control of Spear's lately. Tell us about that and what difference that's likely to make to the magazine and to you.

William rescued Spear's from Luxury Publishing - and it feels good to be independent. With new investment, we've got our sights set on the world - we already have a Russian edition and we're looking forward to Indian and far eastern ones too. As for the difference to me, plus ca change...

Who is the most fascinating rich person in the world? - and why.

I don't think I can name one but I can pick a whole class - entrepreneurs. Everyday I meet and write about them, and the fizz of their brains makes them bound to succeed. They see the holes in the world where no-one else does and have the energy, creativity and intelligence to plug them. It's like watching kaleidoscopes of genius.

In a few words tell us where serious wealth resides these days and is it moving any place? For instance, is the Russian oligarchy about to implode?

At the moment, Russia and the Middle East are heavily oil-dependent for wealth, which is a mixed blessing. As for implosion, it's already happened - most have been bailed out by the Kremlin. I'd look to China in the future - it can only go up.

Vanessa Neumann

I did your horoscope, Josh. Capricorns such as yourself have a natural affinity with high status; your Moon in Leo makes you confident, exuberant even, with a keen sense that you can beat others at their game. It's a good leadership indicator provided arrogance is reined in. Your tender side does not always get properly expressed. Together, the placements make you independent, and eager for authority: indeed people with this combo often successfully seek high positions in large enterprises. Integrity is important to you. As I don't have your time of birth I can't calculate your Rising Sign, but other placements worth mentioning: Saturn in your 2nd House oddly enough puts a focus on finances - this can mean that lessons learnt in life will be through a preoccupation with money as well as hard work which does not generate much in the way of financial rewards. The Sun in your 4th House makes you dominant in family situations, can indicate a very close attachment to at least one parent, and is often found in people who make a "family" of friends or colleagues. Your Moon in the 11th House assures you a wide social circle among all classes and an ease with the powerful. This is an extremely brief horoscope I'm afraid - but does it ring true?

Gosh, it does - it's almost like you've seen my forthcoming autobiography (as yet unwritten). Confident - you can't be a meek journalist. Exuberant - I'd hope so. Tender - give me the chance (see above). And a wide social circle - I mistakenly synced my iPhone with my address book and wound up with 2000 names.

Where would you like to be in, say, five years' time?

I'd like to carry on in financial journalism, so maybe the Economist or FT, but my secret ultimate ambition is to present Front Row on Radio 4.

Thank you Josh! Give my love to William!

Spear's website click here

Nicola Formby's excellent bj* (oh, *brunette job)

After a blissful week of life-proactive events, I turn with a heavy heart to passive grazing mode ie catching up with what passes for news.

With no enthusiasm whatsoever I buy a copy of the London Evening Standard and - expecting to read more about swine flu or Lord Mandelson's Corfu holiday with Nicky Haslam - my eyes instead alight on the paper's front page exclusive and an item that fills me with restored purpose: Nicola Formby has altered her hair colour from blonde to brunette.

Actually, it's not an exclusive at all but a buy-in from Tatler. You have to marvel at the magic of celebrity - a secular version of transubstantiation - which can turn the most banal thing imaginable into the hottest goss thingy. I mean, would I get your interest if I told you that I had abandoned the grey of my permed tresses for a shade of cerulean as a nod to Picasso's Blue Period? No, I didn't think so.

Though you probably don't know who Nicola is, she enjoys a London micro-fame as the woman who cunt-cocks one of the many middle-aged Sunday Times lifers, AA Gill. He calls her "the Blonde" in his munch-munch reviews. The loveliness of her face on the Standard's splash page is not in the least compromised by the likelihood that hardly anyone on the 18.47 London to Littlehampton train (or any other train) will have a clue who she is: she's just another pretty face who fucks the right person who works for the right paper which imagines that ambient media starriness is of universal interest.

Like AA, Nicola name-drops and brand-drops with abandon. Here's a digest of her ES article:

1 She attended Wellington College. Good genes, then.
2 She had a friend called Lucinda. Well, her name wouldn't be Chardonnay, would it?
3 Father of her twins is "Sunday Times restaurant critic" AA Gill. See 1.
4 Diane at Cadogan Salon. Only the best *bj for Nic.
5 Jemima Khan and Laura Bailey have "enviable tresses". Flattery ....
6 Diane von Furstenberg and Christa D'Souza are role model friends. Flattery ...
7 Quotes acquaintance Jeremy Clarkson, AA's mate. Remember the slebby jerk circle.
8 Is "being labelled the Blonde" a curse? No, it's the reason why Tatler commissioned the piece.
9 Passes the fishmongers on Kensington Church St - ES country.
10 David Bailey put her on the cover of Ritz. Ambient starriness, darling!

Nicola's bj in full!

Vanessa Neumann: MPs' expenses "source" named?

Someone on Twitter asked me the other day about Arcati's dear friend William Cash: I hadn't written about him for some time, I was reminded, and what was the fellow up to. I haven't the foggiest: still writing about the rich, I guess - and comforting his MP dad Bill Cash and sister Laetitia after this morning's news in the Telegraph, I suppose. Fancy getting the taxpayer to bankroll his rent for Laetitia's flat when he owned another flat already in London. Oh well. I've heard worse.

It is William's wife Dr Vanessa Neumann - the Venezuelan intellectual and so-called "Cracker from Caracas" after her Mick Jagger fling - who interests me more, to be honest. She and William parted a while ago. Vanessa now writes a blog on her elegant website, click here. I see in her bio she makes no mention of William: we learn of her four degrees, the six languages she can speak or read. Among other things she's editor-at-large of something called Diplomat magazine. Here she is rubbishing Hugo Chavez.

Happily, we learn that the pair (Vanessa and William, that is) are still on speaks. On May 17, 2009, she quotes William's good advice about attending a society birthday party in London: "'You must be prepared; that’s the key to these things,' said my husband, who is highly perspicacious but rarely prepared for anything." Such are the perils of intimacy: familiarity. See Katie and Peter, too.

The May 23 posting - on my birthday - grips the eye: she appears to name the "source" in the MPs' expenses scandal: one Heather Brooke, an investigative journalist. But hold on, not quite. Later in the piece, we learn that Vanessa is still unsure of the identity of the whistleblower despite this claim in her opening par: "The identity of the source remains a mystery. No longer."

Then again, in her last par she comments of the Telegraph: "[They] have reinvented themselves as the clever kids on Fleet Street and are the real winners in the scandal - except for maybe Ms Brooke, whose journalism career will now be assured." I'm confused. We can agree Brooke started the litigation ball rolling on MPs' expenses transparency in 2005, but does that justify Vanessa's headline: "Anonymous No More: Meet the UK’s Deep Throat"? Click here and tell me what Vanessa's saying. I haven't a clue.

London Evening Standard relaunched: 78 year-old man in rescue mission

As a celebrant of elderliness, Madame Arcati has decided to reverse her previous toxic opinion of editor Geordie Greig in the light of his new London Evening Standard relaunched today.

For at the apex of the neo-goodies on display is Tom Wolfe, 78, messiah of the not-so-New Journalism, and author of a lengthy "world exclusive" for the paper titled The rich have feelings too... - a showcase of Wolfe's schtick - the italics, the capitals, the pastiche demotic, the love letter dressed up as satire - which doubtless has made many other fossils nostalgic for his brand of literary nattering on. The work, comic in intention if not effect, is all about fallen super-wealthy cunts divested of their private Lear Jets, now forced to use the Gatwicks and Heathrows of the world and queue with us commoners. Not quite Swiftian is all I'll say. But nice to see the old boy still in his white suit.

Complementing this heavy-weight contribution from Gotham is... Sam Leith in his Monday debut as a weekly columnist. I was recently less than impressed by his gossy colleague Sebastian Shakespeare. I now have reason to revise this opinion. Sam today loses his ES columnal cherry with this opening original piece of writing: "The devil, as a wise man said, is in the detail." I wonder how long it took him to think that one up. Shakespeare, you're rehired!

I thought the front page splash quite original: a news story all about a very rich man with a "secret common-law wife and child" reluctant to give his betrayed ex-wife £11m. While the rest of the UK media froth about MPs' expenses and other trifles, Mr Greig betrays his true love: the rich and their doings. Expect more long-winded soap on the loaded. What's Lord Linley up to these days ever since that other matter got covered up?

In other news, I learn that the let-go theatre critic Nicholas de Jongh was on a £120k contract and has a £38k pension pot. That's an extraordinary amount of money, all deserved I'm sure. A new theatre reviewer is sought. One can only hope that Sam Leith is on nothing like that amount, if only for the sake of the paper. Though I'm sure Wolfe's piece was VERY EXPENSIVE.

William Cash: Has Vanessa buggered orf?

Is it true that Dr Vanessa Neumann has taken her leave of her husband William Cash's society? An Arcatiste makes this claim, but since I have stopped reading publications that deify the rich or run anecdotes about dull people who happen to be loaded, I do not know if this true or public knowledge.

In one of the last pieces that I read of William's in ES, he had revealed tensions in his marriage, one brought on by his blowing up his vintage car by failing to replenish it with oil or petrol. He also appeared to have seen the light on wealth, eschewing his once infamous craven fascination for the glamour of money; though whether this was empathetically precipitated by the fashionable credit crunch and the new unemployment of his many friends is hard to say.

It's always difficult to know whether people mean what they write.

Catherine Ostler to edit Tatler. Oh dear

Yes, indeed. But my lips are sealed. I'm not one to gossip. Catherine, married conveniently to Condé Nast general manager Albert Read, is perfect for Tatler, a money- and status-worshipping priestess whose idea of heaven is a string of pearly noughts - she certainly never discouraged writer William Cash at ES from regaling us with news of his latest heiress love interest.

More to the point, Catherine suits her boss Nicholas Coleridge whose own craven attitude to wealth and status has to be seen to be believed - well, read one of his novels: just money measures set to dialogue. I shall never forget observing him running around like a deranged whippet at a Cartier polo day many years ago, trying to get a photo shot of the Queen blocked off by a crowd of ghastly gawpers. In those few moments I sensed all the materialist kinetic energy that drives him on.

As for Catherine, I'm just praying we don't have a Jane Procter re-run. I understand that she is blessed with a clear sense of purpose that sometimes is enforced by a voice that might be appreciated at the Royal Opera House. Or Wembley.