No life

Hef's Bunnies and me

Toby Young

Since I gave up drinking I've stopped going to nightclubs. If you're not drunk, the prospect of standing in a smoke-filled basement listening to German techno music while a bunch of single men spill beer over you isn't very appealing. However, last week an item in the Evening Standard caught my eye. Apparently, Hugh Hefner, the legendary founder of Playboy, was planning to celebrate his 75th birthday party at China White, a club just off Regent Street. Among the guests would be the seven blonde Playmates Hef is currently 'dating' and a whole rabbit-warren full of Bunnies. Even for a middle-aged teetotaller like me, that sounded too good to miss.

Needless to say, it's only men with fiancées who get all hot and bothered at the mention of Hugh Hefner's name. For some reason, we all imagine that if only we weren't shackled to the old ball and chain we'd be living the life of the 75-year-old swinger. Because Hef managed to pull it off, every sad sack with a dressing-gown thinks that living in a mansion in Beverly Hills with a harem of topless lovelies is, at some level, an option. Consequently, when we're weighing up the pros and cons of getting married we never think of the alternative as a solitary, miserable existence punctuated by Kentucky Fried Chicken and watching repeats of Ibiza Uncovered on Channel Five. Rather, it's always an Austin Powers fantasy in which we're a fingerclicking Lothario surrounded by a bevy of mini-skirted blondes.

Naturally, my fiancée wasn't about to let me go to this party on my own, but that was no bad thing since I thought I'd have a much better chance of getting in with Caroline on my arm. I know I'm biased but, with her gorgeous face, tiny waist and huge knockers, Caroline could easily be mistaken for a Bunny in her own right. Since I wasn't invited, I'd need all the help I could get.

The scene outside China White when we arrived was pandemonium. Three musclebound bouncers were doing their best to hold back a crowd of several hundred people, nearly all of them waving invitations. None of the techniques I'd perfected for getting into clubs during my bachelor years was going to work here. One of my favourites was to march up to the front of the line with a woman in tow, turn round so my back was to the bouncers and boldly announce that I was with 'her', indicating my date, but not with 'this person' or 'that person', pointing at a couple of no-hopers waiting in the queue. The bouncers were so used to a club's regular patrons behaving in this obnoxious way, they'd usually let me in without a murmur.

Another foolproof method was to pretend to be in the throes of a full-scale, nuclear row with my date as we approached the club. The natural human impulse not to get involved in a 'domestic' meant that the doormen would often usher me past the velvet rope as speedily as possible. But that wasn't going to happen here. My best bet was to whip out one of my old business cards that describes me as the 'Social Editor' of GQ. I was sacked from that particular job ages ago but I thought it was worth a punt.

'Toby Young, GQ,' I said, thrusting the card into the hand of one of the bouncers. 'Hefs people literally begged me to come.'

Instead of looking at the card, his eyes went straight to Caroline's cleavage.

'This joker wiv you?' he asked her.

'For my sins,' said Caroline, rolling her eyes.

'Or-white,' he said to me, 'in yer go.'

Hef and his cronies were sitting at a table right at the back of the club. I got as close as I could but none of my defunct business cards was going to work here. He was surrounded by a dozen bouncers and together they formed a human chain. Still, I got a good look at Hef and his seven 'girlfriends'. Hef is like a walking advertisement for whoever his plastic surgeon is — he didn't seem a day over 45 — but the Playmates were surprisingly unattractive. With their bouffant hair-dos, their pug-like faces and their hard, leathery breasts, they looked like runners-up in a Pamela Anderson look-a-like contest. Even if I'd been a single man, I would have thought twice about trying to chat up any of these freaks.

Martin Amis once wrote an essay on Hugh Hefner in which he offered the following description of the women who fill the pages of Playboy:

They have a racehorse quality, cantilevered. genetically tuned or souped-up, the skin monotonously perfect, the hair sculpted and plumed; the body-tone at its brief optimum. Compared to these girls, the ordinary woman (the wife, the secretary, the non-goddess) looks Lived-in or only half-completed, eccentrically and interestingly human.

I don't agree. Next to the harridans draping themselves over Hef at China White, Caroline looked like Aphrodite herself. On my 75th birthday, I hope she's still hanging on my arm.