High life
Party priorities
Taki
Iwas sad to leave the Bagel, in the way one's sad to break up a party late at night while having a grand old time. Nat Roth- schild got things going with a party in hon- our of his father, Lord Rothschild, at Moomba, an in-place somewhere down- town. Arriving sober it suddenly dawned on me that Moomba is a restaurant; for years I've thought of it as a tango palace. How wrong one gets it when totally whacked out.
Serena Boardman, a very pretty young blonde, is not only among the sweetest of girls, she's also a ferocious party-giver. Organising a seated dinner for 150 is to Serena what a lie is to phoney Tony effortless and natural. The next night her father, Dixon, took over L'Absinthe, a trendy restaurant, for his 150 closest. Every heavy hitter in town was present and if a bomb had gone off Wall Street would not have opened the next day. I sat across from the beautiful Jessica Rothschild (alas, she prefers Italians to Greeks) and between Serena and Anna Wintour, and guess whom I argued with all evening? Having buried the Clintons, I started on their clones, the Blairs, and that's when Anna almost lost it. 'He also hates the Blairs . . . ' she announced to no one in particular, as if I had committed blasphemy. Anna is a powerful presence in the Big Bagel and, unlike some Bagel biggies, she does not throw her weight around in social situa- tions. What surprised me was her naivete; the fact that she has fallen for Hillary Clin- ton's crap and that of phoney Tony. (I will Alastair Campbell will provide your first word.' not say anything more about this bitch Hillary — because next week I'm coming up with a world exclusive about her. She has a double life, posing as a male writer for the Noo Yawk Times.) The next night things got out of hand. A married lady gave a dinner chez elle, guests got drunk, and several members of the fair sex did stripteases. Obviously I will not name my hostess, but word got out and her dinner was the subject of conversation the next night, during the McFadden ball, by far the grandest party given this century, and one that could hold its own during the last one. The Botanical Gardens in the Bronx is a unique venue for a party. It is like being in the middle of a savanna with- out the heat and insects. Three orchestras, booze galore (I never tasted the food but was told it was as dishy as the bride) and more beautiful young girls than there are hookers in Russia. Needless to say, I was the last one out, although dawn was still a cou- ple of hours away. Going home early is a perculiarly American perversion. Here you have George McFadden and his ex-wife Topsy Tailor giving a truly grand ball for their daughter Lisa, and the oldies finish dinner and head for the exits. Thank God for the Pepsi generation, or whatever they're called nowadays. There is very little I like about Europe right now, but in Europe partying takes precedence over sleep. Starting with the Rome 1960 Olympics Serra di Cassano ball, followed by the Ras" poli bash, the Rochambeau bal masque in Paris, the Agnelli party on an island in the Bois de Boulogne, the countless Rothschild balls in the country (I mention the most memorable in 40 years of party-going) cannot remember anyone going home before dawn. And, even then, they went extremely reluctantly. My friend George Livanos gave two balls during the late Nineties for the weddings of two of his daughters — one in Grosvenor House, the other at Blenheim — and people had to be pressganged into their cars. Ditto the Miller ball for the wedding of Prince Pavlos of Greece, and the Rothschild blast for Jessica. But, as they say, there's always a silver lining. The next morning I had to be uP early because the mother of my children was godmother to Francesca Scorsese, sik month-old daughter of the great director Martin Scorsese and his wife Helen Morris. Unlike in England, in America there are only two godparents, one male, one feroae: The male godfather turned out to he Robert De Niro, who also turned out to he extremely nice — especially for an actor and unbelievably shy, smiling, saying 04 ing, and looking at his shoes non-stop. IP., christening was moving and lotsa among a few close friends, and Man, Scorsese was as proud as if he had svI3' every award the cinema has to offer which he has — except for the discredited Oscars, which he hasn't. ft. Which is another sore point on my pa Row can anyone take the Oscars seriously when Martin Scorsese, along with Elia Kazan, the greatest living director, has been ignored? It is like writing about Ther- mopylae and not mentioning Leonidas, or the Battle for France and forgetting Gude- nan. But that's Hollywood.
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