Hugo Vickers: Wallis' tragic tale, Higham and the 'Howling Cunt'

Hugo Vickers: Wally?

Most Esteemed Madame,

So happy to see your blog has returned.

I write to ask: have you perchance had an opportunity to peruse Mr Hugo Vickers' new work Behind Closed Doors: The Tragic Untold Story Of The Duchess Of Windsor? I'm half-way through and it is a most seriously curious work: more the tragic untold story of its author, who stalked his subject but was never fortunate enough to be granted an audience, and uses the book for a great deal of score-settling.

Author Michael Bloch gets it seriously in the neck, but I for one am left wondering why there is also no mention of Charles Higham whose Wallis bio contained equally racy allegations and was far more successful. Was it because that one was all true? Vickers doesn't say. It's the most puzzling book I've read in ages in terms of begging the question of what is going on in the mind of its author, so I wonder if you are able to shed any light on the matter.

I'm afraid, as per Mr Vickers' other works, it's crafted in an arid manner with reams of useless trivia crying out for an editor's blue pencil. (And for all that, there's still lots that remains unpublished about the Duke: eg that he used to go cruising for sailors in the company of the automobile heir Walter Chrysler Jnr., etc.). One also senses that the author may have come to loathe the late HM the Queen Mother, but is too polite to employ the term 'Howling Cunt'.

Yours,

A Most Puzzled Reader.

P.S. Recently visited NZ. Going As Far was deliciously accurate, and could have Gone Further!

Dear Puzzled Reader

I'm afraid Madame Arcati has read her last book in her present incarnation and, alas, it wasn't a book by Hugo Vickers. I am therefore unable to offer an explanation for his workmanlike foibles or attachment to royal trivia. However, it should not surprise one that the febrile world of royal biography is a carbonated stew of bitterness and revenge: worthy of its own history I'm sure. This, too, shall be a book I avoid.

Ever

Madame Arcati x

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.

William & Kate's wedding day: virgin on the ridiculous

St Catherine of Siena

Further evidence that Madame Arcati anticipates the zeitgeist is the date chosen for the wedding of the century (so far). Prince 'Big Louis' William will take Catherine Middleton, the future Duchess of Cambridge, to be his wife on April 29 next - which just happens to be the feast day of an Arcati favourite, St Catherine of Siena!

I alone among bloggers have written extensively about the virgin St Catherine. She may have passed away in the 14th Century for the sake of her hymen but she is in fact still fully sentient and engaged with our modern world. She employs as her current mouthpiece the US medium Elizabeth Baron to convey her funkily-expressed thoughts and recollections. I have been unstinting in chronicling them.

St Catherine was instrumental in the capture of the Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega; and who can forget St Catherine's claim that Joaquin Phoenix is possessed by the troubled soul of Johnny Cash? Ms Baron, too, likes to name-drop: do read my tale of her seance with the Hollywood siren Lana Turner, still screaming beyond the grave in a most unseemly way about this and that.

Is this honouring of St C by the House of Windsor (1917 - ) some sort of augury of things to come for Wills and Kate? St C's persistence in staying alive bodes well for marital longevity. But her militant virginity may prove irksome in the creation of an heir and spare. Others, more sceptical than I, may wonder about the royal couple's connection to reality given the heroic claims of St C.

Certainly old Ratzi in his Vatican palace must be delighted as Anglicans flail about under old beardie. It's a wonder the Pope is not marrying the pretty pair.

Prince William and Kate Middleton: A hellish recollection on a happy day

While of course the engagement of Prince William and Kate Middleton leaves me entirely indifferent, I still wonder about the reaction of one of Kate's closest friends a few years back when the couple split up for the umpteenth time.

'We're all relieved,' she told me. 'Kate's better off without him.' Concerned, in the theatrical sense, I asked, 'Why, is he awful?' She replied, screwing her face: 'Oh, don't ask me! Don't ask me! We all think she'll be happier without him.' I can only hope, in my indifference, that matters have improved since then.

Do read my Geordie Greig piece on his 'PR management' of Kate, click here. And congratulations to the Old Moore's astrologer on a correct prediction.

'Rod Liddle won't be editing the Independent' - thanks to Madame Arcati

Alexander Lebedev - a man of incomparable wisdom. He is Madame Arcati's Man of the Year. And it's only February

Rod Liddle will not be the next editor of the Independent, the Guardian reports. The paper claims that Alexander Lebedev had a change of heart.

I have little doubt this was due to Madame Arcati: Mr Lebedev is a follower of Arcati on Twitter and visits this site regularly for about 0.3 seconds per ingress. For a man of his intelligence and scope this would be sufficient time to scan the educated hostility to fag-ash Liddle whose politics, demeanour, temperament and flakiness (and hairstyle) are the subject of much concern.

And it was Madame Arcati that exclusively ran the Facebook row between Liddle and Suzanne Moore: while she was the model of civility, preparing to cook lunch for her little poppets, he ranted and raved like, er, someone who thought he was a national newspaper editor already.

Anyone who writes a column for the hideous and bullying Sunday Times is, as a matter of course, unsuitable for the Independent. Incidentally, does anyone know where the ST's editor now lives?

Rod and Suzanne

Mr Lebedev goes up in my estimation. He is clearly a man of tremendous insight, of wisdom, of worldliness. My God, Geordie Greig was right about Lebby! The Guardian better be fucking right. Meantime, Alexander should consider Suzanne Moore for the Indy editorship - unusually, she combines a left-wing sensibility with haute personal style and grooming: she is well-shod proof that you can make a good living from the politics of selflessness.

And please, Alexander, abandon the idea of Jeremy Paxman. He wouldn't survive five minutes. Plus, he's molto sensitive.

Rod Liddle and the Indy: A rather daft Facebook campaign

The Facebook campaign against Rod Liddle's rumoured appointment-to-be as the next editor of the Independent amuses me. Over 3000 people have signed up to the protest so far - amazing really, considering Liddle's rumoured champion, Alexander Lebedev (the Russian oligarch presently burying alive the London Evening Standard), has yet to buy the paper.

It amuses me for many reasons. For instance, I don't recall a Facebook campaign against the Indy's present editor Roger Alton at the time of his appointment - he'd war-mongered for Blair on the liberal/leftist Observer during the Iraq invasion just because the government paid court to him and one of his ignorant sidekicks.

"Make a stand here for standards in the British press," say the Facebook petitioners. Yet Liddle has made his plastic name writing silly posturing things in The Sunday Times, the Spectator and elsewhere. What standards in the British press?

'Tatlersnob': The man who is utterly obsessed with Nicholas Coleridge

Nicholas Coleridge: In the company of Jordan, Megan Fox, Justin Timberlake et al, he is now a sex object: in this instance, the pin-up of 'Tatlersnob'

Even my most unforgiving critics - yes, you - will readily agree that Madame Arcati has a talent for finding human nuggets: very singular creatures with peculiar tastes. The gorgeous Robin Tamblyn and his preoccupation with Kevin Spacey. Fish and her exquisite fanaticism for Nicky Haslam. Now meet "Tatlersnob".

Tatlersnob, 28, is the alias of a young man who has a fixation on ... Nicholas Coleridge, 52 (job title below), the man who presides over Vogue, Glamour, Tatler etc, in the UK. Recently, Tatlersnob began dropping comments on various Arcati posts in praise of Mr Coleridge: after a while I thought, "I do believe I have spotted another nugget for my Museum of Charming Peculiarities." [I thought these words as a proper sentence]

I am quite confident that Tatlersnob is not a tiresome stalker or clinical loon: he appears to have an incomprehensible obsession with the upper classes (as framed in upmarket glossies, I hasten to add), the aristocracy and Coleridge in particular as icon of the genera. Tatlersnob, after a little persuasion, agreed to a brief, explicatory interview ....

Tatlersnob! Crazy name! Now look, it's become apparent from messages you've left on Arcati that you have a thing for the Managing Director of Condé Nast and novelist, Nicholas Coleridge. Tell me as much as possible what this "thing" is and how it started - do not stint on detail.

I'm a 28 year old male from the wilds of Scotland. I do so love the upper class and the aristocracy. All those ex Eton and ex-Le Rosey types: so attractive and sauve.

You stinted on detail. Anyway, starting with what remains of his hair down to his well shod feet, give us a guide to your thoughts on Nicholas' body parts. I mean, what do you think of his face, his shoulders, tum, other areas, legs etc. And tell us what you think he is like as a person.

Mr Coleridge has such a handsome face. He looks quite sporty and like he enjoys the outdoors. His chest looks quite wide and muscular and he seems to have lovely chest hair. He may well ride and so have very muscular thighs and bottom. AS a good snob I'm sure his crown jewels are well polished and sparkling.

In your dreams what would you love to happen between you and Nicholas, bearing in mind he's a happily married father of four. Share your fantasy - do you have fantasies about him?

I would just like him to take me out to dinner. I'm sure he is a very interesting person. It would be so lovely listening to his lovely voice for a couple of hours.

My own view is that Nicholas is a status obsessed snob as reflected in the magazines he oversees such as UK Vogue, Tatler, GQ etc, and in his rather facile novels which are just about money. How is this healthy? Defend your hero/fantasy lover from my brutal assessment.

I'm sure Mr Coleridge is just going by the old adage "write what you know about". He knows so much about high society and the upper classes, then why shouldn't he write about them? Mr [Geordie] Greig and he made a wonderful team at Tatler and Tatler needs to be somewhat snobby to remain a society magazine.

Christmas is a-coming. What would you love to buy Nicholas and him you.

I'm sure he could could find me some vintage copies of Tatler or maybe get me an invitation to bounce around a stately home. I would take him as my guest as it's always fun to have someone else to bounce around a stately home with.

Tatlersnob! Thankyou for sharing. xx

Tom Wolfe: The rich do have feelings - and he should know

The Tom Wolfe short story that extravagantly kicked off Geordie Greig's editorship of the London Evening Standard several weeks ago has proved to be upwardly mobile by migrating to Vanity Fair.

The Rich Have Feelings, Too is a wanly satirical monologue on all those poor rich CEO financiers who've cost taxpayers billions in whichever currency and been tragically reduced by the recession to flying with the "commercial-aviation herd" after yonks of coking it on private jets.

"We would be lounging lushly in what was designed as a living room, not an airplane cabin," the writer nostalgically recalls of former Learjet heaven. "There were mahogany, walnut, and amboyna inlays all over the place … You never had to sit next to anybody. You had your own virtual easy chair and all the legroom in the world … and cantilevered tabletops made of the same rich, spectacularly grained woods." [Pause to dab eyebags]

If there's a lack of Swiftian rage at this excess - as opposed to a lipsmacking curiosity about how the rich live - then may be that's because Wolfe, who's forever white-suited, is closer to the spirit of his fallen financiers than his fiction might lead us to believe. Commenter MikeyCee recalls on the Wall Street Journal blog The Wealth Report: "Tom Wolfe cannot talk about eccentric rich people, he’s one too. I know someone who customized Wolfe’s Cadillac. He had them do everything in white including the whole interior [for $7,500]. Pretty cool but still a bit over the top."

Yes indeed. Wolfe a little out of touch with the zeitgeist? Commenter King Cash on the same blog answers that with this: "I once heard [Wolfe] go on and on how punk music originated in England to prove a point he was arguing. Sorry, Tom, that you never took a cab to CBGBs [NY] in the time. It was under your nose." Along with the rest of real life.

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!

Tatler alert: The editor is starting to become tiresome

I hear Tatler is a vale of tears as new editor Catherine Ostler externalises her inner misery in order to harmonise the outer weather with it. Ambient misery is the perfect climate for those who dramatise the subjective. She was prone to peculiar behaviour at ES Magazine. One can only hope her Condé Nast boss Nicholas Coleridge will intervene before we have another Jane Procter situation. A magazine insider writes me:

"Currently Tiny Tears is being a total B!!!! and the staff are scared witless by her moods, lots of shouting and bullying. Will Saint Nicholas step in before the troops desert?"

Meantime, here's Tatler's ad rates:

Whole Page £10,500 £13,700
Outside Back Cover £20,500
Outside Back Cover Gatefold £62,000
Double Page Spread £21,000 £27,300
Inside Front Cover Spread £41,000
Inside Front Cover Gatefold £71,000
Half Page £6,100 £7,900
Quarter Page £3,100 £3,900

Michael Gross: His absent book and lapdog hacks

I interviewed Michael Gross the other week about Annette de la Renta's reported campaign against his book Rogue's Gallery - which guts the dubious history of the Metropolitan Museum - and you may be interested to know that the title is inexplicably absent from the online catalogue of the New York Public Library. "The library’s 2008 annual report lists an Anne E. de la Renta Cataloging Endowment Fund as part of a list of endowments that were started with a donation of at least $100,000," reports the New York Observer. Surely that can't explain the absence. Click here.

Michael gives a fascinating interview to Obsessedtv - see it here. He talks about his work methods, characters who fascinate him - eg Murdoch is now seeking respectability in his winter years after being the greatest rebel in newspapers - his career, ongoing project and his thoughts on journalists. Too many of them are "lapdogs who want to be invited back for lunch." Ah yes, the Nicholas Coleridge Syndrome we call it.

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.

Nicholas de Jongh and his Standard departure

It is tragic news that Nicholas de Jongh, theatre critic of the little-read regional newspaper, the London Evening Standard for 17 years, is leaving the paper to spend more time with the film script of his John Gielgud cottaging cock-pulling stage play Plague Over England (see my incomparable review of the play via labels, you idle glancing bitches).

I must have imagined that Geordie Grieg or is it Grieg? (who knows or cares?), doomed and über-pompous editor of same (he loves his über), had generously offered to cut his fee prior to this announcement. De Jongh was most gracious about über-Grieg/Greig, alluding to his courtier quality inherited from a relative who grovelled before a king a long time ago and beyond first-hand memory. Amazing what passes down via the DNA and is then edged with the gilt of eugenics puffery, even if light-heartedly.

The Standard has now lost Brian Sewell, its arts editor and others of seniority and talent. I do hope film critic Derek Malcolm is safe. It doesn't pay to have talent or longevity at the Daily Über right now.

Roy Greenslade says 'bye to Evening Standard?

Roy Greenslade rages at Lord Rothermere for "washing his hands" in Pontius Pilate style of Evening Standard staff - supposedly facing inferior redundancy payments under the new owner. I take it he won't be the Standard's media pundit for much longer, then. Anyone with a peerage want the job? Click here

'Geordie Greig's resignation letter to Nicholas Coleridge'

A naughty Condé Nast person has given me sight of what could be Tatler ed Geordie Greig's first draft leaving letter to his boss Nicholas Coleridge as he departs for the Evening Standard editorship. Is it authentic? Let me know ....

Dear Nick,

It is with much regret that I resign the editorship of Tatler. We’ve talked about this so I know this comes as no surprise – Alexander sends his best wishes, by the way. And he said to tell you, cryptically, “Keep the door ajar, my friend.”

This however does not dilute my sense of sadness at departing a magazine that has been my life (and social/restaurant/hotel/Media Guardian/whatever visa) for nearly 10 years and that is indubitably better for the faith you vested in me, needless immodesty aside. If the Evening Standard fulfils me just half as much as Tatler has done then - in terms of hotel and restaurant reservation pulling-power, notwithstanding - I’ll be a happy man. I am already spoilt with expectation!

Tatler now sits at the apex of British journalism, alone: its society guides and upscale celebrity lists provide those media water cooler moments such as Coronation Street once did among those not quite within the magazine’s immediate target reader demographics.

There cannot be a hereditary living writer anywhere who does not covet space in our hallowed glossy pages; and royal photographers vie to shoot the latest hereditary English actressy Rose. Catch-up newspapers stumble over themselves in a pathetic scrum of social climbing to lift our pictures and parrot our judgements - I’ve often said to you, the Evening Standard would be lost without its monthly Tatler for lifting copy, or should I say, inspiration. And now look – they bought the editor!

I feel like Victor Frankenstein right now, insensible to what I created, even as Tatler celebrates its 300th year! Did it all start with me? Well, it's tempting to think ...

To me Tatler is a celebration of all that is best in the international gene pool, a champion of glamour social eugenics and an unforgiving barrier to anyone who fails to meet those exacting standards as set by our best British public schools and universities (over 500 years old, that is), the finest catwalks, The Sunday Times Rich List, Drebrett's and, if I may say, you.

Tatler is a template for the Better Future to come – I am proud to have worked with you on the long march to physical, intellectual and seating plan perfection. In short, I think we have started the ball rolling to the next Conservative government – and better service at Le Caprice!

And if I could continue to contribute in anyway – how about the six best-looking 6* global old Etonian hotel owner heirs under 30, for a feature? - I would be honoured to do so.

Best wishes (and love to Georgia and the children),

Geordie x

Graydon Carter ... is thoroughly stroked

I love the idea of Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter – his monthly diatribes against Bush are a delight – but did he really need the gushing interview in Mediaguardian yesterday? I know Andrew Neil was the guest editor and that Andrew is one of Graydon’s VF contributing editors but who benefits from this line: “He and Graydon are pals; not least, it occurs to me, because Neil is the closest thing the UK has to the kind of editor-as-myth that Condé Nast creates”? OK, OK, I’ve got a lot to learn about the joys of arse-licking ...

A little while ago I extracted 10 outrageous arse-licky comments from a needlessly crawly Karl Lagerfeld interview by Tatler editor Geordie Grieg. In the same vein here are 10 from the Graydon piece by Janine Gibson:

1 “Even early on he was adept at crafting an image”
2 “A consummate showman”
3 “I wish Graydon Carter was the sort of control freak …”
4 [He is an] “editor-as-myth”
5 “Carter ... is second only to Anna Wintour in the profile stakes”
6 “You will not find him on the charity event circuit”
7 … “we sit in his triple-aspect, incredibly tasteful 22nd floor Times Square office”
8 “ … as pleasant and patient as Carter is …”
9 “Much has been made of his ability to reinvent himself ... as if it were immoral”
10 “He's pleased I'm delighted with his aphorism”

Karl Lagerfeld and his odd bedtime habits

Tatler editor Geordie Greig's interview with Chanel's legendary fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld in the magazine's December issue is faintly fawning to say the least, and it left me a little confused on the matter of the subject's bedtime habits, described in regal detail.

We learn that Karl sleeps in a long white nightdress, in a room with no curtains, for seven hours every night, "like clockwork". But before Hypnos carts him off to oblivion, Karl reads "two pages in bed before the book falls on his face." Karl adds: "I then read in the early morning" even though, as Geordie relates immediately afterwards, "he is woken by light and hunger". That he reads rather than breakfasts first thing is an example to me of admirable masochism.

But let us think this routine through. So, Karl lies in bed, presumably on his back with the book in his hands held above his face. This then crashes onto his face as he nods off. Would this not wake him up? - I take it he's not under sedation. I suppose it depends on the weight of the tome. A slim novella by Ian McEwan or Susan Hill might not make much impression on unconsciousness, but what if it was a fat Nicholas Coleridge hardback novel or anything by Tolstoy? This would surely bring Karl around with a start, and squash his nose too.

Perhaps we should assume that Karl's steepled arms descend gently and smoothly as consciousness ebbs away - he is elegance personified, after all - like one of those rickety elevators in ancient department stores (Debenhams usually) heading south, so that the book enjoys a soft landing. But if awareness ebbs away then we must also assume that he does not actually read the two pages unless he means that his lights go out precisely at the moment he reaches the last word on the second page, Pavlov style. This is most unlikely. I fear that Mr Lagerfeld probably stops reading well before he has turned his first page as drowsiness sets in. Mystery novels must remain a mystery to him, if this is the case.

But even if we accept this two-page claim, are we then to believe that the King of Chic sleeps his seven hours and then awakes with a book spread-eagled upon his visage, like some vampiric bat seeking to infect a new recruit for Vlad? Can you imagine a more absurd sight, accompanied we may suppose by the slightest rumble of a snore beneath? Happily, as Geordie loyally explains: "[Karl] does not take himself too seriously."

Geordie's top 10 Lagerfeld arselicks from the Tatler interview

1 "Lagerfeld is a man of supreme sophistication, charm and power"
2 "And supreme taste"
3 "He massacres hypocrisy and cant"
4 "He is a man of supreme politeness and decorum"
5 "No other designer seems to inspire such adulation"
6 "Pretension is his bugbear"
7 "With a clear conscience, he sleeps long and easy"
8 "He doesn't do anything as banal as translated books" (because he reads in four languages)
9 "His workload is Herculean"
10 "He is courteous, charming, gentle and yet incisive"

To acquaint yourself with the master click here.

Kate Middleton - and the Geordie Greig connection

Is there no end to the talents of the "Napoleonic" Tatler editor Geordie Greig? Not just a celebrity schmoozer par excellence - Britain's "best connected man", according to an Observer profile in 2005 - and a glittery satellite to sooooooooooo many major literary kings and queens, he is also, I discover, the unpaid PR adviser and agony uncle to Kate Middleton, no less.

In the last year or so, Greig has stretched his editorial condom into her media relations and guided many of Kate's public and private moves - why, he even advised her on how to play the game when Prince William dumped her and reel him in back to her bosom. I don't have a transcript but, post-the dump, Greig certainly did not discourage darling Kate from getting herself seen in various upmarket nightclubs or exhibiting her dazzling smile for the paps. The calculation, inter alia, was that the future heir to the throne might wonder what he was missing as (1) his then much- maligned ex-girlfriend failed to be seen boo-hooing into her premature "Wills & Kate" commemorative tea mug, as (2) various snobbish "sources" disgracefully rubbished her mother and family gene pool.

Greig is indeed a canny editor though I would seek to dissuade anyone from any cynical or reductive analysis of motive.