THURSDAY, MAY 24
Dinner aboard Lord Sugar’s gargantuan, 150ft yacht Lady A, temporarily moored right next to Tower Bridge. ‘How much did you pay to park it here?’ I asked.
‘A lot more than you can afford, sunshine,’ he growled smugly. ‘Work harder and you may get a boat like mine one day.’
‘Roman Abramovich has jet-skis bigger than this,’ I retorted.
‘I can’t stand all this PC c***,’ Dame Joan Collins declared. ‘It makes life so dreadfully dull. That’s why Donald’s so refreshing, even if I don’t agree with everything he says’
Other guests included American billionaire Vernon Hill, a great character who founded Metro Bank and is an old friend of Donald Trump.
Vernon and his wife Shirley brought their dog, a Yorkshire terrier named Duffy, or Sir Duffield II to give him his full title, who sat opposite me on his own chair at dinner, eating everything we ate off the same plates we used. He even had his own napkin, tucked into his collar, and occasionally erupted into ferocious barking if service slowed up. In typically British fashion, the rest of us behaved as if all this was perfectly normal.
‘I guess you’re used to this,’ I said to Lord Sugar.
‘What?’ he snarled.
‘Eating with a tiny, hairy, yapping creature – every time you dine alone.’
‘That reminds me, I’ve got a present for you,’ Lord Sugar smirked, before disappearing and returning with a bronze statue of me sniffing President Trump’s bottom.
‘I had this specially made for you, Mr Brown-Noser,’ he guffawed.
‘I don’t want that horrible, ugly thing in my home!’ exclaimed his wife, Lady Anne.
‘You should have thought of that when you married him,’ I replied.
I turned back to Lord Sugar. ‘May I just remind you, Alan, the last time we dined together you told the entire table Trump had zero chance of winning the election.’
‘No, I didn’t,’ he stammered.
‘You did,’ interjected designer-to-the-stars Kelly Hoppen, who’d hosted that dinner.
‘I not only insisted Trump WOULD win,’ I added, ‘I also said I’d get him to deport you from your Florida home when he did. And trust me, when the President sees this statue, you’ll be out faster than Spurs choke the League every year.’
‘Will I be deported too?’ asked Lady Anne, panicking.
‘No! So it’s a win-win for you because Alan will soon be living on a separate continent.’
Duffy barked loudly and, I thought, approvingly.
FRIDAY, MAY 25
To Lord’s for the Test match. As I drank champagne at the Nursery End after tea, one of my sons spied Nigel Farage doing the same a few yards away.
‘What the hell’s going on with Brexit?’ I asked Britain’s most polarising politician.
‘Well, we’re headed for a right mess, aren’t we?’ he said. ‘Theresa May is going to fudge it so badly, absolutely nobody will be happy.’
‘Why aren’t you taking a more leading role?’ I said. ‘Seems perverse to me that the guy who spent 25 years campaigning for this to happen is now on the sidelines as it’s actually unfolding.’
‘I agree,’ he said.
‘Apart from anything else, and speaking as someone who voted Remain, I think people like you who led the country into Brexit should now be tasked with making it actually work,’ I said.
‘I agree with that, too.’
‘So will you get more involved?’
‘Yes, perhaps I will.’
Interesting.
THURSDAY, MAY 31
I’m in St Tropez for half-term, and dined tonight at The Strand restaurant with Dame Joan Collins and her husband Percy. The great lady celebrated her 85th birthday a week ago and judging by her social-media posts from a variety of nightspots, she’s been celebrating it ever since.
‘I’ve hit the wall,’ she groaned on arrival. ‘Can I have an emergency Grey Goose vodka with ice to take the edge off my hangover?’
Joan looks (and behaves!) younger than me. ‘Age is just a number,’ she insisted. ‘It’s totally irrelevant unless you’re a bottle of wine. You are what you think you are. I look and feel several decades younger.’
Joan ordered us a potato-and-truffle starter to share. ‘It’s incredible,’ she sighed.
And it was. But she only ate two small morsels, leaving me to scoff to the rest. ‘Discipline is the key,’ said the woman who once perfectly explained the problem with beauty: ‘It’s like being born rich and getting poorer.’
As with every dinner party in the world right now, we discussed President Trump.
‘I can’t stand all this PC c***,’ she declared. ‘It makes life so dreadfully dull. That’s why Donald’s so refreshing, even if I don’t agree with everything he says.’
As we left, a group of Americans rushed over to pay homage. ‘Joan, we just want to say you are even more glamorous in real life!’ one of them exclaimed excitedly.
‘Thank you,’ she replied, flashing the regal smile that’s kept her a star for seven decades.
There really ain’t nothing like THIS Dame.
THURSDAY, JUNE 7
Very sad to hear that nightclub king Peter Stringfellow has died. I knew him for 30 years, and he was an incredibly funny, generous and self-aware man who just wanted everyone, especially himself, to have a great time.
‘You’ve got to enjoy life!’ he’d cackle, while sitting on a giant throne at his London club, surrounded by adoring, beautiful women feeding him lobster. I don’t know anybody who enjoyed life more than Mr Stringfellow.
RIP Pete, and thanks for all the laughs.
FRIDAY, JUNE 8
According to a Twitter post that’s gone viral, the song that was No 1 on your 14th birthday defines the rest of your life. I assumed this was just silly season nonsense – until I discovered mine was Gloria Gaynor’s I Will Survive.