Celebrity Tories, declare yourselves!
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Version 0 of 1. Those without a handle on the scale of Tory innate self-confidence should consider that the Conservatives call their annual fundraiser the Black and White Ball. As any regular readers of this column will be more than aware, the original party by that name – hosted in 1966 by Truman Capote at New York’s Plaza hotel – boasted a guestlist including Tennessee Williams, Andy Warhol, Frank Sinatra, Greta Garbo, Lauren Bacall and the maharaja of Jaipur. The annual Conservative homage to the event this year garnered Peter Stringfellow, Karren Brady and Billy Murray from The Bill. Whichever Conservative HQ muppet scheduled it the night after the Baftas should clearly be taken out and shot – or at the very least, given a 10-minute headstart in the pheasant woods of Richard Caring’s Somerset shoot, before being beaten out by lumpen locals on the promise of a Cup a Soup, and aimed at by a loudly-tweeded line of horrors comprising the party’s eight largest donors. They will all be absolutely appalling shots, so this may be regarded as the humane option. Mainly, of course, the Tories’ Black and White Ball garnered high-net-worth businessfolk, and it sounds like quite the most taxing of evenings (not in that way, naturally). The dress code was “winter cool” – again, you have to admire the optimism – and there were no place names, and not even a table plan, only a website with a security code to which guests were required to log on for instructions. I do adore this level of secrecy – although, wasn’t not having a placement technically outlawed by the Tories in the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994? Either way, it does all sound like a hi-tech version of organising a rave in a field in 1991, with a few second-tier cabinet ministers, business leaders and Billy Murray perhaps required to phone a number after 5pm on the day to find out the location. Would there have been more or less sweaty hugging at the Conservative bash or at a Spiral Tribe event? Quite finely balanced, I’d say. Though obviously you would have needed way more drugs to get through the Tory bash. Anyhow, the bash does sound like a serious missed opportunity – not for a lone madman, you understand, but for the Tories themselves, who should clearly have used its red carpet as a way of confirming which celebrities would be batting for them in the coming shitstorm, or whatever working title has currently been slapped on the 2015 election. And so to DECISION 2015, as no broadcaster has yet sarcastically branded it, and the question of celebrity involvement. Can Lost in Showbiz make a formal plea to the BBC to resurrect – raise, even – the shipwreck of arguably its most hilariously malarial election-night gimmick ever? I speak, of course, of the Silver Sturgeon, a luxury vessel moored on the Thames, which was captained on the night of 6 May 2010 by Mr Andrew Neil and whose passenger manifest appeared to have been drafted as a dare. Alongside various politicians and pundits, you see, it included an absolute shower of stars, including Joan Collins and her mesmerising husband Percy Gibson, Richard Madeley and his daughter Chloe, star of The Jump, Fern Britton, the Duke of Ben Kingsley, Maureen Lipman, Kelly Holmes, Theo Paphitis … it went on. O mine eyes! This is one of those events that you almost think you might have imagined, but was actually real, a bit like It’s A Royal Knockout (or The Grand Knockout Tournament, to give it its correct title). Largely on account of this nation not having a government for the best part of the next week, the ship of fools never received the exhaustive postmortem it deserved. Nor indeed the iceberg. Those five and a half blissful days of uncertainty saw the entire event effectively buried at sea, the waters closing mercifully over its carcass somewhere offscreen, while Nick Clegg captivated us all in his role as hung parliament love interest. That now feels like a massive error – and not just the Clegg bit, obviously. Just as it is absolutely vital to remind ourselves that Royal Knockout saw John Travolta dressed as a giant vegetable, or Prince Edward storming out of a press conference wearing a sweatshirt that read “NO I JUST LOOK LIKE HIM”, so it is essential that we recall the rolling lowlights of that night aboard the Silver Sturgeon. My memories? All too hazy, though I have recently obtained footage of the event and plan to scorch it all on to my retinas as part of my intense endurance-training programme for this year’s campaign. But I do recall some nutso vignettes – Joan Collins addressing incoming results with a champagne-lubed: “Yay Cameron!” Bruce Forsyth being asked what he thought about an exit poll. “I … I thought it was high,” he gibbered, before turning round on the balcony on which he was being interviewed and trying to get fellow guests to parrot his catchphrase back at him. About three obliged. At around 3.30am – and I swear this happened – Bill Wyman was called to Neil’s rapidly disintegrating pundit table, where he slurringly declared that he hoped the Tories won. Bill Wyman! So many questions. Like, where was Bill at Monday’s ball? When is Labour going to unveil its showbiz dream team? And come the start of the campaign proper, could it not repurpose its post-satirical pink bus as the Mystery Machine, and staff it with four sublebrities and a dog – off the top of my head: Kathy Lette, Melvyn Bragg, Janet Street-Porter, Alastair Campbell and Pudsey – who would be charged with driving around the country and solving the puzzle of what they actually stand for? |