Tatler UK - 09.2019

tatler.com Tatler September 2019

For Hannah

Rothschild,

Nicky Haslam

is ‘one of the

world’s great

life enhancers’.

To Geordie Greig, ‘He always knows what’s

really happening in high and low places. He breaks

barriers, defies convention and is generationless

• both my 91-year-old mother and my 21-year-
  old son claim him as a friend.’ To Violet von
  Westenholz, ‘He’s a complete legend and I feel
  lucky to have him as my godfather.’ And for

Prudence, Lady Penn, one-time Lady-in-Waiting

to the Queen Mother, he is ‘immensely kind, a

unique and charismatic individual it takes time

to understand and appreciate fully. I cannot

believe he is going to be an octogenarian. Don’t

think he can either.’

But he is, on 27 September. And in those 80

years he’s done everything. Invented the 1960s,

according to his old friend David Bailey. Taught

Mick Jagger how to make a Bloody Mary prop-

erly. Introduced the Prince of Wales to Barbara

Windsor with the words, ‘Mr Windsor... Miss

Windsor.’ Provoked Joanna Lumley into writ-

ing, of his latest book launch, ‘Darling Nicky,

that was the most heavenly scrum of wonderful

people, but not one as fabulous as you, looking

like a skinny teenager, signing books like a rock

star for all your fans, of which I am the most

fervent.’ Been the first man to be allowed into

the Paris Ritz in jeans – ‘one must be modern,’

he always says. Become a wildly successful caba-

ret singer since his late sixties (‘I’m sold out,’ he

boasts, ‘I’m Adele!’) and had Leslie Caron and

Rupert Everett up on stage with him – one of

whose ‘lesser-known accomplishments,’ says

Barry Humphries, ‘is an ability to sing the en-

tire score of Irving Berlin’s Call Me Madam, a

gift shared only by myself.’ Instructed us that it

is common to love one’s parents and to light

scented candles. And given his godchild Louisa

Fox a £50 note each birthday and a pair of diamond

and sapphire earrings on her wedding day.

His father’s family made its money in cotton;

his mother was a Ponsonby and a goddaughter

of Queen Victoria. At seven he was struck

down with polio, spent a year immobile in a

cast and a further two years bed-bound – with a

model house in which he moved the furniture,

pinned up the curtains and made the paintings.

At Eton he dressed his study with fake ocelot-

skin curtains, ostrich-plume pelmets and a

carpet of artificial grass. In London, he had, he’s

said, a fling with Tony Armstrong-Jones, as

Princess Margaret’s future husband then was; in

St Tropez, he danced with Brigitte Bardot. In

PHOTOGRAPHS: GETTY IMAGES; SHUTTERSTOCK; RICHARD YOUNG 1962 he went to New York, worked for ]

2005

With Scarlett Johansson, 2004

With Meg Mathews,

2006

With Kate Moss,

2007

With Hilary Swank, 2007 With Tracey Emin, 2007

With Tamara Beckwith, 2006

With Boris Johnson, 2006

With David

& Samantha

Cameron, 2006

With Diane von

Furstenberg, 2006

With the Hon Daphne

Guinness, 2006

With Paris Hilton & Sarah,

Duchess of York, 2008

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