I don’t want to get lost in the politics of envy here, but Lost in Showbiz could live to 100 and never get over the fact of its exclusion from the Tory summer party.
The event took place in London on Tuesday night, and before we go any further let’s get one thing straight: these guys know how to party. Accounts of the raffle takings alone read like KLF performance art. “Tonight we are offering a unique prize: the chance to own the photograph of the first majority Conservative cabinet for 18 years,” enticed the catalogue, insisting that the lot constituted a “truly special piece of history”. I’m assuming they hired the same copywriters who flog kitten plates and Princess Di figurines in the lesser Sunday supplements.
Bidding was fierce, according to reports, and the photo ended up going for £210,000. Not only that, organisers persuaded the next highest bidder to part with his final bid too, bringing the total amount raised for a signed photo of the cabinet to £410,000. I know! I love this funding model. If they did a WI-style nudie calendar, they could afford some planes for our new aircraft carrier.
As for what else can be gleaned from reports, I’m afraid details are sketchy. I can tell you that Celebrity Conservative Kirstie Allsopp was in attendance, though Peter Stringfellow appears to have been decommissioned as one of the party’s big guns. And I feel duty-bound to draw attention to a vintage Daily Mail sentence. See if you can spot the key change: “While the 700 guests – who paid either £450 or £1,000 a ticket depending on where they sat – whooped with delight at video images of Ed Balls’s defenestration at the general election, the mood on the evening was understandably restrained following recent shocking events in Tunisia.”
Oh man. Totally. And look, I like tales of electoral snuff videos as much as the next weirdo, but I do feel there was a missed opportunity to get the phrase “what they would have wanted” into that sentence. Still, there’s more: “An open-necked David Cameron made a sombre, joke-free speech about the need to confront Islamic militants.”
Best. Party. Entertainer. EVER. God knows how they topped that, but given this night sounds like one whose legend will echo down the ages, I’m working on the assumption that Bianca Jagger rode in on Iain Duncan Smith.
