April 27, 2009 - Manhattan’s latest parental punishment
I have seldom been as relieved to read an article as one that appeared last week by New York Times writer Andrew Das. It began: “In the moments after I felt the pop in my left shoulder, the sensation I felt was not pain. It was panic. How exactly does a 40-year-old man explain to his wife that he might have torn his rotator cuff during a midnight game of Wii tennis?”
April 6, 2009 - The Big Apple is learning to live again
The Russian businessman I was having a drink with lived in London. “I prefer London to New York right now; in London not everyone talks about their depleted bank balance; in New York everyone does,” he said. I agreed. But then a friend took me for a late dinner at a restaurant I’d never heard of, Charles, in the West Village.
March 30, 2009 - Sex appeal takes years to master
Details magazine has dictated that the sexiest woman on the planet is not Scarlett Johansson, or Gisele Bundchen, but Jennifer Aniston — who is 40.
March 23, 2009 - If we ‘kill the rich’, don’t we kill the dream?
My neighbor at dinner, a hedge-fund manager originally from Texas, was emphatic. “If your only identity is in your job or your money then there is no point living in New York any more,” he said. “Anyone who thinks like that will leave.”
March 16, 2009 - The guillotine hasn’t arrived here yet
These days it’s not just financial journalists who follow the movements of financiers. So, too, do the entertainment channels and press. Who could have predicted the day would come when OK! magazine would care what mode of transport Ken Lewis, Bank of America’s chief, uses? But according to the New York Times, these topics are now considered as interesting to readers as Britney Spears’s weight fluctuations.
March 9, 2009 - Pity the poor Englishman in Manhattan
My English friend was worried. “I guess the next step is getting American-accent lessons,” she said over dinner the other night. She is a peer of mine — we were at Cambridge together — and she has wound up in New York working in a senior position for an American bank on Wall Street. We frequently joke that she must have done something appalling to be punished for her timing.
March 2, 2009 - The price of a teddy bear picnic – £50,000
New York’s latest financial criminal mastermind — and remember, we now have one a day being unveiled — is Paul Greenwood, 61, the bow-tied town governor of North Salem, New York’s horsey area. (Until recently it’s where the American Olympic equestrian team trained.)
February 16, 2009 - Let frivolous fashion defy the NY blues
New York Fashion Week is here - and, as Lela Rose, the Texan designer, says as she threads her needle and fits her models, “the show must go on.” “We need a little pick-me-up,” she emailed me, “and I actually think the upcoming week should be a way to move forward. That doesn’t mean we aren’t all facing reduced orders.”
February 9, 2009 - Bad times bring out the best in Manhattan
Another day, another one bites the dust. Friends everywhere are losing their jobs. They’re bright. The New York Times described the growing ranks of the city’s unemployed as the new chic club in town.
January 26, 2009 - Cloud-cuckoo-land on Wall Street
“How much should a Wall Street CEO get paid?” The question got bandied around on Thursday night at dinner — by a bunch of Wall Street CEOs.
January 19, 2009 - Let’s hear from the Madoff women
Every day turns up an astonishing new detail of the incredible story of Bernie Madoff and his $50-billion Ponzi scheme: aside from Obama’s inauguration, New York can talk of little else. And some of the new angles are very odd.
January 12, 2009 - Take that smug smile off Madoff now
Today prosecutors will make their case that Bernard Madoff should be jailed for violation of bail conditions. On Christmas Eve he mailed out trinkets worth more than $1 million to family members. His defense lawyer says Madoff had no idea he was doing anything wrong and that these items were sentimental. Prosecutors argue his act shows he will try to hide assets as long as he is not incarcerated.
December 29, 2008 - Haggling my way through the blues
I wish I could say that this holiday season has felt as cheerful as usual. But the emptiness in New York’s streets and stores both on December 24th and 26th merely amplified the depressing retail statistics. Eager sales assistants hawked their marked-down wares with an enthusiasm bordering on desperation. “I can hold any item for you at sixty per cent off for two weeks,” one woman told me.
December 22, 2008 - Just don’t tell us what your manicure costs
“What recession?” shouted the front page of the New York Post last week, beside a picture of a blonde Swedish countess, Marie Douglas-David. Douglas-David, a former banker at Lazard, is divorcing her husband of six years, George David, former CEO of United Technologies and worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
December 15, 2008 - Spot the next Madoff is our new parlour game
It began with the names of corporate victims who had lived high on debt, such as Viacom CEO Sumner Redstone, casino king Sheldon Adelson and Lehman president Joe Gregory. They lost houses, planes or boats worth millions. Who knew they financed their mansions with debt?
December 8, 2008 - With her legs, Palin didn’t need a makeover
Just when I’d hoped Sarah Palin would disappear from public consciousness, it seems we can’t get rid of the former Republican vice-presidential candidate. She’s everywhere and so, too, is the controversy over her ultra-expensive Hollywood-style “makeover”. This weekend, the New York Times revealed details of the $165,000 the Republican party had spent on three stylists, in addition to $150,000 already spent on clothes. Palin has claimed she was “appalled” at the expense. The clothes are being given to charity.
December 1, 2008 - For one fearful moment, I long for home
On the eve of Thanksgiving, just as I was about to go on TV to deliver a light-hearted spoof about what life would be like for Barack Obama without his BlackBerry, the screens filled with the terrible footage of the attacks on Mumbai. While we watched the gruesome spectacle, ticker-tape warnings at the bottom of the screens stated that the FBI had got wind of an al Qaeda plot to bomb subways and other public transport in New York city for Black Friday - the day after Thanksgiving when stores give one-off huge discounts and people get up as early as 4am to shop.
November 24, 2008 - For some, this crisis is on another planet
We’re told a global recession of almost Depression proportions is taking place, fragmenting the social hierarchy. At the bottom end there is tragic chaos represented by suicides and rising crime. At the top, there’s divorce, misery and a small effort to be less ostentatious about one’s wealth. Meanwhile, in the middle, according to New York Times columnist David Brooks, it’s just depression.
November 17, 2008 - Cancel Christmas - sorry, but no one gets anything this year
Given that it hasn’t yet got properly cold here, it feels like a very strange hallucination. In a naked effort to make us forget that we are living in an economic meltdown, the stores are full of fairy lights. Their illusion makes you feel you are in some sort of dream world - everyone is friendly, everything is cheap. Never mind what the news says about the collapsing auto industry, all is just fine and cheery.
November 11, 2008 - My night of joy, then exhaustion dawns
For a moment last week, around midnight on Tuesday, we all went mad with joy. Mad in a way I’ve never seen or heard. As I went to bed around 4am I could still hear the screams from people in the street: “We did it!” Emails came in from friends the next day: “I’m still drunk; you?”
November 3, 2008 - I can’t wait till all the shouting stops
We’re finally here: tomorrow is Election Day. You could cut the tension with a knife. Many of my friends have been stumping in swing states for Obama over the weekend, terrified that at the last moment a “Bradley effect” could rob him of the victory the polls predict. I don’t think this will happen. H L Mencken had a point when he wrote that no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public - but he hadn’t met Sarah Palin. When Obama is declared victor, I hope, it will be a glorious coda to the Bush years.
October 27, 2008 - Obama is short of fans on Wall Street
The other evening I went as a guest of friends to a dinner to raise money for a hospital in New York. This was the same hospital where my twins were prematurely born. On entering this world they weighed only 2lb and 3lb respectively, but went on to thrive. So I was glad to be at this event with friends whose company I always enjoy.
October 20th - Uh-oh, now I’m in love with a vampire
Back before the fall of Lehman Brothers and the global economic collapse, I had a dirty little secret: my weekly addiction to the TV series Gossip Girl, about the absurdly rarefied lives of a fictional group of wealthy New York teenagers. Now ratings for the show are soaring: more than ever, people want cheap escapism.
October 13, 2008 - The silicon chips aren’t down yet
“How poor are you?” That’s what formerly rich guys ranging from hedge-fund kings and tech pioneers to bankers and trust-fund heirs are now asking each other at dinners around town.
October 6, 2008 - And a small glass of Chateau Plonk, please
Last week saw not just the initial failure of Hank Paulson’s bail-out bill but also the death of the $800 bottle of wine. “It’s just not OK to have that on your expenses at a time like this,” one restaurateur says…
September 29, 2008 - Lose your job and watch friends vanish
Alberto Vilar once promised so many millions to both New York’s Metropolitan Opera and London’s Royal Opera House that his name was engraved in both places — only to be removed in 2005, when prosecutors charged him with stealing most of his fortune.
September 22, 2008 - Women should beware male spinsters
For some reason, in the last week or so I’ve had a series of lunches and dinners with friends who are male, single, over 35 and never-married. Men like this were traditionally labelled playboys, a term implying they possessed a rakish charm and a wariness of settling.
September 15, 2008 - Lehman’s collapse rattles the really rich
The phone has rung off the hook all weekend. “Are you OK?” I’ve asked friends whose husbands have been at Lehman Brothers. No, of course they are not. They just saw everything they’ve worked for go down the drain. A lunch barbecue with a Lehman executive who has been there 16 years was cancelled. No explanation needed.
September 8, 2008 - Be very afraid of the hockey moms
Like 37 million Americans last Wednesday night, I sat transfixed as I watched the previously unknown figure of Sarah Palin turn herself into the angel of the Republican party. But the burning issue in my mind was: what is a hockey mom?
September 1, 2008 - Not even a woman can win it for McCain
John McCain made a brilliant move in choosing Sarah Palin, the 44-year-old governor of Alaska, to be his running-mate. This appointment ought to make up for all his own deficiencies. Palin is young. She’s female. She’s attractive; she’s got some celebrity, having been the runner-up in a Miss Alaska beauty pageant.
August 18, 2008 - Will Hillary rain on Obama’s parade?
The story I’d been hearing for some time has finally come out in the open: Hillary Clinton, Bill, and many of her major financial supporters, known as “bundlers”, are so livid at what they see as underhanded play by the Obama team that they intend to eviscerate what ought to be Obama’s coronation at the Democratic Party Convention in Denver this week.
August 11, 2008 - Creative Brits are the talk of the town
In New York, the pre-movie hype about Woody Allen’s latest movie, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, had all been about the kiss between Penélope Cruz, onscreen and real-life girlfriend of male lead Javier Bardem, and America’s modern version of Marilyn Monroe, Scarlett Johansson.
August 4, 2008 - It’s official: guys can wear shorts to work
For women, dressing for summer here is a whole lot easier (and cheaper) than in London. You know that stepping outside will feel like walking into a blast furnace, so you choose pretty light sundresses and then you buy a cardigan to battle the freezing air-conditioning inside.
July 28, 2008 - I’ve almost put my sons on the stage
The light-bulb went off while I was driving home last weekend. From the back seat of the car, my twin five-year-olds burst into song: “I’m a joker, I’m a smoker, I’m a midnight toker …”
July 21, 2008 - Divorce is up, personal trainers down
Last week, in the wake of the near-implosion of mortgage insurer Fannie Mae, and with rumours swirling about the fate of Lehman Brothers, where the stock has plummeted 70 per cent, I got an email from a friend. Instead of his usual pithy jokes, he sent me his investment fund’s second-quarter report.
July 14, 2008 - Tough times, but they still keep giving
New York’s billionaires, it seems, have not really noticed the downturn. They still spend their summers on lavish yachts in Europe, and are still flying in their own planes. Hearteningly, they also continue to give philanthropically on a vast scale.
July 7, 2008 - Oh, for the days of divorce with dignity
The headlines here recently seem to have all been about sex - and costly, illicit sex at that.
June 30, 2008 - Trial runs for Wall Street’s finest
It’s muggy here - a point emphasised by the increasing number of sweating brows I’ve watched on TV the past week. These brows mainly belong to men in suits who are on their way in and out of courthouses on charges of white-collar crime.
June 23, 2008 - Michelle will be a fine feisty First Lady
A friend saw Laura Bush recently and told me how “poised” our First Lady was: “petite” and “gracious”, a “listener”, not a talker. These are the traditional qualities we are supposed to admire in a First Lady. Feisty Democratic women have had a harder time fitting the mould.
June 16, 2008 - London, you’ve changed for the better
For the first time in a year I have spent the week in London, working and seeing friends. It has been an eye-opening experience; after all, it has been 11 years since I lived here.
June 9, 2008 - My nursery shame as a no-show mom
It was the one item in the diary marked “DO NOT MISS”, scheduled for 10.30am on Thursday. What occasion merited such urgency? My children’s graduation ceremony … from nursery school.
June 6, 2008 - Big Apple macho men spin out of control
I will readily confess to being a New York gym rat: I like to go for a run or workout on the elliptical machines. The only times it isn’t relaxing is if I happen to enter the gym at the same time as the “spinning” class is taking place …
May 19, 2008 - Give me Michelle over Hillary any day
It was an intensely political evening. First, the premiere of the amazing new film Recount, starring Kevin Spacey and Denis Leary, turned the dry legal arguments about “hanging chads” in the aftermath of the 2000 presidential election into fascinating drama.
May 12, 2008 - Life’s just a deal for the new gurus
G. W. Bush christened himself “The Decider”, and expounded upon his ability to make swift decisions that come not from his brain but his gut. And look where that has got us…
May 6, 2008 - Don’t blame Obama for his mentor’s flaws
Those of us firmly in the anti-Hillary, pro-Obama camp are fed up with it. “I can’t read about it any more,” one Obama backer wrote to me over the weekend.
April 28, 2008 - Bring on the long, hot Manhattan nights
Where else would a mother in her thirties be invited to dance the night away, seven nights in a row? To sip champagne or cosmopolitans with movie stars and producers all night long and talk nonsense about unwritten movie scripts?
April 21, 2008 - I’m ditching butch Hillary for gentle Obama
For me, no matter what happens in Pennsylvania, I’m done with Hillary Clinton. I have long felt that either Democratic candidate would suffice as President.
