So much news and such little ink flowing on my behalf this last week. Without doubt the highlight of the last seven days was the publication of Hilary Mantel’s Bring Up The Bodies: the second in her series of Thomas Cromwell novels after Booker Prize-winning Wolf Hall. You know I’m slightly obsessed with Anne Boleyn so was understandably keen to buy the hardback when I learnt it was all set in the last turbulent year of Anne’s short life. I opened the book on Saturday morning and finished it by lunchtime on Sunday.

The genius of Hilary Mantel is her ability to make Cromwell – one of Tudor England’s most sinister villains – a well-rounded and well-liked character. Her history is superb as is her reading of the many gaps and enigmas posed by primary source texts and letters. I happen to entirely agree with Mantel. Anne Boleyn was a mercurial character: the Great Whore to the Catholics and the bedrock of the Protestant faith to her supporters. I think Mantel was wise to draw a veil over Anne’s guilt or innocence of the treason, incest, witchcraft and adultery that sentenced her to death in 1536.

Though I’d suspect the charges were trumped-up to remove a second wife of Henry VIII incapable of carrying a male child to term or live beyond infancy. As Mantel describes her, Anne Boleyn is a skittish shadow only seen through the corner of the narrator’s eye. She has effectively already lost the game when we first encounter her in Bring Up The Bodies and I find it entirely plausible that Cromwell saw the removal of she and her supporters as the clearing of chess pieces that had already been lost in the game. Do read Bring Up The Bodies Rowley. It’s one of the best novels I’ve ever read about a historical character and quite comparable to Joyce Carol Oates’s Blonde: a masterful novel about the life and death of Marilyn Monroe.

There! You expected the gossip about Savile Row and you get an undergraduate thesis about Tudor fiction. But I don’t consider Bring Up The Bodies Fiction. I think it is closer in spirit to Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood: a creative ‘faction’ retelling of historic events. However, let’s move frivolously away from beheading by a French swordsman on Tower Green, witchcraft and incest. After one hell of a Mexican stand-off between my publishers and I, we finally re-shot the cover for The Perfect Gentleman.  You’ll recall I’d shot a corker with my principal photographer Andy Barnham but it was considered too close in spirit to Savile Row: The Master Tailors of British Bespoke.

You know me Rowley. I bear a grudge and hate to back track when I think the work done is superb. Long story short, Thames & Hudson sent their secret weapon Niki the covers editor to Bloomsbury Towers a couple of weeks ago and we dummied up a couple of alternative covers. I then turned to the man I always do turn to – Guy ‘Dashing Tweeds’ Hills – who agreed to re-shoot the cover as modelled by yours truly…who actually does get out of bed for less than $10,000. Hell, I could be had for the price of a cocktail peanut as you well know Rowley.

So I donned my Huntsman puppy tooth, twinned it with a divine polynesian sea blue waistcoat from Ede & Ravenscroft and stoated over to Guy’s house in Primrose Hill. Guy is of course known as the creative maestro behind Dashing Tweeds and is now collaborating with Comme des Garcons and Converse so he didn’t really need the job. But as a huge favour, he agreed to dust off his Leica and shoot the cover of TPG. What I love about Guy is that he understands light and he spends an hour searching for the perfect shot before we pin it down like a butterfly and shoot the hell out of it until we’ve got a pin sharp image.

Sweet boy that he is, Guy also shot the inside back author’s portrait for me. I do tend to err towards the mean and moody if not an intensity that would do a serial killer proud when posing for a picture. I usually end up with portraits that make people fear they’ll find a kidney on the head board the next morning. Well, Guy and I are old comrades in arms on Savile Row and he knows how to make me smile. So what we got was a softer, more approachable portrait that wouldn’t make children quake, dogs bark and adults back away fingering the Rosary. Do you think it’s a winner darling?

Other jollities of the week included a real Row day visiting tailors Anderson & Sheppard, Huntsman, Henry Poole & Co and Thom Sweeney to play a photo shoot for the Telegraph. I always adore hanging out with the tailors. This shoot is going to be a cracker and will I believe run to coincide with the inaugural London Collections: Men men’s fashion week that Dylan Jones, GQs editor, is fronting. We’ve had men’s fashion days but never a schedule to match the men’s shows in Milan and Paris. So it’s a big deal.

London Collections: Men begins with a cocktail reception hosted by HRH the Prince of Wales on the 14th of June at St. James’s Palace. No, I’m not going, ducks, because I’ve got tickets to see Liza Minnelli at Hampton Court Palace and that’s one queen I won’t stand up. But a couple of weeks ago, Savile Row was in something of a crisis: having been asked by Dylan to put together an event. The chap approached had talked the talk before dropping the catch. So Anda and I had a pow-wow and decided to go back into the events business. I am damned if Savile Row isn’t going to have a fabulous presence at the first London Collections: Men. So we’re putting on a show. I’ll tell you all about it when next I put pen to paper. Until then…

I’ve never been to the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute ball, have you? It is the one occasion in New York where ball gowns are mandatory and le tout Manhattan comes out to walk the red carpet and renew the vows between fashion and celebrity. This year’s extravaganza was to celebrate the Prada meets Schiaparelli ‘Impossible Conversations’ exhibit. I recall interviewing Mrs Prada for Arena Homme + a thousand years ago. The contradiction was Mrs Ps past as a communist sympathiser and her present as the owner of a billion dollar fashion conglomerate with possibly one of the finest private collections of antique high jewellery.

Mrs Prada made me laugh about the epic battles with her husband Mr Bertelli that I presume she seldom lost. Most amusing was the perspex tube helter skelter tunnel that protruded from her office floor like something off the deck of Titanic that she and her assistants slide down to relieve the post catwalk show stress. I suggested it might be best employed for a bit of  Devil Meets Prada slapstick comedy whereby Mrs P could eject interns. Anyway, I digress when the burning issue of the day was how heinous the fashions were on display this week in New York at the Met Ball.

I’m a terrific fan of Sarah Burton at Alexander McQueen but I do think she ought to have been tarred and feathered for the pink tiered frilly monstrosity she persuaded Florence Welch to parade. There wasn’t a point on that mille feuille that flatted a female body. She looked like a cupcake factory having been outraged by a terrorist bomb. I do believe even the costume designers of Strictly Ballroom  would have turned that silhouette down as a pastiche of a pastiche of appalling taste: terribly passo, darling.

I haven’t seen The Hunger Games having quite enough feral children marauding around the environs of Bloomsbury. But the sight of leading lady Elizabeth Banks wearing a monstrous carbuncle by British-Greek designer Mary Katranzou was enough to frighten small children and panic the cat. The dress/construction was like a cut and shut motor having been soldered together by a dodgy mechanic under the arches in King’s Cross. What a hideous collision of unpalatable patterns and incongruous shapes. I interviewed Miss Katranzou for the BBC a couple of Ascots ago and terribly self-confident she was too. Had I but known what she had in store for womankind, I’d have nipped it in the bud.

And as for the Lady Beyonce! Imagine a blind man playing paint ball with a sequin-loasded gun and a few yards of chiffon. Then ask a blindfolded child to play pin the tail on the donkey with ombre marabou feathers and a glue gun. The ill-advised Givenchy made Cher’s Bob Mackie Oscar dress look positively demure in comparison. I like Beyonce. She’s a game girl and terribly talented. But do you consider it fair for a designer to commit such atrocities with a woman who has given birth not three months previous?

Don’t even get me started on Chloe Sevigny’s Courreges-style shift dress made out of black PVC circles and little else or Mary Kate Olsen who won the Helena Bonham Carter Award for ‘off the slab’ couture. The poor dear looked like a deranged, malnourished lab rat dressed up for halloween. If I have the strength, I will send you pictures of the grave robber fashions at the Met. Poor Alexa Chung, as dressed in bipolar fashion by Marc Jacobs looked as if she was enacting an identity crisis whereby she couldn’t decide whether to be a bondage queen or a nun.

Gwyneth Paltrow has immense style but even she with her macrobiotic diet, gravity-defying body and peachy keen body should have though twice about an apron dress that barely covered her boobs and skimmed the thighs like a scimitar. It quite puts you off your prawn cocktail at Ciao Bella. Speaking of which, La Farmer and I sallied forth into the night this week like two horsemen of the apocalypse to attend a Peter York book launch at Phillips de Pury in Victoria. It was the kind of do where you spot big game such as thrillers from Manilla, maracas from Caracas and Nancy dell Ollio slinking past in inappropriate evening wear sipping Campari and hunting rich men.

I was rather put out to be accosted by a McAlpine, I forget which one. He’d clearly had a few sips and was eyeing me like a schoolboy who was contemplating pulling my pigtails. He was hugger mugger with John ‘Granny Takes a Trip’ Pearce and eyeing me mischievously. Having galvanised himself with another slug of grog, he lurched over, grasped the cuff of my Huntsman suit and said ‘wrong! You unbutton two or none at all’ with all the drunken swagger of Delia after she’d had one over the eight at a football match.

I computed several sharp retorts about relaying his valuable information to my tailor but couldn’t really be bothered. I think the response involved ‘off’ and ‘eff’. Sweaty men with glowing faces and a sense of entitlement are not particularly my bag. Don’t you get fed up of the fault pickers? They employ the lowest form of wit and the baldest sense of attack. Bored me to sobs as La Farmer would say. We resolved to make a quick getaway to Ciao Bella to mop our brows with lashings of Valpoliparrot. I think it is fair to say we rocked it out with immense style. Until next time….

Much excitement this week filming a pre-record at the Design Museum’s 20th anniversary exhibition celebrating Christian Louboutin for ITV This Morning. Paying homage to Louboutin’s early years as a best boy backstage at the Follies Bergere, the centrepiece was a cabaret stage with old school shell spotlights illuminating a chorus line of Christian’s heels. The stage was rendered in glossy scarlet to echo Louboutin’s signature red soles and each killer heel was a star in its own right.

Centre stage was the most magical hologram of a ruby rhinestone stiletto that morphed into queen of burlesque Dita von Teese who proceeded to strip to her scanties. As each piece of clothing was removed, it somehow turned to stardust. Having seen Miss Teese up close and personal in the Savoy’s Beaufort Bar, I’ve got to tell you the hologram was entirely to scale.

True to form, our producer Darren had lined-up a good looking, incredibly efficient and creative crew. Once the fashion pack had been booted out, we practically had the place to ourselves to film. I love live interviews so no butterflies there but have a hell of a time learning links. But I’d practised the script the night previously and was pleased to hit my marks, get the lines out and give it some va-va-voom.

Though we didn’t have an interview agreed with Monsieur Louboutin, I did bring him a copy of Fashion at Royal Ascot and inscribed it ‘To Christian, always a favourite at Royal Ascot’. Thanks to director Sam’s charms, we got the interview. Christian was terribly charismatic and really rather inspiring. I had never heard of a designer taking himself to the appropriate climate when sketching for the spring/summer and autumn/winter collections in the spirit of a method actor.

My favourite encounter that day was with Donna Lovegood, the show’s curator. That valiant woman had spent the best part of five hours on her feet in vertiginous Louboutin heels and yet gave us a good hour and a very, very sharp interview showing us such delights as the fetish room where heels were spotlit in the gloom and displayed with photographs taken by the great David Lynch.

I think it was one of the best bits of film I’ve ever done but will have to wait until it’s available on ITVplayer tomorrow to have a good look at leisure. The next morning was an early start for a sad duty: to say goodbye to one of my great mentors Jane Hurring. Jane taught what was quaintly known as textiles at Lady Manners School when I was a GCSE then A-level student. We became fast friends; nipping into Bakewell for the odd tutorial at Aitches over a glass of wine and a cigarette. I wouldn’t be in this racket if it wasn’t for Jane.

Jane was an incredibly elegant, witty and wise woman. We never lost touch and I was thrilled that she attended my Savile Row book launch at the Savoy and subsequently a 40th birthday lunch in Derbyshire before she died. The funeral was a hurrah that Jane herself had directed. Unfortunately, I had to leave immediately after the service had concluded to get the London train so I’d be in town to do the live This Morning studio item the next morning.

I have dedicated The Perfect Gentleman to Jane. It reads ‘To Jane Hurring, a woman of style and substance’. Says it all really. It is frustrating that so many lights such as Jane’s have gone out in recent years. I mean, let’s face it, there are so many people one would happily never wish to see again and yet it is always the radiators rather than the drains who leave too soon.

The studio item for Louboutin with Holly Willoughby and Phillip Schofield was a winner and I hope it showed that a good time was had by all. This Morning’s green room is always the source of much amusement. I had a brief encounter with Anne Widdecombe who is currently performing a cameo role in the Royal Opera’s La Fille du Regiment. What can one say, Miss Widdecombe has immense presence. Cilla Black was also on the show but I didn’t get chance to say more than hello. It’s a shame because she gave one of the best interviews about her dear friend Tommy Nutter for my Savile Row book.

What other news on the Rialto? While in the steam room devouring the Daily Mail as I invariably do of a morning after a swim, I chanced upon an item in Richard Kay’s social diary. Apparently James Middleton had pitched-up at a party in St. James’s and said somewhat enigmatically to a friend from school that he wasn’t James Middleton. Nor was he ‘that royal fashion man James Sherwood’ who he is apparently mistaken for.

As you know, I use all the techniques of the embalmer’s art to to duel with Father Time but even I will concede that it’s highly unlikely I’d pass for 25 even if viewed from a pew at the back of Westminster Abbey. You’ll recall Master Middleton read the lesson at the wedding of his sister the Duchess of Cambridge. I have gone many times on record to say that James M was the best dressed man in the Abbey so will take this case of mistaken identity as a huge compliment however implausible.

Glorious tintanabulations, today is the wedding of my dear friend Lara Mingay to GQ deputy editor Bill Prince. Though I would imagine Lara will keep her stage name, there is something rather marvellous about the name Lara Prince. She sounds like a heroine in a Danielle Steele. The reception is in the Chelsea Physic Garden so I will do my utmost to take some snaps to send to you later in the week. The weather is a little grim – what else is new? – but I might risk the yellow linen Anderson & Sheppard. Until next time…

While working on Anderson & Sheppard’s No 17 Clifford Street shop project, La Farmer and I found ourselves at Theo Fennell’s Fulham Road flagship and a meeting with the leonine Mr Fennell in his lair. Theo is amusing. I recall interviewing him for an FT story about the crucifix enjoying another fashion moment. ‘How did it begin?’ asks I. ‘Well’, replies he, ‘a long, long time ago there was a Jewish lady called Mary…’.

Theo had us in hysterics about a conference he had attended the previous afternoon as guest speaker for an organisation entitled Women of Power. Though this moniker sounds more like something dreamed up by the leader of  a hen party pack destined for a weekend in Magaluf, this cabal comprises ladies in the business sector who describe themselves as ‘WoP’ with no apparent irony. When I was a child, there was a cartoon heroine entitled She-Ra who I always considered the ultimate Woman of Power but I suspect the assembled ladies more resembled Margaret Mountford. 

Theo is intelligent, he has an unique perspective on life but politically correct he is not. One cheeky comment and you could imagine the Women of Power rising as one like Wendy Deng to engage him in a kung-fu battle to the death resembling the last five minutes of a Bruce Lee movie. I believe Theo escaped without incurring the Women of Power’s collective ire and lived to host a charity Strictly Come Dancing competition that weekend in the guise of Bruce Forsythe.

Speaking of television, I decided to unplug the flat screen in Bloomsbury Towers and retire it to the broom cupboard. Incredible, isn’t it, that when we only had three channels there was always something on the  box. Now, courtesy of Sky et al, we have hundreds of channels and absolutely nothing to watch. How can this be? There are notable exceptions such as NBCs Smash - an adult Glee about the making of a Marilyn Monroe musical destined for Broadway – and the odd gem such as Twenty Twelve or Damages.

Last week better half and I watched our first full episode of The Only Way Is Essex. I was absolutely entranced by a latter-day Mae West character called Gemma Collins who – according to the set-up storyline – was dating a boy she suspected might be gay. As she complained to her mother, ‘E tells me I’ve got nice eyes and beautiful skin but he never says he likes my tits or naffink’. Can’t make it up can you? Compared to Gemma, Mae West’s bon mots are worthy of Montaigne.

We also had the misfortune to see half an hour of Britain’s Got Talent. Now I have nothing against Simon Cowell and the other three Horsemen of the Apocalypse who sit in judgement on infants, the mentally ill and representatives of minority groups guaranteed to grab tabloid headlines like a pedophile in the night. But I have vowed never to sit through such cynical, exploitative, mawkish, dishonest, meticulously micro-managed effluence again.

Watching Britain’s Got Talent leaves one feeling dirty and used. The producers sank relatively low when last night’s episode turned into a revival of the Mini Pops in all but name. An eleven year old girl with a sweet but over-sophisticated singing voice was told by Mr Cowell that she had ‘soul’. Her choice of number? One Night Only. Other than Love to Love You Baby or Je t’Aime I’m at a loss to find a less appropriate song for a pre-pubsescent child to sing.

The gurning facial expressions the judges assume when listening to a voice they ‘love 110%’ makes one wish the gruesome foursome would reach for a blood sausage and have done with it.  Amanda Holden cocks her head like a surprised but delighted toy poodle being given an unsolicited belly rub and assumes her ‘YouTube face’. Mr Cowell gives a satisfied smile that makes one suspect Sinitta is up to no good under the judge’s desk. For one horrible second I thought David Walliams – the Peter Lorre de nos jours – was going to say to the little girl ‘you remind me of a young Whitney Houston’.

But the show saved it’s Susan Boyle moment for an angelic nine year old boy called Malakai supported only by single mother Toni Ann who – with sterling support from Ant n’ Dec – hammered home a back story so heart-wrenching that it left us in no doubt this child would score four ‘yes’s’ from the panel even if he’d gone on stage and participated in a voodoo ritual.  Anyway, said child did indeed have the vocal chords of an infant Michael Jackson doing his best Mariah Carey impersonation.

Malakai broke down half way through the performance to be comforted by his Mum and judge Alesha Dixon who – having mimed concern so convincingly she might have been told to charade Schindler’s List as an in one - said he was willing to smile through the tears and try again. Bang on cue, the nine-year old proceeded to perform a pitch perfect eight bars that left the audience weeping, whooping and clucking like a maternity ward.

Most alarming perhaps is the tone of voice Mr Cowell uses when talking to a nine-year old child. His comments were more suitable for the ears of a hard-bitten lounge singer relegated from the big room rather than as comfort for a traumatised child who is, frankly, cannon fodder ticking the box reading ‘cute black kid in the mould of Michael Jackson’. I felt a chill for that child. His career began, and I suspect will end, in tears. Until next time…

Only in England could Thames Water issue a drought warning during our April rainy season. I just stepped out to the post office and Bloomsbury Square was like a monsoon in Rangoon. I have to venture forth tonight to Hatchards’ annual Authors of the Year drinks reception. It’s a terrific event with no literary agents or publishers allowed on pain of excommunication so I’m taking my friend Timothy Morgan-Owen and his pug Gwendolyn to the party. There’s nothing quite like a friend with four paws to winnow out the wheat from the chaff.

The Hatchards party is terrific fun. Last year there was everyone from Hugo Vickers – author of the definitive Cecil Beaton book – and Philippa  Gregory to Dr Starkey, Antonia Fraser and Nicholas Parsons. Lord only knows who will brave the elements this evening but I am sure it will be a marvellous party. Last night La Farmer hosted a very glamorous event to launch a book and photographic exhibition entitled Dreams of Diamonds. Went Theo Fennell, Peter York, Carol Woolton, Vicki Sarge, Shaun Leane, Maurice Mullen (on whose dimples I rather dote), Harry Fane, Trevor Pickett and Tamara Moussaieff.

As you know, I worked briefly on the Dreams of Diamonds project in its early stages but had to exit for entirely personal reasons. Put me in mind of La Farmer’s friend Janet who in a former life was road manager to John Waters’ muse the drag diva Divine. Do you remember Divine darling? My favourite of his films was Lust in the Dust: a pastiche spaghetti western starring Lainie Kazan and Tab Hunter with Divine playing saloon ‘chantoos’ Rosy Velez in which Miss Kazan sings that immortal number ‘let me take you south of my border (that’s north of my garter)’.

But I digress. When Janet was touring the nigh clubs of sinful cities like Paris, Berlin and Huddersfield, Divine would ask her to pick-up his fee in cash before the show with the words ‘no dough, no show!’ I am thinking about having this motto embroidered on a  sampler and have in recent weeks been putting Divine’s life lesson into practise. I’ve always been terribly grateful to anyone who wants me to write, curate, design or present for them and as a consequence have all the negotiating skills of a new-born kitten. Not any more buster. No dough, no show.

Though I’m longing to tell you about a cabaret project I am working on for Brasserie Zedel, my lips are zipped for now until I get the green light to dust off the bowler hat and darn the fishnets. Suffice to say it isn’t I who will be performing. But the project has allowed me to revisit some wonderful performers who I grew up absolutely adoring such as Mari Wilson and Issy van Randwyck who used to tear it up at Madame JoJo’s at the midnight show. She later starred with Fascinating Aida, performed at the National Theatre in the definitive production of A Little Night Music and released one of my favourite albums of all time.

While we’re ambling down memory lane, I have to tell you how much I’m thrilling to re-read Michael Gross’s fabulous book Model: The Ugly Business of Beautiful Women. It is quite simply one of the sharpest, wittiest looking glasses held up to the fashion and beauty industry. It is a history of modelling and every last supermodel from Dorian Leigh to Linda Evangelista (possibly the two greatest models of all time) agreed to give interviews. Dorian Leigh was Avedon’s muse, Revlon’s Fire & Ice girl and the true inspiration for Truman Capote’s Breakfast at Tiffany heroine Holly Golightly.

Dorian was also one of the last grand horizontals. Her friend Carmen dell Orefice said of her, ‘if she wasn’t drinking, she’d probably be with a man’. Her epic battles with Eileen Ford ‘after she’d had a few sips’ are a joy to read. They don’t make ‘em like that any more. When I wrote the Models Close-Up book for David Bailey, I got to script an interview with Dorian but never met the great lady. She died relatively recently and, I’ll bet, she died with her heels on. When Dorian started modelling in the 1940s, the business was still a cottage industry. Nice girls didn’t go into modelling leaving the field clear for Dorian, her sister Suzy Parker, Carmen and Dovima to make fashion history with Avedon, Beaton, Steichen and Penn.

I’m having so much fun at the moment it is positively indecent. I bumped into super duper fashion journalist Francesca Fearon at the Dreams of Diamonds party who made much of not seeing me since the animals went in two-by-two to the Ark. Where had I been? It’s interesting, isn’t it, that when you step out of a relatively closed world such as fashion journalism it is assumed one has somehow been cast down from Paradise. Quite the reverse as it happens.

The Suzy Menkes, Hilary Alexander, Francesca Fearon and Avril Groom generation are the last of the great fashion journalists. Like I, they came up BB (before blog) in an era when reports from Milan or Paris were telephoned in to copy takers and mobile phones were science fiction. Technology has not been our friend. Information is spewed out like an anorexic’s dinner in vast quantities on t’Internet and quality writing is a casualty of this brave new world. I also blame the advertising dollar that makes even broadsheet newspapers dance to their tune. I find it sad that the global fashion brands use financial leverage to force good coverage out of what should be impartial expert witnesses. Nostalgia ‘aint what it used to be.

Much excitement on Savile Row today as The Chap editor Gustav Temple mustered an army of tweed-clad ladies and gentlemen dressed in their retro bespoke best to protest about the opening of Abercrombie & Fitch Kids at No 3. With a nod and a wink to the Beatles’ infamous last live performance on top of the then Apple building at No 3 in 1968, placards being held aloft read ‘Give Three-Piece a Chance’. Boom-boom.

Though not a subscriber, I am a great admirer of the wit, elegance and eccentricity the chaps and chapesses bring to London’s street theatre. I recall judging the Best in Show at the annual Tweed Run last year with Johnny Allen when the massed ranks of moustachioed, pipe-smoking tweed types cycled past Huntsman.

The Abercrombie incursion is cause for grave concern on Savile Row as is the imminent arrival of French fashion brand The Kooples at No 5. I’m about to pen my column for The Rake about the crisis talks currently going on behind the closed doors of Savile Row’s bespoke houses. With the honourable exception of Davies & Son, Richard James and Spencer Hart, the West side of Savile Row has already been lost to the bespoke trade. The Row can always survive one or two interlopers on the East side – seeing off Evisu jeans after an unwelcome tenancy – but No 3 and No 5 are two huge dents in our hull that will make it increasingly difficult to keep the ship afloat.

The Chap is to be applauded for affirmative action. At the last count, pictures of protesters made online editions of The Washington Post, The Daily Mail, the Evening Standard and Guardian. These ladies and gentlemen are unashamedly nostalgic and wearing what can only be described as fancy dress. But until the bespoke houses of Savile Row raise an objection in public let alone a placard on the street, I think The Chap deserves the bespoke tailors’ thanks for brewing a media storm and orchestrating an effective photo opportunity.

Cynical types might think The Chap‘s protest belittles a serious threat to British trade, tradition and livelihoods. Are we perhaps playing into Abercrombie’s hands by offering such a stark contrast between quaint British nostalgia and the face of Mayfair’s future?  Abercrombie’s pecs and sex marketing blitzkrieg has been the most successful branding ballyhoo exercise in Mayfair since Gordon Selfridge first opened up shop in the Edwardian era. If market forces judge the bespoke trade obsolete then why should landlords with pounds signs for eyes protect them?

Much has been made of market forces. These are, one imagines, the same market forces that allowed Mr Hitler the popular vote in 1930s Germany and we all know the consequences of that unfortunate empire’s rise. It is the duty of Westminster Council, the Row’s various landlords, the Savile Row Bespoke association and each and every Londoner to fight for the preservation of the bespoke tailoring trade with every fibre of their being.

Savile Row is one of the last streets in the world where the same craft has been practised for over two centuries. It is one of the only streets in London where a product is made by hand on the premises. Don’t even get me started on how multi-cultural the workshops are or how non-judgmental the ladies and gentlemen who work both upstairs and downstairs prove to be once you get to join the family. Every age, sex, colour and creed work together on Savile Row and the passion for fine tailoring is the only thing that unites.

When I first got to know the fashion tailors like Ozwald, Richard and Tim in the early 1990s and gradually – thanks to various newspaper features, book projects, exhibitions and archives – met the Row royal family, I developed a respect for the trade that remains unshaken. I was in  awe – in awe! – of the maverick creative spirit that was thriving discreetly behind the modest shop fronts on Savile Row. I am still in awe of them and it saddens me profoundly that minnows in the clothing industry now seek to bask in their reflected glory.

Without the tailors, Savile Row would be an unremarkable backstreet in Mayfair with little to recommend it but for two or three buildings of distinction. You know I’m no fan of political correctness and find positive discrimination a total yawn. But you do have to call into question why the people who safeguard London’s future – the Mayors, MPs, councillors, landlords and employers – preach diversity, sustainability and legacy but blithely allow Abercrombie to invade Savile Row. I’m all for pretty young people. But how on earth can the powers that be think a company that only showcases Adonis types on the shop floor and consigns the Ugly Betty’s to the stock room is to be condoned and encouraged to evict British manufacture from our capital city?

So tonight I raise a glass of rather palatable hoc to The Chap. Their demonstration today was a palpable hit in favour of British barminess and the individuality that is the life blood of London. However nostalgic their style, the young generation have led the way for the Savile Row establishment to wake up and take a very public stance. Until every man and woman employed by Savile Row’s bespoke industry organises a Flash Mob show of strength and contemporary bespoke tailoring on our precious street, we’ve got no right to comment on The Chap’s affirmative action. It is our duty to pick up the baton and rise to the challenge. Until Pentonville…

It’s not every day one is invited to the House of Commons. Don’t get excited Rowley, I wasn’t being hauled in front of the Levinson Enquiry having been intercepted relentlessly by James Murdock. The invitation came courtesy of UKFT (UK Fashion & Textiles) for a British luxury goods reception. This didn’t particularly come at a good time considering Aquascutum had just gone into liquidation and Gieves & Hawkes had gone the same way as Hardy Amies having been flogged to our Oriental friends. What with China, Quatar, the Chinese, Russia and India playing Monopoly with the capital’s real estate, it will be a miracle if we’ll have any of the family silver left.

Westminster isn’t particularly my beat and I wondered who made the invitation. Was it, perhaps, an MP who had seen my fatal charms in the swimming pool a la Christine Keeler at Cliveden and wanted an introduction? I had visions of being chained to Eric Pickles like Carrie Fisher in Return of the Jedi. I don’t think I’d make a terribly good cabinet minister’s moll. It’d be like Edward VIII all over again: cocktail glass stains on the red boxes and MI5 working over time to suppress rumours of my ‘Shanghai grip’.

It was all going rather well as I cantered down Whitehall in my Huntsman puppy tooth. The pace was good to firm until I got to Big Ben when the police insisted all pedestrian traffic stop and wait for Mr Cameron’s motorcade. It was at this precise moment when the phrase ‘April Showers’ fulfilled its promise. By the time the PM swept past, I looked like the witch after Dorothy had thrown a pail of water over her. When I finally got to the Cromwell Lawn entrance, the police  - smug beneath a canopied security booth – instructed us to join a queue fifty deep outside that led towards a subterranean entrance like something out of The Hobbit.

The thought of making my maiden visit to the Palace of Westminster looking like Mr Wet T-Shirt 1973 didn’t appeal. Neither, ordinarily, do industry meet-and-greet events when you’re introduced to people whose hands you’d rather not shake and plied with booze you wouldn’t wish on a wino in Soho walkway. My Sir Walter Raleigh appeared in the form of Luke Sweeney – he of dynamic bespoke duo Thom Sweeney – who offered an umbrella the wingspan of the Angel of the North and a ride back to Mayfair. So we were off like robber’s dogs.

But the day wasn’t wasted. Quite the reverse. I’d spent the entire morning playing truant from the daily grind and going tourist. Going tourist is the reverse of going feral or native. Instead of marching round like a Nazi stormtrooper from one appointment to the next trampling small children and their pets underfoot, you take a leisurely stroll with a smile as wide as Gene Kelly and a good word for everyone. I started with a walk through St. James’s Park towards Buckingham Palace beaming like a cat with a canary in its paws at the weeping willow, ornamental lake and wildlife.

The Palace and Queen’s Gallery weren’t open so I dropped into the gift shop for the newly released DVD of the 1953 Coronation voiced by Sir Laurence Olivier and the odd crested tea towel. From the Palace, I decided to navigate the backstreets of Victoria towards Westminster Abbey and found myself at St Margaret’s – the Houses of Parliament’s parish church and scene of many society weddings – and decided to revisit the burial place of Sir Walter Raleigh for the first time in twenty years.

The last time I’d visited St Margaret’s, I was writing a university thesis about Raleigh’s poetry and conducting a raging affair with an RSC actor. When the latter went into meltdown, a very kindly Verger at St Margaret’s who had been helping me with my inquiries spotted that my outlook had turned from sunshine to rain in the space of two days and invited me into the vestry to pour my heart out over coffee and a cigarette. I’ll never forget that random act of kindness so St Margaret’s remains one of the places I would bury a Horcrux should the necessity arise.

From St Margaret’s, I walked through Dean’s Yard and out into the Georgian backstreets behind Westminster Abbey. This is the London tourists dream about but never manage to find. You rarely see a soul except for the odd Westminster schoolboy or politician en route to a clandestine meeting. Smith’s Square is quite simply like a scene from My Fair Lady. You half expect seeing Jeremy Brett strolling past in Ascot rig singing On the Street where She Lives. This being a self-designated London holiday, I decided to cross the Thames to Lambeth Palace and St Mary’s: the deconsecrated church that now houses the Garden Museum.

If you haven’t been, I urge you to visit the Garden Museum. It is populated by marvellously gung-ho volunteers, winsome young ladies running a vegetarian cafe and a rag tag of students, horticulturalists and tourists not of the back pack and honking voice variety. The crowning glory is the secret knot garden accessed by a door leading off the Howard chapel where Anne Boleyn’s mother is buried. Now I’m no more drawn to vegetarianism than I am to Scientology but thought I’d give it a go. By the time I’d finished the soup, salad and apple and strawberry pressé, I could feel a Damascene conversion coming on. Who needs bespoke suits and Savoy nights when the path to true happiness lies in National Trust membership, homemade pottage and sensible shoes? Until next time…

Has there ever been an event so inappropriately named as Ladies’ Day at Aintree? Should Little Britain make another series, they need look no further for inspiration than the tango-tanned, porcine, peroxide blondes absolutely crucifying the British fashion industry and teetering round Aintree on Louboutin-clad trotters. These ‘ladies’ walk like a transvestite on his first night out, behave with all the delicacy of a long distance trucker and grasp dainty little It Bags like baboons manhandling a Sevres tea cup.

It is terribly unfair of the newspapers to pick on Mrs Rooney who appeared to be channeling Adele but looked like a Julie Goodyear tribute act. She was positively demure in comparison to some of the monsters of frock on display at Aintree. I blame fast, cheap fashion and X-Factor culture that encourages every girl to dress like she’s auditioning for Girls Aloud. Perhaps most unforgivably, they attempt to upstage the horses.

The Grand National is one of those great sporting events that used to unite the nation. I remember being sent round to the bookies in Bakewell when I worked as a Saturday boy in my father’s shop to place our collective bets. Lorraine would bring in a portable black and white TV and staff and clients would gather round at 4.15pm to see the big race at Aintree. I always put a Lady Godiva on for my grandmother and we all hollered the winner home like fishwives poised to storm  Versailles.

Gambling is one of the few vices that I haven’t succumbed to since. At the last two Royal Meetings, I put a monkey to win on a horse with a cute name and long odds and won £350 and £500 respectively. The National is the equine equivalent of the Whacky Races and it’s anybody’s game. So yesterday better half and I studied the form and chose Sunnyhillboy. Knowing what a disappointment it is to lose your jockey at the first fence, I also backed Shakalakaboomboom to win.

Shakalakaboomboom led the field for most of the race before running out of steam over the last few fences. Sunnyhillyboy, having left the pace setters to it until the last four fences, shot into the lead and passed the finishing post nose-to-nose with Neptune Collonges. In the photo finish, Neptune had it and our collective winnings that would have been just shy of £900 evaporated like a Coalition promise. I could have sunk to my knees and ululated.

But frustrated avarice gave way to profound sadness at the news that Cheltenham Gold Cup winner Synchronised and another fine horse had been put down having fallen at Beechers Brook. The death of Synchronised was all the more poignant given that the horse had unseated its rider before the race and had been filmed cantering round Aintree showing the racing world what a magnificent beast it was.

The Grand National is a hazardous race and has killed many horses in its recent past. The racing fraternity has also quite rightly said RSPCA intervention to lower fences has made the race more rather than less dangerous. However, there is something of the Roman Forum about watching and betting on a sport that necessitates the death of thoroughbreds such as Synchronised. Jump racing is a danger for horse and jockey and this enhances the thrill of the chase. But surely the racing establishment could take measures that make a horse’s death an infrequent tragedy rather than an inevitability.

Speaking of the Coalition, one cannot help but think the granny tax, the tax on charitable donors, the lame runners and riders in the London mayoral race and Mr Cameron’s globe-trotting are brewing a perfect storm. Like Mr Blair, Mr Cameron tends to step onto the world stage like a toy poodle at Crufts every time he or his cabinet foul up on home territory. The Dave and Barak show was nauseating enough. The photo opportunity with Ang San Suuy Kyi in Nepal hasn’t raised Dave’s currency with the home crowd any more than posing in a kiss me quick hat with President Assad.

God only knows why the Conservatives are making such a meal of gay marriage. Puts one in mind of Bette Davis’s last line in Now Voyager about asking for the moon when we already have the stars. There’s nothing quite so irritating as the PC lobby categorising one as part of the ‘gay, lesbian and transgender community’. I am no more in coalition with the lesbians as I am with the Maoris. It’s rather like grouping people who have blonde hair and blue eyes…and we all know what happened the last time that unfortunate experiment was tried in Deutschland.

Praise be for mavericks such as David Hockney who wrote a strident defence of smoking in the face of our Health Secretary making it illegal to display cigarettes and lobbying for plain packaging on all tobacco products. If the government was truly altruistic it would ban cigarettes and we’d all live a couple of decades longer to eke out our final years in abject poverty and ill health not related to smokes. But the tax revenues are far too lucrative a bounty to ban hence the pointless exercises that now make scoring heroin an easier proposition in London than buying ten Marlboro Lights.

Still, every cloud has a silver lining. Perhaps anonymous cigarette packaging will revive the vogue for gold, silver or gem-set guilloché cigarette cases. Speaking of elegance, it never got better than Suzi Perry at Royal Ascot. Until next time…

Have you noticed the advertisement campaign on behalf of Stonewall on the side of countless London busses at present? The slogan – in bright red letters a foot high –  reads ‘Some people are gay. Get over it’. Is it just me or has homosexuality gone from the love that dare not speak it’s name to the love that can’t draw breath? Apart from in the odd radicalised mosque or sink estate, I think London is pretty laid back about the gays. The only people we hurl abuse at in the street these days are tourists, bankers and cyclists.

This puts me in mind of an amusing episode with La Farmer as we were stoating towards the Royal Geographic Society to hear a lecture by Mark Shand about Indian elephants. All of a sudden we were engulfed by a tsunami of pre-pubescent Italian tourists shrieking ‘Vamos! Vamos!’ at the top of their lungs as they ran away from us. ‘I told you red wasn’t your colour’, says I to Susan. That said, she paid me back in spades the other day at a meeting with the delightful Maurice Mullen who has quite the most tightly furled brolly I’ve ever had the privilege to see. When I asked if Maurice had my number, La Farmer skipped a beat and said ‘we’ve all got your number, dearie’. Priceless.

In the spirit of Stonewall’s ‘Some people are gay. Get over it’ campaign, I’m thinking of funding my own London bus advertisements in response to one of the burning issues of the day, namely, the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic. Don’t you think the commemorative TV shows, magazine articles, radio plays and reruns of movies are ever so slightly OTT? My ad campaign will read ‘It sank. Get over it’.

Now I know the glub glub of RMS Titanic in 1912 is a metaphor for the end of British imperialist ambitions, the class system and all that. Personally, I only remember 1912 as the birth year of my beloved Grandmother Sherwood who was as unsinkable as Molly Brown. But to the rest of the world 1912 signifies a moment of such doomed majesty, hubris and tragedy that there isn’t a dry seat in the house every time BBC shows a rerun of A Night To Remember or Titanic. Personally, I’d rather watch Shelley Winters in The Poseidon Adventure any day.

So what have the culture wonks provided for our delectation to commemorate the sinking of the Titanic? A Radio 4 documentary voiced by Jeanette Winterson who was chosen presumably because she has a thick northern accent that could pour suitable scorn on the people in first class because they had the temerity to survive a natural disaster. We’ve also been treated to a BBC1 doc voiced by Len Goodman of Strictly Come Dancing fame because he used to work in a shipyard before donning his tap shoes and has a cheeky Cockney lilt that can convey sufficient class bias and sentimentality.  Will a posho ever voice a BBC documentary again?

The iceberg on the cake was Julian Fellowes’s ITV dramatisation of the sinking. The first episode was like a government health warning about the dangers of being a pernicious aristo who cares only for her jewels in the Titanic strong box and tramples over hard working, decent folk, servants, children and pets to get to the lifeboats. It was pure panto and the acting so hammy you’d have to have a heart of stone not to laugh as the leading characters drown one by one in the briny.

I would hazard a guess that the reality on board the unfortunate vessel was that people behaved entirely in character regardless of class. Vanderbilts and Astors went down with the ship as well as Irish navvies and Scottish maid servants. The highest demographic of casualty was the crew. There’s food for thought for the class warriors. I’d like to think I would have been with J.J.  Astor who donned white tie, poured a brandy and waited for fate to take its course. But I suspect I would have tied my braces around Leonardo di Caprio and let him drown as I clung to a stateroom door bobbing in the ocean.

Speaking of going down with all hands, did you hear that the Royal Ascot TV coverage was moving from the BBC to Channel 4 next year? As you know, I was a lifer with the BBC at Ascot and clocked up eight years as fashion correspondent despite skipping a beat last year. I am sad that the crack team including Old Mother Balding, Willie, Rishi and Suzi Perry won’t be riding again in 2013. Royal Ascot should be a BBC flagship sports broadcast.

Being pragmatic I am proud of my contribution to Royal Ascot over the years. The Twitterverse – for what it’s worth – may say all sorts of things about elitism but Ascot has now issued guidelines for dress that I’ve been endorsing for ever. If I have been the cause of less exposed tattoos, navels, bra straps, piercings and fat bingo wings at the Royal Meeting then I’m a happy man. Until next time…

Where have I been all your life? Well, truth to tell after finishing off The Perfect Gentleman I’ve gone from 5th to 1st gear. Bliss, isn’t it? Of course having time on one’s hands allows the devil to make work apropos of which I spent Easter at Better Half’s relations. Come Easter morn there was a three line whip to frogmarch the entire house party to the Sunday service. Whenever I enter a church I think of Charles Laughton’s famous line in Witness for the Prosecution when Marlene Dietrich is in the dock: ‘you’ve told so many lies, Fraulein Helm, that I’m surprised the Bible doesn’t leap out of your hands…In Flames!’

The good book didn’t quite immolate when I took a pew at Puttenham church but there was definitely a whiff of sulphur. Don’t know about you, but whenever a priest says ‘we will now sing hymn number…’ I always want to break into eight bars of I Want to be Evil. Don’t get me wrong. I absolutely adore – adore! – a sung eucharist at St George’s Mayfair with a full choir followed by a thundering sermon by the Bishop of London. But St George’s is a West End showstopper and makes every other church feel like amateur dramatics. Hard to know what to believe, no? I always think reincarnation is an attractive option. If at first you don’t succeed…

What news on the Rialto? Well, for starters there were no Fabergé eggs left by the Easter Bunny. To compound the crushing disappointment, I re-read Erickson’s The Last Tsarina to remind myself that those who receive bejewelled Imperial Easter eggs one minute can end up shot in the Urals the next. One of my favourite authors, Joe Keenan, wrote a brilliant description of a woman so rich ‘she ovulates Fabergé eggs’.

On Tuesday next Andy B and I go to Thames & Hudson to look at the first page proofs for The Perfect Gent. It is always gratifying to see the images chosen and art directed to scale and in colour. I had dinner – or rather two bottles of wine and a quail’s egg – with my publisher Lucas at a terrific new place on Endell Street called The 10 Cases a couple of weeks ago to talk about what next. It’s a toss up between proposing a new idea that is a million miles from men’s style or signing to do the Savoy book for Brett and Rizzoli.

I haven’t been living entirely for pleasure as Lady Bracknell would have it (frequently). The project to catalogue Henry Poole & Co’s ledgers has taken a new direction apropos I duck into the archive every Tuesday as if bobbing for apples and come up with an historic name, write his biography and trace his story with Poole’s. Next week’s subject (to be posted online at the Poole’s Hall of Fame) is Lord Rosebery: a man who declared in his youth that he fully intended to marry an heiress, become Prime Minister and win the Derby…all of which he achieved. We have Lord Rosebery’s racing silks pattern in the Poole’s archive with a wisp of silk as glossy as if it were woven yesterday.

Last week I was given the opportunity to go back to Titanic – or Atlantic as it happened – when Jeremy King gave me a hard hat tour of his new restaurant-bar-cabaret Brasserie Zedel in the old Art Deco ballroom beneath what was the Regent’s Palace Hotel. In the early 1990s, it was known as the Atlantic Bar & Grill as owned by Mr Peyton and was quite simply the most glamorous boîte in London. At the time, I was working as a cocktail waiter in a very salubrious watering hole called The Yard. After closing, we’d pool our tips and high tail it to the Atlantic where we knew the doorman so were waved past the velvet rope.

Walking down the sweeping staircase, past the cigarette kiosk and into the ballroom one felt as jolly super as Gary Cooper. It was a great privilege to go back to the ballroom and see Zedel rising up from the depths of the old Atlantic. I’m going to make a prediction. When Zedel opens at the end of June, it is going to rock London by the heels. As for the cabaret bar, well let’s just say I’ll be going like Elsie. Speaking of cabaret, the Savoy is introducing Burlesque on a Sunday night in the Beaufort Bar. That’s just what Londoners need on a Sunday evening: hits, glitz and tits.

Did I tell y0u I started working on the novel that’s been careering round in my mind for the last year shrieking ‘write me, write me’. Imagine Mapp & Lucia meets Evil Under the Sun and you’ve got the idea. It isn’t autobiographical but does feature some thinly veiled pen portraits of people who have crossed my path over the past twenty years in London. I can already hear the libel writs thumping on my welcome mat like lemmings. What I love about E. F. Benson is his affection for his characters such as Miss Mapp and Lucia despite – or because of – their flaws. That’s the tone I hope to emulate.

Having threatened clients with the kidnapping of their children/pets, I’ve hustled sufficient drachma to book our house in Corfu for September. La Farmer and Mr Bowering are joining us as might Mr Leane and Miss Watt. It’ll be like Carry On Up The Acropolis. Boo hiss that we’ve got six months until take off but the quadrangle behind Bloomsbury Towers always gives me a spring consolation prize when the trees start to leaf and the view from my desk quite simply lifts the spirits and melts the heart. Until next time…