The Lady Vanishes: Mystery on the Orient Express

Middleton and Hughes: She's over there!

Smoke, elegance, cigarettes; mysterious plots and evil doctors; imperturbable baronesses and suspiciously burly nuns. Nope, it's not some new Soho nightclub: I finally caught up with the BBC's fine remake of The Lady Vanishes.

The shuttling train provides the perfect acoustic drumming backdrop to a mystery. It's almost as if trains were built for such things: like that other hamaxostichian (ok, I’ve run out of words for train and have fallen back on the classics) mystery, Murder on the Orient Express, this made great play of the claustrophobia and disruption that railway journeys can cause.

Tuppence Middleton was Iris, the not-so-sweet ingenue who suspects something has gone awry; Tom Hughes the dashing young man who comes to believe her. The suggestions of sleazy opulence were nicely done: the beginning, with  Iris's friends (a charming Emerald Fennell, and a brilliantly boozy Daisy Lewis) providing a raucous backdrop to a seemingly idyllic Balkan holiday.

That idyll, though, is a locus amoenus where trouble will happen. When Iris decides to travel home alone, things start to seem a little loopy: at the train station, she has a fall - but was she pushed, or did she faint? Middleton did a good job of Iris' breathless confusion, moving into semi-hysterical conviction. Reflections, smoke, and, most importantly, other people's prejudices and selfishnesses, all conspired to throw her off the scent. Rather than finding herself on this exotic journey, Iris comes very close indeed to losing herself.

It's a gripping, smooth production - and very pleasing to see Julian Rhind-Tutt playing a cad for once.
And one thing the film certainly made me wish for enormously is the return of a dining car - complete with in-car-pianist. It would make a welcome change from the usual mobile phone conversations...

Tatler, December 2011: Champagne in a Chateau

A staircase is the best place to have a party, I find

So, last night was Tatler's Little Black Book Party, which was a deliciously raucous affair in Annabel's, and was positively thrumming with good looking, talented and fun people - and me. Don't know how I managed to slip through the net, but still... What was a real pleasure was that Kira Jolliffe was there - I'd never actually met her before, but I wrote my first article for her for her magazine, Cheap Date, about guerilla fashion at school. I really enjoyed writing it, and it set me on my path - although I've never written about fashion since (I'd love to though. Come to think of it, I like writing about most things. Post it notes. Space. You know, everything.) There was plenty of flirting, smirting, chatting, and ridiculous dancing.

Also in Tatler this month (the December issue, with the lovely Anna Friel on the cover in a Father Christmas hat) are the results of a shoot I did in the summer, in the Moet and Chandon Chateau in Paris. The theme was Bright Young Things - hem hem (I was a Hot Young Thing in Tatler once; soon I'll be a Lukewarm Young Thing, and from then on  it's a slippery slope...) As you can see from the photograph on the right, we obviously had a lot of fun in the chateau. The shoot lasted from about 6 in the morning till late at night. Somebody knocked over a champagne fountain (thank goodness it wasn't me.) To say that there were liberal amounts of champagne would be akin to saying that on the moon there's quite a lot of rock. I was mostly amazed by how expensive the girls' dresses were. And how difficult to put on (not that I tried, of course.)

Who's who: In the front row, left to right, is model Anouska Beckwith; actress Daisy Lewis; portrait painter Phoebe Dickinson. Behind are fashion designer Charlie Casely-Hayford, actress Amy Beth Hayes, and your humble scribe self; behind are director Luke Rodgers, jewellery designer James Boyd, and photographer Zoe Zimmer; and standing at the very top is songstrell Charlie Simpson.

The Door: dir. by Andrew Steggall

The Soho Hotel is massively trendy, possibly more trendy than any hotel I've ever been into, ever; it also has its own private cinema, which was the scene for the first showing of Andrew Steggall's short film, The Door. Guests flocked to the two screenings. The film was produced by actress Daisy Lewis; in attendance were actress Olivia Grant, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett from Misfits, writer Ivo Stourton, director Luke Rodgers and his girlfriend painter Phoebe Dickinson, as well as hordes of others.

The film itself was beautifully shot, acted and paced. Based on a short story by H G Wells ("The Door in the Wall"), it concerned a man's obsession with a childhood event that changed his life. Charles Dance played the hero, who tells of his memories: As a  boy (played with great sensitivity by an angelic Thomas Hardiman), he saw a green door in a wall (which looked very much like Thistle Grove to me); through it he finds a strange world inhabited by angels, mad clockwork kings, and mysterious, mobled women. Is it a place of imagination, or a real other world? A sterling cast, and an atmospheric soundtrack provided enchantment and strangeness, making us question what we were seeing as they wandered through a world that might be ours, or might not.

In Steggall's reading, the other world seemed like a preparation for death, with the young boy seeing himself held in the arms of a winged man (an angel? a swan?). Everything was tinged with elegant light, with a sense of mystery and foreboding; an excellent score and sumptuous costumes added to the elegiac feel. It was a charmed experience, a window indeed into another world. And next time I go down Thistle Grove, I shall certainly look to see if the door is still there.

Jasper Conran at Somerset House: Champagne and Misfits

Richard E Grant as Withnail: fashion icon

For some reason I associate Somerset House with the phrase "public records"; I'm sure that they used to keep wills and suchlike there. It always resonated rather dully in my mind. Not any more, it seems. On Saturday I was present at the beginning of London Fashion Week for the Jasper Conran show. It was probably the first fashion show that I have been to, ever, (apart from one, at University, which consisted of my better-looking friends waltzing up and down a stage looking faintly embarrassed whilst the rest of us cheered and threw things from below). I have not had a career change; I will not be eschewing dusty books for the glamour of the catwalk (well, not yet anyway, unless Burberry want to make me their new face); I was a guest of the Lewis sisters (actress Daisy and artist Lily), and we had front row seats, putting me next to Kirsty Allsop, the Princess of Property. I promise you that none of us said "location, location, location" at any point in the day. Also in the Lewis party was Nathan Stewart-Jarret, who plays Curtis in the, erm, feisty programme Misfits, which is like Heroes but with ASBOs. Literally. Oh, and Richard E Grant (you know, the actor chap) was in the front row on the other side, as was Vogue editor Alexandra Shulman and lots of fashiony people (including someone wearing a gold necklace that looked like it came from the tomb of Tutankhamun.) I however looked more like Withnail, and certainly felt like him.

Since I don't know very much about clothes, or fashion, I can tell you that the models looked as if they had been assembled from a Meccano kit, their arms hanging in deathly stillness by their sides whilst their shoulder blades jutted out backwards as if they were supercilious swans about to take flight. None of them looked very happy, although I refrained from shouting "Cheer up love!" (although the photographers seemed to take great delight in shouting things at the models – what they were shouting I could never work out.)  I would still quite happily have gone for a drink with most of them – should any of them have been capable of going for a drink. The clothes were swishly ravishing, flowing behind and around the models in sleek and stylish folds. Some kind of weirdly posturing version of Eurythmics' Sweet Dreams pounded out. I wonder what relevance it had to the show? It was quite a slowed-down version, and as far as I remember (though my memory is not that reliable on the point) it was a man's voice.

Everything was so elegant and clean and, well, gracious that I almost didn't stuff myself with a bagel and champagne afterwards – at least there was nobody else eating in the vicinity – but thirst and hunger won the day. I didn't meet a single model, alas; though perhaps that was a good thing.