It isn’t long before I’m slurring my words, scanning the room for potential shags and drunkenly grabbing the disposable camera someone has thoughtfully left in the middle of the table. We finish the film taking silly snaps of each other flipping V signs and showing our pants, and it’s not until I get up to find out where the Ladies is that I remember why I’m here. The caterers. I’ve got to talk to the caterers.
Shit-arama.
Where’s the bloody kitchen?
‘Stay,’ I instruct George, who is far too busy downing the contents of every abandoned glass on our table to even notice I’m going anywhere.
The house is a mizz maze of passageways. Just how many rooms does Belgravia Boy’s family need? In my search for the kitchen I totter into about ten living rooms alone, chocka with antiques and invitingly plump sofas, and decorated in every colour of the rainbow. Sweetshop pink. Emerald and gold. Soft candyfloss. Pure blue. Stinging yellow. Hot orange. This lot clearly take their lounging very seriously indeed.
I find a loo—all Regency striped wallpaper and lavatorial humour cartoons on the walls—and I’ve just about given up hope of ever locating the kitchen—perhaps Belgravia Boy and his family eat out every night—when I go over the heel of one of my sparkly slut shoes as I totter down the final twist in the back stairs. I end up in an enormous room filled with gleaming stainless steel. A tasty-looking bloke in head-to-toe Armani is huddled over the butcher’s block, ruffled blond head in hands. Well, I think that’s Armani he’s wearing anyway. I’ve never been much of a one for recognising labels, unless you count the ingredients on the side of food packets, so I can’t be absolutely sure. I’m one of those people who always reads captions in magazines which describe Gwyneth Paltrow as ‘elegant, as ever, in charcoal Prada’, or Madonna as ‘radiant in shocking-pink Voyage’ and wonder how the buggering hell the writer can tell, just by looking. I look at the adverts in glossy magazines and read Versace as Versass. So the expensive-looking suit could just as easily be a Paul Smith. Or a Hugo Boss. It could even be Man at sodding C&A. Who knows?
Who cares?
Still, it might do me good to have a talk to him. He may well have some useful tips. After all, catering a posh bash like this, he must be fairly experienced. And although I usually find networking about as appealing as VD, I’m pissed enough not to care. So I go for it.
He glances up as I hoop-la, arse over tit, onto the gleaming floor, an ominous ripping sound coming from my crotch.
‘Whoopsy.’
I bend down to check out the size of the hole.
Humungous.
Serves me right, I guess. What’s a gangly great lummox like me thinking of, cramming myself into trews that make even my lanky lallies look like great jambons? ‘I say,’ I say, cursing myself the moment the words leave my mouth. Who actually says that? ‘Finished for the day?’ I garble, whipping cigarettes out of my trouser pocket and tearing off the cellophane in as seductive a manner as is possible for a person whose fingernails are encrusted with chipped Barbie-pink polish and chewed to fat stumps. I’m more twelve-year-old than temptress but hey, I’m off my tits on champagne. Who gives a toss?
‘Bloody well hope so.’ He shrugs. ‘I’m shagged out. And I’m still not even allowed to get pissed.’
‘What?’ I ask, shocked. If catering weddings doesn’t involve a few free glasses of bubbly then perhaps I should seriously reconsider. Every job has its perks, doesn’t it?
‘Even though you’ve doled out all the grub and done the washing up? Surely they’ll allow you to let your hair down for the last hour?’ I say.
‘You’d think so, wouldn’t you?’ He looks confused. I’m not surprised. I bet he’s bloody knackered.
‘I was thinking of starting up a catering business actually,’ I admit, flopping down onto the bench beside him and offering him a fag. ‘Any tips?’
He shrugs. ‘Not really.’
Great. Clammed up like an oyster. Obviously isn’t sharing any of his secrets so readily. Still, he’s probably used to catering for all manner of glamorous dos. From the way he’s dressed, he probably did Brad and Jennifer’s wedding. He’s probably bezzie mates with the Beckhams. The last thing he’ll want is some upstart like me nicking his ideas off him.
Still, I could always get him drunk. He’d sing like a canary then.
Or I could shag him and get him to dish.
Better still, get him drunk and shag him. Then I can’t fail.
Or is that a bit too sluttish for a beginner?
‘Shall I nick you some champers?’ I say wickedly. ‘You could drink it in here. No one would know.’