Last night, across town with Aston Martin and The Critic
“Someone in this room knows who the next Bond is!” teased former GQ editor Dylan Jones last night from halfway down the Burlington Arcade, metres from the Aston Martin DB5. The motoring company were cheersing free-flowing Bollinger to the 60th anniversary of Goldfinger; rumours hummed that a head EON producer was sipping amongst us who even Jones, after multiple glasses of late-night champagne, couldn’t elicit the goss from. MI6 chief Sir Richard Moore, also in attendance, may have had a better chance.
Elsewhere, staff were lubricating Bond high-net-worths with “shaken not stirred” cocktails with Aston Martin-stamped ice to mark the launch of a Goldfinger exhibition in the Arcade featuring original scripts. In the martini glasses? Not a vodka martini, but a gin-based sweet elixir with Tanqueray gin, cardamon and kaffir lime leaves shaken to make cordial, with a dash of prosecco on top. What would Bond say?
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It might have been the first Aston to feature in Bond but the DB5 wouldn’t be much use to whoever the new chap is; big-wigs were running the time-worn anecdote about how the car isn’t actually roadworthy despite its 600k price tag. But do you know what are? Mercedes vehicles, which – it turns out – are the Aston Martin company cars of choice.
Down the road…
Meanwhile City A.M. also had its ears open at 11 Tufton Street, where conservative culture mag The Critic was hosting its summer party in a bid to cheer up gloomy Tory lobbyists with champagne and quail eggs. Amid the canapes and free market chatter were chin-up encouragements as the libertarian thoroughfare adjusts to opposition life.
While some think tankers shrugged off the significance – “we’re saying exactly the same as we said to the Tory government” – the arrival of Jacob Rees Mogg and Suella Braverman wafting through the sea of white skin and beige suits, emblemised the party’s continual rightward drift.
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Tory leadership gossip was the special of the night, with Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick acknowledged as the party’s frontrunners. The latter is set to benefit from picking up disillusioned Suella supporters, those in the know suggested.
The most scandalous detail of the night, however, was an unexpected nod to Theresa May from Braverman: leopard print kitten heels.
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