The Londoner: ‘Captain Condom’ kisses and tells

Aatish Taseer says he used MDMA in Windsor Castle / Glenda Jackson's fearsome interview / Azzedine Alaïa remembered at fashion launch / Kazuo Ishiguro on how Nobel Prize changed his life
Romance: Aatish Taseer and Gabriella Windsor
Getty Images
27 April 2018

Lady Gabriella Windsor’s former boyfriend, the novelist Aatish Taseer, has written about their three-year relationship for Vanity Fair, describing it as “surreal” and a “louche past life” that, he claims, included taking drugs and skinny-dipping in the Royal Palaces.

“I was almost a member of the British royal family,” Taseer writes. “In the early 2000s, I dated Ella Windsor, the daughter of Prince and Princess Michael of Kent. Prince Michael was first cousin to the Queen and married to the unpopular Princess Michael, whom the British press had labelled ‘Princess Pushy’. For three surreal years, Ella and I hung about Kensington Palace; we swam naked in the Queen’s pool in Buckingham Palace; we did MDMA in Windsor Castle; and we had scrapes with the British press.”

His claims, in June’s Vanity Fair, are unverified by the Royal Household, with Buckingham Palace offering no comment on behalf of Lady Gabriella at the time we went to press. But a friend of hers counters that they are fiction. “Aatish is a novelist,” the source says, “he has an active imagination.”

Taseer was born in Britain but studied at Amherst College in Massachusetts. He works as a journalist and has written books including The Temple-Goers, Noon and The Way Things Were. He says his relationship with Lady Ella made news at the time because as a university student he was in charge of promoting peer sexual health and that headlines included: “Princess Pushy ‘Delighted’ Over Her Daughter’s Romance With India’s Captain Condom”. (The Londoner found one from 2006 that called him Captain Condom, but no record of the exact wording he claims was published).

Taseer adds: “There were schlosses, and boats, and stag shoots in Scotland. The cosy crowned heads of small Eastern European countries cooked us lamb chops late at night and told us tales of Nazis and communists. It was a wonderful way to spend one’s twenties.”

Now Glenda stands up for Shakespeare

Suffers no fools: Glenda Jackson (Photo by David M. Benett/Dave Benett/Getty Images)
Dave Benett/Getty Images

Glenda Jackson, actress and former Labour MP, was interviewed by Charles McNulty of the LA Times. He asked if in King Lear, Jackson’s “political and artistic commitments merged”, and quoted, “Oh, I have taken too little care of this!” when Lear acknowledges neglecting the poor.

“I didn’t write the line,” said Jackson. “Why do you dismiss Shakespeare?” “I’m not,” McNulty replied. “I just wrote this long essay on the play for an academic journal.”

Jackson glowered: “You’re the people I avoid like the plague.”

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Comedian Helen Lederer is limbering up her comedy routine for this year’s Edinburgh Festival. It’s called Sex, #MeToo and Nuance. “I was talking about this stuff 30 years ago,” she tells me. “Back then the joke was: ‘What is foreplay?’ My response was: ‘I don’t know, I blinked.’”

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Richard Dennen, Tatler’s revolutionary new editor, is redefining posh. First he decrees it is not “chic” to have a waste-paper basket in the office (rubbish is instead piled on an assistant’s desk). Second, he has killed off the aristo adage that ostentation is vulgar. To prove it he wears a leather jacket with one word on the back: “Money”

Alaïa lives again in first London store and in memories from Naomi Campbell

Remembrance: Siobhan Bell, Greatness Dex, Naomi Campbell, and guest (Photo by David M. Benett/Dave Benett/Getty Images)
Dave Benett/Getty Images

Friends of the late fashion designer Azzedine Alaïa gathered at 139 Bond Street for the opening of Maison Alaïa’s first London flagship store last night. Most wore black in homage to Alaïa: he loved the shade.

Naomi Campbell co-hosted the celebration of the work and life of her “Papa” — she spent her teens in Paris with Alaïa, which gave her access to “the best wardrobe in the world”. “I would sneak out through the window to go to clubs dressed in clothes from the boutique,” she remembers. “He would find me, in the middle of the dancefloor, fix my outfit so that it looked how it was supposed to and drag me back home... I definitely lived a very blessed journey with Azzedine.”

Model Edie Campbell, shoe designer Manolo Blahnik, British Vogue editor Edward Enninful and publishing director Vanessa Kingori were among those who came to pay their respects to the man who died last November.

SW1A

Recovering: James Brokenshire (Photo by Jack Taylor/Getty Images)
Getty Images

James Brokenshire, the former Northern Ireland Secretary, led an “emotional” Commons debate last night as he recovers from lung cancer. Brokenshire, above, is now campaigning with the Roy Castle Lung Foundation to end stigma around the disease. He said the biggest shock was “the kindness and warmth from so many people,” including social media messages saying “look I’m not a Tory but I want to see you fully recovered”.

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Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson is not necessarily known for his diplomacy but there is one country where he can always expect a warm reception. Hungarian Ambassador Kristóf Szalay-Bobrovniczky tells me he met Johnson back when he was at The Spectator. “I was the editor of this small little Right-wing magazine,” he says. “When I came back as ambassador he remembered me. He recently came to visit Hungary during our elections, you didn’t report it here but it meant a lot to us.”

Nobel turns Ishiguro into party pooper

Invitation frenzy: Kazuo Ishiguro (Photo by Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images)
Getty Images

Kazuo Ishiguro, above, author of Remains of the Day, won the Nobel Prize for literature last autumn, so how has it changed his life? “I’ve tried to not let it change anything,” he told us at last night’s Sunday Times EFG Short Story Awards. “The main difference is that I have to spend every day turning down invitations. You just won’t believe the number of invitations, even now, from all round the world — every kind of invitation, social invitations, invitations to conferences, invitations to write introductions, sign petitions for things I know nothing about.” Sigh. We know how he feels.

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