GREAT BEARS

I was breakfasting with Simon Hammerstein, owner of the Box, the late-night cabaret club all of New York wants to get into. I was supposed to be talking to him about the erotic London party he’d put on for Quintessentially, but instead, I couldn’t stop thinking about his shaggy beard, which he stroked playfully as he stirred his tea. Since when have nightclub owners worn Jesus beards? A simple chin brush we understand – but today’s beard must be long and bounteous in the style of late-Victorian mystics, with matching head hair for added virility. Folk-singer hero Devendra Banhart and French rugby player Sébastien Chabal both have the look down. The message is: I’m the real thing. Well, you can’t put extensions in beards – or can you?

A POSTMODERN JOKE BY KATE MOSS

The scene: relentless party girl Kate Moss has summoned all her friends – Sadie, Naomi, Kelly, Lily, Bobby et al – to Annabel’s for the launch of her winter collection for Topshop. The room is like an aviary, with everyone chatting madly. But what are they talking about? Fashion? The contemporary arts scene? Burma? “Oi, Simon,” says Kate, who is hugging Chrissie Hynde, to Simon Cowell, who is sitting next to Kate’s mum. “What about we all get dressed up, go back to mine and do The X Factor?”

WISH YOU WERE THERE

Such a razzy crew trooped into the London offshoot of the Manhattan members’ joint Bungalow 8, the day members’ cards finally arrived after the postal strike. Unleashed on their new playground, Courtney Love, Mary-Kate Olsen, Alexa Chung, the Horrors, club kid Molaroid, plus a bevy of young things so gorgeous and vacant they had to be androids, settled in like they were born there. Not much of a surprise that less extrovert guests – I came upon one who’d been lost for half an hour – kept quiet about not knowing where the loos were.

LIT UP

Fame is stressful, so no wonder it induces more intense cigarette cravings than normal life. But is Johnny Borrell from Razorlight more pressured than most? Why else would the singer light up on stage at Fashion Rocks, rather than waiting until after his set? It was a countercultural statement so lame, so affected, so un-Keith Richards, that I had to give up smoking immediately.

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