Throwing & Whitey

HAPPILY for all of you who forgot to take a camera along to Elton John and David Furnish’s White Tie & Tiara Ball, OK! has published the album of the event in the form of a magazine.

There are lots of pictures of the do. And things get underway with a shot of Liz Hurley and Pamela Anderson.

On the face of it, these two form an unlikely duo, the pneumatic Baywatch babe and the finest thing to come out of Basingstoke since the last bunch of bananas left the town’s banana ripening centre (the biggest in Europe!).

But celebrity is so much about achieving a norm. And here are two celebrities dressed if white gowns that reveal lots of cleavage. Both have clutch handbags, full lips and a complexion of a beige usually reserved for the carpets in starter homes.

Over the page and the guests are coming thick and fast. There’s Natalie Imbruglia wearing a chunky blue necklace round her neck and David Williams round her waist.

Jamie Oliver and his taller wife Jools are there; Anthony Andrews is dressed in a white tie and tails, reminiscent of the last time we saw him in Brideshead Revisited back in 1981.

And there’s Simon Cowell (no tie), his fellow TV talent show judge Louis Walsh (wearing a black shirt and white bowtie of the type that magicians transform into a dove or snotty hankie) and the ubiquitous Sharon Osbourne.

And then there are the OK! regulars: Anthea Turner stands in close proximity to Grant Bovey; Tania Bryer and Michelle Heaton cosy up for the snappers; Jordan and Peter Andre take in the magic; Tamara Beckwith half-smiles; and Tara Palmer-Tomkinson shows us her nose.

And as the sunlight fades, and the snappers and their muses move within the marquee, we are left with the impression that we have been here before.

Former Boyzone singer Stephen Gately boasts, “I’ve been here four times”; Coronation Street actor Antony Cotton says, “It’s a great delight to be here again”; “I’ve been to the White Tie & Tiara ball three times,” says Kelly Osbourne; and Sharon Osbourne crows, “I think I must have been to the ball at least five times.”

It’s not a little unsettling. A giddy sensation not aided by the arrival of slow-cooked leg of lamb with morel korma with truffle oil. And Take That.

Posted: 6th, July 2006 | In: Reviews Comment | TrackBack | Permalink