Out with Fashion Week and in with Frieze. The art fair’s VIP preview drew a wide crowd yesterday from the launch to the after party. We were there for it all, bumping into friend of the diary Princess Beatrice and having lunch with singers FKA Twiggs and Tinie Tempah. The venue was Jikoni, where actors Will Sharpe, Russell Tovey and Omari Douglas supped on risotto. Tovey, who has a painting podcast, told us Frieze is his “art Christmas”. He was coy when we asked if he had a max art budget. Limitless then? Fashion face Princess Julia told us the hottest ticket during Frieze was to Wolfgang Tillmans’ intimate dinner. “It’s a melting pot of creative fabularity,” she said. Where was our invite? We made do with the next best thing, The Groucho Club’s opening party.
We spotted art historian Katy Hessel in the top floor party room, Amelia Dimoldenberg in a little alcove with friends, and Sadiq Khan’s deputy mayor for culture Justine Simons deep in conversation at the bar with artist Gavin Turk. The party raged until 2am but some were loitering at the coat check at 11pm. Joe Lycett, Luke Evans and others were drawn to the Attitude Awards, where Dame Shirley Bassey, 86, belted out “Divas Are Forever”, a remix of Diamonds Are Forever. Singer Paloma Faith couldn’t match that, so she called the Prime Minister a c***.
Eddie Izzard on the big screen
Spooky season is upon us, marked by last night’s world premiere of Hammer film studio’s latest horror, Doctor Jekyll, starring Eddie Izzard. Hammer was recently bought by billionaire and self-confessed horror fanatic John Gore. Before the film started, Izzard addressed the audience: “I was a street performer for four years in my career, street performing just behind this wall in Covent Garden, and on Friday, Saturday nights we used to come here into this very cinema we used to sit and look up at the screen and go ‘god I wish I could do films!’ So to finally be here and to be doing film is un-fucking-believable.” Doctor Jekyll’s producer, Guy de Beaujeu, said: “Indy film in the UK has been really tricky in the last 5-7 years. What these guys have achieved on this budget is absolutely extraordinary.”
