AIR_February'2012

ISSUE NINE | FEBRUARY

2012

EMILY BLUNT

Produced in International Media Production Zone

g ht-talkin The st raig o laug h s h A-liste r w ce of in the fa gos de Holly woo

TONY BENNETT The man Sinatra called ‘the best’ on why he’ll never stop singing

THE OUTSIDERS Are football’s maverick men really ripe for political office?

NOBU MATSUHISA Why the undisputed king of the kitchen is opening his own-named hotel

SPRINGS BREAK? The Californian desert city that still has the style to charm famous visitors

www.chanel.com

CONTENTS / FE ATURES

FORTY EIGHT TONY BENNETT The old-school crooner on why he has no intention of retiring yet and how a duet with Amy Winehouse proved to be her last.

THIRTY SIX EMILY BLUNT Britain’s self-deprecating A-lister on Hollywood egos and what not to wear when filming with a leopard...

FORTY TWO THE MEN WHO WOULD BE KING Wealthy, world-famous and, at times, tempestuous. Are football’s finest really ready for politics?

FIFTY EIGHT MASTER CHEF AIR sits down to talk brand extensions with the much-lauded king of Japanese cuisine, Chef Nobu.

Tel: 00971 4 364 2876 Fax: 00971 4 369 7494 Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission from HOT Media Publishing is strictly prohibited. All prices mentioned are correct at time of press but may change. HOT Media Publishing does not accept liability for omissions or errors in AIR.

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CONTENTS / REGUL ARS

FIFTY FOUR MOTORING AIR test drives Ferrari’s new 458 Spider and puts the spotlight on the latest offering from Lexus.

Managing Director Victoria Thatcher Editorial Director John Thatcher Advertisement Director Chris Capstick chris@hotmediapublishing.com Group Editor Laura Binder laura@hotmediapublishing.com Designers Sarah Boland Adam Sneade Production Manager Haneef Abdul Senior Advertisement Manager Stefanie Morgner stefanie@hotmediapublishing.com Advertisement Manager Sukaina Hussein sukaina@hotmediapublishing.com

SIXTEEN RADAR

FIFTY EIGHT GASTRONOMY

What’s on, what’s new and what to spend your dollars on, including solid gold bars from Jean Paul Gaultier.

Why the steak is making a comeback, what determines a fine cut - and where to head to devour the best in beef...

TWENTY SIX TIMEPIECES

SIXTY SEVEN GOLF

Jaeger-LeCoulture pays tribute to US sitcom Mad Men, while Hermès credits its own brand-defining style.

AIR gets inside info on the Omega Dubai Desert Classic and tells you how best to hit out of a divet.

THIRTY INTERIORS

SIXTY EIGHT TRAVEL

AIR snuggles up to stellar furnishings this month, from Rubelli to Harrods’ favourite, Christopher Guy.

Sizzling South America, stylish Milan and timeless Palm Springs - AIR serves up a trio of travel treats...

THIRTY TWO CRITIQUE

EIGHTY WHAT I KNOW NOW

The films, shows, artwork and reads the critics say you won’t (or, in some cases, will) want to miss.

Life lessons learned by Adham Charanoglu. CEO, Aston Martin MENA Region.

Agency Sales Manager Jad Hatem jad@hotmediapublishing.com

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GAMA AVIATION

February 2012

WELCOME ONBOARD

I’m delighted to welcome you to the February edition of AIR – Gama’s in-flight magazine.

I hope you’ll enjoy learning more about our global business aviation group and the services we provide as you browse through the pages.

Gama is one of the world’s largest business jet operators – we have nearly 80 business jets operating all around the globe. Established in the United Kingdom in 1983, we’ve grown to have bases throughout the Middle East, Europe and North & South America as well as operating licences issued by the UAE, UK, US and Bermudan Authorities. As well as providing aircraft management and charter services, the group also provides aircraft maintenance, avionics design and installation, aviation software, aircraft cleaning and leasing services to a wide range of clients.

Gama’s expansion in the Middle East continues to progress well, our regional fleet has grown significantly over the past twelve months with the arrival of a number of aircraft including the Bombardier Global XRS and the Airbus A318, along with the continued development of our regional footprint and services.

Business aviation remains one of the best tools available to corporations and individuals who want to make time for themselves and it’s been pleasing to see a resurgence in charter flights in 2011 – the world is travelling for business again and developing much needed revenue for the global economy.

Thank you for choosing Gama – welcome on board.

Dave Edwards Managing Director Gama Aviation

Contact details: charter.mena@gamagroup.com gamagroup.com

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GAMA AVIATION NEWS

GAMA AVIATION ANNOUNCES EXPANSION INTO SAUDI ARABIA

Jeddah will be Gama’s second Middle East base

Gama Group MENA FZE, part of the Gama Group, the global business aviation services company, announced during the Dubai Air Show 2011 that it is to expand its services into the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

With Imitiaz Company for Aviation Services LLC as a strategic partner in Saudi Arabia, the new joint venture company, to be known as Gama Aviation, plans to be operational in 2012 from Jeddah, Saudi’s second largest city and a vital centre for commerce and tourism.

The Imitiaz Company, headquartered in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia is headed by some of the Kingdom’s most experienced aviation professionals.

This is an expansion in the Middle East for the Gama Group, a long established aircraft charter, management and maintenance business company now in its 29th year, which set up in Sharjah and Dubai three years ago. The company will specialise in aircraft management and aims to operate charter services under its own Saudi GACA Part 135 Air Carrier certificate. The next step will be to add aircraft maintenance and consultancy services, replicating the company’s expertise in Europe, USA and the Middle East. Gama’s first base will be at Jeddah’s King Abdulaziz International Airport where it will employ around five people in the start up phase. Gama Aviation in Saudi Arabia will be overseen by Gama’s Regional Managing Director, Dave Edwards.

“This is a significant announcement for Gama and is the culmination of a substantial period of planning and negotiation,” said Gama CEO Marwan

Abdel Khalek. “We are delighted to have Imitiaz LLC as our strategic partner in this venture, which will bring to Gama many years of experience in the Kingdom. Breaking into the important Saudi market, the biggest market for business aviation in the Middle East, is a huge achievement and a long held wish of Gama. This milestone reflects a considerable amount of hard work by the team at Gama and our ability to demonstrate how the Gama culture and business model could be adopted in Saudi. ” Gama Aviation obtained its UAE GCAA Air Operator’s Certificate in February 2010 and now supports 25 staff and five managed aircraft at both Sharjah International and Dubai International Airports, including an Airbus ACJ318 which joined the fleet last month. Gama is on track to obtain its UAE GCAA CAR 145 maintenance approval and is working to develop a new 12,000 sqm hangar facility at Sharjah which will provide hangarage and maintenance facilities for business jet aircraft in the region.

It will also be home to a new Fixed Based Operation.

ASIA FIRMLY IN GAMA GROUP’S SIGHTS FOR 2012 Gama Group is planning to establish its next base in Asia, CEO Marwan Khalek confirmed at the National Business Aviation Association tradeshow in Las Vegas. “We are building the foundations now with a view to getting established in Hong Kong in the first half of 2012,” he said. The intention is simply to replicate Gama’s successful business model in the region and mirror the quality, ethos and service offering of the international network currently centered in Europe, the Middle East and the USA. Hong Kong will be the company’s fourth continental/regional base complementing operations in Europe, North America and the Middle East.

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Gama Aviation’s european charter fleet grows with the addition of two more aircraft Farnborough, UK-based Gama Aviation has just introduced a Cessna CJ2+ to its managed charter fleet, new onto the UK register. Together with the addition of a 13-seat Falcon 2000 imminently its European charter fleet now totals 28 aircraft, 11 of which are based in the UK. Its success in winning tri-zone Wyvern approval across its three continental bases – Europe, USA and the Middle East has had a strong effect in boosting cross-continental client sharing, according to Commercial Manager Paul Cremer. It has helped gain more international clients – in Russia, the Middle East, including Royal family members and music tour arrangers, for example.

500,000 Hours 200,000 Flights 28 Years

Gama Aviation Limited Business Aviation Centre Farnborough Airport Farnborough Hampshire GU14 6XA United Kingdom Tel: +44 1252 553000 Email: charter.eu@gamagroup.com Gama Aviation FZC Building 6EB Office 550 PO Box 54912 Dubai Airport Freezone Dubai United Arab Emirates Tel: +971 4 609 1688 Email: charter.mena@gamagroup.com Gama Aviation, Inc. Airport Business Center 611 Access Road Stratford

www.gamagroup.com

CT 06615

Business Aircraft Management, Charter,

United States

Maintenance, Design and Installation,

Tel: +1 800 468 1110

FBO Services, Valeting and Aviation Software.

Email: charter.usa@gamagroup.com

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GAMA AVIATION NEWS GAMA AVIATION OPENS NEW SHARJAH FBO FOR EXECUTIVE AIRCRAFT HANDLING

Gama aviation’s middle eastern fleet grows with the addition of the airbus ACJ318 Gama Aviation, the global business aviation and services company in association with the Sharjah Department of Civil Aviation announced today the next phase of their close partnership aimed at encouraging and facilitating the growth of business aviation traffic at Sharjah International Airport.

Effective, 23 January 2012, Gama Aviation will be the sole provider for all executive aircraft handling at Sharjah International Airport. Gama Aviation’s dedicated Sharjah team is on-hand to provide a 24/7/365 service to facilitate the arrival and departure of all business aviation traffic.

Gama has been a Sharjah-based operator since 2004 and during that time it has built a strong business development partnership with the Sharjah International Airport management team with respect to the development of Executive Aircraft handling services.

Sharjah celebrates 80 years as the leader of aviation activities in the UAE, with the start-up of operations in 1932. Throughout its long history it has seen continued expansion and on-going investment resulting in today’s Sharjah

International being one of the most efficient and easy to use airports in the region. Landing to chocks on time at Sharjah is a remarkable and enviable average of just 6 minutes!

As well as providing excellent links to Sharjah itself one of the key benefits for business aviation is that it is situated very close to Dubai (just a 5 minute helicopter transfer) and is nearer to the business centre of Dubai than the new World Central Airport (51 kms, 43 minutes) which it has been announced will become Dubai’s main business airport during the course of 2012. As such, Sharjah International Airport will become a very practical alternative for visitors to Dubai and the Northern Emirates.

“We are delighted to partner with the Sharjah International Airport management team’s aspiration to establish the Gama operated Sharjah FBO as the first choice for business aviation operators in the region’’ said Dave Edwards, Managing Director of Gama Aviation FZE. ‘’Sharjah offers less capacity restraints and no slot restrictions which responds perfectly to the specific demands of business aviation.’’

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Gama Aviation FZC, the business aviation charter and management company, has added a new business aircraft type to its UAE-based fleet – its first Airbus. The Airbus ACJ318 was added to its UAE operator’s certificate in October. Configured with a 14 seat VIP configuration, the ACJ becomes the largest aircraft in the company’s Middle East fleet and for Gama globally, its 11th manufacturer type. The new aircraft is being operated and managed by Gama on behalf of a private owner, based out of Sharjah International Airport.

“We welcome the increasing involvement of experienced companies such as Gama Aviation with the growing fleet of Airbus corporate jets, which are the new top-end of the market because they deliver the widest and tallest cabin of any business jet,” says Airbus Corporate Jets Vice President Francois Chazelle.

Gama Aviation obtained its UAE GCAA Air Operator’s Certificate in February 2010 and now manages five aircraft on behalf of Middle East based clients at both Sharjah International and Dubai International Airports. Gama Aviation is on track to obtain its UAE GCAA CAR 145 maintenance approval and is working to complete its new 12,000 sqm hangar facility at Sharjah which will provide hangarage and maintenance facilities for business jet aircraft in the region.

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Our expertise helps clients on all different levels. I am a lawyer by

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I already have a PA, in fact I have a few, but I do not want to bother my PAs at 3am, for example, for a travel arrangement. Some things I would

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It’s a bit like a package of four PAs, but with a lot more expertise and know-how in many fields. My normal day will vary all the time; it can range from meetings to finding new opportunities for our members, or going to formal dinners, writing a complaint letter to third party suppliers or even arranging a lift for the client’s kids from school.

The consultants integrate themselves in the members’ lives and can act on their behalf, because the nature of CAVA is to create a comfortable and stress free environment.

rather have handled by a professional company which I can rely on in terms of liabilities and benefits. For example, if I am travelling and any of my family get ill or face an accident, I know that CAVA will be there physically to assist them, arrange a limo to hospital or call a doctor to go to the house; they will also handle bills and make all necessary arrangements.

I would recommend CAVA to anyone who can afford it; people like myself, who are very busy and can’t be bothered with random obligations while I could be focusing on my businesses.

CAVA throws events and all their members are screened so it is ideal for those who, like myself, are easily disappointed by people trying to sell them something at social gatherings.

It makes me more comfortable to interact with likeminded people and I have met some amazing individuals.

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CAVA by numbers 10,900,000 The number of high-networth individuals (HNWI) worldwide

400,000

How many HNWI exist in the Middle East

41,000

The number of HNWI in the UAE

100

How many HNWI will be granted a CAVA membership in Dubai

1

The number of solid gold CAVA cards you need for an uncomplicated lifestyle

RADAR

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You’ll Always Have Paris It was on the banks of the Seine that Niépce and Daguerre officially gave birth to the art of photography. This 600-page tome, Paris, Portrait of a City, fuses past and present images of the City of Lights, dating back to some of Daguerre’s first shots, and delivers to its readers a fascinating historical record of transformations – in the city’s fashions, its people, objects and places – captured by the most illustrious photographers of their age. taschen.com

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RADAR

Sweet Between them, acclaimed pastry chefs Claire Clark (The French Laundry) and Christina Tosi (Momofuku Milk Bar) hold five Michelin stars. At the Park Rotana Abu Dhabi on February 12 you can sample their delectable produce in the best possible way – eating as much of it as you like over the course of a leisurely brunch. One of which is dedicated to chocolate and pastry alone.

Savoury To Dine For Gourmands in Abu Dhabi will be spoilt for choice this month as the city plays host to some of the best chefs in business for Gourmet Abu Dhabi, which runs for two weeks from February 8. Which craving will you choose to indulge?

If you’re a fan of foie gras, Bord Eau, at the ShangriLa Hotel, Qaryat Al Beri, has a treat in store for you on February 17. Each dish served that evening will feature this rich, deliciously buttery ingredient in a creative way, with the man responsible, acclaimed French chef Bruno Ménard, being somewhat of a master at extracting full flavour from foie gras, cooked or not.

> Long before the invention of Photoshop, celebrities relied on the painting skills of a magazine’s art department to brush out any imperfections and accentuate the positives. Until March 18, the UK’s Open Eye Gallery will display a collection of these worked-on images as part of a brilliant show exploring the cult of celebrity. A must-see if you’re in town. openeyegallery.co.uk - 18 -

> From February 8 through to April 22, London’s V&A will celebrate the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II by staging a series of events and exhibitions celebrating her life on the throne.

Included among them are Cecil Beaton’s often candid photographs of Queen Elizabeth, who first sat for the one-time Vogue contributor in 1942. Over the course of the following three decades, Beaton established himself as the royals’ photographer of choice, shooting the memorable portrait of the Queen on her Coronation Day in 1953 (pictured) and at home with her newborns in behind-thescenes shots you’d never see commissioned today. vam.ac.uk

> Doha’s Jewellery and Watch Exhibition (Feb 20-27) is the venue for Fabergé’s first showing of its prized jewels in the Middle East. The historic brand was relaunched in 2009 and has since opened boutiques in Geneva and London – its first stores in nearly a century – with a New York outlet to open in the spring.

On show in Doha will be Fabergé’s one-of-a-kind creations, and its range of handcrafted timepieces. faberge.com - 19 -

RADAR

Tour De France

You may have visited France on countless occasions, but chances are you wouldn’t have experienced it to the degree now being offered by luxury tour operator Travcoa. Their Gallic adventure, priced at $25,990 to a limited number of attendees, takes in Paris, Lyon and Provence, granting you behind-the-scenes access to famed fashion houses Louis Vuitton, Christian Dior, and Hermès (a celebrity stylist will be on hand to help with any purchases), private dinners aplenty at Michelin-starred restaurants, and a one-onone cooking class at the school of legendary chef Alain Ducasse (pictured). Attendees also get to sample the fruits of Ruinart, one of the world’s oldest champagne houses, and take to the roads of Paris in a vintage, and quintessentially French, Citroën 2CV. travcoa.com

> The enfant terrible of French fashion, Jean Paul Gaultier, drew most attention for designing Madonna’s cone-shaped bra, but his latest line is a lot easier to get your hands on – and less likely to have someone’s eye out. In partnership with US firm Dillon Gage, Gaultier is releasing a limited run of 5,000 solid gold bars, each bearing his signature sailor stripes. You’ll pay around $1,825 (along with a $25 handling fee) per bar, although that figure will fluctuate depending on the spot price of gold at the time of your purchase. dillongage.com - 20 -

The Magnificent Seven Seven Michelinstar toting chefs will descend on the Sofitel Dubai Jumeirah Beach hotel on April 3 for an evening that celebrates the union of art and fine dining.

It will be the single biggest ever gathering of Michelin-starred chefs in the UAE, with each preparing their signature dishes for guests’ enjoyment aside the hotel’s starlit pool. Tickets are priced at Dhs2,500 and reservations can be made by calling 00971 4 448 4851. sofitel.com

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RADAR

> A new exhibition at the Palm Springs Art Museum – Backward Oasis – shows off the work of renowned photographers like Herb Ritts and David Hockney to acknowledge our undying love of the swimming pool, capturing poolside poseurs both famous and wouldbe famous and a slew of stunning homes to boot.

It shows until May 27. psmuseum.org

WANT TO CUT A TRACK AT THE WORLD’S MOST ICONIC RECORDING STUDIO? Here’s a hotel deal with a difference for the frustrated guitar hero; book yourself a stay at one of Fairmont’s 60 hotels worldwide – which include gems like the Savoy – and you can seal a recording slot at London’s legendary Abbey Road studios. Sixty guests per year will be invited to cut their own tracks over the course of a single day in Studio Two, where The Beatles and Pink Floyd laid down seminal albums. You’ll do so with the aid of a producer plus vocal and performance teachers, and what you record will be committed to CD for you take home as a souvenir (or sell on iTunes should you fancy yourself as the new Sinatra). fairmont.com - 23 -

TIMEPIECES

TIME HONOURED Luc Perramond, CEO of La Montre Hermès, on the watches he thinks helped define his brand

T

hanks to its inventiveness and mastery of fine craftsmanship skills, Hermès has always sought to merge quality with creativity, and I view each creation as a work of art.

La Montre Hermès tradition dates back to 1912, when its saddle-making talent was first exercised on watch straps – a time when Jacqueline Hermès wore a pocket watch, the Porte-Oignon, on her wrist thanks to a Hermès strap. It’s a model that stands as a product icon for us.

Another model that perfectly symbolises the link between saddlery craftsmanship and technical features is the Miami (1), which was launched

in 1935. It features an entirely leather-wrapped metal structure, paying an eloquent tribute to Hermès leatherwork expertise.

People’s love of travel, sports and leisure, which emerged in the early part of the 20th century, deeply inspired the Hermès watch collections, especially in their functionality and design. As such, the Belt Watch (2), launched around 1930, was developed specifically for leisure activities. Set on the belt, the watch movement is subtly housed in the belt buckle, thereby protecting the balance wheel from any shocks induced through playing sports or travelling.

Also released in the 1930s was the Russian-leather Buttonhole (3) watch. Fitted with a transparent case-back, it displayed a hand-wound mechanical movement that expressed Hermès’ dedication to incorporate watch-making expertise and its quest for technical features.

The most recent launch that I hold in high regard is 2011’s Arceau Le Temps Suspendu, a watch able to suspend time by erasing it from the dial whilst continuing to register its ceaseless march: a world-first complication developed exclusively for Hermès. Protected by two patents, this 43 mm-diameter case is a gem of horological engineering. The mechanical self-winding movement is equipped with three retrograde functions, and has a 42-hour power reserve. It’s also an award-winning watch, scooping the prestigious Geneva Watchmaking Grand Prix award for Best Men’s Watch.

Flight Club

1.

2.

3.

Of all the new timepieces unveiled at last month’s SIHH, there were few with a history as rich as IWC’s Pilot’s Watch. 76 years have passed since the first model in this range was designed to meet the needs of pilots, chiefly to protect the watch’s functions from the adverse effects of temperature fluctuations and magnetic fields. This 2012 version of the Chronograph stays true to its roots while featuring a host of impressive design quirks: propellerlike hands and cockpit-style instruments among them.

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The third model from Harry Winston’s Histoire de Tourbillon collection incorporates three tourbillions, the workings of which are displayed in an incredible watchcase formed of white gold, sapphire crystals and Zalium, an ultra-light zirconium alloy that’s so hard you’ll usually find it put to use in jet engines.

And it’s all pulled together by a hand-sewn strap.

> In homage to the hit TV series, Jaeger-LeCoultre has created a Mad Men version of its iconic Reverso watch, engraved with the Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce logo and delivered to its owners in a custom-designed walnut box.

Inside it you’ll find all manner of exclusives, including a personalised commemorative letter from Roger Sterling and a copy of his book, Sterling’s Gold, autographed by the show’s creator. Watches don’t come any cooler.

> It took celebrated sculptors, painters, jewellers and watchmakers hundreds of hours to craft this stunning Van Cleef & Arpels Midnight Poetic Wish timepiece; its dial something of a miniature masterpiece. Buy one in a customised, mother-of-pearlinlaid presentation box and you have a collector’s piece guaranteed to grow in value.

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INTERIORS

Wrap and Roll

SARA COSGROVE

Harrods’ head of design looks to Christopher Guy for stellar February furnishings...

Founded in 1858, Rubelli has, in the decades since, crafted beautiful Venetian fabrics that have dressed the homes of the very discerning. Today, the Italian brand’s textile trends and home furnishings have never looked more grandiose, with its Venezia 2012 collection a case in point. Brocade, damask, velvet and silk are the tools of this line’s trade – so have beds adorned in rich marigold yellows and golds; take Rubelli’s trademark reds to the maximum with ruby hues inspired by Istanbul; or opt for the kimono florals of Kyoto. Patterns rarely look (or feel) quite so sublime. rubelli.com

One interior direction that I have noticed emerging in design is a trend for brightness and lightness.

Across the board, many brands and designers are introducing pale, fresh and light tones in to their collections, which in turn are being translated in to our interior schemes – offering an uncluttered and serene look and feel. Christopher Guy is one such master of furnishings who I look to for my projects. The brand has just introduced finishes that fit perfectly with this trend, including shimmering pale gold lacquers and fresh white fabrics. The beautiful Le Fan Plisse chair is a prime example, although the entire current furniture collection demonstrates the mood well.

Elsewhere, Larsen, a popular fabric brand, has also launched a spring collection, with lovely pale greens, blues and whites with metallic details. Daum and French luxury bath company THG have also collaborated, introducing a stunning white crystal tap and bathware collection – I love the Paradise range, which uses a beautiful moon-hued crystal.

The benefits of using light tones in an interor scheme are simply boundless; particularly when working in a hot climate. When using such tones and soft textures, a more relaxed, calming environment can be achieved, making it the ideal solution for bedrooms or a spa area. thestudioatharrods.com

Freudian Pick Rare etchings by Lucian Freud go under the hammer at Christie’s in London on February 15, giving you the chance to own works that until now formed a private collection owned by Freud’s friend Marc Balakjian. Freud has been deemed the ‘greatest living realist painter’, and this sale, The Printer’s Proof, will showcase his most complete print works yet. Lots to keep an eye on include an etching of Sue Tilley (estimate £30,000–£50,000) – a portrait of whom was bought by Roman Abramovich in 2008 for a then-record-breaking £20.6million – and an affectionate portrait of Freud’s dog, Pluto (estimate £50,000–£70,000). christies.com

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Table Manners

These terrific side tables from Versace Home are just the ticket when entertaining…

1

Verlaine coffee table

2 Page Turner: 100 Contemporary Houses Whether you’re planning a property overhaul or musing over a newlyacquired plot, this stylish tome comes thick with modern properties, from a cliff-tinkering, glass-walled beach house in Sydney to a wooden Deck House in Chile – and more besides.

The first of two volumes, its pages catalogue some 100 homes – from the bizarre to the, quite simply, pioneering – headed by some of the top names in architectural design (Richard Meier, Shigeru Ban, Tadao Ando and Zaha Hadid among them).

Peruse entirely new ideas (they’ll have your mind working overtime) for achievable living spaces and learn how to beat environmental obstacles, too. taschen.com

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Grid coffee table

3

Nesting side tables

4

Nesting side tables

CRITIQUE

Film Red Tails

War II, despite their segregation from ground troops.

AT BEST: “Under the Lucasfilm label, the flick definitely feels big...” Cinema Blend AT WORST: “So narratively old-fashioned it creaks.”

Time Out New York

Dir. Anthony Hemingway A combat-in-the-sky film that chronicles the heroic exploits of the controversial ‘Tuskeegee Airmen’ – untested African-American pilots called into duty to help win World

Albert Nobbs

Dir. Rodrigo García Glenn Close slips, quite literally, into a man’s shoes in this gripping tale of a woman forced to live as a man in 19th century Ireland.

Thirty years on, a new love threatens to topple a life-long charade.

AT BEST: “As directed with grit and grace by Rodrigo García, this quietly devastating film goes bone-deep.” Rolling Stone AT WORST: “The rest of the movie, sadly, can’t live up to its leads.”

New York Daily News

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Dir. Stephen Daldry Oskar, a boy struggling to grasp his parent’s death in the 9/11 attacks, takes an eye-opening journey through New York, convinced that his late father (Tom Hanks) has left him a final message, hidden somewhere in the city...

AT BEST: “Horn delivers a star turn as Oskar, a child trying to make sense of a tragedy that still baffles us all.” Newsday AT WORST: “With one exception, the quest is lumbering at best, and precious the rest of the time.” Globe and Mail

The Grey

Dir. Joe Carnahan It’s survival of the fittest when a plane crash leaves a group of boisterous roughnecks out in the Alaskan wilderness. Injuries, ice-ridden elements and rogue wolves give the men, led by Liam Neeson, a run for their money.

AT BEST: “A man’s-man of a genre pic that will satisfy the action audience...”

Hollywood Reporter AT WORST: “When word gets out as to the more philosophical content, audiences will fade...” Boxoffice Magazine

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Books

The last couple of years have seen a flood of ‘the history of’ books hit the market, some immaculately researched and filled with intriguing anecdotes, and some half-baked shelf-stuffers cobbled together from Wikipedia. Happily, the just-released Corsets and Calories by Dr Louise Foxcroft falls into the first camp, charting a history of dieting over 2,000 years with wit and aplomb. It traces our obsession with weight from the Ancient Greeks to the Dukan diet, with some superb vignettes about well-known figures thrown in along the way. As The Telegraph’s Helen Brown says, “[Lord] Byron himself proved that men were not immune to an unhealthy relationship with their weight.

A yo-yo dieter susceptible to every fad going, who wore layers of clothes to sweat off his excess fat, the poet’s eating habits were mad, bad and definitely dangerous.”

Joan Smith of The Literary Review thought the book “entertaining and occasionally stomach-churning history of the subject” and picked out the story of “Daniel Lambert, who was born in Leicester in 1770, was just over five feet tall and weighed fifty-two stone; when he died, at the age of thirty-nine, he was rolled through the streets in a wheeled coffin to his grave.” Fascinating stuff.

Staying on the non-fiction theme, another big winner that’s just been published is Pity the Billionaire by Thomas Frank, which, as the Guardian says, “takes us on a roadtrip through the strange landscape of the American Right, the Tea Party and Glenn Beck, makes sense of a topsyturvy world and shows how instead of complying with the new speed limit, conservative America has stamped hard on the accelerator.” It’s the ideal read for anyone struggling to make sense of this year’s Republican candidate debates, when at times it felt like any semblance of normality had been suspended (see Herman Cain and Rick Perry) and madness reigned. Kirkus Reviews, who dub themselves ‘the world’s toughest critics’ say Pity The Billionaire is “An insightful, bitingly humorous book” – a top buy, whatever your political persuasion.

Switching to fiction, the book to watch out for this month is The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson. Set in North Korea, this “harrowing and deeply affecting new novel” as Michiko Kakutani of the New Yok Times, describes it, “recounts the picaresque adventures of its title character, Jun Do, a soldier turned kidnapper turned surveillance officer, who tries to stay alive as he stumbles his way through the government bureaucracy.” David Ignatius of The Washington Post agrees it’s a hit – “A great novel can take implausible fact and turn it into entirely believable fiction” he says. “That’s the genius of The Orphan Master’s Son. Adam Johnson has taken the papier-mache creation that is North Korea and turned it into a real and riveting place that readers will find unforgettable.” With all eyes turned on the Hermit Kingdom after the death of Kim Jong Il, this is the perfect time to gain an insight into the country while enjoying a rollicking good read.

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CRITIQUE

Art Roberta Smith writes in the New York Times, “the quality of the art – and the experience of it – varies tremendously.

Parts of Hirst New York are both visually exhilarating and accessible; you can take the kids, take friends who have never looked at art or acquaintances curious about the formal principles of abstraction. Then there are parts so redundant and oppressive as to appeal to only hard-core Hirst devotees.” You have been warned.

Finally, in Paris, the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in the Saint Paul quartier is showing an intriguing collection of work from photographer Youssef Nabil, who has made a name for himself by taking gelatine silver prints of celebrities (including Gilbert and George, Alicia Keys. Sting, and Omar Sharif) and then colouring them by hand. Tania Brimson, art critic of Time Out Paris, was bowled over by the show, saying that “Contemplating Youssef Nabil’s photographs is a bit like watching an Egyptian film of the 1950s, and seeing its most glamorous elements frozen and given colour. These are blinding colours, which appear as though they have been burnt into place by the desert sun: the young photographer spreads them on his black and white prints until they are suffused with a dreamlike perfection.” Here are shots of Charlotte Rampling and Catherine Deneuve in all their glory.

“Wherever he takes these iconic stars,” says Brimson, “and whatever he does, the young Egyptian exile seems to see the world in the form of film and nostalgia.” Unmissable.

Image: David Hockney’s Woldgate Woods, Royal Academy of Arts

London’s art lovers have ever reason to grin at the moment, with a huge new show on offer from one of the art world’s favourite – and most idiosyncratic – characters. At the Royal Academy you’ll find the latest batch of works from David Hockney, his A Bigger Picture exhibition, including 51 that the artist drew on his iPad. The pictures are all of the English countryside – as Sam Parker of the Huffington Post explains, “David Hockney has spent the past seven years sat amongst the hedgerows and woodlands of his native East Yorkshire obsessively capturing – and in some cases, dramatising... this quiet and understated ‘greatness’.” Like most critics, Parker is a fan of the new paintings. “Each one contains the truth about our national countryside”, he says “ – that what it may lack in grandeur, it makes up for in mood. Working well in his seventies, back home after a life spent traveling the world, our greatest living painter has captured the greatness of our land.”

Another British great is showing over at the three Gagosian galleries in New York, where you’ll find a display of over a hundred of Damien Hirst’s finest spot paintings, brought together from institutions and private individuals from around the world. It’s part of a show taking place concurrently at all 11 Gagosian galleries across the world – you can also check out his works in Rome, Athens, London and Hong Kong. With this many works on display, it’s perhaps no surprise that not all of them are hits – as

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Image: Noises Off, Johan Persson

Theatre

The Richard Rodgers theatre, located between Broadway and Eighth Avenue in New York, has been causing some serious ripples in the city with its latest production – a revamp of the old George Gershwin classic Porgy and Bess.

The cast is stuffed with big name stars, who tell the classic story by DuBose and Dorothy Heyward of the beautiful Bess’ struggles to break free from her scandalous past, aided by the crippled but courageous Porgy. Even if you’ve never heard of the piece before, you’ll know half of the songs in it when you hear them – this has been a seriously influential show over the years. Time Magazine named the relaunched musical its favourite of the year to date and New York Magazine said “This uncontestably beautiful production kept the audience absolutely rapt, ravished by two hours of one of the greatest scores ever written for the American theatre.” A must-see for the diary next time you’re in the Big Apple.

If you’re on the west coast of the US rather than the east, however, you should head to the Electric Lodge theatre on Electric Avenue in LA for a showing of Awake in a World That Encourages Sleep. This simple play of three people has a dull-sounding storyline – a couple meet an odd character in the park and get talking. That’s about it. However, as Margaret Gray of the LA times says, “these actors are so stylish and proficient that you don’t care what they’ll say next – you just can’t wait for them to say it.” She’s particularly taken with the character of Barry claiming that “he and his co-stars could probably recite the phone book and leave us wide awake and begging for more.”

In London, meanwhile, the critics have been delighted with the revival of a classic farce at the Old Vic – Michael Frayn’s Noises Off, directed by Lindsay Posner, which is set to run until the middle of March. Andrzej Lukowski of Time Out London was an instant convert, saying that “Posner’s first-rate ensemble bring a winsome existential melancholy to this story of six bickering actors, two browbeaten crew members and one megalomaniacal

director who are stuck together for 12 weeks touring a show they hate around towns they’ve never heard of, for motives that never seem quite clear.” This “richly detailed tapestry of catastrophe” was also hailed by the Sunday Times, who deemed it “Foot-stompingly, seal-honkingly hysterical” and The Daily Telegraph, who claimed it is “An infallible escape into happiness”. High praise indeed.

While farce rules the roost in London, theatre-goers in Paris have been captivated by Manon, a 19th century opera by Massenet, running at Opéra Bastille. Le Figaro’s opera critic is a fan: “The mise en scène is as original as it is delightful, full of surprises and even provocative of occasional gales of laughter”, he says. “The hyperreal sets outdo all our expectations, and the talented singers and actors bring real pleasure and emotion to every spectator.”

Unsurprisingly, not many tickets remain, so make sure to book soon if you’re heading to la ville lumière.

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Being Blunt Clever, self-deprecating, straight talking, EMILY BLUNT is that rarest of birds – an A-list star with a sense of humour. The British actress gives AIR a crash course in Hollywood survival WORDS: KATE SALTER

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I

t is Paris fashion week and the lobby of Le Meurice, one of the city’s most opulent hotels, teems with men and women who would look at home on a catwalk. Upstairs Emily Blunt, the face of Yves Saint Laurent’s Opium perfume, is cosseted away in a plush suite. Bottles of the perfume decorate the room, the air is thick with the heavy fragrance and a trailer for the new television advert starring Blunt plays on a loop on a large screen in which she talks about her role in the advert (“I’m a woman, on a mission – in really high heels”). I am told that Blunt will be ready to see me soon,

but first she must have her make-up reapplied. Five minutes later a greyhaired Frenchman with an impressive coiffure goes to attend to her hair.

It begins to feel like waiting for an audience with J Lo. As soon as I am greeted by Blunt, however, it is clear that she finds all this palaver most amusing. As the hairdresser leaves she is unable to contain a conspiratorial smile. “He told me I kept messing up what he’d done, so he insisted on giving me another blow-dry,” she says. Her eyes are indeed immaculately pencilled, her hair is cut in a short, chic bob and she is dressed head to toe in black

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Yves Saint Laurent. On screen her porcelain skin, wide-set blue eyes and fine bone structure are deployed to full effect, but in person it is Blunt’s sardonic, slightly lopsided grin and irreverent sense of humour that you notice first.

In the television advert Blunt prowls the darkened hallways of an expensive-looking apartment, searching for a bottle of perfume that is guarded by a leopard. When I tell her that I’ve been watching the trailer for the advert in the room next door, she says, “God, I’m so un-French in that trailer.” She adopts a grating, nasal voice, “I’m a woman, on a

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mission – er, in really high heels,” mimicking herself.

It is almost impossible to pay Blunt a compliment because of the constant self-deprecating banter, but it is a mark of just how much of a bona fide superstar she has become that her face is now capable of selling millions of bottles of perfumes. Why does she think she was chosen? “I don’t know.

I’ve no idea,” she says, wheezing with laughter. “There was no one else? They made a mistake, a terrible mistake.”

It is the first time that Blunt, 28, has fronted a beauty campaign, despite having previous offers. “I think that I’ve been wanting to make sure that when I did it it would be the right thing,” she says. “There’s such an aura of scandal around this perfume that I was quite attached to the idea of doing it from the word go. I’d been asked to do a couple of things but none were as classy as this. And I got to work with a leopard. ” The leopard and its costar had minimal interaction, about which Blunt is secretly relieved. She says she suggested wearing a dress in the advert rather than the classic Yves Saint Laurent tux. “But I got word back ” she continues in a perfect French accent, “that the leopard trainer says, ‘If you have flowing fabric around the leopard the leopard will go crazy.’ So I said yes to the tux. ” One of the things Blunt liked about the Opium campaign was that “it’s not necessarily going for the obvious – it’s something a bit more mystical and weird”. For someone who is so hard to pigeon-hole herself, it’s easy to see why she found this attractive.

She once said, “If I open a script and the description reads ‘nice, normal girl’, I slam it shut, ” and Blunt’s CV is intriguing simply for its variety: she has done everything from cult indie films to period dramas, romantic thrillers, horror, comedy, even an animated children’s film and a guest role in The Simpsons. It does seem as though she has tried her hand at an awful lot. “You mean I’ll say yes to anything?” she jokes.

With so many films under her belt,

is she still at the stage where she has to fight for the parts she wants? “Oh, God, yes,” she says, eyes widening.

“Yes, absolutely. Because the good stuff – everyone wants the good stuff.

We’re like savages,” she says and starts to laugh again. “There’s not much meat on the bones in this industry so all the women go crazy when there’s a great role.”

One such role for which she fought off the competition was the imperious Emily, personal assistant to Meryl Streep’s fashion editor, Miranda Priestly, in The Devil Wears Prada (2006). The producers had thought the character should be American, but Blunt read for the part in her own

‘There’s not much meat on the bones in this industry so all the women go crazy when there’s a great role’ accent. It paid off and Blunt turned in a brilliant comic performance, transforming what could have been a flimsy pantomime baddy into an acute study of the cowardice and desperation of someone who undermines others because she is undermined herself. Blunt, of course, shrugs off her ingenuity and says she only got the part because during the audition she was panicking about missing her flight – fear being an integral part of her character in the film.

“I was so frantic that they said, ‘Yep, that’s it.’ That kind of reeking of desperation to get out of the room was what did it. ” If The Devil Wears Prada was the film that got her noticed in America, it was an independent British film, My Summer of Love (2004), that first caught the attention of critics. In it Blunt played the manipulative, upperclass Tamsin who starts a relationship with a local working-class girl (played

by Natalie Press) while on holiday in Yorkshire. Since then she has had roles in many more mainstream films but says that independent cinema

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will always be her first love. “They’re the best parts and the best scripts, usually. Sometimes the bigger-budget films are made for teenage boys, so the girl parts are one-dimensional or rather idealistic and I don’t know how to play The Girlfriend part – there’s nothing there for me to do. There are fantastic roles out there for women, you just have to sift through all the c— to find them.”

Blunt recently finished filming her first lead role in a mainstream American comedy, The Five-Year Engagement, in which she does in fact play The Girlfriend part. It is produced

by Judd Apatow, the writer-director of hugely successful ‘buddy’ comedies such as The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up and Superbad. Some have accused Apatow of sexism, saying that his female parts are stultifying bores who are there simply to make the male lead look even funnier. Blunt says she was determined this wouldn’t be the case with her role. “When I signed up to it I said I don’t want to play someone who’s just a nag, so they wrote it with me in mind and with my input. It’s really refreshing because

‘I’m a woman, on a mission – er, in really high heels’ not afraid to give things a bash. It’s clear that Blunt loves to laugh – she is rarely serious for more than a few seconds – but she says she feels confident expressing her funny side on film thanks to her childhood.

“I grew up in a family where there was lots of laughter and people doing impersonations,” she says. “It was a rowdy, fun household – I’m one of four kids – and everyone to this day is still doing impersonations of each other and telling stories.” Blunt’s father is a criminal barrister and a QC and her mother now teaches English after giving up her acting career to raise Blunt, her elder sister, Felicity, and her two younger siblings, Sebastian and Susannah. Blunt went to private school in Roehampton, Surrey, and it was while she was at sixth-form college that her acting career took off.

But before that, from the age of about eight until she was 13, Blunt suffered from a debilitating stutter.

When I ask her about this it is the only time in the interview when her grin fades and she becomes pensive. “As a child and early teen I didn’t speak

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as much – because I couldn’t. Maybe that was a good thing because I soaked it all up like a sponge. But I don’t remember it as a conscious thing. I think I was just not wanting to talk.

Too embarrassing,” she says with a resigned shrug. After the age of 13 it became less severe, and by 16 Blunt had been signed by a theatrical agent and was cast opposite Judi Dench in a West End show. Blunt says that she will always be a stutterer, and it comes on when she’s particularly tired or stressed. “Weirdly enough, I stutter less with a person I’m unfamiliar with,” she says. “And then with my family or my husband it’ll come out more, which is strange.”

In 2010 Blunt moved to Los Angeles where she lives with John Krasinski (who plays Jim in the US version of The Office), whom she married at George Clooney’s estate on Lake Como. It was a small, intimate affair and ever since the couple have kept a low profile. Blunt is open about most things, but will not discuss her private life other than to say, “We have lots of friends who aren’t in the business and we don’t really go to the sceney places.”

What does she think Americans make of British women – given that they seem to have a reputation for bad teeth and being overly hirsute? “Do they say we’re hairy?” She peers at her own arm resting on the sofa, then at mine. “I’ve heard people say they find British women intimidating. But people also say that British women are so much fun because of their laid-back sense of humour. “ For someone so forthright, Blunt must have a grand plan of where she wants to take her career next.

“I believe in a plan,” she says, “but I think it has to be ever changing, because it’s such a precarious job. You can’t rely upon the machine, so all you have are the choices you make.” As she’s tried her hand at most genres, is there anything left she’d like to do?

She grins. “I haven’t done a Western yet and I would quite like to do a Western.”

Credit: Kate Salter / Telegraph Magazine / The Interview People

my character has as many set pieces as Jason’s [her co-star, Jason Segel]. ” She points out that Apatow also produced Bridesmaids, the slap-stick female-led comedy that divided audiences with its graphic, scatological mishaps. “I think there’s a tendency to think women can’t be funny,” she says. “But you look at someone like Kristen Wiig [the lead in Bridesmaids], I think people like her are real trailblazers for girls in the comedy world. If you love it or hate it you can’t deny that Bridesmaids is such a big film for women. It was a really important film to happen.”

There can’t be many actresses who could pull off playing Queen Victoria and also star in a Judd Apatow comedy, but there is something so fearless about Blunt, you feel she is

The Men Who Would Be King Eric Cantona may have sold a dummy to the world’s media when his apparent pitch for the French Presidency was revealed as an awareness-raising stunt, but the interest it ignited was proof that football has what it takes to raise statesmen WORDS: JAMES MONTAGUE

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ric Cantona has been many things to many people over the course of a tumultuous, two decade career.

To some – like Manchester United supporters – he is ‘The King’, the greatest player from the greatest English team of the Premiership era. To others he is variously: an insouciant bully unable to bend one iota for the collective good (every French international coach of the past two decades who tried and failed to tame him); a violent thug with philosophical pretensions (ask Crystal Palace fans about his karate kick attack on a fan who was abusing him after getting sent off) or a Gallic braggart with zero loyalty to team and team-mate alike (speak to any Leeds United fan about the true reason Cantona left Elland Road for Old Trafford, for a pittance and in a hurry).

Each new role, each new act is as contrarian as the last. He has been an actor and a footballer, an anti-capitalist voice for France’s progressive left and an ambassador for the New York Cosmos in the home of laissez-faire capitalism. He has been the face of international beach football and the man who urged the French to remove all their money from their bank accounts at the same time in a bid to bring down the global financial system. The only surprise when he announced that his next role would be to run for the French Presidency was that that there was any surprise at all.

He would later pull out, citing his announcement as a ruse to raise the issue of a lack of affordable housing in his homeland. But by then Cantona had got what he wanted. His potential presidency was dissected. The column inches boomed exponentially. He had reinvented himself and expired, only to be reborn to follow some new, unpredictable path. King Eric is dead; long live King Eric. French politicos scoffed at the idea that a mere sportsman, worse, a footballer who once declared he felt more English than French, could ever have represented France on the highest stage. But what they forget is that, far from being just a breeding ground for petulant millionaire teenagers, the beautiful game can provide an almost unparalleled platform to launch a political career. Football’s ubiquity as the global game means that, for one, successful footballers bring with them something that politicians can only dream of: Deeply and passionately felt love.

We are instantly suspicious when we hear of a former footballer making the leap into politics, as if the former player could be little more than a dumb Manchurian candidate for interests looking to cash in on their cache.

It is the same for any actor or musician that has trodden the same path: The actor Ronald Reagan was lampooned when he decided to run for the U.S. presidency. “Ronald Reagan, the actor?!” exclaims Dr. Emmett Brown in Back to the Future when he discovers that Reagan is

‘These players all have one thing in common… They are the outsiders, the mavericks who answer to no interest group’

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president in 1985. “And who’s vice president?

Jerry Lewis?”

Michel ‘Sweet Micky’ Martelly, Haiti’s most famous domestic singer, faced the same when he won Haiti’s last presidential election in 2010. Although he was renowned for exposing himself on stage, he managed to persuade a jaded population to vote for him. There was less luck for Wyclef Jean of Fugees fame who had himself briefly harboured dreams of being Haiti’s president. He was seen as a step too far, even for a country desperate to break from the tragedy of despotism that had haunted Haiti since it became the first black state to declare independence 200 years ago.

Youssou N’Dor’s recent announcement of running for office in Senegal met with much the same shrug given by a French waiter in London when asked by a British news channel what he thought about Cantona’s aborted presidential bid. “He should stick to football.”

But football provides exactly the right conditions to raise future presidents and statesmen, especially in the developed world.

When George Weah, arguably Africa’s greatest ever player, ran for the Liberian presidency in 2005, his campaign not only counted on his popularity as the country’s greatest ever export. The subtext resonated with the poor: professional football is one of the most brutally meritocratic professions there is and Weah had succeeded not because of nepotism or bribery but because of his talent against all the odds.

And having made his name in Europe, he was far from the corruption and horse trading that blights African politics. He was a self made man untainted by the realities of Liberia’s brutal civil war. He was attacked for being uneducated and unprepared for the realities of political life. “With all their education and experience, they have governed this nation for hundreds of years,” he retorted. “They have never done anything for the nation.” Weah lost the election, but gained over 40 per cent in the final run off.

His performance was remarkable given he had zero experience in how to run, well, pretty much anything.

Others have trodden similar paths. Shortly after surviving a heart attack and ballooning to the size of an ox, Argentine maestro Maradona became heavily involved in socialist politics in the mid-noughties. Having become morbidly

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Eric Cantona.

George Weah.

Diego Maradona.

Diego Maradona at his most maverick.

obese none other than Fidel Castro stepped in to the breach to offer Maradona Cuba’s excellent health care system to perform a gastric operation. During his convalescence the two became firm friends. He shared a stage with other firebrand leaders like Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and would routinely denounce U.S. foreign policy on his new TV talk show. In the end he decided that he still had something to offer the game and took Argentina to the 2010 World Cup finals. But far from shunning a man who would seem unprepared for the vagaries of international politics, some polls showed that he would have won the Argentine presidency if he had stood. At least until Germany beat Argentina 4-0 in the quarter finals, that is. Even Brazilian legends Romario and Bebeto has taken the political path, being elected to state and national offices in Brazil. Six other footballers stood but failed to win enough votes.

These players all have one thing in common when they begin their post-football political careers. They are the outsiders, the mavericks who answer to no interest group. They are truly independent of spirit and in action, untainted by vested interests. Of course, that never lasts for long in politics. And we will never know how King Eric would have stood up under the glare of intense examination, with a manifesto to critique and a political culture that shuns individualism and turns any innocuous comment into a policy blunder.

But he has proven that it is not just those in the developed world that hanker after the non-politician to vote for. Cantona may not become French President, but given the intense politician fatigue gripping Western democracies rocked by the 2008 banking crisis, he has left the door ajar for Europe’s footballing stars to find a second career outside of punditry or race horse ownership when they retire. David Beckham to run for the British parliament in 2018? It would be a landslide.

James Montague is the author of “When Friday Comes: Football in the War Zone (Mainstrean)”. He is currently working on his second book “Thirty One Nil: From Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, the Amazing Story of World Cup Qualification (A&C Black)”.

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THE CROONERS’ CROONER TONY BENNETT will celebrate his 86th birthday this year, yet laughs off the idea of retirement. He tells AIR why he still loves the business WORDS: NEIL MCCORMICK

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n the air-conditioned chill of studio three at Abbey Road, producers and engineers hovered over a vast recording console, setting levels. A handwritten sign proclaimed this console has 12,974 buttons.

A small group of record company representatives gravitated towards a buffet of sandwiches and crisps, talking business in hushed tones. No one paid the slightest attention to the dapper, grey-haired gentleman sitting quietly in a corner. Immaculately turned out in white shirt, braces and tie, with his suit jacket folded over a chair, he peered through thick spectacles, scratching the surface of a Post-it note with a Biro. Every now and then he looked up. “The trouble when you sketch with a pen, you can’t make mistakes,” murmured Tony Bennett, contemplating his portrait of a studio engineer.

Through a clear glass division, inside the recording booth, two microphones stood side by side. “She’s in the building,” someone announced. “She just needs a little time. She was semi-attacked by paparazzi, but she’s fine, she’s not upset.”

“Bop da ba da bop bop,” Bennett sang softly, to himself, as he continued sketching. “Let her take her time,” he said.

“We got plenty of time.” The legendary 85-year-old crooner was patiently awaiting the arrival of Amy Winehouse.

On March 23 last year, Amy Winehouse recorded a single

with Tony Bennett for his new album, Duets II. It was the young British soul singer’s first publicly acknowledged recording session in over a year, and Abbey Road was surrounded by a scrum of photographers and fans. She finally entered the studio an hour late and forgivably flustered, an entourage of management, PRs and stylists fussing over her. The quiet ambience dramatically shifted, suddenly the room seemed packed and bustling with activity, with Winehouse at its centre. Stylishly turned out in minidress, knitted cardigan, big hair and bold eyeliner, she made a beeline for Bennett, gushing, “We love you, we love you, we love you so much.”

“Thank you,” said Bennett, who never lets a compliment go unacknowledged. “You’re sweet.”

“I’m not going to cry,” Winehouse snuffled, as Bennett took her hands. Her almost comically casual air of youthful confidence (peppering conversation with “all right” and “whatever”) evaporated in front of her idol, although Bennett was doing his best to put her at ease. Slipping his jacket on, red handkerchief poking from his breast pocket, he guided Winehouse, with an almost imperceptible touch, into the recording booth, murmuring, “We’ll just run it over till you get comfortable.”

Watching them side by side at their microphones was like witnessing a masterclass in jazz improvisation. Dapper

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and calm, left hand tucked in pocket, Bennett sang quietly and talkatively, feeling his way up and down the melody of the 1930s classic Body and Soul while remaining intently focused on his singing partner. Bennett talked to her about the song’s composer, Johnny Green – “he was a friend of mine, a tremendous intellectual” – and its history, from a Coleman Hawkins instrumental to “the official standard of popular light entertainment” recorded by Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra and Bennett himself.

Winehouse was clearly in awe of the whole situation, unable to look Bennett in the eye, staring at the floor and the ceiling, chewing on her hair and sleeve, swaying nervously. Yet her singing belied her youth and nerves.

The voice that emerged was rich and ancient, cracked and bluesy, flowing around the song in jazzy glides and fluid bursts that would dazzle and explode then peter out at dead ends, where she would tut and grunt and bite her lips in frustration. “I haven’t done this in a long time,” she apologised, head hanging, eyes fixed on the floor. “And I’m nervous because it’s you.”

Bennett kept up a murmur of encouraging patter.

“It’s just like we’re talking to each other,” he reassured her. “You’re feeling it real good. I like it.” Take after take unfolded with Bennett drawing a performance out of Winehouse, while at the same time blending his thinner, smokier voice with her rich tone. “Do you like Dinah Washington?” he asked. “You remind me of her.”

‘I never wanted to be the biggest. Because you get ripped apart, they tear you down, for some strange reason’

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Winehouse blushed with pleasure at being compared with one of her heroines. And when Bennett crooned, “For you, for you dear only,” a lovely, secret smile lit up her face.

Three months later, Winehouse was dead. “I broke down and sobbed when I heard the news,” Bennett admits. “I’ll tell you, of all the young people I’ve met over the past 50 years, she sang the right way. It’s funny to say that, because there’s a lot of singers that sound wonderful, but she sang for the moment, and that’s honest. She was ready to take a chance, right on the spot, right on the microphone, she’d try a different phrasing, she knew how to improvise, it was spontaneous and intimate. That’s what I loved about her.

She was really herself. Since Elvis Presley and the Beatles really changed the game, and into big stadiums, music became like a big football game and it lost the intimacy that really makes it interesting to me. But Amy had that, she was a true talent, and she was on her way to becoming a very, very important jazz singer. What a tragedy. Just 27 years old. It’s so regretful. It’s heartbreaking.”

Bennett donated his share of proceeds from their duet to the foundation Winehouse’s father Mitch set up in her name. “I’d like to really have had a chance to talk to her.

Because that’s what happened to me. I was almost the Amy Winehouse of my day.”

Bennett has such a humble manner, so softly spoken, it is difficult to picture him in his carousing younger days – a jet-black-haired handsome crooner, playing Las Vegas

and, like his hero Frank Sinatra, doing his best to resist changing fashions and new popular music styles. He is clearly hesitant about acknowledging how far he might have drifted from his own ideals, yet has previously admitted problems with alcohol and drugs, almost dying from an overdose in 1979, when he had to be revived in the bath by his second wife, Sandra Grant.

“I was caught up in it when I was younger. When the Kennedys got assassinated, and Martin Luther King, our country took a terrible turn, and everybody got wasted.

In those days I was hiding, I was in a room somewhere getting high, that’s not a correct way to live.” He is (perhaps deliberately) vague about when his drug use came to an end, though he recalls one particular conversation that resonated with him. “I was talking to Woody Allen’s manager, Jeff Rawlins, and he said he used to handle Lenny Bruce. I said, ‘Oh, I knew Lenny, what did you think of him?’ And he said, ‘He sinned against his talent.’ That line changed my life, I threw away all kinds of corruption out of my system, I just went back to being pretty normal.”

Given his 1979 overdose, it seems likely this change of lifestyle took longer than Bennett cares to recall. But his sense of regret about lost years is genuine. “When I dropped everything, my career went right up, the public accepted me, everything’s fine, without any trouble, without any pain, without any torture. I’d like to have talked to Amy about that. She was a sweet girl, she had a gift. Don’t sin against your talent.”

Born Anthony Dominick Benedetto in 1926 (he changed his stage name on the advice of Bob Hope in 1949), Bennett grew up in poverty in New York in a large, Italian immigrant family. His father died when he was 10; his mother was a seamstress who “had to work for a penny a dress to put food on the table for three children”. Young Tony would entertain at family gatherings, accompanied by uncles on mandolins and guitars. “They encouraged me.

They said, ‘Look at how Tony makes us feel good, he tells jokes and he sings,’ and they created a passion for me that exists to this moment. I love entertaining. I make people feel good and they make me feel wonderful. I’m getting away with murder as far as I’m concerned.”

As a teenager, Bennett worked as a singing waiter, before being drafted into the Second World War, where he experienced things that, he says, haunt him to this day. “It made me a pacifist. The lowest form of human behaviour is killing someone. I’m against any war. It’s horrible. We all live on this planet. I’m no better than anyone else, no one is. Everybody’s here. Everybody’s got a gift.”

It was studying music on the GI Bill (which offered vocational training for returning war veterans) that allowed him to realise his own potential. He learnt bel canto singing techniques, to which he ascribes his vocal longevity. “Bel canto means beautiful voice, a beautiful sound, so you try and think of beauty when you sing. It’s very wholesome. If you warm up for 15 minutes in your room before the show, you feel great comfort, because you

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Images: Corbis / Arabian Eye; Getty Text: Neil McCormick / Telegraph Magazine / The Interview People

see where you’re at, and you think in terms of feeling and pouring your soul into the music.”

He was guided towards developing his own distinctive, jazzy and improvisational style. “I had a very good teacher on 52nd Street, a great jazz street in New York. She said, ‘If you imitate other singers you’re just gonna be one of a chorus. It’s better to imitate musicians.’ From her brownstone window you could look down on the awnings, and it would say Billie Holiday, Stan Getz, Errol Garner or Art Tatum. I couldn’t believe Tatum, he was the most phenomenal piano player I’d ever heard, different from anyone else. Everybody had a tempo going so you could dance, but Tatum started changing tempos, breaking it up at unexpected moments. Then Stan Getz had a beautiful, very wide, honey sound to his saxophone and I liked that, I put those two together and found my style. Musicians would say to me, ‘What the hell are you doing? You’re breaking the songs up.’ I’d say, ‘I’m telling stories.’ It was ahead of time but now it’s just accepted. Spontaneity is key.

So on a nightly basis it always feels like a brand new show.”

In 1950, aged 24, Bennett won a recording contract with Columbia and had his first number one in the US charts the following year, with Because of You. He has since recorded over four dozen albums, and proclaims himself satisfied.

“There’s been ups and downs, but there’s 54 albums and not one obsolescent song there. I never followed disco or rock or rap, or whatever the fashion is, I just sing quality.

Great songs, great melodies, great lyrics. And it’s thrilling to see that, if you live long enough, it’ll pay off.”

Sinatra held Bennett in the highest esteem, hailing him as “the best singer in the business”, adding, “He moves me. He’s the singer who gets across what the composer has in mind, and probably a little more.” Bennett is equally enthusiastic about Sinatra, yet says he decided early on that he didn’t aspire to the same level of fame. “I never wanted to be the biggest. Because you get ripped apart, they tear you down, for some strange reason. People can’t take somebody that’s better than everybody. They tore down Marilyn Monroe, they tore down Elvis Presley, they worked very hard on tearing down Sinatra; he overcame it but he had a tough time. And I witnessed that as a youngster and I decided, I just want to be one of the best, I don’t want to be the best. It’s not a soccer or baseball game, it’s a matter of being part of the community. I love to entertain, I feel very good about doing that. It’s tragic what happens to people who go way up above everybody else, because they have to compete with everyone coming up. It’s a fiasco.”

Bennett speaks with the same soft understatement with which he sings, unwinding anecdotes and observations without hurry in a caressing, lilting tone, smiling with genuine warmth, exuding a kind of delighted wonder at where he finds himself in life. He seems almost a caricature of benign old age. Yet he is honest and self-aware enough to admit it was not always thus. “Oh no, no,” he says, waving the past away with one hand. “I went through a lot

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‘I dislike people who think they have to give up on life because of their age. That’s incorrect thinking’

of changes. I found out that whatever success, whatever failures I had, you just have to live with, you still have to go on.”

By the end of the 1970s, in the face of public uninterest in the old swing-era stars, he found himself without a recording contract and fighting off bankruptcy. Following his near-fatal overdose and subsequent divorce in 1979, he turned to his adult sons, Danny and Dae, for help, telling them, “Look, I’m lost. It seems people don’t wanna hear the music I make.” His sons were both struggling musicians, but Danny had a head for business and took over his father’s management, reuniting him with his estranged pianist and musical director, Ralph Sharon. They slowly got his career back on track throughout the 1980s with intelligently themed albums built around the classic American songbook and a well-received MTV Unplugged show in 1994. These days, both fame and fortune have been restored, with Bennett’s net worth recently estimated to be in excess of $100 million.

Dae is his recording engineer, his daughter Antonia sings with him, and other members of his family worked on photography, design and marketing for his last album. “It’s a family business now,” Bennett says. “It’s very nice.”

“Susan, how are you doing?” he calls out to an elegant blonde hovering at the edge of the room. “I’m doing great,”

she says, crossing to rest her hands on his shoulders. Susan Crow is 51, a former social studies teacher and manager of jazz artists, who became the third Mrs Bennett in 2007, after they dated for 20 years. Why did it take them so long to tie the knot? “I’m always busy,” Bennett laughs. “He’s not joking,” she adds, wryly.

“I fear retirement,” Bennett admits. An accomplished (and lifelong) painter under his real surname, Benedetto, he works in impressionist and realist styles. He exhibits frequently and has work in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian Museum.

“I sing and paint every day. It’s a matter of ‘keep learning, keep growing, keep studying’. All of the arts have the same rudiments, learning what to leave out, how to simplify things. When I wake up, I can’t wait to go at it. I love it. I never say, ‘Oh God, I need a vacation.’ I’m on vacation, wherever I am. Sinatra retired, Astaire retired a couple of times, I’ll never retire. What would I do?

Watch the wall? I don’t get it. I have an ambition to keep improving myself as I get older. If I get lucky enough to stay healthy, I’m trying to sing better at 100 than when I was 20. I dislike people who think they have to give up on life because of their age. That’s incorrect thinking. Never give up on life. If you are alive, it’s a gift. You’re lucky to be alive, never regret it.”

MOTORING

Spider Fan

I

n the minds of some, this should not be allowed.

That it is suggests that the EU compliance office responsible for certifying vehicle-noise levels has a local branch in Ferrari’s home of Maranello, staffed by ex-Ferrari employees. How else can I be sending gloriously explosive soundwaves of fuel-combustion across the valleys of Emilia-Romagna in a brand new, fully certified Ferrari?

As for me, I’m hearing it in better Sensurround than ever before, as this new version of the 458 Italia is currently roofless. It is called 458 Spider, but unlike previous Spider versions of mid-engined V8 Ferraris, it has not a fabric convertible roof but a hard one made of two flat aluminium panels. Their folding is electro-hydraulically powered, of course.

So the new open Spider is a coupé-cabriolet (CC), which instantly brings notions of extra weight and aesthetic challenge. Few CCs are genuinely good-looking, although the job is easier when there are just two seats and thus a shorter roof. And with the roof in place, the Spider looks much like the Italia coupé. The only obvious differences are the lack of the small rear quarter windows and a different rear deck: while the coupé has a large, sloping rear window through which you can see the engine, the Spider has a vertical rear window immediately behind the occupants and the engine is covered by the panel under which the roof sits when folded. The engine’s air intakes are repositioned, too, under slots in the rear deck. Just as well, as leaving them near your ears would be too much of a good thing with roof stowed.

In Race mode, rather than the usual Sport mode, the loudness is on offer all the time, which it is not in the coupé. Ferrari figures that those who buy the open car are especially likely to want to hear the engine, but there

are times in towns when the inevitable attention can get embarrassing. Best to keep Race for open spaces. Or tunnels, in which a blast up to the 9,000rpm point of peak power and peak screaming is irresistible.

How much power? An extraordinary 570bhp, making it ridiculously rapid. There is also very strong pulling power from relatively low engine speeds, and gear shifts, the work of a near-instant via shift levers either side of the steering column, are inherently smooth.

As I squirt the Spider through bend after bend, revelling in its grip, thrilling to little tail-slides as I squeeze the power, there’s an occasional tremor through the steering column, but that’s as far as the disturbance goes. The structure is significantly more rigid than the old F430 Spider’s, and it feels it. With side windows up and the little rear window set to the optimal midway position, there’s not much buffeting from the wind, either. This is as close to the perfect open Ferrari as it’s possible to get.

The Spider has to be stationary to open the roof, but 14 seconds of aluminium choreography later the roof is closed.

Now it’s just like the coupé inside, albeit 30kg heavier and the view over your shoulder almost non-existent. But, at speed, the roof proves a fine piece of engineering. There is practically no wind noise at all, such is its sealing.

This is truly two Ferraris in one, with all the extra opportunities for enjoyment that brings – even if having the second personality facet does demand tens of thousands of dollars extra. If you’re thinking of buying an Italia coupé, though, you can probably run to a Spider. In which case, do it.

Price Guide: $310,000 Engine: 4,499cc, V8 cylinders Power: 570bhp 0-100km: 3.4sec Top Speed: 320kph

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Text: John Simister / The Independent / The Interview People

Ferrari’s new 458 is a blast – not least in the noise department

MOTORING

Worth the weight?

The latest generation of the hybrid Lexus GS saloon is a heavyweight contender in an extremely competitive class

Text: Andrew English / The Telegraph / The Interview People

W

as it worth it? Having launched its luxury brand back in 1989, Toyota has taken 22 years to build it from a study in big-ticket bland to a smallish contender in the premium field. Technically accomplished and ultra refined they might be, but there’s still an impression that Lexus does cars for rich people who don’t much like cars.

Part of Toyota’s quixotic attempt to establish the Lexus brand is the GS saloon, a BMW 5-series/Mercedes-Benz E-class contender that few have ever heard of. Well, you might have if you remember your political history.

England’s PM David Cameron was one of the first customers for the GS 450h hybrid back in 2006 when he was leader of the opposition and was going to save the planet from climate change. My, how things have changed.

And that’s just from a Lexus perspective, what with a series of quality-control blunders and a monumental blunder of a recall issue.

The main change for this fourth-generation GS is the new bodyshell, claimed to be stiffer and better looking than its predecessor. The engines are tweaked (including the adoption of the high-expansion-ratio Atkinson cycle for the 3.5-litre V6 in the hybrid 450h model) and there are also suspension revisions and uprated brakes. When it goes on sale in the summer, the range will cost from about $70,000 for the new 2.5-litre V6 GS 250, available in standard and uprated F Sport derivatives, to $113,000 for the top GS 450h hybrid model in F Sport trim.

Visually, this is a huge improvement over the old, inside and out. The new facia is tastefully embellished with wood trim and soft-touch plastics. There’s an excellent 12.3in facia display with touch-screen interface, a new air-con system, redesigned seats and a completely revised driving position with changes to steering rake and reach, seat depth and adjustment travel. It is luxurious and comfortable and there’s new-found space for front and rear-seat passengers. The old car also had a minute boot, because the nickel-metal-hydride battery lived underneath.

Lexus has addressed this with a 60 per cent larger boot.

With tweaks to the hybrid system including better cooling and increased operating voltages, plus the more efficient engine, the fuel consumption and CO2 emissions for the 450h also improve.

For all its svelte looks, however, at 1.8 tons the hybrid GS is still relatively heavy despite a weight-saving regime and that dominates the driving experience. The old GS

was something of a hot rod, but its body control was wayward. The new one is just as fast but tweaks are aimed at addressing the chassis problems with improvements to the suspension to provide better control, with more precise steering.

It’s certainly more refined and comfortable, but even with adaptive variable suspension in its fourth Sport Plus’ mode, the nose pushes wide in corners and when driven hard the standard cars feel not unlike a runaway train.

Rear steering hasn’t been in vogue since the late eighties, when several car makers tried mechanical systems. Toyota’s revival of the system consists of a highly sophisticated electric motor mounted on the rear subframe, which pushes and pulls the wheels against their bushes to give up to two degrees of movement. Below 50mph, front and rear wheels turn in opposite directions and above 50mph they can turn in the same direction when extra stability is required.

Four-wheel steering works with the rest of the chassis electronics to control the vehicle’s roll and yaw and improve dynamics.

It’s hard not to admire Toyota’s adherence to the long game with both its Lexus brand and its commitment to

‘Visually, this is a huge improvement over the old, inside and out’ hybrids. In the US, Lexus rivals German manufacturers such as Mercedes-Benz and Audi and it comfortably outsells its Japanese luxury rivals; Nissan’s Infiniti and Honda’s Acura. As far as hybrids’ contribution to climate change is concerned, the GS model doesn’t sell enough to be significant in either direction.

Yet if lighter cars seem a more fruitful research direction to improve fuel consumption as well as ride and handling, the latest GS is impressive. By throwing the technological kitchen sink at this car, Lexus has assuaged some of the inherent drawbacks of the hybrid and, with its better handling and fine brakes, it might even make the roads a little bit safer.

Price Guide: From around $70,000 to $113,000 Power: Total system power approx 343bhp @ 6,000rpm Top speed: 250kph 0-100 kph 5.9sec

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MASTER CHEF Nobu Matsuhisa’s fusion of Japanese and Peruvian cooking techniques and flavours has won him the hearts of gourmands and an honour from the president of Peru. It’s also earned him a multimillion dollar culinary empire that’s about to expand into the hotel business. John Thatcher meets him at his Dubai restaurant I’m at Atlantis, The Palm, sat inside one of Nobu’s private and dimly-lit dining rooms, flicking through the latest Nobu cookbook that constitutes a mere fragment of what’s now a fully fledged culinary empire, its outposts spread across the globe. And I’m doing so in the company of the man at the heart of it, Chef Nobuyuki Matsuhisa, or Nobu, as he is better known. “That one is a great one”, he says, as I come to what looks like a complicated recipe involving myriad, exotic-sounding vegetables (this is Nobu’s first vegetarian cookbook, hitting shelves this month).

We have an hour until service begins for what’s always a busy Thursday night in the restaurant, with this evening being additionally hectic due to it being Nobu’s last in a flying visit to Dubai. As such, every table is booked. “Normally I’d give you the book, but this one is my only copy”, he says, apologetically, before he talks of his career in a resolutely Japanese accent despite decades of life in America.

It was in the US that Nobu made his name, moving to Los Angeles at the tail end of the 1970s to work the kitchens in one of the city’s few Japanese restaurants, and opening Matsuhisa a decade later in the celebrity strewn district of Beverly Hills. Regular diners there included a who’s who of Hollywood, with Robert De Niro being a huge fan. Later, De Niro would convince Nobu – after years of timely cajoling – to partner with him in the launch of the first

Nobu restaurant, which opened in New York in 1993. Since then, 28 have opened worldwide.

However, Chef Nobu’s time in the US wasn’t always spent on the ascent.

His first port of call in the country was Alaska, where he invested all he had in his own restaurant, firmly backing his conviction that there was a market for his then highly innovative food.

But just 50 days in, disaster struck; a huge fire engulfing the restaurant and turning Nobu’s dream to ashes. It wasn’t insured. “I thought of suicide, but didn’t go through with it because of my family. They saved my life”, he says softly, looking so incredibly sincere as he does so that you’re left in no doubt as to the sheer adoration he has for his wife of 39 years. He recalls thinking for a week about the ways he could kill himself, of being sick each time he ate, and of feeling so shorn of energy that he felt nothing at all. And of how his wife pulled him back from the brink.

It’s a story he’s doubtless recanted to journalists many times before now, but it still comes across in such a startling honest way that for a few seconds it’s difficult to know what to say next, and there’s an obvious silence before Nobu continues: “Before the fire I was in a real rush to make money, to buy a house etc, but in that fire I almost lost my mind, myself, too.

What I learned from it was patience and appreciation. I learned that I have to go one by one, millimetre by millimetre”.

Nobu also learned from the other

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GASTRONOMY tragedy to afflict him, the loss of his father, who died in a car crash when Nobu was just seven years old. He talks of how, in the years that followed the accident, he would sift through photographs of his father shot in different parts of the world and grow ever curious about what lay beyond Japan. He finally made the move abroad – to Peru – aged 24. There, and in the seven previous years in

‘Before the fire I was in a real rush to make money, to buy a house etc, but in that fire I almost lost my mind, myself, too’

Japan, Nobu worked every job there is within the kitchen, including that of dishwasher. And it’s an experience that he keeps in mind till this day.

“Every restaurant needs dishwashers yet nobody respects the dishwashers, nobody talks to the dishwashers. But without the dishwashers chef cannot serve his dish on a clean plate. I know what it’s like to be a dishwasher, so in every one of my restaurants I’ll go and say hello to them first.”

It leads me to ask how easy he found the transition from kitchen to

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boardroom, seeing that he’s now the figurehead of a multi-million dollar company. “Still, I am chef, I don’t know anything about money. I have a team and I trust my staff. I am very comfortable to always create new dishes, but I don’t know much about the finance.” And he has good reason for not wanting to know, too. “If chef start to think about the money, maybe he cannot make the good food because he doesn’t buy the best product. Make great dish, make customer happy, and then customer come back”.

That’s the simple philosophy at the heart of his empire, but making dishes as great as Nobu – as anyone who has tried his signature black cod and its pale imitations elsewhere will tell you – isn’t as easy in practice; something which Nobu admits to when I ask how he feels about competitor restaurants.

“Competition is very good for me. I’ve been cooking for 40 years and I know good food. When new restaurants open they attract customers, but after my customers visit these restaurants they understand the quality of Nobu.”

Does he still cook? “For special customers, but it’s difficult to stay in the kitchen.” It is, at least, when your diary is as fully loaded as his. “I travel for 10 months of the year. That’s why I’m still married!” he laughs.

“Everyday I call home wherever I am. I trust her, she trusts me.”

This year sees the Nobu name expand into the hotel industry, with the launch in Las Vegas of the first of what are many planned Nobu hotels, but the man himself is already giving thought as to when he will call it a day. “Still I not decide which country to live in. I was born in Japan, then moved to Peru, which is like my second country because my first daughter was born there, and now I live in the United States. It gave me a lot of opportunities and so I much appreciate the United States. But then I think about my country, Japan.

Bodies cannot spread, and I’m now 62, so now I start thinking about where I will spend the rest of my life. This is my homework. And it’s very difficult.”

GASTRONOMY

What’s Your Beef?

Laura Binder finds out what’s behind the humble steak’s well-fed comeback

1.

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W

hen a long list of elaborately-formed concoctions peer at you from a fine dining menu, the steak – the boring choice, the safe choice, the simple choice – can feel rather like the easy option. But if you harbour a penchant for a hearty beef feed, you’re not alone: chefs the world over are cottoning on to the pure pleasure a fine cut can afford: The formerly uncelebrated steak is having a revival.

Even the king of moleculargastronomy himself, Heston Blumenthal, the very advocate of the weird and the wonderful (remember bacon and egg ice cream?) served up a steakhouse classic at his critically adored London eatery, Dinner – a short rib of beef. No fuss, no nonsense.

Well, almost – it’s cooked for 72 hours and served in an anchovy and onion sauce. But that’s as gimmicky as it gets. So popular was the dish that three more steaks emerged on the menu, including an Aberdeen Angus fillet, wing rib of Irish Angus and Hereford rib eye. Elsewhere in London, a city that sets rather than follows food trends, Wolfgang Puck, opened CUT to, in his words, “elevate” the status of steak; sans sauce and using Chile, Kanas and Queensland’s finest livestock.

The steak revolution has also spread to the UAE, with steakhouses among some of the country’s best restaurants.

“Steak is definitely at a different level now”, comments Mark Patten, Vice President of Culinary for Atlantis, The Palm, where the restaurant Seafire serves up some of the best beef in the business. “I think that’s because people’s demands are higher.

Customers are demanding a better product. They want something more.”

In the case of Seafire, that means having its own cattle (Wagyu) in Queensland, Australia, reared with the specific purpose of supplying top quality meat to diners at the restaurant. “When we discussed what we’d serve at Seafire I wanted Wagyu

‘We [Gaucho] have a dedicated person in Argentina... to ensure the provenance of our beef ’ to be the standard steak available, and for it to come from a source unique to the UAE,” said Patten. This meat is simply labelled Atlantis Beef on the menu, and when it was first introduced diners would eschew it for the more established US Prime. But tastes have changed, and 90% of Seafire’s diners now order the Atlantis beef. Try it and you’ll understand why.

Just as important as where the cow hails from is how it’s treated.

“These animals are top end and very well looked after,” Patten explains.

“They spend 300 days of their life on a normal farm, eating and grazing on hay, wheat, barley, grasses, after which they’re moved to a feed block where a muesli-like blend is pumped into troughs and where they feed for 350 to 500 days, twice a day, so they gain around 0.7 kilos in weight daily.” So what of the oft quoted line about Wagyu cows being massaged and fed beer? “Not so”, says Patten.

“What they feed on, as part of a mix, is sediment from brewers’ yeast. And this has nothing to do with adding flavour to the meat – it doesn’t. It’s simply used to stimulate the cow’s appetite.”

Across the city, in Dubai’s unofficial culinary quarter of DIFC, an outpost of Gaucho (with monochrome-themed, slick interiors, sky high ceilings and mammoth chandeliers it looks more

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GASTRONOMY

‘Simple marinades are just essential to complement the meat, rather than disguising its natural flavours’

1. Gaucho’s steak cuts.

2. Seafire’s Beef Wellington.

3. Marco Pierre White’s Restaurant & Grill, Fairmont Bab Al Bahr, Abu Dhabi.

4. Seafire’s rib-eye steak.

5. Gaucho, Dubai.

akin to a private members’ club than a steakhouse) shares this passion for high-quality meat. “All our meat is certified free-range, Black Angus beef from The Pampas in Argentina,” tells Gaucho’s International Operations Director, Ryan Hattingh. “We have a dedicated person in Argentina, who has been working in the industry for over 45 years to ensure the provenance of our beef, and to personally check each cow is fed purely on grass, and water from the Andes.”

It’s an approach that’s taken seriously in a time where breed, age, provenance and a well-oiled execution all count in guaranteeing stellar cattle-to-plate results. At Gaucho, it’s a lengthy process: “the beef is wetaged in its own juices for a minimum of 95 days, producing the tenderest meat, with maximum moisture and subtle flavours,” explains Hattingh.

Flown to the UAE, stored for 35 days and then cut, it’s seasoned on just one side before being cooked at a low temperature and turned just once.

“The length of cooking depends on how the guest wants it, but we only ever cook them for a few minutes,” says Hattingh. On top of that, a “special water bath” in the Gaucho grill locks in the meat’s moisture.

When it comes to choosing which cut to sink your knife into, Patten puts it simply: “Tenderloin is your plush car, your beautiful 7 series BMW. It’s very tender when cut, and there’s not a lot of fat in it so it’s mellow and light in flavour. Striploin is the main loin, and from that you get more texture and flavour. There’s a bit more fat the

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meat. While the rib eye takes you up a notch – it has the most flavour and fat.

That’s the big boy of steak.”

A steak connoisseur would also have you take note of ‘scores’ – that is, the amount of marbling (namely, the white specks you’ll see within the beef). The structure of scoring varies between countries (4 the lowest, and 14 the highest, all countries considered) and the higher the score the higher the fat content. “Beef with a score of 10 is like eating 60% fat, but that’s where all the flavour is,” says Patten. “You can get a score 10 here in Dubai, but you can’t eat a lot of it. If I were trying a score 10 I’d have it as a strip loin, at a max weight of 100g, and have it simply grilled with sea salt and maybe bit dipping sauce.”

Ah, the sauce. Are we not committing a foodie faux pas when reaching for a generous dollop? The South American school of thought, certainly, is a fuss-free one: “Simple marinades are just essential to complement the meat, rather than disguising its natural flavours,” Hattingh says. “Keep it as simple as possible”, affirms Jeffrey Brothers of Marco Pierre White’s Restaurant & Grill in Abu Dhabi. “My personal preference is to eat steak as is, but in the restaurant our most popular sauce accompaniments are pepper sauce, creamy truffle sauce and béarnaise.”

Of course, for the cooks among us, recreating that restaurant-worthy steak seems a tall order – after all, where to get a grill with a water bath, á la Gaucho? “Just don’t try to over complicate the cooking process,” advises Brothers. “Make a simple rub of oil, chopped herbs and garlic, or just a little oil and salt and cracked black pepper. Try not to mask the natural flavour of the beef. Once cooked, ensure to allow it to rest for about five minutes before eating it. This will allow the juices to redistribute throughout the steak.”

Now there’s just the niggling question of whether to stake a claim on a cattle farm…

3.

2.

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GASTRONOMY

GUESS WHO’S COMING TO DINNER? Argentinean chef Fernando Trocca has cooked his way around the globe and starred in some sublime kitchens. But who would be most love to cook for?

Fergus Henderson

Fernando Trocca is one of Buenos Aires’ most respected chefs and is the man behind the city’s famed Sucre restaurant, as well as being the Executive Chef of luxury steak restaurant group, Gaucho. Prior to this he worked in gastronomic capitals Paris and New York, where he co-owned Industria Argentina in trendy Tribeca.

Sean Penn

Miles Davis

Henningll Manke

Pierre Gagnaire

Fergus is one of my favourite chefs in the world – I like his style, his way of thinking, his aesthetics... Without doubt he is one of the chefs that I most identify with.

What I’d Serve: I would cook him an Argentine feast of classic chorizos, black pudding, chitterlings, sweetbreads, chimichurri ‘short ribs’, meat empanadas (from Salta) and dulce de leche flan for desert.

I think he’s a great actor and I love to watch the films he’s in. I really admire the way he interprets the roles he plays.

What I’d Serve: A typically Argentine meal inspired by Salta (a provence in the North of Argentina), which has many cultural and culinary roots. For me, Salta has the best meat empanadas in Argentina. I would also cook chicken humitas, oven-cooked kid, and a special dessert of acorn squash cooked in syrup and served with freshly whipped cream, accompanied by a Torrontes from Salta.

I really like his music and am a big fan of all his songs. He’s someone I like to listen to when I’m cooking in my house.

What I’d Serve: The meal would be Italian-inspired and include spaghetti Carbonara, Vitello Tonatto (a sliced veal dish with a creamy sauce) and an excellent Panna Cotta for dessert.

The Swedish author is one of my favourite writers, not only because of his style of writing but also for his social work which I think is incredible (he directs the National Theatre of Mozambique).

What I’d Serve: A diverse, eclectic meal of roasted aubergines with olive, garlic and cumin, grilled Patagonian lamb, potatoes, sweet potato and pumpkin cooked on open coals. Also, grilled asparagus with balsamic Parmesan shavings and pine nuts, parsley potato salad and alli olli, and a bread pudding with raisins, nuts and brandy. All of this would be accompanied with a Malbec wine from Mendoza.

I just like Gagnaire’s0 philosophy of cooking and think he is one of the most creative cooks working today.

What I’d Serve: I would cook him classic Argentine dishes, including oven-cooked lamb, potato salad and hard-boiled egg with parsley and alli oli, then Dulce de Leche pancakes for dessert.

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GOLF HAVE YOU PLAYED HERE YET? FANCOURT, SOUTH AFRICA

The rolling, pea-green hills of George in South Africa make for one of the most scenic spots on earth, so the chance to play a round there should be just the cherry on top. Particularly when it’s home to what’s arguably the country’s premier golf resort. At Fancourt you’ll get the chance to sharpen your skills on three Gary Player–designed courses, one of them a truly outstanding Links course that does much to separate the Tigers from the pussycats. If you end up as the latter, the excellent on-site TaylorMade Performance Lab will have you roaring back to form in no time. fancourt.com

HOW TO MASTER AWKWARD LIES LESSON#5 PLAYING AN IRON SHOT FROM A DIVOT

Where this month’s Omega Dubai Desert Classic will be won & lost...

Emirates Golf Club’s PGA Advanced Professional Andy Matthews knows the Majlis course better than anyone. Here he shares his thoughts on the holes to watch Hole 9, a par 4, is a crucial one and will play a big role during the tournament.

With a tough tee shot and a second over the water, it is vital to take the corner out, allowing for a short approach to the pin. This could cause some problems for some of the players who aren’t such long hitters. Depending on how close the competition is, the par-5 Hole 18 could also pose some problems. A long second shot is required to clear the water so long hitters will really benefit here. I expect Álvaro Quirós to do well, having won the tournament

last year and having recently edged out the competition to win the Dubai World Championship at Jumeirah Golf Estates in December. He is experienced in this climate, as well as long off the tee and strong in the rough. If Rory McIlroy is to succeed in the tournament and repeat his success from 2009 he needs to show some consistent form throughout the four days. I expect the winner to definitely be a long hitter and with the Majlis course in excellent condition, it’s all set to be a fantastic tournament.

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It is one of the most frustrating things in golf when you hit a beautiful drive down the middle of the fairway only to arrive at the ball and discover it’s in a divot. When you find yourself in this unfortunate scenario the first thing that you must do is stay calm.

There is no point getting upset and complaining to your playing partners about how unlucky you have been; they won’t really be listening and probably don’t even care.

If you keep your cool and make a couple of simple adjustments you should be able to play a good recovery shot. To do so, place the ball a little further back in your stance and lean more of your weight over the leading leg.

This will encourage you to have a steeper downswing which will help ensure you strike the ball before the turf.

It is likely that these changes will produce a lower than normal ball flight that will roll more on landing, so you must take this into consideration when selecting your club. Take a club, then, with more loft and this should balance things out nicely. Stephen Hubner, Head Golf Professional, Dubai Creek Golf & Yacht Club.

TRAVEL

Arctic Ocean

USA

04

Pacific Ocean

Indian Ocean

The Drive of Your Life

Swap wings for wheels and embark on one the world’s best road trips...

01. Garden Route, South Africa This famed route demands attention: be sure to drink-in everything you’ll see on the south-easterly stretch, from beautiful beaches, jagged mountains and wild bush.

The restless among you can also pause the trip to partake in whalewatching (great at a little place called Hermanus), ostrich riding, swimming and bungee jumping – to name a few.

02. The Romantic Road, Germany A trip here really does live up to its

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name. The route is basked in history (created after World War II to attract tourists) and drivers are drawn to its far-reaching vistas, dotted with fairytale-like castles and ancient buildngs. Spare up to seven days for the trip, best kickstarted in Frankfurt.

03. Amalfi Coast, Italy This has to be Italy’s most scenic strip: start at coastal Salerno (a bustling port) and snake your way inland to what is regarded as the prettiest twee town in Italy’s south;

Germany

Netherlands Austria

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Italy

03

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Atlantic Ocean

South Africa

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Southern Ocean

Ravello. The passing sights make for movie-like scenery; pastel-coloured villages climb up hillsides, curved corniche roads appear from nowhere and vistas drop over green-tinged mountains and out to turquouise seas. Breathtaking.

04. Route 66, USA Doubtless America’s most romanticised road, the reality is to be taken with a pinch of salt, namely roadside motels with neon signs and old-style diners serving Mississippi

Mud Pie. In total, it’s a 2,000 mile stint from Chicago to La-La Land, the biggest delight of which is how it manages to transport you back to the 1950s.

05. Grossglockner High Alpine Highway, Austria This road has been since 1935, taking five years of labour and over 3,000 men to build. The climb starts from Heiligenblut, up the Carinthian side of the Grossglockner peak, which soars 12,470 feet. Ample

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twists and turns are rewarded by stellar vantage points, like Edelweissspitze, which peers over East Tirol, Carinthia, and Salzburg.

06. Flower Route, Netherlands Running at a length of some 25 miles to Leiden, this colourful drive bypasses the biggest collection of flower fields, where a literal blanket of blooms appear in the form of tulips, hyacinths and daffodils – the climax being April to May, when it makes for the world’s best drive.

TRAVEL

Buenos Aires

Image: Corbis / Arabian Eye; Photolibrary

The Argentinian capital is an invigorating, lively city which offers a powerful blend of European culture and South American passion

Buenos Aires is the ideal spot to start a tour of South America. It’s safe, friendly and beautiful – a mixture of the very best of Europe and the New World, and a great city to get your bearings, warm up your holiday Spanish and ease yourself over the jet lag before moving on through the continent. Its huge central bus station is the nexus for a grand network of routes which take you out to the wild, harsh beauty of Patagonia, to the lush farmland of Mendoza, and further afield into Chile and Peru. While bouncing along in a bus may not sound like fun, that’s because you’ve not been on an Argentinian luxury bus yet – book in to first class (the tickets are incredibly cheap) and you’ll be treated to padded flatbeds, three-course meals and waiter service.

But BA is much more than just a hopping-off point – it’s a holiday destination in itself. Your first priority on arriving is to take a morning’s tour: get in touch with Buenos Tours (buenostours.com), who will send out one of their highly-trained guides, selected for their love of the city.

They’ll pick you up from your hotel and, after suggesting a schedule to you over a breakfast cortado (the delicious local coffee, made with powerful espresso and a shot of warm milk) they’ll lead you off down the wide boulevards, winding backstreets and grand squares of the centre, filling you in on local customs and history along the way.

Your trip will culminate in a visit to the Plaza de Mayo, the heart of Buenos Aires, surrounded by flagdraped government buildings and heroic statues, and the focal point of endless demonstrations, parties and rallies throughout the years. This is the location of the Casa Rosada, from whose balcony Eva Peron’s made her famous speech, immortalised by Andrew Lloyd Webber in Evita. After your tour, head to the Avenida 27 de Febrero, which runs along the river, for an al fresco lunch at one of the

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lovely cafes that dot the waterside.

Talking of food, you mustn’t leave town without trying a traditional Argentinian asado – an epic, multicourse barbecue, at which cheery waiters will fill your plate again and again until you can eat no more.

Argentina’s vast open plains produce some of the world’s juiciest and most tender steak, and there’s no better way to enjoy it than flame-grilled in the parilla. A great place to start is La Cabrera at 5099 Cabrera, (parrillalacabrera.com.ar), whose ojo de bife cuts will leave hardened foodies weak at the knees. You must also dedicate at least one mealtime to the joys of the empanada, the ubiquitous street food of the capital – small parcels of meat or cheese wrapped in delicate pastry.

After an excellent dinner, it’s time to head out to a milonga (tango club) to see this beautiful dance performed by fleet-footed experts – try the Cafe Tortoni on Avenida de Mayo 829, which, incidentally, is the oldest cafe in the world.

When it comes to accommodation, the most attractive area of the city is Palermo, a low-rise, upmarket neighbourhood filled with boutique stores and excellent restaurants. For high design hit Malabia House at 1555 Malabia (malabiahouse.com.ar), which offers individually-designed rooms, beautiful gardens and plenty of top recommendations from the owners.

Meanwhile, for ultra luxury, you’ll want to check in at Faena Hotel and Universe (faenahotelanduniverse.com) in Puerto Madero, a Philippe Starckdesigned celeb magnet with serious attitude to boot.

1. Floralis Genetica sculpture, Plaza de las Naciones Unidas.

2. Dorrego Square.

3. Cafe Tortoni.

4. Puerto Madero district.

5. La Boca district.

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Milan

Images: Corbis / Arabian Eye / Photolibrary

Overlooked for too long in favour of its telegenic neighbours to the south, Milan has more to offer than any other Italian city

Italophile bores will ramble on for hours about the joys of Tuscany, its exquisite rolling hills, its wonderful art, the breathtaking buildings of Florence and Siena, Piombino and Pisa. And we won’t deny that the region has a lot going for it. But the reality is that if you’re looking for genuine stimulation, to check out the latest in cutting-edge fashion, cuisine and style, and to get a flavour of the real Italy rather than the carefullycultivated tourist cliche, you should head north to Lombardy and Milan.

Milan is a no-nonsense, bustling, largely pretension-free (apart from during Fashion Week) city that wears its heart on its sleeve and isn’t ashamed of its industrial roots. It’s brash, modern and ambitious, and all the better for it. You’ll fit in more in a day here than you would in a week traipsing round old Toscana, and (whisper it) eat better too - if you know where to go.

The best way to orient yourself in the city is to start at the gigantic central station, the imposing Milano Centrale, which links directly to the local airports. From here you can wander down the sunlit Via Vittor Pisani towards the old area of the city, where the sights come thick and fast.

There’s the beautiful Giardini Publicci

(public gardens) of Indro Montanelli, with its winding pathways and coffee stands; the Piazza Duomo, a vast square where hawkers, tourists and hurrying locals come together in a scene straight out of ancient Rome; the Royal Palace of Milan; the wonderful galleries, including Galleria Milano on Via Daniele Manin and the Galleria d’arte Moderna on Via Ciovasso; and the gorgeous university buildings (the city has a big student population, which helps keep its prices low and its creativity high).

Just north of this area is the legendary Quadrilatero d’Oro (Gold Rectangle), a quadrant of tight-knit streets formed by Via Montenapoleone, Via della Spiga, Corso Venezi and Via Manzoni. It is, quite simply, the single most concentrated fashion district on the planet. This is where the great Italian and international brands have their homes - label-lovers will have to be torn away from the motherships of Versace, Armani, Canali, Berluti, Baldinini, Gucci and hundreds more.

These are the stores where collections are first rolled out: the population of Milan (and the city’s lucky visitors) form the testing bed for the most imaginative minds in fashion.

Once you have scratched your sightseeing itch and satisfied your retail cravings, it is time to enjoy a couple of the city’s less well-known offerings. Milan, you’ll be pleased to hear, has some of Italy’s very best spas, king of which is the Terme Milano (termemilano.com), an art deco gem where hydrotherapy and blissful massages will leave you feeling like an Emperor. It also, surprisingly, has a network of canals, which you can travel round with Navigli Lombardi (naviglilombardi.it), who will show you sides to the city you’d never see otherwise, and take you out into surrounding areas of Lombardy too.

After a busy day, it is time for a superb dinner. You may not know Milanese cuisine well - it tends to

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be overshadowed internationally

by Tuscan staples. If this is the case then you are in for a treat - Milan’s traditional food leans heavily on rice over pasta, makes the most of the delicious cheeses from its satellite villages, employs roast meats in all sorts of wonderful dishes and has a justified reputation for some of the best soups in the world. For a crash course in all of these delights, get yourself a table at Trattoria Milanese on Via Santa Marta, (trattoriamilanese.it), where a husband and wife team serve fresh daily specials - including a killer risotto - to a host of appreciative reguars: the Lombardy-style taglioni and the ossobuco are also unmissable.

Finally, when it comes to finding a place to lay your head, there are two absolute stand-out hotels. Fashion addicts should choose the first, the Bulgari Hotel Milano (bulgarihotels. com), right in the heart of the Gold Rectangle, and blessed with wonderful views over the botanical garden, rich decoration and the city’s most beautiful swimming pool. The other top option is the Seven Stars Galleria (sevenstarsgalleria.com) which, as its name suggests, is a luxury haven where guests are looked after by their own private butlers and surrounded by the most glorious 19th century architecture and design. Superb.

1. City tram.

2. Via della Spiga.

3. Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II. 4. Aerial View of Milan.

5. Saffron risotto.

6. Two Carabinieri Guard at Cathedral of Milan.

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Springs Awakening Elvis and Sinatra fell in love with Palm Springs – and its iconic buildings and glitzy past mean this Californian desert city still has the power to charm - 74 -

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here’s nothing particularly glamorous about the drive from Los Angeles to Palm Springs. It runs past concrete commuter builds, shopping malls, roadside banners advertising discounted cosmetic surgery, and rows and rows of motionless wind turbines. So much for the romance of the open road, I thought, as I motored into the city through desert that looked more like rubble than soft, scalloped sand. Palm Springs itself didn’t seem to be quite the glamorous retro playground I’d imagined either, with its desultory clusters of bungalows, motels and kitsch shops grouped along wide roads.

I felt a bolt of panic. I’d understood that the nearby Coachella music festival and the popularity of local modernist design had made Palm Springs, formerly known as a pensioner’s paradise, hip again. Had I actually elected to spend a week in what could turn out to be a glorified al fresco retirement home in need of a makeover and heated to 100 degrees?

That was before I met architecture buff Robert Imber, whose tours of Palm Springs are the only way to start a stay here. His passion for modernism is deeply infectious and brings alive one of Palm Spring’s most seductive features.

The city is considered to have the highest concentration of mid-century modernist buildings in the world, and there’s something compelling about the combination of optimism and imagination that these sleek temples to the American dream represent.

Imber’s tour casts the city in a new light. He showed me a perfect snapshot of America at the height of its cultural influence; a place which draws the visitor in gradually, which keeps twinkling swimming pools and architectural audacity tucked discreetly away from the first glance. It whispers of self-indulgence and a glitzy, hedonistic past, rather than screaming it like Las Vegas.

I could see why my French friend – a Le Corbusier obsessive – came back from Palm Springs in raptures over the Bank of America. Designed in 1959 by Victor Gruen Associates, it was inspired by Le Corbusier’s chapel in Ronchamp, in eastern France, and has curved blue walls with a flat white roof that looks like it has been rolled out of a thick slab of marzipan.

It wasn’t the first stop on Imber’s tour, however, which was conducted from his car thanks to the baking heat. He starts his story with the Tramway Gas Station, designed

by Swiss architect Albert Frey and Robson Chambers in 1965, which now acts as a visitor centre and the gateway to the Coachella Valley. Viewed from the side, the building’s huge triangular porch roof (technically speaking it’s apparently a hyperbolic paraboloid, but to the layman it looks like a star destroyer spaceship from Star Wars) slopes gradually upwards, but viewed from the front it seems to soar skyward. Frey came to Palm Springs in 1934. He was the first disciple of Le Corbusier to emigrate and work in America. He wrote in a letter to his mentor that, “The sun,

the clean air, the pure simple forms of the desert create perfect conditions for architecture.”

Frey is the best-known of all the architects who worked in Palm Springs. Besides the City Hall and the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway Valley Station, his most-loved building is probably the Frey House II, built on the side of the San Jacinto mountain and completed in 1964. It’s a quintessential piece of desert modernism: low, angular and spare. Built of industrial materials such as corrugated metal and thin concrete panels with plenty of glass, it’s designed to blend into the landscape. A giant boulder from the hillside even acts as a partition between the living and sleeping areas in a symbol of the way in which modernist buildings embrace the harsh desert environment, rather than acting as sealed fortresses against it.

Most of the notable buildings – such as the 1946 Kaufmann Desert House – are private homes, so we were able to view them only from the road, but the futuristic House of Tomorrow is an exception. Resembling a UFO from the front, it’s an intriguing combination of the visionary design and showbiz glamour for which Palm Springs became renowned. Elvis and Priscilla Presley spent their honeymoon in the house in 1967, with the King carrying his doll-like 21-year-old bride over the threshold singing a Hawaiian love song.

The house’s interior furnishings aren’t original, but they have been faithfully recreated – from the white sofas down to a white china monkey statue in front of the TV. The clues to its original décor came from a 1962 photoshoot in Look magazine: it depicted Robert Alexander, a prominent local architect who commissioned the house, and his wife Helen in their chi-chi home. Part of the Palm Springs in-crowd, the pair would invite people round to show off new dances and songs. When the Twist became all the rage, Chubby Checker came by and ended up leading a conga around the pool. Now the emphasis is firmly on Elvis, and our guide pointed out a few features you have to be a real fan/ voyeur to appreciate, such as the bed where Lisa Marie was conceived – accompanied by the information that after they crossed the threshold the honeymooners were in the bedroom for an uninterrupted three hours.

By the time Elvis arrived, Palm Springs was already firmly established as an out-of-town hideaway favoured by the likes of Joan Crawford, Clark Gable, Lana Turner, Bob Hope, Elizabeth Taylor and Marilyn Monroe. Probably the most celebrated visitors, though, were Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack.

In 1947, Sinatra commissioned what can only be described as a swank-pad, with automatic sliding glass doors, hi-tech recording equipment and a flagpole with a Jack Daniels emblem flag. The jewel in the crown is a heated swimming pool shaped like a grand piano, and a pergola which casts shadows resembling the black keys.

Anyone who wants to see the chipped sink where Frank chucked a bottle in a rage, or stand on the drive where

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‘Beyond the city limits, the Joshua Tree National Park itself is one of the most intriguing, atmospheric places I’ve ever been’

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Kaufmann House.

2-4. The Viceroy.

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Joshua Tree National Park.

6-10. The Parker.

TRAVEL he threw then-wife Ava Gardner’s possessions after she appeared at the house in an attempt to catch him with Lana Turner, can rent it.

Whenever Sinatra fancied cocktails and company he would invite people round by hoisting his flag. Drinking is still an established diversion in Palm Springs. (Golf features highly, too, as does visiting a spa to soak in the natural V C mineral waters, and outdoor activities such as hiking in the Indian Canyons or taking an aerial tram up 8,516ft at the Chino Canyon.) While there are numerous bars in Palm Springs, the best places to pay a liquid tribute to the Rat Pack are the hotels. The Viceroy and the Parker are two of the most chic.

accommodated each other as they have overlapped. The hipsters are starting to venture forth from the Ace into the town, too, savouring Palm Spring’s kitsch nightlife in the form of its traditional supper clubs.

The entertainment around the Coachella Valley isn’t all supper clubs, Hawaiian tiki bars and camp shows. In addition to the very glossy Coachella festival, there’s a contemporary art and music scene around the Joshua Tree area, a 45-minute drive from Palm Springs. Art happenings, music festivals, sculpture gardens, artists’ studios and swap-meets (similar to flea markets) all provide a rather more “alt” scene. For something really out of this world, there is the Integratron, a dome built in

The Viceroy, once favoured by Clark Gable, Joan Crawford and Bing Crosby, is an up-market boutique hotel designed in a modern interpretation of the Hollywood Regency style popular in the Thirties. Like so many buildings here, it looks unassuming from the road, but once inside it opens into a secret, achingly stylish world of manicured low box hedges, statues of sleek greyhounds and lemon trees around three pools.

The Parker is a more sprawling, eclectically decorated hotel with extensive and less regimented gardens in which you can play tennis, croquet or pétanque. Fusing louche 1960s style and dark wood-panelled walls, the restaurant Mister Parker’s has apparently been decorated to look like “Mick Jagger’s Scottish castle”, and in the lobby there are two full suits of armour standing amidst retro furnishings.

In the main, the Parker attracts wealthy movie industry insiders from LA looking for some weekend R&R. A younger, more edgy crowd is to be found at the Ace Hotel & Swim Club. This converted mid-century motel is part of a small chain with outposts in New York, Portland and Seattle. At 3pm on a Saturday afternoon the scene around the pool resembles a Terry Richardson photoshoot for Vice magazine, thanks to the plethora of hipsters in their uniform of American Apparel swimwear, coloured RayBans, tattoos, and pork-pie hats.

I broached the subject of the hotel being “noticeably cooler than anywhere else in Palm Springs” with a man at the reception desk who looked like one of the Kings of Leon. His verdict was that the hotel is still a fairly isolated enclave of cool, attracting a new crowd that is yet to integrate into the rest of the town.

However, historically Palm Springs has always attracted new and eclectic constituencies. Hollywood stars, modernist enthusiasts, elderly sun-seekers, plastic surgeons, spring-break students and passing bikers have

the 1950s by George Van Tassel and based on telepathic directions from extra terrestrials. Yes, really. It’s now open for UFO conventions, concerts and “sound baths”, which are billed as “kindergarten nap time of the third kind” and involve listening to music created with crystal bowls.

Beyond the city limits, the Joshua Tree National Park itself is one of the most intriguing, atmospheric places I’ve ever been. The cartoonish, twisted Joshua trees could be straight out of a Dr Seuss tale, while smooth, giant boulders look as if they have erupted from the earth, ready sculpted to scramble over. The cactus park is particularly surreal, full of cacti with so many closely packed white spines that when I walked amongst them at sunset they seemed to glow with furry halos.

Closer to the city are the Indian canyons, where the original inhabitants of the valley lived long before the arrival of modernist architects. Before the heat of the day could take hold I went for a walk through Tahquitz Canyon, one of three canyons with signposted trails in the Agua Caliente Indian Reservation. I followed a small stream up a hidden gorge to where it culminated in a 60ft waterfall and a clear green pool shaded by the rock.

What looked like rather underwhelming dry scrub and rock from the road came alive as I walked to the waterfall.

Petrol-hued lizards shimmied across the paths and redtailed hawks swooped on the thermal currents overhead.

In spring – the best time to come to Palm Springs thanks to more clement temperatures – the desert bursts into vibrant bloom. It’s the raw, wild quality of the surrounding desert and mountain ranges that prevents Palm Springs from feeling like a fussy holiday suburb of LA. Just outside the kitsch bubble of cocktails, pool-side bars and vintagecar showrooms is a rugged mountain range. Here, as I walked at dusk, I could hear the haunting howls of coyotes mingling with the strains of Frank Sinatra.

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Images: Supplied; Corbis / Arabian Eye Text: Carola Long / The Independent / The Interview People

‘It whispers of self-indulgence and a glitzy, hedonistic past, rather than screaming it like Las Vegas’

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LIFE LESSONS

WHAT I KNOW NOW

Adham Charanoglu

CEO, Aston Martin, MENA Region Making the right decision is a crucial personal skill on every level that requires the right state of mind as well the correct thread of thinking.

Integrity is the essence to being credible within one’s circle. This credibility that is built extensively throughout the years via the close ties and interaction with people, is the recipe to my success story.

I know to always have that will to watch and listen till the end, and never fall in the trap of underestimating others thoughts or views.

My road to success, be it personal or business, has been paved by the high standards and expectations I have set – these are my daily rules that pave the road and guide me in the face of any situation needing to be resolved.

Every thought or idea is a hidden opportunity in disguise, once put on the right track it is a road to success that is revealed. One should always materialise his thoughts and work on them until he has reached the desired goals.

To me, knowledge is power. I make time to read extensively during my day at any chance I get. Reading exposes me to ideas and knowledge that, unlike money, is the real currency to success in business.

How you think of a problem you are faced with is more important than the problem itself: to be able to constructively rise above problems faced one should always think positively in order not to be drained in the wrong direction and waste both time and energy.

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www.piaget.com

PIAGET BOUTIQUES: Abu Dhabi: Al Manara Jewellery, Hamdan Street, 02 626 2629 Dubai: The Dubai Mall, 04 339 8222 – Wafi New Extension, 04 327 9000 Abu Dhabi: Al Manara Jewellery, Marina Mall, 02 681 0888 Dubai: Ahmed Seddiqi & Sons, Atlantis 04 422 0233, Burj Al Arab, 04 348 9000 Burjuman Centre, 04 355 9090, Mall of the Emirates, 04 341 1211