AIR_November'2011

Issue sIx | november

2011

martine s scorse

Produced in International Media Production Zone

ld’s be st The wor n his o r to c dire inar y life e x traord e le n s behind th

ricky gervais

best in snow

the ecclestones

Ferran adrià

Ten years on from The Office, its creator is still laughing loud and proud

slope off to one of the world’s must-stay ski retreats this winter

The sisters keen on doing it for themselves despite their father’s fortune

What now for the man who closed the world’s most prestigious restaurant?

HEAVYWEIGHT LUXURY IN A LIGHTWEIGHT BODY. Feel the lightness. Admire the agility. Sense the power.

The new Jaguar XJ, for a fast moving world.

VISIT YOUR NEAREST SHOWROOM AND TEST DRIVE A JAGUAR TODAY. BAHRAIN. CAIRO . AMMAN . RIYADH . JEDDAH . KHOBAR . KUWAIT . BEIRUT .

CASABLANCA . MUSCAT . DOHA . ERBIL . BAKU . TUNISIA . DUBAI . ABU DHABI .

AL AIN . SHARJAH . AJMAN . RAS AL KHAIMAH

Contents / Features

Sixty Ferran adriÁ The Spanish super chef on why he closed the world’s most prestigious restaurant at the height of its success – and what he plans to do now.

thirty Four Boy racer Off-track with Formula One sensation Sebastian Vettel ahead of his return to Abu Dhabi.

thirty Six LiFe in the FaSt Lane On the face of it the Ecclestone sisters have it all, but is life really so perfect as an heiress? Harriet Walker finds out...

thirty eight the goodFeLLa Mick Brown talks the talk with director Martin Scorsese as he looks back on his life behind the lens.

Forty Six he’S having a Laugh It’s 10 years since Ricky Gervais introduced the world to The Office.

AIR meets the man who’s been laughing ever since...

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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a pLaCE tHat FEELs LIkE It was MadE FoR you.

Because it was. the spectacular two-island Conrad Maldives Rangali Island boasts the most luxurious villas, two spas and the best dining experience in the Maldives, including Ithaa undersea restaurant, the only one of its kind in the world. spend your days enjoying romantic dining experiences and of course, taking the refreshing opportunity to do absolutely nothing.

Conrad Maldives Rangali Island For reservations contact MLEHI.maldives@conradhotels.com or visit ConradMaldives.com

Contents / regul ars

FiFty tWo motorinG Matt Slater explores Abu Dhabi’s love for bespoke Rolls-Royce, while Nick Hall drives the first great eco car.

Managing Director Victoria Thatcher Editorial Director John Thatcher Advertisement Director Chris Capstick chris@hotmediapublishing.com Group Editor Laura Binder laura@hotmediapublishing.com Group Deputy Editor Jade Bremner jade@hotmediapublishing.com Designers Adam Sneade Sarah Boland Production Manager Haneef Abdul

sixteen radar

FiFty six Gastronomy

What’s on, what’s new, and what to spend your dollars on during the month ahead...

David Collins recounts the famous restaurants he’s designed, and Pierre Gagnaire dreams up his ultimate dinner party.

tWenty Five timepieces Christie’s Aurel Bacs on what you should be bidding for at this month’s most significant watch auction

tWenty eiGht home Our new columnist Sara Cosgrove on why she’s all about Baccarat, and an inside look at Fendi Casa’s latest collection.

thirty critique We’ve waded through the column inches of cultural critique to present its essential offerings.

Group Advertisement Manager Cat Steele cat@hotmediapublishing.com Advertisement Manager Sukaina Hussein sukaina@hotmediapublishing.com

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sixty seven GolF Expert advice on how to swing at a ball set above your feet, and Nike’s new fairway wood that shifts to suit any shot.

sixty eiGht travel History-rich hotel rooms, stunning ski retreats, and a truly wild adventure in Kenya.

eiGhty What i knoW noW Celebrity designer Jimeale Jorgensen shares her life lessons.

Gama aviation

November 2011

Welcome onboard

I’m delighted to welcome you to the November edition of Air – Gama’s inflight magazine.

I hope you’ll enjoy learning more about our global business aviation group and the services we provide as you browse through these 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 – and a warm welcome on board.

Dave Edwards Managing Director Gama Aviation

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

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Gama aviation news

aSIa FIrmlY In Gama GroUP’S SIGHTS For 2012 Gama Group, the business aviation charter, management and maintenance company, 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.

Gama to provide business jet service to asia air miles members Gama Aviation has signed an exclusive partnership with travel reward programme Asia Miles to provide business jet services to its 3.9 million members worldwide. The newly ratified partnership commenced from August 1 2011.

As part of the agreement, Asia Miles members will be able to earn 1 Asia Mile for every US$5 spent using Gama’s business jet services, which can connect with prestigious Asian airlines such as Cathay Pacific and Dragonair. Asia Miles members with onward connections to destinations that are not served by Asia Miles partner airlines can arrange a connecting sector by business jet with Gama to destinations such as Lugano, Cannes and St Moritz.

The deal signifies the first step towards Gama’s planned expansion into the Asia market, and follows an introduction by Freestream Executive Aviation Limited made in March 2011. Gama’s strategy is to build on the success of the company’s international network currently centered in Europe, the Middle East and the USA. By partnering with Asia Miles, Gama will bring its bespoke travel services to the most sophisticated travelers in Asia.

“We are very pleased to confirm this strategic agreement to provide frequent flyers of prestigious international carriers like Cathay Pacific and Dragonair a convenient travel solution that suits their particular needs,” said Marwan Khalek, Gama CEO. Paul Loo, General Manager Cathay Pacific Loyalty Programmes Limited, said: “Asia Miles strives to bring quality partners to its members and we believe

Gama Aviation’s wide geographical coverage and long established experience in the business jet service will meet the needs of our worldwide members.” about Freestream executive aviation ltd.

Freestream Aircraft Limited consists of a team of highly experienced and uniquely qualified aviation consultants based in the USA and UK. The staff at Freestream are able to cover all aspects of aircraft brokerage, acquisition, marketing, sales, interior modification, import/export and maintenance review of corporate jet aircraft types. about Gama Group Gama is an international business aviation services organization, founded in 1983 in the UK by Marwan Khalek and Stephen Wright. The group employs over 300 at bases across Europe, the Americas and the Middle East and operates over 80 business aircraft.

The group’s companies and affiliates hold EU-OPS, FAA Part 135 and UAE GCAA Charter Certificates, FAA Part 145 Maintenance Approvals, Part 21 Design and Manufacture Approvals and offer business aircraft charter, management, FBO, maintenance, valeting and aviation software services. The Group is headquartered at Farnborough Airport in the UK, with its Americas headquarters in Stratford, CT and its UAE headquarters at Sharjah in Dubai (Gama Aviation FZE). All three bases are Wyvern approved.

The group operates aircraft throughout the world and has over 30 worldwide operating bases.

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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’s middle eastern and european Fleets GroW

Gama Aviation FZE, the business aviation charter and management company, has added a new business aircraft type to its UAE-based fleet – its first Airbus. The Airbus A318CJ was added to its UAE operator’s certificate last month. 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, becoming its fifth business jet in the region Meanwhile, Gama is on track to obtain its UAE GCAA CAR 145 maintenance approval by year end and is hard at work to commence development of its new 12,000 sqm hangar facility at its Sharjah International Airport base, 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, creating more jobs in Sharjah.

“This facility represents a major opportunity for Gama in the region, providing significant cost benefits and ease of access,” said Managing Director Dave Edwards. “Sharjah is also a great fuel stop destination, between East and West, and our terminal will have dedicated refuelling facilities.

The whole experience will be smooth and client focused.

Our goal is to build a bespoke, tailor-made facility designed by Gama with nearly 30 years of global business aviation experience invested in it.”

Gama formed Gama Support Services FZE, in readiness for the commencement of maintenance services at Sharjah.

Initially, the approval will allow the company to undertake line maintenance support on its growing fleet of aircraft, thereby mirroring its capabilities in Europe and the USA, as well as the potential for base maintenance of business jet types. Significantly across its bases in Europe, Americas and Middle East, Gama is now Wyvern-approved for its commitment to improving aviation safety.

The Airbus A318CJ is now the largest aircraft in the Middle East fleet In Europe, meanwhile, 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, its European charter fleet now totals 28 aircraft, 11 of which are based in the UK. Gama’s 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 Gama gain more international clients in Russia and the Middle East, including Royal family members and music tour arrangers. Gama offices in its regions share clients to ensure a consistent level of service and local knowledge, which means the clients are assured of attention to detail. Gama’s clients have a fleet of 83 aircraft to experience, based out of Europe, Russia, the Middle East and Continental USA. Client interface has also been strengthened by the arrival of Trevor Jones as Director of Client Services – a new role.

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RadaR

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Notes oN a small islaNd At 2,000 acres this spot of land is one of the largest private islands for sale in the Caribbean. Part with the asking price of $100 million and you’ll have free reign to develop anything you wish on it, from a private home to a full-scale resort. But the real draw here is what surrounds this little slice of paradise: the ocean’s so clear that visibility levels exceed 100 feet, which means you can explore the close-by underwater cavern, where the walls are adorned with quartz crystals. privateislandsonline.com/ ronde-island

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RadaR How did Porsche create its 918 RSR concept car?

> Visitors to the Dubai International Motor Show (November 10-14) will not only get their first up-close glimpse of Porsche’s redesigned

+ 911, a car that the critics lapped up when it was unveiled in Frankfurt last month, but will also set eyes on the firm’s striking 918 RSR

= concept car. It marries the technology in the 911 GT3 R Hybrid to the design of the 918 Spyder, giving birth to a showstopping super car.

When elvis met the Beatles “Nothing affected me until I heard Elvis. Without Elvis, there would be no Beatles”.

John Lennon’s life-long admiration for Elvis and his influence is a feature of a fascinating exhibition which runs in Liverpool until January. It includes a raft of rare and exclusive artefacts drawn from the archives of both artists, including testimony of the one time – August 27, 1965 – that the two met at Elvis’ home in California.

On show, too, is what’s routinely championed as the world’s most valuable pool table, that on which Elvis played a game with Ringo Starr. elvisandus.com

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RadaR

Images: Kate Moss ‘96, Cicciolina Up a Ladder, Red Warhol, Reg and Ron Wanted.

All courtesy Scream, Copywright David Bailey

> The much anticipated Chequered Flag Ball signals the start of the off-track entertainments celebrating this month’s Formula 1 Etihad Airways Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, promising red carpet glamour, celebrity guests aplenty and music from soul singer Mica Paris. The black-tie event takes place at the brand new St. Regis Saadiyat Island Resort, and any remaining tickets (in short supply at time of press) can be bought via chequeredflagball.com

> David Bailey is one of the world’s greatest photographers but he’s barely known as a painter. Yet over the years he has worked up a large collection of mixed media artworks which he’ll be showing to the public for the first time at Scream gallery in London this month. The works, which are as eyegrabbing as his photographs, were inspired by Bailey’s childhood, influences, inspiration, fears and desires. screamlondon.com - 19 -

RadaR > No self-respecting shoe lover’s closet is minus a pair of red-soled Louboutins; but now you can get your hands on an entirely new creation from the feted designer – his first tome.

Part autobiographical, part photo album, the book captures his inspirations and career highlights and includes input from his favoured muses, Dita Von Tees and Kirsten Scott Thomas included. rizzoliusa.com

> Ian Schrager, the man behind New York’s infamous nightclub Studio 54 and the boutique hotel concept (he spawned the world’s first), is back again to shake up the hospitality industry with his new hotel brand PUBLIC. “We are trying not to be hip, we are in fact anti-hip, and therefore by definition, we are,” boasted Schrager, who also confirmed to us that a Middle East opening is very much part of the brand’s plans. publichotels.com

> The world’s largest known pear-shaped yellow diamond goes under the hammer on November 15 at Sotheby’s Magnificent Diamonds auction in Geneva. The Sun-Drop diamond, which weighs in at over 100 carats, was discovered in South Africa only last year and is tipped to sell at around $15million. sothebys.com - 20 -

Mauritius is Magnifique

Sofitel So Mauritius Bel Ombre An intimate getaway on a turquoise lagoon, Sofitel Mauritius Bel Ombre offers supreme luxury while celebrating the natural environment. Strikingly modern and timelessly elegant, it is a haven of peace designed by Lek Bunnag and decorated by Kenzo TAKADA. Luminous suites feature private tropical gardens and provide absolute tranquility and comfort.

Bel Ombre - Île Maurice Tél. : + 230 605 58 00 – e-mail : h6707@sofitel.com

www.sofitel.com

AP_Sof118_PP148x210-HOTMEDIA_41174.indd 1 Untitled-5 1

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Best Foot Forward

As part of their new line of bespoke, cityinspired footwear, renowned bootmaker, John Lobb, has created the Dubai Sandal.

Its creator Cyrille Pinon talks us through the key features of what is the world’s most expensive sandal.

> The lining is fashioned from lamb skin, which makes it very comfortable to the touch, while there’s a thick sole (in rubber or leather) and padded insole. The comfort of the shoe was very much a priority of the design, and it’s technically geared for hot weather.

> Here we’ve used a very soft crocodile skin. But there’s a second style of this sandal also available and it’s formed from calf skin. Both are available through our made-tomeasure service, so can be tailored to your desire.

> The double buckle element is a signature of ours, first used on a pair of bespoke shoes in 1945 and then as one of our first ready-to-wear shoes in 1982. It means you can adjust the sandal to suit your instep. If you wish, the buckle can be crafted from gold.

> London’s Michelin-starred Hakkasan brings its acclaimed Cantonese fare to Dubai’s Emirates Towers this month, adding a second UAE venue to its international outposts. As well as the menu featuring the now classic dishes like black cod in champagne sauce and Peking duck with Royal Beluga caviar, it will offer diners the opportunity to sample some fashioned exclusively for the Dubai menu. hakkasan.com - 23 -

Timepieces

Time Honoured In the first in a regular series of articles looking at brands and the history of their watch designs, Perrelet CEO, Fausto Salvi, reveals his personal favourites from Perrelet’s back catalogue

T

he Turbine (2009) has been instrumental in the brand’s success. I really like the new interpretation of the double rotor, with its large titanium 12-blade wheel inspired by a gas turbine. The focus is firmly placed on aesthetic appeal and the watches in the Turbine range offer a wealth of delightful visual effects.

I love our ladies’ model, the Turbine XS (2011). Its curved lines with alternating polished and brushed surfaces provide a more sensual feel. The lower dial in white or black mother-of-pearl allows magnificent

rays of light to filter through. And with the first motion of the turbine, the observer can measure the scale of the impact, which is spectacular and dazzling.

The Skeleton Chronograph (2011) is a watch with a definite sense of both openness and pace. It times sports accomplishments in an entirely clear manner, displaying the complexity of its movement through the intricate mazes of its mechanical skeletonised movement. This watch eloquently embodies the meaning of design prowess. The model asserts its strength on the wrist with a steel case featuring a black DLC treatment, creating a masculine aura that is reinforced by the sporty touch of the rubber strap.

A mechanical marvel, the Tourbillon (2011) remains a benchmark in the universe of luxury watchmaking and signals the return of a masterpiece to the Perrelet collection. We have

if you’re flying into London this month, be sure to head to Chelsea’s Saatchi Gallery for its annual staging of SalonQP, where the world’s leading watchmakers will be present to showcase their newest offerings from november 10-12. Among the exhibits will be The Fondation de la Haute Horlogerie, which traces the history of watchmaking by drawing on rare and important Swiss pieces, and, best of all, a Jaeger-LeCoultre masterclass. it will be hosted by some of the brand’s most experienced watchmakers, and gives attendees the chance to try their hand at assembling the iconic reverso Grande date.

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chosen to work the structure and composition of our latest creation in depth, in order to evoke the multidimensional aspect of time.

Thus, the cage of the flying Tourbillon is presented inside a cylindrical ring positioned at 6 o’clock. The small second’s indication is provided by the revolving of the cage, which completes one full rotation every 60 seconds.

Timepieces Piaget’s newest – and arguably most eyecatching – offering is a gem-enhanced version of the Dancer.

This one-of-a-kind creation, the thinnest of its type in the world, is fully covered in brilliant and baguettecut diamonds which total 1,230. While beneath them lies an 18-carat white gold case and bracelet which bears the brand’s signature dumbbell links.

Watches at auction

Christie’s Head of Watches, Aurel Bacs, on the pick of the lots at this month’s most significant watch auction The Event: Important Watches, Christie’s The Location: Four Seasons Hotel des Bergues, Geneva The Date: 14 November 2011

Our November sale in Geneva is one of the most beautiful and exciting my team and I ever managed to put together, both in terms of quality and variety. It includes more than 420 lots and is expected to realize in excess of $16 million, with the highlight being one of the best group of Patek Philippe watches ever seen at auction. Among the 100 timepieces by this most exclusive of watch makers, are twenty-six rare vintage complicated wristwatches, assembled for the sale from different private collections.

Among them is the world’s most significant rediscovery: a previously unknown, wonderful, pink-gold perpetual calendar wristwatch with moon phases, manufactured in 1968. It comes from a private gentleman and has never been exhibited or offered for sale at auction. It will be much sought-after by a competitive group of the world’s most committed watch collectors and is estimated at $540,000-1.1million.

Among the ladies watches is an unusual and attractive gold, diamond and pink sapphire-set chronograph wristwatch by Rolex (pictured).

Made in 1996, it is estimated at $33,500-56,000.

By Cartier is a fine elegant white gold, diamond, ruby and emerald set bracelet watch (estimate: $16,700-28,000) and a gold watch known as the St Peterburg. It’s set with diamonds, rubies, sapphires and emeralds, and is estimated at $9,000-13,400.

The latest adaption of CORUM’S TI-BRIDGE TOURBILLION is designed for those keen to make a bold statement. Its RED GOLD case is paved with 689 BRILLIANT-CUT DIAMONDS, which total 8.64 CARATS, and is designed so that the caliber and constantly moving tourbillion are visible from all sides and through its back.

Furthermore, the watch is available in an ULTRA-LIMITED 25-PIECE EDITION, and is delivered with two straps: one of which is HAND-SEWN IN CROCODILE LEATHER. - 26 -

Checkers Kitchen - www.armanidada.com

Finasi L.L.C.

AI Ittihad Road

P.O. BOX 118508 Dubai

United Arab Emirates

T +971 (4) 2971777

www.finasi.ae

home

LONDON ART FAIR JANUARY 18-22 Those in the market for modern art would do well to schedule a trip to London in the new year.

The city’s annual Art Fair offers up a plethora of for-sale works from 20th century talents, the ubiquitous Damien Hirst among them. Of-themoment names joining Hirst include the likes of Michael Taylor, Gabriel Dubois, Darren Murray and Albert Irvin.

But don’t turn a blind eye to the global offerings. The show’s Art Projects section will sell acclaimed international works, and is where the Hoxton Art Gallery will showcase artists from its space for the first time. londonartfair.co.uk

Sara Cosgrove Our new columnist, Harrods’ head of design, waxes lyrical on her brand of the moment; Baccarat This year Baccarat launched a stunning range called Highlights at the Salon di Mobili in Milan, the latest launch from a brand that has brought luxury crystal to a whole new market over the past three to five years. Its specialty is classic, hand-blown crystal which is constantly being re-imagined and brought right up to the moment by some of the world’s most iconic designers, such as Arik Levy, Phillipe Starck and Jaime Hayon. The fantastic thing about the Baccarat collection is its flexibility; you can use their fittings in a slick, modern environment, a deco-styled room or a grand, classical salon. The opportunities are endless and that’s why, as a designer, I constantly integrate their pieces into my schemes, whether it is object, lighting, furniture or mirrors. In fact, having been to the factory and seen hundreds of their pieces being blown by hand, I now want to use everything!

If I had to narrow it down, though, the Torchere Lamp by Arik Levy inspired the entrance to our Harrods studios and we’ve had a tremendous response to it from visiting clients. I find that Baccarat’s innovations mean the brand has an international appeal; it has a large range, plus many archive pieces that can be integrated in to the home to stunning effect. Watch out for the new Baccarat dragon, which will mark 2012, the year of the dragon.

Box Clever 1,088 triangles in silver, gold and wood leaf make up this Rubik’s cube-style cabinet, the Pixel, which comes poised upon a brass base. It’s the hot new design of bespoke Portugese brand Boca Do Lobo. bocadolobo.com - 28 -

Have to Have It Take a pew, any pew…

1.

2.

3.

Versace Home Andrew Martin Nada Debs at Bloomingdale’s Home

Through The keyhole: Fendi Casa

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The crème de la crème of italian style, exclusively at aati, dubai The Italian house of Fendi’s home collection is well worth introducing to fashion-conscious homes. Those with property in the UAE can source its eclectic range at Dubai’s Aati boutique. Printed leather, animalistic fabrics, fur and slick accessories dominate the - 29 -

range, while colour palettes cling to white, cream, black and bronze tones – with accents of dark blue. For those with an eye for shine, meanwhile, see its Crystal Elements (by Swarovski for Fendi Casa); velvet covers set with micro-crystals.

Critique

Film

London Boulevard

Dir. William Monahan Colin Farrell stars as an ex-con who becomes a bodyguard to a young movie star (Keira Knightly), only to find himself drawn back into a criminal underworld...

At best: ‘Thanks to a top-notch cast... plus a wry script, this stands head and shoulders above recent geezer fare.’

Sky Movies.

At worst: ‘Essentially, London Boulevard is a long but not very winding road.’ Empire Magazine.

Anonymous

Dir. Roland Emmerich Rhys Ifans plays Edward De Vere, the Earl of Oxford, in a drama set in Elizabethan England which claims he was the literary genius who penned Shakespeare’s work.

At best: ‘Surprisingly, this is easily director Roland Emmerich’s best film.’

Hollywood Reporter.

At worst: ‘Roland Emmerich’s meticulously crafted and often wellacted exposé of the “real” William Shakespeare is shocking only in that it is rather good.’ The Guardian.

Tyrannosaur

Oranges and Sunshine

Dir. Paddy Considine Considine’s first directorial offering tells a tale of violence and rage, as a woman tries to find the will to leave an abusive relationship.

At best: ‘It is Colman’s terrific performance that sticks in the mind, a powerhouse portrayal of one of modern-day suburbia’s many unseen, unheard victims.’ Radio Times.

At worst: ‘As much as Tyrannosaur is well made... it still feels like it’s of little use to anybody with a brain.’ Birmingham Mail.

Dir. Jim Loach Emily Watson plays social worker Margaret Humphreys who, in 1987, helped expose Britain’s ‘Home Children’ programme, which wrongly relocated poor children to commonwealth countries after informing them that their parents were dead.

At best: ‘Loach has done a beautiful job capturing the heart and soul of these characters.’ ABC Radio Brisbane.

At worst: ‘... a plodding script and muted staging strangely strip away the emotional punch.’ Hollywood Reporter.

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Image: Frank Stella’s Lettre Sur Les Aveugles

Art

‘The godfather of minimalism is showing an extensive body of his work at London’s Haunch of Venison this month, most of it comprised of lesser-known pieces’

Frank Stella, the man whose name is often prefaced with the words ‘the godfather of minimalism’ is showing an extensive body of his work at London’s Haunch of Venison this month, most of it comprised of lesser-known pieces.

Some are “fascinating”, according to Time Out London’s Gabriel Coxhead. And though The Arts Desk’s Josh Spero agreed that the works “reflect a new approach to sculpture” having derived from Stella’s paintings, it was “not one that stirred me”, he surmises.

“If you think video art is all endless films shown in austere black rooms with bottom-numbing benches, then Pipilotti Rist will make you think again”. So says the Evening Standard’s Ben Luke of the new, psychedelic, video exhibition at London’s South Bank Centre, which runs until January. Rist’s show takes the voyeur on a visual journey which Luke believes amounts to “an exuberant, surprising and, at times, laugh-out-loud funny retrospective”.

Moreover, he feels that Rist “consistently proves that she is one of the most innovative and beguiling artists around.”

It’s an opinion not shared by Laura Cumming of The Observer, who critiques that the show’s inclusion of Rist’s more recent work, described by the writer as “frictionless and empty” is ultimately its undoing. “What is happening in the viewer’s head is almost bound to be more interesting than what is going on before their eyes”, Cumming concludes.

Over in Paris, Cité de la Musique’s monographic devotion to the life and works of artist Paul Klee, Polyphonies, has earned rave reviews to date (it shows until January), with Le Monde’s Philippe Dagen of the belief that: “Klee is one of the great designers of the twentieth century, and to see over one hundred of his works cannot but lead to euphoria”. Though Klee was best known as a painter, he was also a skilled musician, and what Dagen likes most about Polyphonies is that it illustrates perfectly how one skill informed the other. “It does not just recap the musical allusions in the work, but looks at how the musical composition determined the plastic composition and how the concepts – structure, repetition, rhythm – travel from one art to another”.

Running until the end of this month at LA’s Sam Lee Gallery, Color Rise offers gallery goers “a breath of fresh air”, according to LA Times’ David Pagel. The exhibition features the work of 71-year-old John Pearson, an artist whose paintings are “worlds away from the high-powered drive to turn art into history”, reckons Pagel. Furthermore: “The painter’s quirky works capture the atmosphere of the old days, when artists did their own thing and expected to be ignored for it”. Artweek.LA was equally enthused with what it saw, stating that “Pearson’s sculptural paintings display a dramatic contrast of colors, evoking a visual push-pull that energizes and seduces”.

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Critique

Books Three years on from the financial mayhem that engulfed the world at large, Michael Lewis releases his take on the global recession with a witty and colourful tome named Boomerang: the Meltdown Tour. “The boom times already feel so remote that it is well worth the reminder of how lunatic all of our behaviour really was”, reckons Robert Colvile of The Telegraph, who is full of praise for the book’s author. “It is impossible to imagine a better guide to this terrain than Lewis.” The prose is laced with humorous commentary on governments’ behaviour in the lead up to the crisis, at one point likening the Greek government to a “piñata” that was there to be struck at by “as many Greek citizens as possible”. Fran Hawthorne from The National is suitably impressed with this writing style: “Lewis nails the essence of the problem with straight talk and dry humour” she says. And it’s an opinion shared by the New York Time’s Michiko Kakutani, who reckons Lewis has the “rare storyteller’s ability to make virtually any subject both lucid and compelling.”

Leftfield author Bonnie Nadzam released his tender fiction debut Lamb last month, the story of a fake kidnapping which turns real, and the subsequent relationship bore from it. “It’s brilliant, dark and very disturbing” says Nancy Connors from cleveland.com. “The story, like the bond between these castoffs, is difficult and beautiful” writes Matthew Love of Time Out New York, “and though it may not be normal, it feels very real.”

First published in Canada during 2008, and recently released worldwide, The Sealed Letter by Emma Donoghue “is cut from a very different cloth” from her bestselling novel, The Room, writes DJ Taylor from The Guardian.

Taylor further believes that readers who bought The Room will be hugely disappointed by Donoghue’s follow up: “my hunch is that the Amazon reviewers will be furious,” he says. The book’s plot is set in 1864 and follows a 29-yearold female activist named Fido, who witnesses her friend Helen having an adulterous affair. “Donoghue... builds a sense of expectation... but the overall tone is oddly light,” writes Lesley McDowell from The Independent. Though she is a fan, of sorts: “Donoghue can’t quite take herself seriously, or her characters. As a result, this is a very enjoyable, and, in places, even educational, kind of romp.

But I’m not sure that’s really what she intended.”

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Theatre

to plot, Richard Patterson, of Exeunt, is far from impressed, thinking it “suffers from a lack of focus”, while using “cheap tricks to keep the audience entertained through a catchy flash-forward through black history” that felt “like a bone thrown to an expectant audience”.

He’s “Russia’s Shakespeare,” says David Nice from The Arts Desk, when speaking of Alexander Pushkin’s and his novella, The Queen of Spades.

Now showing as a theatrical play at the Arcola, London, the tale has been converted to verse for the show by Raymond Blankenhorn, though “some of the most effective moments are when nothing is being said,” critiques Jonathan Lovett of The Stage. The tale is told through three dream sequences and set against a musical score described by David Nice as “superb”.

And though he goes on to describe the plot’s structure as “an odd gamble”, he

Images: Any Given Monday

Theatre goers in New York have been queuing nightly outside the city’s Bernard B. Jacobs Theater to see The Mountaintop, a play which reimagines events on the final night of Martin Luther King Jr’s life. The story is set entirely in one place, Room 306 of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, and centres on the connection between the two principal protagonists, who share nearly all the on-set dialogue.

Peter Marks, of The Washington Post, is not convinced this set-up works, believing that “part of the problem is casting”. The production marks the Broadway debut of Hollywood actor Samuel L. Jackson, cast in the role of King, and also that of Angela Basset as Jackson’s co-star. Yet Ben Brantley of the New York Times finds Jackson’s performance thrilling: “This imposing film actor turns out to be a natural onstage, and he gives a lucid and likeable performance.” When it comes

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does concede that it’s “a unique and often compelling one.”

Comedy fans have been flocking to the 59E59 Theaters in New York for Any Given Monday (pictured), a production that appears centred on American football but is ultimately about the struggle of keeping a family together in an age riddled with temptation. There are enough “twists to keep the audience’s attention throughout”, says Daniel M Gold from the New York Times, who further believes that although some of the play’s characters “aren’t memorable”, this “one weakness... doesn’t derail a play this well constructed”. On the other hand, Suzy Evans of Backstage commends the director Bud Martin’s comedic timing and “crisp dialogue”.

Although it wasn’t quite enough to hold her attention throughout: “the plot starts to drag in the second act,” she says.

Boy Racer John Thatcher on Formula One’s record-setting superstar, SebaStian Vettel

T

he last time Sebastian Vettel set foot in Abu Dhabi he was a man on a mission. If not quite mission impossible, then mission improbable, certainly. Lying third in the F1 divers’ championship, he’d start the season’s final race with a model-slim chance of stopping Fernando Alonso claiming the crown. But he’d end it as world champion. The sport’s youngest ever.

Forward 12 months and Vettel returns to Abu Dhabi with a second world championship already won. The youngest driver to capture back-to-back crowns.

Try as one might, but it’s practically impossible to not to constantly reference Vettel’s age in relation to his racing achievements. At a little over 19 years he became the youngest man to participate in a Grand Prix meeting. In 2007 he was the youngest ever claimant of championship points. And in 2008, aged just 21 years and 73 days, he became the youngest driver to take pole position in a race he would go on to win, thereby setting another record.

If those statistics hint at single-minded, machine-like efficiency, Vettel’s character could not be more contrasting.

On being told by the Red Bull pit team via his car’s two-way radio that he had won last year’s Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, Vettel burst into tears, telling them that he loved them all.

Then there’s the time remembered by Red Bull’s Danish mechanic, Ole Schack: “One year the team was flying to Bahrain. By the time we got off the plane, Sebastian had taken all of our bags off the carousel and lined them up for us. That’s how you bring a team together”.

Vettel hails from a close-knit family – his father is a furniture maker, his mother a housewife, and he has one brother and two sisters – and away from the track likes to indulge his passion for music. “My father told me about many bands from back in the day, but the Beatles stuck with me”, he told Rolling Stone. “My collection comprises almost the entire body of their work.”

He took to the wheel of his first vehicle aged only 3 (you see how difficult it is not to bring age into the equation?), when his father, Norbert, bought him a go-kart and built an improvised track for him to race around. It was a move designed solely to keep Vettel “off the streets”, but it would reveal a talent for driving that would soon catch the eye of Gerhard Noack, the man who discovered Michael Schumacher.

Reflecting on their fledging encounters to The Daily Telegraph, Noack said: “First, he really knew how to drive a go-kart. Second, he was very fast by nature. Third, he was a friendly kid who always said thank you. Right from day one, Sebastian was one of those people on the team who gets there first and is the last to leave. He always wanted to know every detail of technical aspects and he was always capable of providing the best information regarding what needed improving. These are some of the elements that distinguish a potential future world champion. I saw the

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‘If you are happy, it doesn’t matter how many championships you have won or what you have achieved’ same things I saw in Michael: stamina, fighting spirit, pride and the absolute will always to be the best”.

By virtue of sharing those qualities, as well as their nation of birth, it’s little surprise that the media was quick to christen Vettel ‘Baby Schumi’. But it’s not a label Vettel likes to wear, preferring instead to be thought of as the one and only Sebastian Vettel. Yet comparisons are inevitable so long as Vettel continues along a path that many believe will eventually lead him to more titles than Schumacher, the current record holder. “I think this is a very complex sport and it takes a lot of things coming together to be, first

of all, in a position to fight for the championship, and then to win it”, Vettel told The Independent. “And to have that a couple of times in a row, or seven times like Michael did, is very hard to achieve. But on the other hand, I am convinced if you work hard and are ready to give everything that you have…”

Whether he’s successful or not in eclipsing Schumacher’s success, what will have proved a satisfying career when Vettel comes to look back on it? “It’s a difficult question to answer”, he told The Independent. “If you are happy, it doesn’t matter how many championships you have won or what you have achieved. Some people are happy because they have had success, others are happy because they have a nice family and a happy life. It’s the same thing if you ask ‘does money make you happy?’ I don’t know… maybe you ask me in 20 years when I’m not able to race cars anymore!”

By then, Abu Dhabi’s F1 fans will have surely bore witness to many more Vettel victories on the Yas Island Circuit.

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Life in The fasT Lane Formula One might be Bernie Ecclestone’s most famous offspring, but it’s far from his most glamorous.

Say hello to the EcclEStOnE SiStErS…

i

t’s tough being an heiress. Public opinion and reality TV are against you, altruistic endeavours are greeted with snorts of derision and your spending habits are broadcast the minute you reach for your credit card. When you are the daughters of the Formula One mogul, Bernie Ecclestone, you do not even need to look for fame to add to your already considerable fortunes to find yourself in the spotlight.

What daughter of marriageable age would not appreciate a bit of help from her dad with buying a new home? It is just that the pile Bernie bought Petra, 22 (sister to Tamara,

26) early this year is, at $141 million, the most expensive house in America, and comes with its own bowling alley and citrus orchard. She already has two houses in Chelsea, the biggest of which is worth $86 million. And what mother would not be proud to see her daughter following in her own footsteps career-wise? It is just that Tamara is the face (and body) of Ultimo swimwear.

The two gangly society beauties take after their mother Slavica Radic, a former Armani model, rather than their diminutive father, whose reported personal fortune of well over $2 billion more than makes up for

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what he lacks in stature. But despite their looks and good fortune, the sisters are known for having their heads screwed on.

“The most important thing Dad has taught us is that money really isn’t everything,” Tamara said in an interview in 2005. “Of course, it makes things easier, but it can bring its own problems. You don’t find happiness by being able to buy everything you want, whenever you want it.”

This from the girl who bought a $13,000 Rolex with her first pay cheque. Still, the sisters appear to prioritise their personal lives

ahead of their bank balances and, perhaps because of the pressures they feel as two of the world’s richest young women, have chosen to settle down early. Petra is married to businessman, James Stunt, 27, while Tamara is dating a stockbroker, Omar Khyami, 37.

The sisters have said their parents provided a grounding influence. “They both came from humble beginnings,” Petra has said, “so they respect money enough not to waste it. Mum does all the shopping herself in Waitrose and often looks for two-for-the-price-ofone deals.”

It is quite a contrast to some of the more lavish spending of the Ecclestone sisters. They travel regularly on their father’s private jets and, as teenagers, shared a credit card, on which they admitted to having an allowance of several hundred pounds a month. Petra held an engagement party earlier this year with a million-pound Bugatti supercar as a centrepiece and a private performance by Rihanna. “It was incredible,” said one guest, “but Tamara’s speech really stripped away all of the glamour – it was very sweet.

She had tears in her eyes.”

Slavica Ecclestone takes her daughters back to her native Croatia three times a year with the express intention of reminding them how ordinary people live. During the 23 years she was married to their father (the couple separated in 2009), she insisted on doing the ironing herself.

“We never had nannies or housekeepers,” Tamara said earlier this year. “Mum was into cooking and cleaning and doing everything. She was inspirational.”

The Ecclestones were raised in West London and went to the Kensington Prep School in Fulham and then Frances Holland School for Girls in Belgravia. When she was 18, Tamara worked as an assistant on her father’s racing magazine for a starting salary of $22,000 before going on to work as

a presenter for Sky Sports Italy. This month her Osbournes-style reality TV show, Billion $$ Girl, debuts in the UK. “I hope I will be taken more seriously,” she said in January, “perhaps [as] a businesswoman rather than a socialite or whatever they call me.”

Petra, meanwhile, turned down a place at Central Saint Martins to be an apprentice on Savile Row and, in 2009, started up a luxury menswear label, Form. It was launched at the Monaco Grand Prix and, after two collections, closed thanks to the unfriendly financial climate for fledgling high-end goods companies.

She is not deterred, since launching a range of bracelets she has designed for

‘The most important thing Dad has taught us is that money really isn’t everything’ a meningitis charity (Petra contracted the disease in her teens).

Tamara, meanwhile, has bought a disused pub in Knightsbridge and intends to refurbish and reopen it.

Both want to earn their own crust – during her time as designer, Petra was said to be in the office from 8.30am until 6pm every day.

If one of the great hurdles for heiresses is to be taken seriously, it does not help when so many of them are pictured falling out of nightclubs.

Not so the Ecclestone sisters: Petra does not drink or like partying, while Tamara – having been burnt by a kissand-tell boyfriend at the age of 16 – is equally discreet with her private life.

Resilience is part and parcel of the Ecclestone’s lives, from their father’s donations scandal to the false accusation that their mother used to

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be a Communist spy. Then there is the assumption they are feckless rich girls with so much money to burn that any initiative of theirs can easily flop without financial consequences, as well as the worry that anyone in their coterie of friends and admirers might only be looking to gain a little stardust by association.

“They do basically have to deal with a lot of hangers-on,” says a friend of the sisters, “but they each have quite a small group of close friends that they have known for a long time. A lot of people try and use them, but their friends are very loyal. One of Petra’s bridesmaids is a friend from primary school.”

“Naturally, I’m wary and of course it crosses our minds that people might want us for our money,” Tamara has told the press. “How can anyone ever be 100 per cent sure? Those people that expect you to pay the bill because you’re rich aren’t true friends and we stay clear of them. I don’t need anyone to look after me financially and, while it’s hard to trust that a man loves you for the right reasons, you have to take a leap of faith. I think I’m a good judge of character.”

the goodfella

Martin ScorSeSe turned to film not long after embarking on a path to the priesthood, and his lifetime’s work has been shaped by the passion and desire of an evangelist. Mick Brown meets the man acclaimed by many as america’s greatest director

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I

n the 1970s, at a time when he was being feted as one of the young lions of the ‘new Hollywood’, Martin Scorsese was a man beset by deep anxieties and forebodings. Fragile in health and temperament, he was convinced that every breath might be his last, a terrified flier who during take-off would clutch a crucifix in his hands until his knuckles turned white.

He was also a man burdened with superstitions, with a particular phobia about the number 11: avoiding flights in which the numbers added up to 11, and refusing to travel on the 11th of the month, or stay on the 11th floor of hotels. So the fact that I was meeting Scorsese on October 11 occasioned some apprehension. “I’d noticed that, too,” Scorsese says when I point out the date. He gives a resigned shrug.”It’s either very good or very bad.”

The superstition, he says, had to do with his own obsessive nature when he was younger.

“It was a way of trying to grab at the chaos of the world and say, well maybe this makes sense… Strange things kept happening with that number during that period. I found that when I’d had a bad experience, or maybe I’d been fired from a project, the numbers in the address of a building added up to 11, or it was the 11th day… But then on the other hand, the New York Film Festival where Mean Streets was premiered was the 11th festival. And even with takes – some of the best takes, I thought, in pictures that people have liked over the years have been number 11.” He pauses for a moment. “Interesting…”

It might be Scorsese’s favourite word, used as a device to buy himself time in answering a question, or as a punctuation mark, talking about the performance of an actor, the thread of a plot. He talks expansively – one might say interestingly – over a broad range of subjects, making unexpected connections, jump-cutting from film to literature to theology, giving the impression of a man who is not so

much being interrogated as engaged in a sustained interrogation of himself.

He has settled himself on a sofa in the New York hotel suite where we meet – a small, dapper man with a neat plume of silvery hair, immaculately dressed in a blue blazer, shirt and tie, beige trousers and dainty little slipper-style Italian loafers. His manner is quick and nervy, and he talks with a machine-gun rapidity, his eyebrows knitting together at moments of thoughtfulness, rising behind the thick black frames of his glasses like exclamation marks to register surprise or humour, when he explodes into bouts of sudden, shoulder-heaving laughter.

In the 1970s Scorsese was one of a generation of young maverick directors – Brian De Palma, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola among them – who would change the face of Hollywood, challenging the studio system and introducing a new vernacular into American cinema influenced by the spirit of the nouvelle vague. Of them all, it is Scorsese who has most endured. He may not have enjoyed the blockbuster successes of Lucas and Spielberg; he may not own his own vineyard, like Coppola. But it is Scorsese to whom the accolade ‘America’s greatest director’ is most often applied – the filmmaker’s filmmaker. In a career going back more than 40 years, Scorsese has made some 22 feature films.

Reflecting on his childhood in New York’s Lower East Side, Scorsese once remarked that he was raised with gangsters and priests. “And now, as an artist, in a way, I’m both a gangster and a priest.” His parents were second-generation Sicilian immigrants – a presser and a seamstress – who had risen from the Italian quarter of the Lower East Side to the leafy suburbs of Queens, where Scorsese was born, but then, when he was seven years old, been cast back by financial circumstance to the teeming streets of ‘Little Italy’.

The architecture of Elizabeth

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1.

2.

3.

On the set of Raging Bull.

In conversation off screen with Robert De Niro.

On the set of Casino with Sharon Stone.

1.

2.

3.

Street, where Scorsese grew up, has barely changed in 60 years, but the social fabric has been thoroughly transformed. The mom and pop stores and Italian social clubs have given way to smart boutiques and restaurants – the overspill from nearby SoHo. Scorsese was a sickly child who suffered from asthma, and was confined to his home for long periods.

You can stand on the pavement outside the tenement building where he lived, look up to the third floor and imagine him gazing longingly out of the window, closely observing the busy theatre of the streets below, the children playing, the local hoodlums loitering on the corner, “men moving furniture, people yelling like you see in Italian movies”.

His love affair with film began in the local cinemas where his father would take him and his elder brother Frank, and in front of the television set that his family bought largely to keep him amused – the first on the street. Scorsese would spend hours watching good films, bad films – any films – drawing his own scenes, frame by frame, in a notebook and flicking the pages to create his own animated movies. Even now, when shooting a film, he works from extremely detailed storyboards that he has drawn himself.

Scorsese was an altar boy at the local Old St Patrick’s Cathedral, and seemingly much given to reflecting on matters of faith. His decision to study for the priesthood was rooted in pragmatism. “I thought a lot about salvation, and it seemed that the best guarantee of being saved was to become a priest.” In 1956, at the age of 14, he enrolled at the Cathedral College on the Upper West Side, planning to study in the junior seminary and then take his vows. He lasted a year before the distraction of a girlfriend led to his being expelled.

He went on to read English and film at New York University School of the Arts. Scorsese once said that his whole life “has been movies and religion.

That’s it. Nothing else.”

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A few weeks after our meeting in New York, Scorsese was speaking at the BFI in London. For two hours he held forth with extraordinary erudition on British, American, Spanish and Italian cinema, and how he had been trying to catch up on South Korean cinema with a crashcourse of DVDs. “The Day a Pig Fell into the Well… I watched that twice.”

Filmmaking was not simply a matter of learning technique and craft and mastering technology, he said, but of passion and desire. To illustrate the point he played a clip from Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s 1948 masterpiece The Red Shoes, a film that Scorsese first saw when he was eight years old, and which he has recently been instrumental in restoring to its original Technicolor glory. In the clip he chose, the impresario Lermontov asks the young ballet dancer, Vicky, ‘Why do you want to dance?’ She replies, ‘Why do you want to live?’

‘Well, I don’t know exactly why, but…

I must,’ Lermontov says. ‘That’s my answer, too,’ Vicky says.

“That’s the way it is with art,” Scorsese told his audience. “It’s not that you want to do it, it’s that you have to do it. You have no choice.”

He went on to talk about another of the significant influences on his life as a filmmaker – Shadows, made by the director John Cassavetes, who is widely regarded as the father of American independent cinema. Made in 1959, Shadows is about bohemian life in Greenwich Village – barely a mile, but what Scorsese describes as “a world”, away from the tightly familial immigrant milieu in which he grew up.

It inspired in him the idea that he too could make films drawing on his own world and experiences and rooted in emotional truth.

His first feature-length film, Who’s That Knocking at My Door, in 1968, was a semi-auto-biographical neighbourhood story of a young Italian-American (Harvey Keitel) who discovers that his girlfriend has been raped. When Cassavetes saw the film he declared it “better than Citizen

Kane, it’s got more heart”. Cassavetes became a close friend and mentor – unstinting in his support of Scorsese, and unsparing in his criticism.

Scorsese remembers that when he made his first feature in Hollywood in 1972 for the producer Roger Corman, the Depression-era exploitation film Boxcar Bertha, Cassavetes told him, “You’ve just spent a year of your life making a piece of shit.”

The criticism reinforced Scorsese’s conviction to return to what he knew.

The result was Mean Streets, made in 1973, the story of a small-time hoodlum in Little Italy, torn between the conflicting codes of the Church and the mob. Made for only $600,000, and utilising the kind of pounding rock’n’roll soundtrack that would become a motif of his films, Mean Streets established Scorsese and its young star Robert De Niro in the vanguard of the new wave of American film.

Martin Scorsese says that many of the themes that recur in his films – the struggle to find morality in an immoral world, male camaraderie, what a life of violence can do to a man – can be traced to the streets of his childhood. “The world I came from was very much based on loyalty and trust, and even beyond family ties; it comes from the old Sicilian world where god-parents were as important as blood relatives. And I think that’s why so many of the stories I’ve done are rooted in a kind of tribal behaviour that has to do with betrayal.

When a person does ‘betray’ the other – he or she – why does that happen?

What puts that person very often in a place where they have no choice, they couldn’t do otherwise – and where the decision is not good either way – that’s very interesting to me.

“You can see it in GoodFellas, you see it in Casino… Gangs of New York – that was a major change. I’d realised it over the years, but that film was when I suddenly began to understand it.”

He laughs. “Oh, I see!” The interesting thing, he says, is how life tends to replicate art, how you could turn the

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‘Scorsese was a smasher of telephones, a thrower of glasses, a puncher of walls, who frequently fought with studios, collaborators, girlfriends and wives’

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camera around and see exactly the same dilemmas being acted out by those making the film – the same tribal loyalties, the same betrayals.

“People talk about this group of us in Los Angeles in the early 1970s being so ambitious – yes, well ambition is part of it. But it was also a kind of obsessive drive – me and a number of other people at that time, that whether I like it or not it’s there, and it still seems to be. And sometimes when your drive gets in the way of another’s drive, that can be a problem, even when you’re best friends. A lot of it was my own doing.” That shoulder heaving laugh. “The old refrain was, is it something I said? Ha, ha, ha! Well, maybe it was.”

Scorsese was a smasher of telephones, a thrower of glasses, a puncher of walls, who frequently fought with studios, collaborators, girlfriends and wives. His first marriage, to Laraine Brennan, whom he had met at NYU, ended in 1971 when he left her behind in New York to follow the work to Los Angeles. His second, to the writer Julia Cameron, ended in 1977.

Scorsese was close friends with Robbie Robertson of the Band, about whom he made the documentary film The Last Waltz. He and Robertson shared a house in the Hollywood Hills and a prodigious appetite for drugs.

In 1978 he was rushed to hospital with internal bleeding and almost died. At his bedside Robert De Niro pleaded with him to look again at a book that De Niro had given him some years earlier: Raging Bull, the autobiography of Jake La Motta, the former world champion middleweight boxer. Scorsese wasn’t interested in boxing, but he could see something of himself in the ageing prizefighter’s self-destructive tendencies, and his struggle for redemption. The film won Scorsese his first Academy Award nomination for Best Director.

From the outset, he has tended to work with a small roster of male actors (and his central protagonists have always tended to be male) who

share his vision and sensibility.

Harvey Keitel was an early favourite.

But it was Robert De Niro with whom he enjoyed the longest working relationship, beginning with Mean Streets and on through Taxi Driver to GoodFellas and Casino – what might be called ‘wise guy’ films. De Niro came from the same neighbourhood as Scorsese. “He was like somebody who’s part of your family. He knows what a look means in that world, he knows how a person should open a door, or how they should be selfeffacing and make themselves look like they’re part of the furniture when certain people enter a room – he just understood that.” Since Gangs of New York in 2002, Leonardo DiCaprio has supplanted De Niro as Scorsese’s leading man. “Leo has a similar sensibility to me. I’m 30 years older than him, but I think we see the world the same way, meaning he feels comfortable with the characters I’ve dealt with over the years in movies – with Robert De Niro’s films, with Keitel” Scorsese is a collector. He has a compendious collection of vintage film posters, some of which line the walls of his offices – most of which are housed at New York’s Museum of Modern Art – and also of first editions by such authors as James Joyce, Herman Melville, Aldous Huxley and Graham Greene. Scorsese says that his was not a home where there were books, and as a child he was mildly dyslexic, but he read Greene’s The Heart of the Matter in his early teens, and it was a revelation. It is tempting to think that Scorsese shares Greene’s view of human nature as ‘not black and white, but black and grey’. Talking of his film The Departed, he once said that what attracted him to the story was that “Good and bad become very blurred. It’s a world where morality doesn’t exist, good doesn’t exist, so you can’t even sin any more as there’s nothing to sin against. There’s no redemption of any kind.”

I raise the subject of Greene’s first novel, The Man Within, with

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its epigraph from the 17th-century philosopher Sir Thomas Browne.

‘There’s another man within me…’ To my surprise, Scorsese interrupts and completes the quotation. ‘That’s angry with me…’

Does he recognise that in himself?

“Oh yes.” He laughs. “Very upset and angry.” Are you less angry now?

“No, I’m still angry. But the anger in the olden days may have been more self-consuming, where you could not get out of it.” He laughs. “You lose a lot of friends that way. But I think in the past 15 or 16 years, round about the time my parents died, I had to assume a lot of responsibilities and obligations.” He pauses, thinking about this. He was married for the fifth time in 1999, to Helen Morris.

“I have a young daughter now who’s 10. I’m in my sixties. I have two older daughters, but I was in my twenties then – it’s a different situation.

“With anger, you have to keep it from eating you up if you’re interested in continuing. Anger is one way of expressing it. Another way of expressing it is caring about the state of who you are and what’s happening in the world. And I think the anger now is more towards the way things are than in myself. So that I have to find my place in that, rather than consuming myself in uselessness.”

You sense that, like Scott Fitzgerald, Scorsese believes that the redeeming things are not happiness and pleasure, but ‘the deeper satisfaction that comes out of struggle’ – in his case between his personal vision and the imperatives of the marketplace.

The films that critics often cite as being among his most accomplished – Mean Streets and Raging Bull – were not outstanding commercial successes. The films that one senses were the closest to his heart – The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) and Kundun (1997), about the early life of the Dalai Lama – both involved a prolonged struggle to bring to the screen.

Musing on all this, Scorsese says you have to be “a little crazy” even to

think about making a film. “It’s an extremely physical process. And also, the films I’ve made over the years, I’ve had to work within the studio system.

There are obligations everywhere, because it costs money, and you have to be reasonable – up to a point, of course. You’re taking a big gamble every time, and you never know how it will be received. I’ve had to encourage the crew on occasion – ‘Come on, there are people out there waiting to pan this picture…’ ” He gives his shoulder-heaving laugh. “But it’s what filmmaking is. I always complain, and then you try and do it again.” You go on, Scorsese continues. And you do what you can do.

“We’ve had 100 years of cinema now. Change is inevitable. I saw [the screenwriter] Paul Schrader last night.

He said, ‘Marty, don’t you understand, now the young person will have a computer, they’ll be watching the restoration of The Red Shoes and at the same time be watching a commentary by Martin Scorsese in the corner of the screen; then some friend of theirs will call – “there’s something called Skype?” – and then they’ll be talking: Hey, I’m watching The Red Shoes and there’s Scorsese’… It’s a different experience.

“I remember watching Citizen Kane or The Third Man on TV, and there’s commercials, and my mother’s talking, and the apartment’s the size of a shoebox, and there’s people arguing and the dog’s barking – you’re still watching it, and then it’s on another night and you’ll catch the end of it. But you really have to be someone who’s obsessed by that to keep focused.

“The new generation sees the world in a different way and I don’t know what that is. I just retreat into what I know.” He laughs. “I don’t even know how to use a computer. But I do have this…’ He reaches for his BlackBerry and mimes texting a message. “I can do this but it’s hurting my thumbs.”

Images: Corbis / Arabian Eye Text: Mick Brown / Telegraph Magazine / The Interview People

‘The new generation sees the world in a different way and I don’t know what that is’

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He’s Having a laugH

Talking to Ricky GeRvais has been likened to coaxing a polecat from beneath the sofa. Not when we spoke it wasn’t: he gave us a riotous account of how he went from eating beans on Shredded Wheat to building a fortune – and the implications it’s had for buying underpants...

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R

icky Gervais’s laugh is truly a thing of wonder. Outside the temperature is freezing. Somehow, the interior of Gervais’s Hampstead office manages to be even colder.

At times it feels as if the only source of warmth in the room is Gervais’s extraordinary cackle.

Gervais is famous for a lot of things but that laugh is right up there. It is so popular that it has inspired numerous websites in exalted tribute. A ten-minute YouTube montage of Gervais laughter has clocked up millions of hits. Even when he’s only mildly amused, it sounds like three men laughing at once. When he finds something downright hilarious, the laugh sounds like a cross between a pack of mating hyenas and the noise you might hear echoing around the corridors of a 19th century lunatic asylum; and it’s no more evident than when he’s reflecting on one of the bleakest chapters of his student days. “I was down to my last 50p,” he tells me, “the last remnants of my student grant. The water meter in my flat had reached zero and I had no clean clothes to wear.

Also, I needed a wash. So I decided to wash myself and my clothes at the same time. But I had a dilemma. Do I put the shirts in with me and use the last bit of shampoo, thereby compromising the shirts? Or do I put the last bit of Daz in and compromise my skin? In the end I went for the Daz option. Let’s get my shirts looking good, that’s the priority.

It was a big mistake because I felt all gritty and itchy.

“That same day I realised I was starving and had nothing at all to eat so decided to raid one of the kitchens in the halls of residence, but all I could find was some stale Shredded Wheat and a tin of baked beans. So I laid out the Shredded Wheat and flattened it so that it vaguely looked like a thick slice of toast. Then I found out that the oven didn’t work, so I just poured the cold beans on top of it. It was pretty grim. At the time I wasn’t thinking that this is going to make for an amusing anecdote 20 years down the line. I was thinking, this is a terrible situation to be in and I really shouldn’t be living like a loser.”

It’s been a long time since Gervais felt like a loser or had to worry about being down to his last sorry coin. A glance around his office tells the story of just how far he’s come since those hungry, hard-up student days. One wall of the office is given over to bulging shelves containing various DVD versions of his work from the last decade: TV masterpieces The Office (the 10th anniversary DVD of which is out this month), Extras and the animated Ricky Gervais Show, a stack of movies including Ghost Town, The Invention Of Lying and Cemetery Junction, as well as his four live shows. He’s been showered with awards, including three Golden Globes (for The Office), two primetime Emmys (for Extras), seven Baftas and so many British Comedy Awards that everybody’s lost count.

Another wall of his office is filled with Post-it notes containing ideas for his soon-to-be-released series, Life’s Too Short, a comedy about the everyday trials of a showbiz

dwarf. Judging by this hub of creativity, it doesn’t seem like Gervais is planning to take a holiday any time soon.

Indeed, the idea strikes him as plainly absurd.

“I don’t really do holidays,” he says. “At least not the kind that involve sitting on a beach for a fortnight. My whole life feels like a holiday. Winston Churchill said that once you find a job that you love, you’ll never work again. That’s what it’s like for me. When I do get a rare day off I’ll come up with an idea for a sitcom and it all starts up again. When I’m out running in the park I’m thinking up new comedy routines. I go to bed and think up jokes. It never stops and I don’t want it to stop because I love every moment of it.”

Interviewers haven’t always found Ricky Gervais an easy subject, but today he couldn’t be more affable or more generous with his time. His first big laugh of the day arrives as I take a seat opposite him. I lean back and the chair collapses, nearly throwing me onto the carpet. Gervais whoops loudly, explaining that it’s a “joke” chair belonging to his writing partner, Stephen Merchant.

Laughter has always come easy to him. “I was the youngest of four so it was always a bit of a fight to get my share of the laughs. All my family had a good sense of humour. They were funny even when they didn’t realise they were being funny. One time I was watching the news with my nan. There was a report about a prison riot with footage of these prisoners ripping lead off the roof and chucking it at the warders down below. My nan tutted and said, ‘Look at that lot, they should all be locked up.’ You never forget stuff like that.

“Growing up, TV comedy was a huge inspiration to me.

I got into Monty Python very early because my sister and brothers were laughing at it. Then I started to discover my own stuff. Abigail’s Party was one of the first comedy revelations for me. It had such a brilliant vein of irony that I hadn’t seen before. But the irony in it also made me feel guilty because I felt he was laughing at my family.

Mike Leigh was laughing at working-class aspirations to be slightly better but getting it all wrong. Like putting red wine in the fridge. But I’ve come to realise there’s no part of society you shouldn’t be allowed to satirise. There’s nothing you shouldn’t joke about. Comedy comes from a good or a bad place, it’s all about context. People should know the difference between satire and being nasty.

“The same people who think I go too far in my standup are probably the same people who enjoy The X Factor.

In my live show I talk about Susan Boyle being exploited through the way she looks, but I’m not having a pop at her. I do watch these shows, and there’s no doubt they’re exploitative. It’s just like the days of the Victorian freak show. You can say that people have volunteered to take part in these shows. But John Merrick, the Elephant Man, also volunteered to go on show as a human curiosity back in the 1880s. No difference at all.” The young Ricky Gervais prepared for a future life as a comedy writer and actor by developing a keen eye and ear for the vagaries of human behaviour. “The Office could never have happened

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‘Winston Churchill said that once you find a job that you love, you’ll never work again. That’s what it’s like for me’ if I hadn’t been a people-watcher. As far back as I can remember I was always closely observing people. I wasn’t consciously storing this stuff up, thinking it could come in useful at a later date. It was a story to tell down the pub or wherever.

“The very first seed of David Brent was sewn when I left school at 18 and took a year out of education to make some money. I went along with another schoolmate to a job placement interview. The interviewer said, ‘I’ve got just the job for you,’ and called up a friend of his. He went, ‘Sammy, you old b******. Got two guys here who would be perfect for the job. Of course they’re over 21...’ Then he winked at us and did the Pinocchio thing where he pretended to stretch his nose, almost exactly as I used it in The Office. As I was sitting there I remember thinking that we’re meant to be trusting this man, but he’s lying to his best mate. That doesn’t work at all. “The job he got us was in a factory making tables with two bent tubes for legs.

I’d haul the tubes out of a vat of oil when they were straight and have to grind down the edges, then pass them to someone else who would bend them into the shape of table legs. It was horrible, depressing work by any standards.

On the first morning I was getting on with it, passing these tubes to another guy and he went, ‘Here, who are you trying to impress, mate? Why are you going so fast?’ I’ve kept that with me ever since. There’s no sense in rushing things when you don’t have to.”

Having graduated from University College London with a 2:1 in philosophy, he made a stab at being a pop star as part of the New Romantic duo Seona Dancing. Despite

fleeting chart success in The Philippines, the band split after releasing two singles. “It makes me think of my young cousin on Grand National day when he was allowed for the first time to spend his pocket money on a bet. His horse came in at 20/1. My mum said that was the worst thing that could happen to him because winning on his first time out didn’t teach him a lesson. It would have been better for him if he’d lost. She was right because he carried on betting. In my own case I went in with a demo tape and got a record deal. I thought, ‘This is fantastic. It’s going to last forever.’ I was trying to be a pop star whereas I should have been trying to be a songwriter.

I remembered that lesson when I started doing comedy. I didn’t want to be a celebrity, I wanted to be a writer. I didn’t want to be an actor, I wanted to be a director.”

There was a long wait ahead. Briefly he managed an early version of the indie band Suede. Then, for eight years, he worked as entertainments manager at his old university.

At 36, he was a decidedly unlikely candidate to emerge as the biggest comedy name of his generation. Then, in 1997, he got a job at music station Xfm. It was here that he would forge friendships with two figures who would become his two main collaborators: Stephen Merchant and Karl Pilkington.

In 1999, Merchant went off to train as a BBC producer and asked Gervais to help him make a film as part of the course. The result was effectively a dry run for The Office.

When Gervais brought The Office to the BBC, he demanded and got absolute control, right down to the final cut and a say in what time it was broadcast. The first series emerged in 2001, slowly attracted an audience then became a full-blown phenomenon. “When The Office first broke, I turned to my girlfriend and said, ‘I should have done this years ago.’ And she went, ‘Yeah, but it wouldn’t have been any good then.’ She was right. You’ve got to have life experiences. You’ve got to write about what you know, and you’ve got to write about something that other people don’t know. Or at least you’ve got to put your own slant on something.” The Office made him a household name.

Instantly recognisable, he was unprepared for the reality of walking the streets to be confronted by total strangers performing David Brent’s famous dance. “Even stranger was the fact that strangers would come up to me and say, ‘People tell me I’m exactly like David Brent.’ Let’s be honest, that’s a weird thing to admit.”

After The Office came Extras. Once again, Gervais demanded and got complete control. Then came roles in Hollywood. If Gervais was known only for his standup, he would qualify as one of Britain’s most successful comedians. But it’s the astonishing range of his output that puts him in a league of his own. Aside from writing, directing and starring in his TV and movie projects, there’s Flanimals, his series of children’s books. The blog on his website receives over one million hits per week.

Gervais’s podcasts, his recorded banter with Merchant and Pilkington, have been downloaded more than 200 million

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Images: Gallo / Getty Images Text: Jon Wilde / Live Magazine / The Interview People

times, breaking all records. Clearly it’s his work with those two that bring him the most pleasure.

“They’re crucial,” he says. “As soon as I met Stephen, we got on instantly. We fill in each other’s gaps. When we’re writing we’ll start at 11.30am and finish up at 3pm, with a fairly long break for lunch. The time is split evenly between mucking about and actually working. If we’ve got 30 seconds of good material by the end, I’m buzzing.

Stephen says that working with me is like one of those documentaries where they’ve put a secret camera in someone’s house on a council estate somewhere, and they’ve given the kids too much Kia-Ora, and they’re completely frenzied, smashing the place up. That’s about right. I do get fairly manic. The dynamic with Karl is different but works just as well. If you plant an idea in his head he won’t let go of it.”

Asked what he would change about his life, Gervais pauses for the first time. “The things that used to bother me I’ve managed to let go. I still get my share of criticism. I started off fearing it. Then I made the point of combating it.

Then I ignored it. Now I quite like it. To me it’s like wiggling a loose tooth.

“I do value my privacy. When I came into this business I didn’t sign a contract that said anyone who wants to can go through my bins. There are people who love doing that and it gets worse all the time. You see people telling the most awful things about themselves in the papers every day. Then they bring out yet another autobiography, even though they’ve told us everything. Or maybe they’ve held some tragic detail back for the book.”

He has similar concerns when celebrities front charity campaigns. “Whenever I do things like Comic Relief I always make the dig that there are all these celebrities doing it in the open. They don’t have to go public about it.

There are people standing outside supermarkets every day of the week raising money for cancer research and they’re not getting anything out of it. The problem with famous people fronting charity campaigns is that a lot of people think, ‘He’s getting something out of this, and I wish he wasn’t.’ If that person came to your house and asked for money, saying that no one would ever know about it, it would be different.

“If anything’s changed for me, it’s that it’s more difficult to observe people like I used to. Now I’m the one being observed. I’ll be sitting in a restaurant having a salad, be conscious of someone looking at me and start to wonder if he’s tweeting about it. Or I’ll walk into a shop to buy some underpants and see one cashier whisper to the next. In that case I’ll walk out and buy my underpants somewhere else.

But it’s a small price to pay. After all I spend my whole life pleasing myself. I can honestly say that my life has turned out exactly as I wanted it to.”

And, with that, he fires off the loudest laugh of the afternoon. Make no mistake, Ricky Gervais might have the coldest office there’s ever been. Other than that, he’s got the world by the tail.

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Motoring

Positive Karma Nick Hall rides the front runner in the race for the first great eco luxury car

G

oing green is big business right now. And though virtually all manufacturers are clamouring for a slice of the environmentally friendly action – Audi, Porsche and BMW are all working on their own versions – it looks like the big names have been beaten to the punch by a small start-up firm from California. The Fisker Karma is more or less the perfect eco luxury car.

Fisker is headed up by former Aston Martin designer Henrik Fisker. And it’s going to make big waves in the coming years. Put simply, this is the first viable eco car you could drive every day, pretty much anywhere, and for any length of time. There are no caveats, there are no problems

and there are no sacrifices.

First of all, it’s beautiful. More than that, the Karma looks like the future it represents. It’s a step forward in car design, as well as technology. There are hints of Aston Martin here and also the BMW Z8 that Fisker also penned, but the low-slung and swooping lines are normally found on concept cars that never see the light of day.

Inside it is beautifully adorned, stitched and leather bound, like a perfect clad book. Bright red lights line the centre console and there’s a futuristic looking screen and LCD dials to demonstrate the power. It’s also a very well appointed car, and of course it should be; the Karma costs

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the same as a high-end Mercedes, Audi or BMW. Is it quite as good as those market leaders inside?

Possibly not, but then it doesn’t really need to be, because the Karma is a concept, a mission statement and the early adopters have queued up to put down 3,000 deposits.

Because the elite, the glitterati and more can now abandon their Toyota Prius and drive a real, big, beautiful car with a social conscience. Because Fisker mated its substantial 199bhp worth of batteries to a 256bhp, two-litre turbo petrol-powered engine to create a high-end sports saloon that is more innovative than it sounds. And because this is a range extender system rather than a traditional hybrid,

and it should almost put an end to the first world problem that is ‘Range Anxiety’.

The batteries take just five and a half hours to fully charge and offer more than 70km of running in ‘Stealth’ mode, which is purely on battery power. And it’s worth noting here that it feels as silky smooth as a Rolls-Royce, wafting silently to 100kph in 7.9s and swallowing roads with near regal elegance.

Electric motors have a long way to go, but there are some very cool aspects to them. The main one is that they provide massive amounts of torque, more than two Ferrari 458s at 981lb/ft, from absolutely 0rpm. The split second you push the throttle all that torque is right there, and that’s a truly special feeling. In ‘Sport’ mode, accessed with a paddle behind the wheel, the petrol engine fires up and the 100kph time falls to a remarkable 5.9s.

But there’s a downside, a big one: the engine thrashes like a shark on land, it’s raw and brutal and not a particularly attractive sound.

It doesn’t especially matter that the Karma is limited electronically to 200kph, it’s not an out-and-out sportscar despite its remarkable acceleration. It will lose out at the race track because it weighs 2,070kg, which is huge, and that’s largely down to the batteries, which are heavy enough to sink a battleship. Fisker did its best to position the batteries sympathetically, in a spline down the middle, but no amount of clever design can hide that much weight.

So the Karma isn’t the most rewarding driving experience from a purist’s point of view.

But then owning a car like this will give its owner the excuse to go and buy a thoroughbred sportscar for the weekend. The Fisker is the environmental statement that will show friends, colleagues and business associates that you’re not about to compromise on style to display your social conscience.

Price guide: $135,000 Engine: Twin-electric motors (260bh) and 2-litre turbo petrol Power: 402bhp Torque: 981lb/ft 0-100kpm: 5.9s Top speed: 200kph

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Motoring

High Rollers Matt Slater on the silver lady’s very bright future

T

raditionalists will argue the creation of a RollsRoyce Phantom in bright purple flies in the face of everything this proud, historical brand stands for.

Combine the bodywork with an all-white interior and vast amounts of chrome, and you are left with an automobile that would look perfectly at home in a Jay Z video.

But when the car, built for American collector Michael Fux, was unveiled on the plush manicured lawns of the Quail Golf Club in California, Torsten Muller-Otvos, the CEO of Rolls-Royce, could not have been prouder.

As the crowds gathered to take pictures of the Phantom, he revealed how it’s this type of bespoke Rolls-Royce that is helping to reinvigorate the company – and the Middle East is right at the head of that push.

“Who are we to say what defines good taste?” he said.

“There is a new generation of wealthy and powerful car enthusiasts who love the history of Rolls-Royce but want to give it a modern twist and we completely embrace that.

“The Middle East market illustrates this trend perfectly.

Our bespoke service allows the buyer to customise

absolutely everything on the car – from the colour of the car to the stitching on the seats and the size and shape of the gear stick. In the Gulf this is a service that is very popular and is preferred over the traditional way of ordering a Rolls-Royce.

“Abu Dhabi is the single biggest market for bespoke Rolls-Royce in the world and the region as a whole is responding to the principles of bespoke.”

Mr Muller-Otvos is fascinated by the influence hip-hop, basketball and bling culture is having on those in the Middle East with the funds and desire to buy a luxury car.

On visits to the region he has noticed Rolls-Royce owners are younger than in the more established markets and is convinced his company must respond to demands they may not have once been equipped to deal with. “The important business leaders in the Gulf are full of energy and ideas and when we meet them it is clear they will not be satisfied with anything less than a truly unique Rolls-Royce,” he says.

“Hip-hop and American sports culture is clearly influential and it is translating into the choices being

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‘Abu Dhabi is the single biggest market for bespoke Rolls-Royce in the world’ made when purchasing a bespoke Rolls-Royce. It is very interesting to see.

“Owners are not holding back from the bling factor and I can honestly say I love the way they are going with our cars.

But it is intriguing how they also involve traditional values.

The fact so many order interiors with the family badge or name embroidered into the leather shows how proud they are of family and there are also other twists which pay tribute to the places they are from.”

A total of 2,711 Rolls-Royce were built at the company’s headquarters in Sussex, England, during the course of 2010. Mr Muller-Otvos and his team are certain that figure will be beat in 2011 and the hopes are that, despite the global financial slow down, sales will continue on an upward trajectory. The majority of purchases are still in North America but emerging markets such as the Gulf – with the UAE at the forefront – are catching up fast.

“We have recently opened in Qatar, which is a country that has a lot of attention at the moment, and the early feedback is good,” added Mr Muller-Otvos. “My team is also looking at Bahrain and it will be fascinating to see what they come back with.”

Unsurprisingly, India is also high on the Rolls-Royce agenda and the company is in the middle of a big push into the country. “We handed over a bespoke Rolls-Royce in India recently and the buyer was just in his twenties. It was incredible the drive and ambition this young businessman had.

“It is a source of great pride for Rolls-Royce that these types of people want one of our cars. The quality of our cars is unquestionable and I think we are showing we are a company that moves with the times and is certainly not stuck in the past.”

At the end of 2011, the Rolls-Royce executive team will

be regular visitors to the Gulf and keen to achieve a series of goals as they head into the new year. The priority will be to take stock of the business in the UAE and look at the best way of speaking directly to potential owners about the bespoke service. In addition, they will also be bringing with them the first ever Rolls-Royce powered by electricity.

Currently just a prototype, there are no plans to take the vehicle to market, but it is being taken around the globe to gain feedback from current customers. Mr MullerOtvos admits the reaction so far has been mixed, with some praising the efforts of Rolls-Royce to explore a green option, but with many saying they would never consider purchasing one. “It is very hard to judge what the opinions are going to be wherever we go and that is definitely going to be the case in the Middle East,” he said. “There is no point in pretending everyone has loved the car. It is a fantastic drive but a lot of people say that if they are going to live the dream of owning a Rolls-Royce it needs to be the real thing. They love everything about the power and engine and the exhilaration of putting their foot down and feeling that roar.

“Who knows what they will think of it in the Middle East?”

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Gastronomy

Table Talk Designer David Collins has arguably done as much as any chef to help transform London’s dining scene into the world’s best. Here he talks AIR through the city’s famous restaurants he’s designed and the stories behind them

J. Sheekey Designed in 1998 J.Sheekey is one of my favourite restaurants. Someone whose opinion I respect a lot once told me that instead of entertaining at home, she took friends out to J.Sheekey, sat in the furthest room and felt as if she was entertaining in her own home.

I think this says it all. Of course, it has a long history, and when Jeremy King and Chris Corben decided to buy it and refurbish it in 1999, they were very conscious of this history and its connection with theatreland.

Therefore I was really pleased and delighted on the opening evening when I walked into the restaurant to find it pretty empty; they don’t believe in doing pre-openings or hype. But, that evening, sitting at the table in the first room was an actress called Googie Withers, who sadly passed away this year, and she was there with a friend. I was introduced to her and we chatted away and I pointed out to her that her photograph was adorning the wall, amongst the many other black and white pictures which had been brought to the restaurant during the 50’s and 60’s by actors from the theatre who dined there. It was a kind

of tradition that they brought a signed picture or still from their play to put on the wall. And these were the only pieces I retained from the previous incarnation of the restaurant.

The WolSeley Designed in 2003 It’s kind of odd how I ended up designing The Wolseley. Again, Jeremy and Chris Corben had bought the building but they had employed somebody else to design it, and so I kind of shrugged my shoulders and moved on. But they called me out of the blue and I rather unwisely said I love that building so much I would almost design the restaurant for nothing. So I almost did it for nothing! However, it has given me a lot of pleasure over the years and I like the fact that it is casual and, most of all, accessible, because growing up in Dublin that’s what restaurants had to be, accessible, and cater for everybody. locanda locaTelli Designed in 2008 This was my first Italian restaurant.

Giorgio Locatelli is charismatic and strong willed. His wife, Plaxy, is very

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‘Sometimes when I don’t know what to do I kind of imagine myself as somebody else’

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opinionated and really knows how to run a restaurant. So, they have got a great partnership there; he is a great cook and she is a great operator. But the building it was located in at the time was not very inspiring. However, I wanted to create some of what Giorgio’s vision was, which was that a Locatelli restaurant is really a place

do what I like to Bob Bob Ricard.

Sometimes when I don’t know what to do I kind of imagine myself as somebody else, and in this case I imagined myself as Muiccia Prada designing a restaurant, which had to be in some ways challenging to one’s taste and one’s idea of good taste.

But it also had to be luxurious. And

‘I created a bit of havoc in my office by saying that I didn’t want any straight lines in Nobu’ where people, especially families, can feel comfortable in and eat in. Many years later this restaurant continues to pull in the crowds and yet remain very informal.

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Massimo.

Bob Bob Ricard.

The Gilbert Scott.

The Wolseley.

Nobu Berkeley Street.

J. Sheekey.

Locanda Locatelli.

nobu berkeley STreeT Designed in 2008 Nobu Berkeley Street was something that was, I suppose, a little bit of a departure from the more David Collins type of work that I had done previously. It came hot on the heels of Wolseley and, in fact, I set myself a task of designing something that didn’t look like anything I had done before. I created a bit of havoc in my office by saying that I didn’t want any straight lines in the restaurant.

I don’t know what I was thinking, but it became very complicated and, strangely enough, even though I find it very noisy, of all the projects I’ve done, we find very unexpected people coming to us and saying: ‘Nobu Berkeley Street is my favourite restaurant, I didn’t know you did it’.

Which I guess is nice. But, you know, not wanting to sound too arrogant, I have had plenty of people tell me that they don’t like what I do as well! bob bob ricard Designed in 2008 I was given a pretty free range to

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so even though no one else might see this, Bob Bob Ricard is my Mui Mui moment.

MaSSiMo Designed in 2011 Massimo was a restaurant which (design wise) was very influenced by the building it was in, although the actual room didn’t even exist when we first started work on it; it was just an empty concrete site with no ceiling, no floors and a rather difficult window treatment. They were great clients and they let me do what I wanted to do. I designed it and designed it and couldn’t get it right, and then suddenly I had painted the grey and white columns, that you’ll see inside, on one of my little sketches that no one else but I can read, and it came together.

GilberT ScoTT Designed in 2011 Gilbert Scott was a funny project for me. From the outset I was very constricted by English Heritage, with what I could do and what I couldn’t do, but the fact that Marcus Wearing is such a great chef and operator meant that I was able to overcome all of these challenges. People do seem to love this restaurant, which is good for Marcus and good for Harry Handelsman, who built the hotel.

Gastronomy

He built El Bulli into the world’s most prestigious restaurant – and then, at the height of its fame, closed it down. Now, he’s looking for new inspiration. Genevieve Roberts meets Ferran Adrià

P

eople think I’m on holiday,” Ferran Adrià laughs. “I’m relaxed, but I’ve only had three days off in the past three months.”

It has been that long since Adrià, arguably the world’s greatest chef, closed El Bulli, the Spanish restaurant with near-mythical status. Until then, foodies had travelled from around the world to experience the 30-course culinary circus that included spherical olives, foie gras made into dust and peach liquid. But no more.

The chef seems remarkably laid back about the closure.

Much more so than the many who once dreamed of getting a table at El Bulli. But then there were always going to be many disappointed gourmands, given that he served only 50 people a night, and more than two million would bid for the 8,000 places available each six-month season. “We are now just closing for a slightly longer period,” he jokes, although there is no suggestion that his restaurant will reopen in its previous form. Plainly, he sees his next project as an evolution rather than an ending.

“There’s not a big difference,” he says. “We’re doing what we would do every year, and travelling a lot. The difference now is that we’d usually be working on new ideas for menus; instead we’re working on new ideas and concepts.”

I meet him and his Spanish translator for lunch – a selection of dishes cooked from his new book, out now, entitled The Family Meal – at Google’s London offices.

The book offers step-by-step instructions and photos for 31 meals, each of three courses and costing no more than $5 per person, based on the dinners his staff would share together each night at 6pm, before service started.

“In Spain, it’s quite common in professional kitchens to talk about the staff as family, because we spend a lot of time together. If you eat well, you work well and in a

‘The transformation has to happen when at the top, not at the bottom’ contented manner,” he says.

In contrast to the culinary theatrics that Adrià gave the world – the mojito baguettes, game-meat cappuccinos and fish wrapped in candy floss that his guests ate at El Bulli – the meals shared by staff were straightforward home cooking: pasta and risotto; salads and burgers; Adrià’s favourite noodles with mussels. Adrià has lost 20kgs over the past two years, exercising for 40 minutes a day.

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Text: Genevieve Roberts / The Independent / The Interview People

‘From time to time, we will serve diners but guests won’t pay; they’ll be invited’

“The solution isn’t dieting,” he says. “Most of us delude ourselves, because we don’t have the willpower to do an exercise regime.”

But he is not turning his back on the avant-garde creations (he dislikes the term “molecular gastronomy”, and its associations with science laboratories) that made him world famous. “This is a special circumstance. I am not going to do another cookbook like this for home cooks,” he says.

He is also compiling 4,000 pages of recipes from El Bulli, covering the year 2006 when the restaurant was first named the best in the world, until its closure in 2011 (previous recipes, going back to 1983 when Adrià, now 49, joined El Bulli, have already been published).

While documenting a glittering past – Adrià became a pot washer at 18, joined El Bulli as line chef at 22 and was made head chef at 24 – may be enough for most people, he is firmly focused on the future. Perhaps it’s a logical progression that his next venture will be dedicated to pushing the limits of cuisine. In 2014, he will open El Bulli Foundation, a place chefs can think about creation and development, away from the kitchen.

Early sketches suggest it will look like a technologically advanced James Bond lair on the original restaurant site, carved out of rock from the Costa Brava coast, with brainstorming rooms, temperature-controlled thermal spaces, sea-facing glass rooms and even a balcony made from bird feathers. Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel Prizewinning economist and adviser to Barack Obama, is on the advisory board. “The current challenge is deciding the selection process for chefs,” says Adrià. “It’s about them being really creative.”

The foundation will run for eight months a year, with 11

core members of the El Bulli team, and another group of chefs who will vary their lengths of stay. He thinks chefs, such as his good friend Heston Blumenthal, will also want to visit. “People ask, ‘Is it really going to take two years to prepare this?’ The answer is ‘Yes’.” And occasionally, people will get to sample the creations. “From time to time, we will serve diners. But guests won’t pay; they’ll be invited. They won’t be able to make reservations.”

The foundation is his focus, but El Bulli’s legacy is unlikely to fade soon. A museum will open in Roses, near Barcelona, next year, and an exhibition opening at the end of January 2012 will tour cities worldwide. Three documentaries are being made, as well as a Hollywood feature film with a script in progress. “I’m excited. No one has ever made a great feature film about high-end cuisine: there’s been Ratatouille, but that was an animation,” he says, laughing when I ask who he’d like to play him. “I think it shouldn’t be someone too famous. The reason The Social Network’s a good movie is because the actors aren’t too famous. If Brad Pitt were Mark Zuckerberg, you wouldn’t quite believe it.”

Adrià’s right: it seems wrong to obscure the film by picking too well-known an actor. Especially since his life, which includes working for Pepsi, is strikingly unstarry compared with those of most A-list actors. He’s been happily married to his wife, Isabel, for more than two decades; they have no children. “So,” he says, “we have freedom to do whatever we want, but we do very normal things: go to the cinema and theatre, eat out. We have normal friends, we dress normally and aren’t materialistic, but we enjoy good travels.” He is proud of his work for the Alicia Foundation, which aims to generate knowledge in the culinary field and provide strategies to improve eating habits. It recently encouraged record numbers of blood donations, by giving away a little food afterwards.

And while no chef can completely avoid kitchen dramas – Adrià was once accused of poisoning restaurant guests – he remains pragmatic. “Life is made up of people who appear in the photos, and people who don’t. And the people who aren’t in the photo always want to be,” he says.

He has stepped away from his restaurant while it was still at its best. “The transformation has to happen when at the top, not at the bottom,” he says. “Otherwise, people start saying you’re doing something else because you’ve failed.”

Despite having only three days off since closing El Bulli, Adrià says he is under much less pressure. “I’m doing what everyone would like the chance to do: spending two and a half years learning, travelling, getting new ideas and inspiration, cleaning out my brain so I can think in a different way. If I stopped completely, it would be dangerous.” But he doesn’t rule out taking a few more days off. “Hang out on a beach in the Maldives? I may do something like at the end of 2012 when I’m totally relaxed.”

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Guess who’s cominG to dinner?

Multi Michelin-starred chef Pierre Gagnaire reveals who’d be present at his fantasy dinner party, and the dishes he’d cook for each guest

t e ve Mr. Sbs Jo

Pierre Gagnaire’s eponymous restaurant in Paris – of which he is owner and head chef – is rightly ranked among the world’s finest. He is also head chef at London’s equally exceptional Sketch, and has a number of international restaurants bearing his name, one of which, Reflets Par Pierre Gagnaire, is in Dubai.

y Mr. Cbly Twom

rank Mr. Fhr y Ge

il e s Mr. Mvis Da

a r t in Mr. Mrsese Sco

Before his death, I have to admit that I was about to describe him as the modern times’ Jesus Christ. He has modified our world in good, as well as in bad.

What I’d Serve: Santa Barbara lobster poached in an infusion of lemon verbena served with a cream of avocado spiced with mexican chillies.

I really like the way he paints. I feel that I have the same approach to cooking, with instinct, with no logical construction, like scratches. I have the feeling that it is his subconscious which is driving his brushes.

What I’d Serve: Rocket salad soup with a buratta ice cream flavoured with sage.

I’d invite him because he builds like a sculptor with some amazing forms, with incredible strength and yet with so much emotion.

What I’d Serve: Beef rib steak and a pepper sauce with a gratin of ‘crozets’ pasta and Comté cheese.

He was the only jazz musician who was considered as a rock star. He was also a musician who managed to mix with talent, the blues, rock, gospel... And at the end of his life, his music was more modern than music nowadays.

What I’d Serve: Bouillabaisse with bread croutons covered with a rouille sauce and served with a bandol white wine.

He is the only director who can tell and film incredible stories, very often related to our society, and who is also a lover of music and musicians.

What I’d Serve: Bouillon Zézette. A mushroom aromatic broth with coconut milk, soja sauce and lots of fresh herbs, with thin slices of grilled chicken served with gnocchis of different colours.

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Golf

How To MasTer awkward Lies Lesson #2 BaLL aBove your feet

The first thing we have to consider is how this awkward lie will alter the flight of the ball. In this case

– where the ball is on a slope higher than the level of your feet – you have to allow for the fact that the ball will fly through the air with added hook or draw spin. So to compensate for this, as a right-handed golfer you must take aim right of the target (and to the left if the target if you’re a left-hander). How much will the ball move? Well the higher the ball is above your feet, the more it will move in the air. When choosing a club, a higher number should be selected as the hook spin will also cause the ball to travel further.

For the set-up, you must grip approximately one or two inches further down the grip, as the ball, when on the slope, is effectively closer to your body. This will ensure a better strike of the ball. Balance throughout the golf swing is always important and in this case the slope is pushing the weight back onto the heels. Stand taller and lean slightly forward so your body weight is now on your toes, and maintain this balance throughout the swing. Kenny Monaghan is a professional at Dubai Creek Golf & Yacht Club

Have you pLayed Here yet?

The Golf Course, Le Touessrok, Mauritius Bernard Langer designed this postcard-perfect championship course, which occupies an entire island a few hundred yards off the coast of mainland Mauritius. And given its setting, it’s no surprise that water plays a big part in any round here – your first real test comes on the par-three third, where the green is almost island like. Master it and you’ll be in good spirits to claim what’s a real eagle opportunity at the par-5 fourth. But prevail or fail in this challenge and hole six is still guaranteed to put a smile on your face; it plays the entire length of the island against a beautiful backdrop of mountains, beach and crystalclear sea. letouessrokresort.com

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Nike’s new Vr Pro range of fairway woods was designed with the aid of input from tour professionals, who wished for a club with a flat profile and low leading edges so they could exert greater control over their shots.

They got what they wanted, and more. so on top of delivering greater distance, this wood allows you to set the club face in 32 different angles so you can tailor it to suit your shot. nike.com

Travel

Rooms that made histoRy

Stay in one of the world’s most famous lodgings, from where Churchill discussed Second World War strategies to where Monet painted priceless works.

paintings of the streets of London and the famous Thames.

01. Hotel Ritz, Paris Coco Chanel lived in a modest-sized suite here for a staggering 37 years, from 1934 to 1971, and the room has since adopted her name in honour.

It still houses the original furniture from Chanel’s time, most of which she handpicked, while her image now hangs in portraits on the suite’s walls.

03. Fairmont The Queen Elizabeth, Montreal John Lennon and Yoko Ono spent a week here in peaceful protest during the Vietnam War. Room 1742 set the scene for their Bed-in for Peace protest, and though the room’s current bed isn’t the original, everything is positioned exactly as it was then, while memorabilia devoted to the moment covers the room’s walls.

02. The Savoy, London Book the Monet Suite here and you’ll be in the exact location where the French impressionist brushed over 70

ARC TIC OCEAN

06

Shanghai

PA C I F IC OCEAN

INDIAN OCEAN

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04. The Stanley Hotel, Colorado Rumoured to be haunted, this is the very hotel where Stephen King got the idea for The Shining: he claims it came to him after he awoke from nightmares in room 418. Now the hotel plays the chilling film on repeat in the lobby, and thrill-seekers the world over book stays in the hope they’ll get spooked too.

05. Mena House Oberoi, Cairo Some of the most important meetings in history were made here when the former British prime minister stayed

04

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in the room that’s now named The Churchill Suite; among them the Cairo Conference, where he discussed war strategies with President Franklin Roosevelt and Chinese general, Chiang Kai-shek.

06. Peace Hotel, Shanghai In the 1930s, the famous British playwright, composer, director, actor and singer, Noel Coward, penned his famous play Private Lives within these very walls. Previously named the Cathay Hotel, this art deco building has

Montreal Colorado Washington ATL ANTIC OCEAN

London Paris

07. The Mayflower Renaissance Washington DC Hotel, Washington Close to parliament, this hotel is known as a real political hangout; Calvin Coolidge threw a charity ball here, while Harry Truman once lived in one of its rooms. Most impressive, though, is Franklin Roosevelt’s stay in room 776, where he practiced the speech he’d subsequently deliver at his 1933 presidential inauguration.

02 01

Cairo

SOU THERN OCEAN

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had its fair share of other celeb guests, including comic genius Charlie Chaplin.

05

Travel

Alpine Chic Cosy, cool and seriously luxurious spots to retire to post-ski…

FAirmont BAnFF SpringS, CAnAdA Descend in to the heart of Banff National Park and you can’t fail to spot this ‘Castle in the Rockies’: its turretlike structure pierces through a blanket of determined, emerald-green pines, while the crystal clear Bow Lake snakes its way toward its majestic façade. The mammoth hotel has assumed this position since its birth in 1881, though today it’s more Scottish castle than ski retreat.

Feast-worthy dining tables are flanked by tapestry-covered chairs; huge log fires roar; and a rich colour palette of ruby reds and golds reign supreme. Make the most of its modern offerings, most notably Willow Stream Spa (all 38,000 square feet of it), where you can take your pick of an arm-length treatment menu or slither in to its waterfall-fed whirlpools. fairmont.com

LeCrAnS hoteL & SpA, SwitzerLAnd Far from an ordinary chalet, this boutique jewel in the Alps boasts 13 rooms, each of which takes its style tips from a famous mountain range: check in to the Everest Junior Suite for Indian-themed flamboyance where pinks and greens prevail; the Alpes Deluxe for charming mountainstyle; or the Atlas Suite for an ebony and gold-hued space, offset with Moroccan arches. Outside your suite, time is best spent amid the rough-hewn wood walls of the Cinq Mondes Spa, where stiff limbs can be remedied by its hammam, pools or steaming Jacuzzi. Alternatively, whet your appetite at LeMont Blanc restaurant, where panoramic windows provide a snow-soaked backdrop to avant-garde bites, before retiring to the oversized armchairs of Le Cigare Lounge for a fine smoke. lecrans.com

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1.

Travel

5.

2.

Hotel le Saint RocH, FRance Don’t be fooled by this bolthole’s traditional exterior, for inside it’s a virtual treasure trove of design gems, created to please patrons of France’s trendiest ski town – Courcheval.

Jet setters can (literally) ski in to a fabulous world of faux fur (don’t resist sinking into one of the hotel’s yeti-like stools), touch-me velour (a real winter warmer) and – best of all after a hard day’s ski – outsized bathrooms where you can treat tired loins to a private hammam surrounded by crocodile, mother of pearl and slick metallic décor.

Alternatively, don your best swimwear and head to the hotel’s disco-like pool, where you’ll take a dip beneath bunches of low-slung glitter balls. lesaintroch.com

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emeRald lake lodge , canada For sheer escapism, it doesn’t get much better than this: a timber lodge that’s the only one of its kind to set up a tranquil home by the crisp, cool shores of the Emerald Lake (above). Get past that view and you’ll find the lodge’s chocolate box exterior is mimicked inside, where charm takes hold in the form of stone fireplaces, cabin-like boudoirs and wraparound verandahs. Though those less familiar with life in the wilderness will be pleased to know its cosy interior comes peppered with all the mod cons a modern globe trotter could need. And when the awesome surrounds prey on your senses again, the best spot to drink it all in is the bubbling outdoor tub. crmr.com/emerald

3.

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

Fairmont Banff Springs.

Emerald Lake Lodge.

Hotel Le Saint Roch.

LeCrans Hotel & Spa. Gstaad Palace.

Amangani.

amangani, USa Even the name of its location – Jackson Hole, Wyoming – screams the Wild West, and this rustic resort stays true to its roots: redwood walls, cowhide chairs and pine stump tables set the scene inside, while floor-to-ceiling windows ensure its impossible to miss the snow-dipped mountains that parade outside. And when you’re ready to don your snow boots again, (with an average of 400 inches of the white stuff a year, you’ll need them) there’s no shortage of spine-tingling pursuits to enjoy (think snowboarding, dog-sledding and sleighing). Summer, meanwhile, reveals alpine meadows and a fisherman’s dream – Snake River; fat with trout and ripe for fly-fishing. amanresorts.com

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Travel

4.

5.

6.

gStaad Palace , SwitzeRland If you want a hotel that makes you go weak at the knees, the magnificent Gstaad Palace could well do the trick. Towering over the sweet, Swiss village of Gstaad, its sumptuous suites are good enough to have you holed up for days. The ruler of the roost? The penthouse suite; three-bedrooms (each with steam baths) and a rooftop terrace and Jacuzzi that will tempt you out in to the crisp, alpine air whatever time of year. Romantics will also fall for the hotel’s bespoke offerings: bubbly-fuelled breakfasts on untouched snow (at a setting reached by helicopter), and horse-drawn sleigh rides on the nearby lake, among them. palace.ch

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VigiliUS moUntain ReSoRt, italy One for the style-conscious skier, this fig-coloured property appears at one with its idyllic, woodland surrounds, thanks to the affectionate handiwork of architect, Matteo Thun.

Reach scenic South Tyrol’s Vigiljoch peak by cable car (no roads, noise or vehicles here) and behold the hotel’s carefully-constructed façade, coined from 300-year-old timber beams; a roof blanketed in grass; and, beyond it, catch-your-breath vistas of the Dolomite Mountains.

Gourmands, meanwhile, can’t fail to delight in the chalet’s heart-warming fare: Parlour Ida, a gingerbread house-like cafe, serves cakes made in a 100-year-old stove. vigilius.it

Travel

Where the wild things are How man’s hunt of the Big Five led to diminishing species, spawned specialist sanctuaries and – happily for us – luxury lodges for the modern jet set.

Laura Binder follows the tail of a safari evolution...

A

s morning reared its head, my travel companion and I sat down, as always, to a breakfast of coffee, muesli and eggs. Except, that was as normal as this particular morning got. For as we sat enjoying our food, it became apparent that we had a dining companion: what started as a large, long-lashed, unblinking eye in my peripheral, became a long, elegant neck prying tentatively through a tall window next to me, before a grey tongue emerged, wrapping its way around the contents of my hand.

Said tongue belonged to a Rothschild giraffe, and this marked the beginning of my first stop in East Africa; Giraffe Manor, a colonial manor house in Nairobi’s

suburb of Langata. It’s an experience not to be sniffed at – and it sure does wake you up in the morning. Far from domesticated pets, though, (with names like Daisy, Betty and Laura, it’s easy to forget) every inch of the giant’s patchwork-skin is wild animal – as I’m reminded on a tour of the ivy-clad bolthole. “If a giraffe comes up to the house, walk slowly inside or, if you get stuck, make sure you have a piece of garden furniture between you both – giraffes can run 30mph and kill a lion with one kick.” Right, then.

It was this beautiful animal’s dwindling status on the endangered species list that prompted Giraffe Manor’s owners – Betty and Jock Leslie-Melville – to use it as a breeding ground on which to rear and reintroduce the Rothschild to the wild – an effort that began in the 1970s

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and continues today using funds from this private hometurned boutique hotel. (And, with a 25% survival rate of calves, it’s a harder process than you might think.)

It’s with some guilt-free comfort, then, that you can while away the day at this grand 1930s property knowing you’re contributing to the greater (giraffe) good. So novel is the experience that you may be tempted, as I was, not to leave its walls, rather, sit on the grass deck with a tome from the manor’s library, drink in hand and giraffes roaming before you (though don’t expect to get any actual reading done).

Perfecting the art of ‘just being’ couldn’t be easier.

When the next morning rolled in I went to the window, held my breath, and drew back the curtains of my Scottish hunting lodge-style suite (green/red fabrics, mammoth bed, antique furniture) in the hope of meeting those heavylashed eyes again – I did. It never tires. The only thing that could drag me away was the lure of the next spot on my trail; Laikipia, to a safari lodge with its own conservational tale. To reach it, I forwent a more amicable 30-minute charter flight for a five-hour drive and glimpse of the ‘real Kenya’. My driver, Kenyan-born Michael, narrated the simple scenes we passed; local people tending to their modest shack-like homes; tin shops affectionately named in candy coloured paints; sprawling coffee farms and, every now and then, a flash of brilliant purple and coral blossoms parading through a mass of green trees.

When I woke up from a snooze, we were on off-road territory, somewhere between Mount Kenya and the rolling peaks of the Aberdares. But, after asking whether we were lost (and wondering whether that was a lion rustling in the tall grasses) we emerged at Solio Lodge, to a smiling staff and a simple, heart-warming greeting: ‘welcome home’.

Here, my new abode came in the form of a luxurious, modern cottage (one of just six that dot a slice of the Solio Game Reserve) and, inside, I’m dwarfed by soaring thatched roofs, and silenced by the view from its floor-toceiling glass windows, where dainty zebra and antelope play. With a log fire in the bedroom (at an elevation of over 6,000 feet, nights are pleasantly chilly); huge open shower (surely enough room to bathe a small herd?) and gloriouslydeep tub, all next to wraparound windows, the best point from which to spy the wildlife takes some thought.

It’s a design that’s mimicked on a larger scale back at the beautifully cosy main lodge (the setting of daily, candlelit meals of truly delicious, home-cooked fare) where a couple of other guests invite me to make my first steps in to the wild for a bush brunch. We delve in to endless greenery to find a table – manned by waiters – awaiting our arrival, set up with a feast-worthy spread of fruity salads, pesto pasta, meats and Kenyan cheese. It’s here that I met Mark, a seemingly quintessential Englishman who is, in fact, a game guide and fourth-generation Kenyan.

“Of course there was a time the original owner’s wife wouldn’t let a soul on the land,” he told me, “it was just for her and her friends only.” The land (all 17,500 acres of it) was sold in 1965 to a Texan, Courtland Parfet, who

made his fortune from chewing gum and had a penchant for hunting – shooting everything on the land, including its last rhino. His French wife, however, had a passion for conservation and persuaded him to put all of the swamp areas aside as a sanctuary. “From there, it became the first private sanctuary in the country; most likely in the world,” recounts Mark.

After being granted permission to look after game, Parfet caught rhino, as did another prominent hunting family, the Carr-Hartleys, who captured (by lasso) 80 white rhino from South Africa and brought them to Solio. “They were left undisturbed and bred incredibly well,” Mark recalls, “they went on to restock many of the reserves across Africa.” Today, Solio Lodge is officially the best place in the continent to spot both black and white rhino in their

‘crossing the Equator, the lush green plains of Solio morphed in to a tapestry of coral, orange, gold and rust hues...’ natural habitat – a source of excitement for my partner, a second-time safari-goer who’s yet to spot the muscular mammal. “Kenya has rhino today, I believe, because of this particular lodge,” affirms Mark.

With the Parfet and Carr-Hartley legacies now in the hands of sons Ed Parfet and Mikey Carr-Hartley, Ed consented to Mikey’s grand designs for Solio Lodge little more than one year ago. And it’s a venue that’s proved good enough to draw even the most seasoned safari-goers; like my other lunch companion, ‘Midgie’, a pint-sized eightysomething whose frame cheats the reality; she’s a real powerhouse. This is a woman who, before the 1977 hunting ban, tracked and shot every one of the Big Five (lion, leopard, elephant, water buffalo, rhino). Of course, while the roaming mammals are now safe from professional trophy hunters, only too happy to admire from afar, the rhino remains under threat from poachers who trade its valuable horn on the black market; a product that can reach one-and-a-half times the amount of gold, around $60,000 per kilo. “The future now is a bleak one – the Chinese have moved in in a big way, and the ivory trade is up 20%,” reveals a solemn Mark. “If it continues, it’s feasible they could be wiped out in months. In the meantime, it’s little places like this that can draw money in, put rangers in place and not only secure the future of the rhino, but wildlife in the main.”

It was time to see the real thing: and there were two men who were going to help me do it. Cue Fred at the wheel of our stellar 4x4, a former teacher and Masai Mara guide (think of Morgan Freeman’s calming aura and dulcet tones and you’re on the right track) and our young ‘spotter’ Blackie, hailing from one of the country’s 42 tribes and able to spot a monkey at a thousand paces (how, I’m still

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Travel baffled). Binoculars at the ready and camel-hued outfits donned, we headed in to the Solio Game Reserve. I was primed for a long day, but, within half-an-hour we were surrounded: rhino. Giraffe. Warthogs. Zebra. Waterbuck. It was like being dropped in to a real-life Disney film.

Surmising that I couldn’t tell the difference between a black and white rhino, (they’re the same colour, after all) an uncontained giggle from Blackie indicated we were in the company of the more aggressive black rhino. “We have been chased for miles by one before,” smiled Fred, “that’s an easy way to tell the difference!” Sturdy, bulbous, dinosaur-like, it was both amazing and a force to be reckoned with. But, with Fred, I felt 100% safe, who, like a wise grandfather, eased my nerves with his implicit knowledge of each and every creature.

Each drive revealed a new surprise: sleeping lionesses and her cubs, all-but-concealed in the sand-hued grass; sleek cheetahs that stalked the grounds by nightfall; two mighty rhino sparring in a valiant effort to protect their brood; giraffe ambling amid rhino like a scene from Jurassic Park (my travelling companion’s incessant humming of the theme tune did, admittedly, seem apt); and lines of comical warthog zipping along the ground, tails erect like antennae. “They do this by nature, so that the babies may spot their mothers in the long grass,” Fred told

‘Today, Solio Lodge is officially the best place in the continent to spot both black and white rhino in their natural habitat’ me. Unfortunately, others were fond followers of the hairy hogs, too: “To the lions, they are a delicacy,” he chuckled.

Three days on, my partner and I leave what had become a home-from-home, for the north Kenyan pastures of Samburu. The 30-minute flight from Solio’s private airstrip (an irresistible prospect second time around), was a headturning trip: crossing the Equator, the lush green plains of Solio morphed in to a tapestry of coral, orange, gold and rust hues, before we touched down to hot, dry climes and a vast sand-covered wilderness: a genuinely soul-stirring sight. My Samburu guide, Andrew, is the man at the wheel here, shrouded tip-to-toe in traditional tribal dress; bright blue and red cloths and a multitude of beads and jewellery to make a girl jealous (try as I might, he wouldn’t part with them).

Touring rocky roads in an open-sided 4x4 toward Mount Kenya’s jagged peak and over the banks of the Ewaso Nyiro River, which runs through the region like a pulse, gave a glimpse of another world: no barriers, but raw, natural land interrupted only by wandering locals and traditional villages where modest huts form circles, children play barefoot and young boys are tasked with herding the family’s livelihood; bleating goats. It’s with mutual

curiosity that I, they, wave and smile at every passing.

Such drives were laced with Andrew’s tales; a man who’s managed to unwittingly walk in to the path of a lioness and her cubs (the soul provocation for attacks on humans, I learn), be chased by a water buffalo (“it threw our friend up in to a tree”) and come face-to-face with a leopard protecting its young (“I have never seen such fury, I thought ‘that’s it, I’m gone’.”) Whether such close encounters are a quality you want in a guide, I couldn’t decide. Nonetheless, he was a man of experience and, in response to my longing to see an elephant, trumped all my expectations.

The first came in Dumbo-like form of a young pup, ambling on big, flat feet through thickets of leaves, with a toddler-like sway. Within minutes, not one, but five, 10, 20 or more of every size emerged on the tail of the next, before we were driving as part of the herd. It was an experience fuelled by equal measures of jaw-dropping wonder and adrenalin. When the car engine stopped, I turned to see why: a bull, the herd’s protector, sizing up our vehicle. Instinctively, we fell utterly quiet. It moved, slowly, curiously to the side of the car, where I was sat, at exact eye-level with its lined, grey face. Hands-over-mouth, heart-beating hard, I realised just a few steps forward would bring his huge, ivory tusks or prying, muscular trunk through the car’s open side. After a few minutes (I held my breath for each), he moved on, pausing to scratch an itch – which entailed straddling an entire tree and almost flooring it in the process. Andrew breathed a heavy sigh of relief – always a good sign. “If he had taken exception to us, he would have just flipped the car,” he said. Right, then. Still, it was another memorable way to start a day.

Such exhilaration was challenged only by our arrival to the stunning Sasaab; another lodge touched by the talents of its owner, Mikey Carr-Hartley. This place has real wow factor. Its main, Moroccan-style lodge unravels beneath pillars, etched with mother-of-pearl, and its elevation affords priceless vistas of the Samburu plains and famous

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Images: Robin Moore / The Safari Collection

river (a sight I later drink-in from the lodge’s turquoise infinity pool). My ‘room’, meanwhile, brought a new meaning to ‘posh camping’: immersed in the rugged landscape, I climbed up a rocky pathway and set foot on its white stone floor, open walls all around, and a four-poster bed shrouded by nets. But it was the private plunge pool that provoked a delighted gasp – the perfect place to seek relief from the sun and witness elephant crossing the river.

Like those lodges that had gone before it, Sasaab marries its refined luxury with a responsible agenda: aiding the conservation of the Grevy Zebra (an animal that’s forgone the most drastic drop of any African mammal) and

vulnerable lions, as well as the region’s indigenous people through community projects funded by guests. Schools benefit from stays with new desks, art supplies, and learning materials; women are given a livelihood making bracelets and beaded bottle covers for the gift shop; and work with Westgate Community Conservancy health care projects brings vital preventative programmes to fruitition.

In fact, you can visit a local school – as I did – where I sat perched on a bench at the back of a maths class, amid beautiful, wide-eyed children.

It’s a contrast to my former stays in Nairobi and Laikipia, where I felt far from a real, local way of life, and a contrast that continues in the region’s wildlife. “Samburu land has its own special Big Five,” Andrew told me. “Beisa oryx, Reticulated giraffe, Grevy’s zebra, gerenuk and Somali ostrich.” Fresh finds that injected new anticipation in to our next game drives where, in addition, I marvelled at the almost mythical-looking Dik-diks – tiny deer-like creatures, with stubs for horns, huge black eyes and the twitching nose of an anteater. “They pair for life, so you will always see them in twos,” Andrew told me, “but when one dies, the other will pass from stress; a broken heart.”

It’s such creatures, which look plucked from fairytales and birds – some in electric blue hues, others with yellow, feather-duster like tufts and ducks with red-striped faces – that make safaris here so unique.

Parking up in yet another spectacular setting – by the river’s edge, with a breakfast fit for a king and, across the water, the sight of dozens of monkeys, babies and all, scampering along in tribe-like style – proves yet another lump-in-the-throat moment. It’s this raw, natural landscape that no doubt first drew the British to colonise Kenya; that enticed people to take home trophies of its astounding life; that prompts generations to fight for its species; and what makes these evolving lodges an once-ina-lifetime experience. Kenya, we agreed, sat there in the bush, gets under your skin.

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Life Lessons

What I KnoW noW

Jimeale Jorgensen

Owner and designer of Jimeale New York Learn from the mistakes you make. We all make them.

No one is perfect. Don’t dwell on them, move forward and just remember; in five years time will this particular mistake be a thought?

Listen and soak in what others have to teach you. It may not be your way or what you want to hear right now, but take it in. Surround yourself with people you can learn from.

Things take time to evolve. Time needs time. If I had to take one word going forward from my experience it would be ‘evolve’. Everything takes time to evolve into something...

Having someone be your rock is critical to success. There are days when nothing goes right and you doubt yourself, your ability to deliver, even your ability to make a cup of tea! But having someone there cheering you on and telling you it will work out is a huge form of support.

Your dream has to be bigger than the reality, and when you get close to it, move the goal posts.

Give back. It is so important to do something for someone else that does not benefit you in any way. Doing my charity work, even when I think I don’t have one more hour in the day, makes me feel like a better person and then the reality kicks in of how lucky I am.

I love my dogs, cats and horse. I love them with every inch of me. They are pure, unconditional love and happiness for me.

Don’t complicate what isn’t complicated. Look at things in a simple form.

Take time to teach others what you have learned along the way. Any time someone asks me how to set up a new business, I lay it all out, giving them all the secrets that I know. Someone gave me a break along the way, so I try and do the same.

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