FOGO versus FOMO

Ivo Dawnay... happy in his armchair

It would be clever but trite to say there are parties and then there are parties: the warm white wine book launch in Daunts, Marylebone is not, after all, quite the same as a kneesup in a Hampton Court palace with Evgeny Lebedev and Elton John.

But, in fact, all parties, modest or extravagant are ultimately the same thing: a festival of show-offery. All of them, after all, are merely marketing vehicles whether it be for a book, restaurant, museum or hotel, or simply for the hosts themselvesgilding his or her ‘brand’ with the quality of the canapés and the celebrity-wattage of the other guests.

I suppose when I was much, much younger and a professional party-goer for the Evening Standard’s Londoner’s Diary column they were occasionally fun, spiced by the challenge of having to find out something that would make a paragraph or two the next day. For a bachelor-about-town, they also held the vague promise of an encounter with the woman of one’s dreams or at least one for dinner.

Well I now recall my first fumblings as a diarist being forced by my editor to ask Tim Rice a cheeky question at the launch of one of his West End hits. As my boss looked on, I sidled up to him and coyly whispered: ‘Please talk to me briefly as I am being monitored for chutzpah by my employer and I badly need to keep this job.’

Rice, ever the gentleman, complied, and a few days later I was invited out of the blue to be an ‘angel’ for his new project, something provisionally entitled Evita. I politely declined on the grounds that it was improbable he would have three smash hits on the trot – a poor decision as, had I had a punt, I would not now be reduced to writing about my social phobias.

Since I married a socialite, parties have become an even greater trial. My friend, Giles Wood (of Gogglebox and this parish) once invited me to be a founder member of the Threapleton Society – a club for men married to more important women.

(Threapleton was the husband of Kate Winslet, sadly no longer needed on the voyage of life after the commercial success of Titanic. We planned to ask Denis Thatcher to be chairman and Prince Philip our patron.)

Plus One, then, is now my fulltime role and possibly the title for my autobiography. Like Rosencrantz and Gildenstern, I have long been one to swell a progress, though seldom start a scene or two.

Moreover, I am now familiar with the time-honoured rituals of arrival where a mob of ‘snappers’ catch Her at the door of the V&A or the Corinthian Hotel.

Usually they reluctantly if politely take a quick pic of the two of us together, then gesture impatiently for me to step aside as they get the money shot of Herself, posing, chest minutes with ironic observations about this and that.

But then, this is the fundamental problem of parties: the 60 second conversation. Now replete with canapés, one must eventually lumber off like some lonely Mastodon in the savannah in search of someone you might vaguely know to ask them questions the answers to which interest neither of you.

‘Oh, hello Charlie’, you say to someone you think you might have been at prep school with, ‘Been on holiday yet?’ out, knee cocked, like a Hollywood babe in front of the branding.

Or at dinner, seated with the rest of the duds next to a woman who was pining to be close to the fashionable poet, she turns and asks: ‘Do you have children?’ As a cricket-loving friend has it, such well-meaning ladies are ‘unplayable’, like an Australian fast bowler.

And hence, FOGO – or, if not actual Fear of Going Out, then BOGO – or deep, profound boredom with it. For let’s face it, parties are almost always devised and convened by women, for women to display clothes, flaunt status and gossip. They are not for men.

Once inside it is sauve qui peut as she disappears into a sea of air kisses and deeply insincere whoops of greetings (and, no doubt, caustic whispered asides) and I slip away to the bar, or, better still, spy out the kitchen exit where the canapés emerge, hot and piping, into the melée like TS Eliot’s coffee spoons.

There are usually a group of us men, quite often including David Cameron, biding our time while our better and brighter halves exchange their ‘Oh My Gods’ and ‘awesome’ insights into Harry & Meghan or goings-on at 5 Hertford Street.

Occasionally this salon des refusés masculins can actually be tolerable and we can idle away the

For us, nothing - not even the Vanity Fair Oscars - can really compete with an open fire, a large whisky and Match of the Day.

Rachel Johnson... out on the town

My name is Rachel Johnson and I am a party addict! Which means of course that I also have a chronic FOMO. Indeed, until the other day (ie a few years ago) if I was invited to several parties on the same night (these were my glory days as one of London’s Most Invited) I would micro-manage the logistics, as to miss even one party would give me an almost physical pain.

Most evenings when there was ‘only’ one party and I had RSVP’d yes but had decided not to go (always because my husband was being an Uncle Matthew) this would happen.

I am town mouse, he is country mouse and if he had his druthers he would never go to town, let alone ‘out out’. As the witching hour of 6.30pm approached I would end up pelting upstairs, throwing on a dress and fleeing solo into the night, unable to resist the lure.

I would progress to the party as if yanked on a rope. I couldn’t bear the idea of not going because then, Rumsfeld-like, I wouldn’t know what I had missed. Only if I went would I know.

All my jobs, contacts, stories, friends, or most of them, came from parties. I would go because of purest FOMO. I would therefore plan the evening with the care and efficiency once dedicated by Alastair Campbell to a Blair re-election campaign tour of the North-East.

I would plot which constituency (ie party) to hit up first; who to knock up and canvass (ie who to talk to); how to leave without offending hosts (ie plot an exit strategy); work out which party to drink, eat and end up at, set myself a final departure deadline and have in mind a return ride before I stepped out, heels on, blow-dry swinging, into my first Uber (Mohamed in a Prius is here for you) of the evening.

I swapped notes and tips on strategy with Sir Nick Coleridge, also a serial party-goer, as to how to work several parties in one night. We agreed that this can only be achieved if they were all ‘in town’ or within a mile or so radius. It was a breeze to swing past a book launch in Hatchards or Sotheran’s, a cocktail party at Sotheby’s or Christie’s and a private view in the Royal Academy before, say, ending up in the Wolseley or 5, Hertford St or at a wooden table drinking plonk out of a tumbler in the Academy Club.

It was harder, we agreed, to do multiple drive-bys if Winfield House (the residence of the US Ambassador to the Court of St James), Lord Lebedev’s rus-in-urbe pile (called, agreeably, “Stud” but it’s in the KT8 postcode), the River Cafe in W6, or anywhere indeed south of the river.

‘The way I do it is I never take a coat,’ Nick told me, ‘So I never look as if I’m arriving or leaving, I always make sure I have face time with the hostess, I buy the book, and keep my driver waiting just outside’.

It took the pandemic and parties to dry up for me to think I hadn’t really missed them as much as I thought I would. The warm white wine. The speeches. I could live without a book launch ever again, I told myself. I hated evenings racing, late, between events and not even having time for pointless small talk, let alone pleasurable gossip and flirtation!

And then, of course, the social whirl started spinning and in 2022 I was back to my bad old ways. If invited, and if I’d accepted, I felt it was bad form not to show (this is something that never occurs to my husband - he rarely responds to emails, opens Paperless Post, or even replies to WhatsApps). I would feel - narcissistically, no doubt - that my presence would be noted, even missed (I know - laughable).

But, in order not to burn out, I am on a party diet. Like Martinis, and unlike breasts, I have decided that one is perfect, two is too many.

Sometimes this protocol presents temptations. At a fun bash for Sebastian Payne’s new book at the Reform Club, over Christmas, Emily Maitlis came up glittering. ‘Do you want to come to Hugh Grant’s party with us? We’re leaving!’

Reader, I have my pride.

Now I am merely the sister of the former PM, I hope it will be easy to stick to my new regime.

But of course if two tempting stiffies on one night need to be attended to - no pun intended! - I am still just the girl for the job.