CLAUDIA SCHIFFER, TRUDIE STYLER, AND ME

BRUCE PALLING | UNCORKED | November 28th 2007

Detail from "Dublin's Last Supper" by John Byrne; photo Wrote/Flickr

Bruce applauds Claudia Schiffer's taste in luxury, has a few reservations about Trudie Styler's, and finds the world's great chefs to be a pretty drab bunch when it comes to choosing their last suppers ...

Special to MORE INTELLIGENT LIFE

I have a guilty secret—as, dear virtualperson, I suspect you do too. Whenever I see one of those columns ghost-written for a person of notoriety or fame, I read it in the hope of a snigger. You know the sort of thing: "The Importance of Being Charitable, by Heather Mills", "Hopeless Causes, by Bob Geldof", or, "My Favourite Books, by Posh Spice". Well, imagine my surprise when the same sort of inadvertent mea culpa turned up in the Style magazine of the London Sunday Times, by supermodel Claudia Schiffer —and it was called "Top of My Wish List".

I was bracing myself for the usual tripe about Claudia: that she never kills a living thing, flies economy (if she flies at all), and drinks only Fiji water—or did until she got concerned about its air-miles.

But my heart took a skip when she said that her favourite hotel was Amanpuri in Phuket—the first and still the most opulent of the Amanresorts. I suppose I am biased: we had our honeymoon in the owner's private villa, with its 80-foot black-marble pool, refrigerator stocked with Dom, and Montes in the humidor. (Shortly afterwards an Arab monarch stayed there and drank them out of Chateau Pétrus. They had to charter a plane to Bangkok in search of more).

It only got better when Claudia confessed a weakness for Chateau Lafite, Latour—and Palmer.

Palmer!? Now we really are talking. Any dumb billionaire can parrot the names of the first-growth clarets and throw in Pétrus and Romanée-Conti. But someone has done their homework if they like Palmer, which is technically a mere third-growth Margaux. The iconic Palmer '61 was the one that Alan Clark drank to excess before he was rightfully accused of being drunk at the despatch box in the House of Commons. (For myself, I have only ever managed a shared half-bottle at the Tate Gallery restaurant 30 years ago).

The article had more kick to come. Claudia said she particularly liked foie gras, fine tea and caviar. In fact "I used to eat Beluga whenever I visited Moscow". Well, not exactly a surprise, but how refreshing to read the true indulgences of a supermodel rather than the hair-shirted nonsense of bimbo do-gooders.

Compare and contrast with the approach of Trudie Styler, the former London nightclub compère who is now, with her husband, Sting, very big on tantric sex and on hair-shirt issues such as rainforests and Amnesty International. Nothing wrong with that: I am probably right on their wavelength, at least on the latter subjects.

But there was a big gap between the public profile and the private detail that came spilling out when Ms Styler sacked her personal chef this year and was taken to an employment tribunal. The chef told of working 14-hour days, travelling from Wiltshire to London to cook pasta, shipping in truffles from France, and losing her job soon after she became pregnant. An employment tribunal called Ms Styler's conduct "shameful"; she disputed the verdict and said she would appeal. Add in the news that Ms Styler took a helicopter 80 miles to discuss the fate of the planet with fellow eco-warrior Zac Goldsmith, and you do have to hope that she gets her public relations back under control soonish.

But consumption of fine food and wine is always going to be something of a reputational minefield. Most people see it as extravagant posturing, or worse. They could be right: I can only say that taste and smell are joys as vital to my life as music, art and literature. I admired the line taken by my friend Christopher Hitchens, when he was accused in his socialist days of taking too much pleasure in the finer things in life. His reply was the definition of Hitchenesque: "Why travel steerage on the Titanic?".

Perhaps it depends, too, on what you're used to. A survey of last suppers ordered by death-row inmates in American prisons found that the favourite dish by far was a Big Mac with
extra fries. This might have marked the extent of the typical consumer's culinary range, but
it also, surely, had something to do with the positive reassurance of familiarity and routine.

Now, in her book, "My Last Supper", Melanie Dunea asks 50 of the world's greatest chefs what each would want for his own last meal on earth. Guy Savoy declares himself incapable of fulfilling the task because of his "phobic rapport with death". Otherwise, replies range from the mundane to the celestial, for food and for wines—with the British contingent slightly letting the side down. Jamie Oliver, true to form, wants a spaghetti all'arrabiata and a beer; Gordon Ramsay would be satisfied with roast beef and a Bâtard-Montrachet (hang on Gordon, that's a white Burgundy!)

Even Elena Arzak, who runs the most amazing three-star Michelin in San Sebastian, would be content with txakolí—a teeth-stripping local white wine—as her favourite drink.

I appreciate the virtue of simplicity in one's last moments, but this is taking convenience a bit too far. Only a handful of chefs specify particular vintages of great wines. Some say "a great bottle of Pétrus", or of Margaux, but that is like saying your favourite work of art is "a Picasso".

Daniel Boulud, of Manhattan's Daniel, is a man after my own heart. He spells out his preferences. To accompany a perfect meal prepared by Alain Ducasse, he would want "incredible white Burgundies, such as Montrachet Domaines des Comtes Lafon 1986, Montrachet Ramonet 1982 and Musigny Comte de Voguë 1962; red burgundies such as Domaine de la Romanée-Conti La Tâche 1959, and from Bordeaux L'Eglise-Clinet 1947, La Mission Haut-Brion 1955 and a 1921 Chateau d'Yquem."

Gary Danko from San Francisco is someone I have never met, but I must start saving up for a flight to his restaurant. He specifies a location which shows true class—a lakeside palace in Udaipur. This in itself is very revealing as most people would specify the Lake Palace, but anyone with real knowledge knows that it is the ones on the shoreline that have the edge. He desires a Poulet de Bresse, suckling pigs and a Roman banquet, all eaten by hand. Space does not permit his outrageous selection of wines, but, even more important, they are all in large sizes, such as Rehoboams, Methuselahs, Salmanazars, Balthazars, and, to cap off those final breaths, Nebuchadnezzars.

I will save my last supper for another time. But for my last drink, I would hope to be able to emulate the cellar-master at Chateau Cos d'Estournel at the turn of the last century. A concerned colleague gave him, on his death bed, a glass of wine to ease the pain. He clutched at it, gulped, and then said in a final whisper,

"Chateau.... Lafite ..... soixante.....dixxxx....."

He and Claudia both came to the same conclusion a century apart. When life is short only the best will do.