by Chris Evans
Holidays – nice ones – and especially in France, were new to me. Up until this point holidays had been an unwelcome cross I had to bear. I did go away from time to time but I had never really enjoyed myself and I could never wait to get back. I loved working and I hated airports, plus I burn at even the slightest mention of the word ‘sun’, so what was there to like?
Suzi was clever, though. She was having none of that. If I wanted to be with her, not only was I going to have to go on holiday, I was going to have to enjoy it.
She would not be patronised by the presence of a token companion, she wanted to see and feel me having as good a time as she was or there was no deal. How she managed to successfully extract this out of me where everyone else had failed I have no idea, but extract it she did and we always ended up having a blast.
All of our vacation destinations were pretty top notch, to be honest, but it was the Côte d’Azur that we loved to go to most of all. There is no place on earth like the South of France with its picture-perfect coastline all the way from Monaco to the Cap d’Antibes; glorious mountains crashing into the blindingly beautiful Mediterranean Sea below.
Whether you are having lunch at a waterside restaurant in the pretty village of Beaulieu-sur-Mer or looking down over a thousand feet from one of the exclusive restaurants perched on the side of Eze mountain, there is nothing not to like – except perhaps the bill. As well as topping the league in the beauty stakes, the Côte d’Azur is also the most expensive place I have ever been to.
That said, budget and availability permitting, Suzi and I would always try to stay at La Voile d’Or (the Golden Sail), a small but perfectly formed bijou hotel situated right on the rocks just above the sea in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, probably my favourite place on the planet.
Like several of the hotels in the region, La Voile d’Or didn’t take credit cards until very recently. When Suzi and I were going there it was always cash only.
I think such hotels have been forced to change policy as with a single fried egg now costing as much as £10, the size of the bags full of money required to settle residents’ accounts were becoming noticeably impractical.
I understand this was particularly evident at the most famous hotel in the region, where a basket of bread at your breakfast table will set you back £36 and that’s before you even think about daring to order any tea, coffee or croque-monsieur. I have stayed at this place three times, most recently in 2009, and the sight of l’addition arriving never fails to bring me out in a cold sweat.
Not to worry though, eh? What’s money for, if not to spend on the things you like with someone you love? What Suzi and I could afford we would enjoy, and what we could not we wouldn’t worry about.
We always talked about what it must be like to have a house in Saint-Jean, the dream to end all dreams, but there is a knack to owning houses abroad. The secret is that unless you have infinite wealth, it’s imperative that you are a founder-member of a future trend as opposed to someone who ends up paying through the nose, having turned up late to the party.
Take Noël Coward and Ian Fleming, for example, and their respective retreats in Jamaica when it was the last place on earth a European might think to live. They picked up their slices of paradise for virtually nothing. The same can be said of John Lennon and his various forays into Malta, and let’s not forget Richard Branson and the legendary bargain that was Necker Island. The story goes that he paid ten per cent of the asking price – just £300,000. Not bad for your own island; he now charges double that if you want to rent it for just one week.
And so it was with Saint-Jean, we just didn’t realise it at the time.
David Niven had lived there once upon a time and his house was for sale during one of our early trips. Set just off the main drag towards the shore on the path to Eze, it was a magnificent movie-star mansion, almost Gatsbyesque in its grandeur, and with its own private jetty and walled tropical garden thrown in.
I recall the price tag being £4.7 million.
‘What?’ I remember thinking back then. I couldn’t believe anywhere in the world could be worth that much. I was of course entirely wrong about David Niven’s house, which has since changed hands for ten times that amount. A good house is only expensive once, they say. After that you will never be able to afford it.
Suzi and I were destined to miss the French property boat big time, but this was not the case for Bono and his musical colleague the Edge. They had bagged themselves a relative bargain on the beach nearby just a few years before.
No sooner had the Dublin rockers made their first few quid banging out their irresistible brand of rock and roll than they heard of a beach-front villa up for grabs for a couple of hundred thousand pounds. A fortune to them then, but they knew something Suzi and I didn’t and, without pausing for breath, they snapped it right up. They bought it between the two of them and proceeded to share the house straight down the middle whenever they could get away. Each of their families had half the villa, with both families coming together in a communal living room and kitchen.
It’s testament to the two men’s friendship that this arrangement worked for over ten years before they succeeded in getting planning permission for a second property on their not unsubstantial plot. They now enjoy a villa each, as well as a combined net value of tens of millions of pounds.
I know the above is fact because I’ve been there. Bono, who had appeared on TFI Friday several times, heard Suzi and I were in his ‘Manoir dans Le Midi’ and tracked us down to our hotel, where he extended, via a rather creative fax, a generous invite for us to come over and enjoy a slab of pizza and a glass or two of wine with him and his clan. The fax requested an RSVP and informed us that he would pop by and pick us up if we were interested.
Interested? What do you think?
When the night in question arrived, Suzi and I sat outside on the terrace eagerly awaiting our ‘lift’ whilst desperately trying to act cool and not drink too much, by playing Scrabble of all things. However, by the time our man arrived, we were both a bottle of champagne to the good and as giddy as kites. So much for our strategy.
All the other guests in the bar, meanwhile, did a doubletake the moment Bono walked in. You see, in real life he sort of does and yet at the same time doesn’t quite look like Bono. It can sometimes be difficult to be sure.
I would be lying if I denied the swelling sense of pride I felt as he spotted Suzi and me beaming back at him across the lawn. He strode over purposefully, shades on, arms wide open, the perfect rock-star welcome.
As we hastily and somewhat nervously gathered up our things, the normally surly French waiters began throwing smiles in our direction. Smiles we thus far had been unaware they were capable of producing. Strange, that.
The drive back to Bono’s house was right up there in my top ten celebrity journeys. There in front of the main door was parked his gleaming black BMW convertible, roof down, all set and good to go. A turn of the key, a growl of the exhaust and the screech of rubber and we were off into the balmy Mediterranean air with the lead singer of one of the greatest rock bands in the world as our chauffeur.
Did it get any better than this? Well yes, actually it did.
As we exited the village of Saint-Jean, Bono turned up the car stereo and started singing along at the top of his voice to The Carpenters’ Greatest Hits. This was another one of those moments – of which there have been many because I have been very lucky. The surreal ones are the best and they don’t get much more surreal than our night with Bono.
Once we arrived at the bargain villa on the beach, the food and wine began to flow along with the stories. Lots and lots of stories. Bono loves to tell a tale or two, most of them wonderfully outrageous. Like the time he and his mate Gav ran out of brandy one night so decided to take a small dinghy out to sea in search of the US Navy and more booze.
Beaulieu, next door to Eze and Saint-Jean, is a deep-sea port and as such can accommodate the biggest ships in the world including, on this
occasion, a humongous US aircraft carrier.
‘They love U2, the Americans,’ Bono said to Gav as they made for open water, ‘they’re bound to have some brandy on board, sure they’ll be up for giving us a bottle.’
Now, two things here. Firstly, it was the middle of the night and the sea can be a dangerous place at the best of times, and secondly, how on earth were the US Navy supposed to know this was Bono and his mate Gav requesting benevolence and not some murderous terrorists surreptitiously attempting to stick a limpet mine to the side of their warship?
The story goes that once safely located next to the carrier in their minute dinghy, our two thirsty adventurers looked up to register a vessel the size of a small city bearing down upon them.
‘What did you do next?’ asked Suzi, barely able to speak for laughing.
‘I took out an oar from the boat,’ replied Bono, ‘and I started to hit the metal hull as hard as I could – clang, clang, clang.’
‘No way!’ we both exclaimed like a pair of school kids. We were gripped.
‘Way,’ came the reply. ‘And then.’ he continued, ‘after about a minute, Gav now having joined in, we hear the whirring of chains being lowered and see what looked like some kind of mini destroyer descending down towards the water a few hundred feet away.’
‘Shit,’ shouts Gav, ‘that boat’s got a gun attached to it. Start the motor, Bono, they think we’re attacking them. Fuck, they’re going to blow us up!’
Suzi and I at this point were on the floor killing ourselves laughing and Bono, not immune to a fit of the giggles himself, was finding it increasingly difficult to carry on spinning his merry yarn.
When he finally did manage to finish, we all had tears streaming down our cheeks. It transpired that the night watch on board the US naval craft had indeed identified a security breach in the form of Bono and Gav in their dinghy, and launched a gunboat patrol to check what on earth was going on.
Suffice to say they caught up with our two barking-mad buccaneers within seconds, both of whom were on the brink of having a heart attack. Bono said it was still the most frightened he’s ever been and Gav likewise. But did they ever get their brandy?
Well, he said no but I suspect otherwise.
But Bono wasn’t the only well-known surprise Cap Ferrat had in store for us that week. When you go to extraordinary places, extraordinary things tend to happen and we weren’t done yet.
TOP
10
THINGS THAT COME IN A BOTTLE
10 HP Sauce
9 Worcestershire sauce
8 Dandelion and burdock
7 Extra virgin olive oil
6 Vinegar
5 An ice cold beer
4 A pint of fresh, full fat milk
3 Heinz tomato ketchup
2 White wine
1 Red wine
THE FOLLOWING THURSDAY AFTERNOON, the sun was high in the sky, the sensible people were having a siesta whilst the sun worshippers were beachside busy baking themselves. As Suzi was happy to sizzle with the best of them and I was neither tired nor mad enough to expose my milk-white body and already sunburnt face to yet more heat, I decided to mosey on down to the town to enjoy a quiet read and a cold drink in the local patisserie.
After doing exactly that and whilst ambling back up the gentle hill towards the hotel, I noticed in the distance an equally pink-faced gentleman walking towards me. I smiled to myself, more out of a sense of camaraderie than anything else, but as he drew closer I couldn’t help feeling he looked familiar.
‘Blow me,’ I thought to myself as we continued to converge, ‘he looks for all the world like David Frost.’
Several more steps towards each other and…
‘Blow me again, it is David Frost.’ And sure enough it was.
At almost exactly the same time I recognised him, he recognised me. We’d never met before, yet here we were now, red face to red face in an almost deserted French village. Les deux rostbifs rouges, très extraordinaire!
‘My dear boy,’ he announced, ‘you’re always much taller.’
What the heck did that mean? And before ‘Hello’, or ‘How are you?’ Hilarious.
‘David, what a perfectly pink pleasure this is for both of us,’ I replied.
‘Indeed, indeed – hey, I’m staying at Andrew’s, you must come round for a drink one night.’
I had no idea what on earth he was talking about.
‘Oh, yes, er, right, of course, we must. I’m with my girlfriend you see.’
‘Excellent, then you must bring her along as well. I’ll get one of the girls on to it. Where are you?’
‘We’re at the Voile d’Or’.
‘Righty-ho, we’ll get you there, then.’ And with that he was off.
I still had no idea what he was talking about. Who was this Andrew to whom David was referring, and who were these girls?
I half expected to hear no more about it, but I have since learnt to take members of the old school at their word. Later that evening there was a call to our room.
‘Hello,’ Suzi said.
‘Ah, hello, this is Maddie Lloyd Webber here.’ Ah, it was that Andrew and those girls to whom David had been referring.
‘Frosty says you and young Mr Evans might like to come for dinner one evening. Would that be agreeable?’
Two evenings later, the ‘boys’, i.e. David and Andrew, were dispatched by the ‘girls’, i.e. Maddie and Carina (Frost), to fetch Suzi and me from our now familiar spot on the hotel terrace. Needless to say, after our second famous pick-up of the week, the waiters could not have been nicer to us for the remainder of our stay.
We sauntered down the road to Andrew’s house, which was no more than a few minutes in the direction of the Cap itself. Andrew, the great composer and impresario, walked ahead with Suzi while I trailed a few metres behind with David. Andrew and Suzi talked wine whilst David and I talked telly.
Now, there’s success and then there’s Lloyd Webber success, as we were about to discover.
When we arrived at our dinner venue, Andrew and Maddie’s house was nothing short of amazing. I won’t go into detail – that wouldn’t be fair – but let’s just say it was off the scale.
There is a wee tale, however, that I do feel at liberty to share with you.
‘Suzi and I had a delightful conversation walking up the hill,’ proffered Andrew as we sat down to commence dinner. ‘Suzi asked me what, in my opinion, was the greatest wine in the world, which, I believe, to be a 1947 Cheval Blanc.’ At this point David and several other guests nodded their approval.
‘So, if everyone is in agreement, I propose that after the Rothschild ‘55’ (of which there were two magnums opened on the table to have with the starter), ‘we move on to a couple of bottles of the best of the best for the main.’
Was I hearing this correctly? Had Mr Lloyd Webber just announced that we were to have not one but two bottles of the greatest wine the world had to offer? It certainly appeared so. Not only that, but how about the two babies currently taking pride of place in front of us; easily the best wine I’d ever had in my life thus far, but already about to be relegated to second place.
The night turned out to be fascinating on many counts; I have an idea most Lloyd Webber dinner parties do. The conversation was like a script from a film, with talk of presidents, prime ministers, gangsters and movie stars, all vying to be invited to this or get a part in that. There were also a few surprise visitors as the night went on, but those names are also for Lord Lloyd Webber’s book. If he ever writes one, what a book that will be.
When the moment came for the ‘47 Cheval Blanc to be served I’ll never forget Suzi’s face when Andrew asked her to taste it, on behalf of all the guests. She was as nervous as I’d ever seen her. This was going to be the sip of her life.
Suzi raised her glass, closed her eyes and pursed her lips in her usual expectant manner, but this time as she tilted the glass towards her the deep-red ruby liquid inside seemed to light up wi
th an extra special promise of the magic to come. We all waited, almost scared to breathe, for her verdict.
‘Yum, that’s lovely!’ she declared, a brief response admittedly but an entirely acceptable one at that. Besides, what else is a girl supposed to say in front of a man who was not only our host and provider of the wine but also known to be one of the world’s most prominent wine connoisseurs?
Moreover, Suzi was absolutely right. The Cheval Blanc 1947 was indeed lovely.
I only wish I could taste it again today now that I know just a little bit more about what a good wine should taste like.
Upon our return to England, Suzi and I couldn’t resist following up our great wine adventure by paying a visit to our local vintners. The sommelier there was our very own grape guru and we couldn’t wait to ask him which wine, as far as he was concerned, was the best wine in the world.
Without missing a beat he replied, ‘Alors, mais bien sur, zere is no question, Monsieur, Madame, zat is zee famos 1947 Cheval Blanc – sans doute!’ His eyes misted over as he pronounced the name and vintage of the famous château. ‘Why you ask?’
‘Because we had some last week,’ I said, trying not to sound too pleased with our revelation.
‘Non Monsieur, ce n’est pas possible. Zee only person known to ‘ave zat wine ees your music man, Andrew Webber Lloyd. You cannot get it anywhere else!’
‘I know,’ I said, this time having to try really hard to avoid the smug zone. ‘We were at his house last week and he gave us some.’
Upon hearing this, our friendly wine merchant took a beat to see if we were joking, then for a brief moment looked as if he might cry, or faint, or both. Thankfully this was only a temporary glitch as he was soon back with us, insisting we tell him all about our experience, whilst offering us a glass each of something ‘he just happened to have open’ as a small bribe.
For the record, thank you Sir David for getting us the invite to the Lloyd Webbers in the first place. Thank you