Monday 12 August 2013

Flashback: No. 73 Andrew Lloyd Webber

Some men marry clones, the next wife a younger version of the woman she's replacing. Other men change their wives with their aspirations. We put (now) Lord Lloyd-Webber in the latter camp.

The current Lady Lloyd-Weber is horse-made Madeleine Gurdon, and they live in Chester Square. Although Lloyd Weber owned a house in Eaton Square before that, he doesn't seem to have lived in it.

An Aran sweater and jeans, casually posing near the balcony overlooking the Square. The balcony shows that this was a top floor flat - an estate agent might call it a penthouse, we call it an attic.

To place him as a resident we have to go way back to late '80s - the decade that taste forgot - and his rather flashy show-biz second wife Sarah Brightman.

A rather strange internal staircase suggests a duplex. The art on the walls is rather good, the woman in the dress is attempting to be 'classy' but is about as klassy as a Kardashian. And a gold-plated hand rail? Too Arab, sweetie. Don't even get me started on the frosted glass door. Butterflies?!

This must have been the 80s version of Faux Country House? The Greek vases are fake too.

Those of us that read books certainly don't shelve them that way. Didn't someone else write The Lady in Red? Silly me. She wasn't a Lady, was she. The piano is forgivable as a tool of the trade, but the flowers are not.

We assume this is meant to be 'romantic'? At least it is taking place in the kitchen and we're spared lolling on a bed.

The decorator - and we assume a decorator was involved as who else could create so much bad taste - seems to have forgotten to tell the builders not to wallpaper Lloyd Webber. At least Brightman's bush seems to be almost under control.

This seems to be a second baby grand. And a Chesterfield upholstered in velvet. Paintings hung too low, but then so are the ceilings.


Words fail us. A roaring fire. Florals and Chintz galore. White skin cowboy boots. One of those ghastly waste paper bins with a landscape scene that the GTC used to do a roaring trade in. This reminds me of how I lost my virginity. I feel sick even looking at those ruffled cushions. Cushions should never be arranged on their points. It suggests a maid who trained by watching Dynasty.


The flat has since been modernised and de-Dynasty-ised.

By a strange coincidence, we think that it is the same flat that the current owners are sub-letting by the night through Air B'n'B ... very unusual for Eaton Square, and a "snip" at £1029 per night.


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