Member Since: 11/16/2010
Posts: 7,213
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Lady Gaga takes tea with Mr. Fry
Quote:
It takes quite a bit to excite the staff of The Lanesborough Hotel, one of London’s more self-consciously luxurious five-star residences. Princes, sultans, presidents, oligarchs and film stars have been coming here ever since the grand but oddly anonymous building on the corner of Hyde Park Corner and Knightsbridge arose from the ruins of Belgravia’s old St George’s Hospital some 20 years ago.
I approach the desk, cough politely and murmur, as if it were the kind of remark I might drop into the ears of a concierge every day, “Hello. I’m here to see Lady Gaga.”
As I am sure you know, it is a matter of pride among *Hollywood stars that they check into hotels under elaborate and often preposterous aliases. Only those in the know are therefore able to call their rooms or ask to be shown up to see them. Lady Gaga’s people had alerted me to no such code system, and somehow I instinctively knew that the lady was simply too big and too … well … too Gaga, to bother with such nonsense.
Either side of me, as I had hurried through, many in the huge gathering outside the hotel had raised their voices in screams of excitement and their right hands into a kind of frozen claw, a gesture that I had inexpertly attempted to return. The crowd must have guessed why I had come to The Lanesborough and it was only polite for me to acknowledge this by returning their salute. This upraised claw is the worldwide identifier of Gaga fans, or Little Monsters, as they style themselves. I am not embarrassed to call myself – grotesquely over-aged and oversized as I may be – some kind of Little Monster too.
On Madonna
‘I genuinely love her so much. I think she is so amazing. She could never be replicated and, yes, I’m Italian, I’m from New York, and not for nothing, it’s not my fault that I kind of look like her, right? So if anything it’s more annoying to me that people would insinuate that I don’t like to be compared to her’
..I had already been introduced to Gaga by a mutual friend on the roof terrace of the newly opened West Hollywood Soho House in April 2010. She had lifted the veil she was wearing that evening and I had kissed her on each cheek. In that stylish private members’ club whose dining tables were peopled by what looked like an exaggerated magazine photo mock-up of every Hollywood A-lister you had ever heard of, this 24-year-old girl had caused a stunned silence to fall as she had entered.
“Ho, ho,” I thought to myself. “Someone has had the idea that it would be amusing for the ‘quintessentially English’ Mr Fry to be seen ‘taking afternoon tea’ with a broad from the Bowery. Oh well, one plays these games and the scones did look rather delicious. I readied my iPhone for recording, sat on the sofa and consulted the notebook in which I had jotted down my questions..
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Read more: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/0cca76f0-8...#axzz1Nay7N3JL
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