'Monica's story' much like Diana's

The most famous feminine icon of our media-obsessed fin-de-siècle is an attractive, egocentric, not-particularly bright, love-addicted young woman from a well-to-do broken home, prone to frequent temper tantrums, with an eating disorder, a questionable taste in men, a serious telephone, shopping and hairdressing habit, and who, just out of her teens, fooled herself into thinking that she would one day become consort to the Master of the World.

No, not Monica Lewinsky. The late Princess Diana, of course.

The announcement, earlier this week, that Diana's approved biographer, Andrew Morton, would write Monica's own story for St. Martin's Press/Michael O'Mara books, should come as no surprise to us.

After all, both women alternately tried to conform, then chafed (rather than rebelled) against bewildering expectations of public and private behavior. They found themselves hounded by the establishment and the media, their telephone calls tapped, their love life speculated upon. Both have followed various courses of psychotherapy and counseling. Vast sums of money have been offered to auction off their clothes. Both rated "Vanity Fair" photoshoots. Both spent claustrophobic months cooped-up in their plush apartments, eating TV dinners in front of the tube, reduced to tears at the prospect of a life forever spent under a magnifying glass.

The similarities go much further than the effects of the celebrity machine steamroller. Both Monica and Diana were painfully ill-equipped to deal with adulthood, their barely-adequate schooling (whether at West Heath College or Bel Air Prep School) offering them little opportunity for self-esteem. After managing a single prize over her entire high-school years (for "best-kept hamster"), Diana was so desperately unhappy in the Swiss finishing school she was subsequently packed off to that she dropped out after one term. Monica was the only girl in her class not invited to her classmate Tori Spelling (daughter of "Dynasty" producer Aaron Spelling)' 15th birthday. Diana's first jobs were as cleaning lady and nanny. Monica's were as shop assistant and legal receptionist.

Both girls have unresolved conflicts with more poised, but less scrupulous mothers, who drilled into them unreasonable expectations, and whom they have regularly, if somewhat wistfully, termed [their] "best friend[s]". Diana's "bolted" (the accepted expression, in the English upper classes) from the family home to pursue an affair with a married man, ultimately losing custody of her children. Marcia Lewis-Lewinsky divorced Monica's father California-style, with a settlement including therapy costs for her daughter. "I was brought up with lies all my life," says Monica in the infamous Tripp tapes. "To get money from my Dad I had to tell him a story. My Mom lied about everything ... all the time."

It was her mother - thin, celebrity-focussed, more successful with men - who got Monica her intern's job at the White House. It was Diana's maternal grandmother, Lady Fermoy, a lady-in-waiting to the Queen Mother, who eventually pushed her as a suitable bride for Prince Charles; but it was Diana's mother who first encouraged her children to play with the young princes, and used to joke that Diana would marry Prince Andrew. This is the boomers' sense of entitlement gone mad: Windsor Castle or the White House as post-prom playground; as the convenient set for ambitions vicariously vested in their children.

Just as Diana ranted about the courtiers, the "gray men" who tiresomely wanted her to read up on the institutions she carelessly opened, Monica complained about Evelyn Lieberman and other White House staffers who expected of her -- typing skills! correct spelling and grammar! Diana rollerskated down the corridors of Buckingham Palace to the muffled sounds of her Walkman. Monica stalked the East Wing corridors with gifts of pizza and Godiva chocolates. Reproaches of unseemliness were greeted with rolled-up eyes by both girls alike. Even their indiscretions are amazingly similar, down to the expletives. "When I think of all I've done for this f***ing family!" [the House of Windsor] Diana complains to her boyfriend James Gilbey in the notorious "Squidgygate" taped telephone call.

Flareups were frequent: Diana shouted at her secretaries, press assistants, her husband's staff; rang up Camilla Parker-Bowles to tell her she had sent hired killers to her house; dropped her friends dramatically; fired aides, maids, hairdressers, masseuses, therapists. Monica merely screamed at the Secret Service and at the long-suffering Betty Currie. "If I'd know the sort of girl you were, I would never have gotten involved with you," President Clinton is quoted as telling Monica: feelings heartily endorsed by Prince Charles.

Both Diana and Monica have repeatedly described themselves as "insecure" and "vulnerable"; and in both cases, they have been enthusiastically believed when putting forward their cases for public consumption. Diana's stage was the world media, while Monica's, so far, has only been Ken Starr's Grand Jury; but it is interesting to note how well the jurors received her testimony: time and again, evidence of identification and bonding shows through the transcripts. Motherly advice is profferred: ": Monica, none of us in this room are perfect," says one juror at the end of her deposition. "We all fall and we fall several times a day. The only difference between my age and when I was your age is now I get up faster." Diana charmed the historian Paul Johnson and the film producer David Puttnam; Monica has obviously bowled over Larry King, who had repeatedly said on air that "the President did the wrong thing by this young girl."

Andrew Morton, one of the hardened breed of British Royal correspondents, will no doubt find himself in familiar territory when he starts working with Monica. "They clicked very loudly," his publisher Michael O'Mara said last week, describing the first Morton-Lewinsky meeting. "They were making progress on the book before [Morton] even signed." Diana had picked him personally to write the 1992 biography revealing her bulimia and her suicide attempts, and which finally sealed the end of her marriage to Prince Charles. Its serialization in the Murdoch-owned "Sunday Times," raising as it did Britain's Republican sentiments, was seen as high treason by the Windsors. (Diana answered all Morton's questions in a series of tape-recordings in order to be able to deny ever having met him, a cute legalism Clintonites should appreciate.)

There will be talk of midnight binges (Monica, unlike Diana, did not make herself throw up afterwards); of best friends to whom one "babbles." There will be names of heads of State and foreign countries thrown incongruously into a Barbara Cartland recital: Monica accompanying the Defense Secretary to Bosnia and giving her analysis to Clinton late at night; Diana meeting president Sadat of Egypt during her honeynoon and impulsively kissing him.

It should be acknowledged at this stage that both women tried to please according to the rules they were brought up with. Diana, perfectly capable of stalking her men (the married art-dealer Oliver Hoare, who received more than 200 anonymous phone calls traced to her private line; the Pakistani surgeon Hasnat Khan, whom she regularly visited at night in hospital, and whose parents received a surprise visit at their home near Lahore) outwardly cultivated the pure English rose style. Monica, in the Beverly Hills style documented by the late Nicole Simpson and Faye Resnick, "fooled around" at the drop of a beret.

Of the two, Monica got the rawest deal - a $600,000 book contract instead of a $80 million divorce settlement; Monica inflatable dolls instead of Diana Franklin Mint memorial figurines - but it should be said that she was the more sincere of the two. She did love her "Butthead", whom she saw, perhaps accurately, as a lonely, insecure little boy (a description which could easily apply to prince Charles, but which his ex-wife never considered.) Unlike Diana, she never wished to topple the head of State, trying to protect him instead. But with Andrew Morton's canny help, she might fare better in the long run, as long as she avoids playboys and too-fast cars.

© Copyright Chicago Sun-Times & Anne-Elisabeth Moutet 1998

Raine at the Ritz

Lord and Lady Spencer, the Escoffier Cookery School, and Paris Ritz memories

"Can you be at the Ritz tomorrow morning by 11:30?" a Mr. Klein said out of the blue on the telephone. "Lord and Lady Spencer will be opening the new Ritz cookery school." "Tomorrow?" I said. "Tomorrow. Earl Spencer, you know, the Princess of Wales's father. And Lady Spencer, uh..." "...is her stepmother. Barbara Cartland's daughter," I said. "Yes, we-ell, yes. Well, can you make it?" I said this was jolly short notice, and I might be ten minutes late, due to a prior appointment at the other end of Paris. "Oh, that's quite all right," Mr Klein (who later turned out to be the Paris Ritz's president, no less) said. "Actually, we're expecting Lord and Lady Spencer at noon, but you know how it is, we want the press to be there before them."

I then knew exactly how it was: we - half a dozen hacks and twice as many photographers - were going to get the closest to a Royalty walkabout as could possibly be contrived. Be there before them. Don't leave before they go. Dutifully smile at their jokes. Don't touch. Look, but don't stare. Jot down every utterance, however inane. And, puh-leeeze, give a good plug to the new Ritz-Escoffier cookery school, ready from April 5 to take on Le Cordon Bleu and La Varenne in the highly competitive market of expensive Paris-based top class cookery schools (one week spent in the basement of the Ritz under neon lights, learning to knead pate brisee, starts at £450; the full 12-week course costs £5650,) whose attendance is roughly equally divided between English society debs (there is life after spag. bol.) and serious aspirant two-rosette chefs from all over the world (there is life after kiwi fruit.) In fact, the man in charge of the Ecole De Gastronomie Francaise Ritz-Escoffier, an inexpressibly chic American with a Mid-Atlantic accent called Gregory Usher, was poached by Mr Klein from La Varenne, which he manages to praise while letting it be known that the Ritz-Escoffier will be a lot "more inventive."

The following morning found us dutifully assembled in the immaculate Ritz basement kitchens - a far cry, indeed, from George Orwell's horrendous, squalid descriptions of the neighbouring Hotel Lotti's, circa 1928, in Down and Out in Paris and London. The New York Times was there, and the Sunday Times, and the Telegraph, and ELLE, and Le Figaro Madame. The white-hatted Ritz chef Guy Legay, one of the three French chefs to be awarded the Legion d'Honneur (the other two are Paul Bocuse and Jean Troisgros) was handing out his card to everyone in sight, and promising us he would explain the recipes again afterwards. It was all very cosy, due to the absence of students, who were not expected to start courses until about a month later. Gregory Usher looked charming. Mr Klein looked worried. And then, at 12:00 on the dot, They appeared.

As always when you meets celebrities whose pictures you've seen everywhere, you had to adjust for a fraction of a second to what they really look like. Raine, Countess Spencer, for instance, is much taller than you'd expect - almost as tall as her husband, whom she calls John (not Johnny.) This, coupled with the fact that Princess Di's dad is a quiet sort of unassuming chap, with a friendly manner and unsure smile (not unlike his youngest daughter's in the days when she tried to avoid the press outside her Coleherne Court flat,) certainly contributed to the instantaneous effect she gave - of being totally and immediately in charge.

Clad in an impeccably cut blue dress and a few good jewels (canary yellow diamond ring, diamond bracelet, huge pearl choker, pearl and diamond brooch, all in definite need of cleaning) Raine swept into the gleaming white-tiled kitchen, her husband meekly following three paces behind. (Well, perhaps two paces. Behind.) She exhibited definitely royal graciousness, underscored with Princess Michael-like aplomb. How perfectly lovely, she said, and how extraordinary that in forty years that she'd been coming to the Ritz, she'd never been down to the kitchens before. The two assistant chefs who were about to demonstrate how to cook a Tarte Tatin and a Mussel Soup were duly introduced. "Je ne sais absolument pas faire la cuisine," Raine said in excellent French, translating for our benefit "I really can't boil an egg", then switched back to French, never missing a beat. "Mon mari adore le Ris de Veau, vous savez. Nous venons ici depuis toujours." The Ritz people were impressed. We were impressed.

"Your wife speaks excellent French," I told Lord Spencer, who had pottered away from the group, unnoticed. "She does, doesn't she?" he said with obvious pride, beaming at her. "D'you know, she speaks Japanese too." Japanese? "With all those tourists coming to Althorp, our house I mean. She learnt Japanese and now they're tremendously chuffed when she starts speaking. Fluent Japanese, d'you know." Did he speak Japanese? Oh no, he said, he wasn't clever like his wife. But French, perhaps? Lord Spencer demurred. "Pas devant la famille", he said somewhat puzzlingly with an atrocious accent, making his point.

In the background, the two Ritz cooks had started preparing the mussel soup with swift, competent moves, chopping shallots and heating butter and mincing vegetables and in general being very, very efficient, without anyone paying much attention. The mussels disappeared into a pan, reappeared, got shelled and chopped so fast that I'd defy a competent cook to see how it got done, let alone our little platoon. (Guy Leguay said yes, the cooks would take more time during an actual class.) Within minutes, a small round pan containing an appetizing, sophisticated saffron-yellow steaming mixture was presented to Lord and Lady Spencer, who got at it with large spoons and obligingly posed for the photographers, the full spoons poised in mid-air. Then Raine spoon-fed Lord Spencer, twice (one of the photographers had missed his shot the first time round.) Excellent, they pronounced. Wonderful, very good, first class, absolutely marvellous. The two young cooks then started on the Tatin, ignored by the group - it was now time for the requisite bit of chitchat with Lady Spencer.

"When, uh, when was the first time you came to the Ritz ever," I asked. "Oh, it's such a long time ago," she said a bit vaguely. "Years and years and years. Such a lovely place." I was about to tell her her husband had just told me of his first stay here on Place Vendome, in 1947, aged 22, on his way to ski-ing in Meribel (he'd remembered how his telephone call to his family had been "a big thing, had to book it hours in advance, in those days") then checked myself. Raine Spencer had first stopped at the Ritz when she was still married to the Earl of Dartmouth, while her adoring husband was taking his first wife, Frances Fermoy, now Mrs Shand Kydd, to that same gilded, grand palace of a place. The Paris Ritz, one of the world's truly magical places, had started as separate memories for them - before their messy divorces, before their marriage.

So instead I lamely asked about her knowledge of Japanese. "There are already a lot of Japanese tourists coming to the UK, and we must attract some more," Raine said forcefully, her manner switching in a flash from Royal to New Tory - she reeled off so many figures she could have been Mrs Thatcher on the campaign trail. "The largest group is the Americans, two and a half million. Then the French, 897,000; then the Germans. I was in Berlin recently for the World Tourism Fair, you know." She is, she explained, a member of the British Tourism Authority, has been for years, long before she opened Althorp to the public. "I already was very active when I was married to my first husband." She was recently a judge in a Bed-and-Breakfast competition ("We British must stick to what we're best at, but excel at it") and another tourism design competition. What was she like as a judge? "Oh, I suspect I'm rather bossy," she said with a smile. "But it's worth its while - you feel you're doing something effective."

In past years, Raine Spencer has often been cast in an unfavourable light - her flogging off XVIIth century paintings to refurbish Althorp earned her a lot of flak, as did the tabloids' easy picture of her as the Princess of Wales's wicked stepmother, not to mention the high visibility of her best-selling authoress mother. But with our little flock of journalists, including the notoriously hard-bitten French photographers, she came out with flying colours. "Elle est très sympathique, cette Lady," the tall burly paparazzo from the Gamma picture agency, with his 35lbs of expensive Japanese hardware dangling from his soulders and neck, said between clicks.

Under the eyes of an agitated Mr Klein, I sidled up to her during a brief lull in the baking of the Tarte Tatin. Would she and her husband perhaps agree to a portrait picture upstairs, in the great Ritz hallway? "Of course," she said. We waited for the Spencers for a good while, slightly worried that once the function had been performed, they might have vanished to enjoy their holiday in Paris in peace. But they were as good as their word. "You must excuse us - my husband was a bit tired, and needed to rest for a while," Raine said. I couldn't help remembering that it was she who nursed him, willed him back to life ten or fifteen years ago, when he suffered a serious stroke and lay in hospital in a coma. She had never stopped talking to him for days, until he responded, and it was agreed in the family that she had "brought him back." "Are you all right, sir?" we asked. "Oh, yes, fine," said Lord Spencer. "Well," said Raine Spencer brightly, "where would you like us to stand?" She led her husband over Aubusson carpets into the great gilded and paneled corridor, its French windows opening onto the lovely indoors Ritz garden, and obligingly stood next to him in the best-lit spot, holding his arm and smiling. "We've been coming here for forty years," Lord Spencer said.

© Copyright Associated Newspapers - Mail on Sunday & Anne-Elisabeth Moutet 1988

CHARLOTTE AU CHOCOLAT

Ingredients for 6 to 8 servings
3 layers of sponge cake
Sponge fingers for a charlotte
1 cup (1/4 l) black coffee
Chocolate Mousse (recipe below)

Method
Brush the sponge cake layers with black coffee. Place one inside a flan ring on a serving platter. Slide the sponge fingers in-between the sides of the ring and the sponge base.

Pour a third of the mousse into the ring, smooth the surface and place the second sponge base on top. Fill with half the remaining mousse and cover with the remaining base.

Finish with the rest of the mousse. Decorate with chocolate curls and a dusting of icing sugar.

Refrigerate for at least 3 hours. Remove the flan ring before serving.

Mousse au Chocolat Ingredients:
5 tbsp (7cl) black coffee
9oz (250g) plain chocolate chopped into small pieces
1 cup (1/4 l) egg whites
6 tbsp (75g) sugar

Method
Heat the coffee in a small saucepan until it almost boils. Remove from the heat, add the chocolate and stir until smooth and creamy. Leave to cool.

Beat the egg whites until stiff, but not overly so, then fold in the sugar little by little until perfectly smooth. Combine a little of the whites with the chocolate, then transfer mixture to the remaining whites and fold in, using a spatula. The mousse should be perfectly smooth when finished.

N.B. The egg whites are easier to beat and much smoother if a little lemon juice is added to them first

© Copyright Escoffier Cookery School, Associated Newspapers - Mail on Sunday & Anne-Elisabeth Moutet 1988