David Starkey: The history man doesn't suffer fools gladly
The thing about the historian David Starkey - and God, he's going to absolutely hate me for saying this (he does have his reputation for being rude and a brute to think of) - is that he is just such a dream date. We had a terrific evening, or at least I did. I probably bored the arse off him, poor fellow, but he didn't bore me for a minute and there was champagne and wine and I got quite tipsy, although only in the most professional way, and then it was a lift home in his Daimler with its luxurious, cream leather interior and a friendly, if slightly unsteady embrace when we part. Smashing. Were you ever truly, I ask at one point, "the rudest man in Britain", as the epithet had it in the mid- Nineties, or was it all for effect? "I suppose in those days there was a sense of trying to make my mark. I did have things to prove." And now? "I no longer do. One has become a very cuddly teddy bear!" I'm not convinced he is that cuddly yet. He still loves the remark he made about the former Archdeacon of York George Austin on Radio 4's The Moral Maze. It went: "His fatness, his smugness, his pomposity, doesn't it make you want to vomit?" He says now: "It's still a good line. You have two very Anglo Saxon words - 'fat' and 'smug' - and then you have the rolling 'pomposity' to round it off. Ha, Ha!" David is as thrilled with this remark as he ever was. His bitchiness, his campness, his vanity, doesn't it just make you want to whoop? It does me.
We start at 8pm, at a restaurant in Kensington, west London. He's seated at the bar when I arrive with his partner of 12 years, James. "Champagne?" David offers. Don't mind if I do, I say, in the most professional way. James and David have just been to Olympia, to an auction salesroom to look at some furniture. They're currently doing up their newly acquired second home in Kent. "It's not a country house at all. It looks as though it's migrated from Richmond or perhaps Spitalfields. It's the classic Georgian double f fronted: red brick; straight parapet; wisteria across the front." Are you Farrow and Ball-ing like loons? I ask. "Yes, of course," says David. Can I take it as read you are not an Ikea man? Not at all, he says. "All our glassware and china is from Ikea. It's very good for nightlights too. Candles do come cheap there." They are also after bath-taps. David says he's never needed bath taps before and do I have any idea how expensive they are? "I'll have to work for several minutes to pay for them," he says. Don't you mean almost several minutes?, I counter. He laughs. He is pleased. He has never affected any kind of distaste for money. When I later ask, why history?, he says that when he was a boy his best subjects were actually physics, chemistry and maths. "But my problem was I'm not a natural mathematician. The only time I'm really interested in numbers is when they have a pound sign in front of them." David, I say, the only time I'm interested in numbers is when they have a pounds-off sign in front of them. "Deborah," he says, "we move in very different worlds."...
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We start at 8pm, at a restaurant in Kensington, west London. He's seated at the bar when I arrive with his partner of 12 years, James. "Champagne?" David offers. Don't mind if I do, I say, in the most professional way. James and David have just been to Olympia, to an auction salesroom to look at some furniture. They're currently doing up their newly acquired second home in Kent. "It's not a country house at all. It looks as though it's migrated from Richmond or perhaps Spitalfields. It's the classic Georgian double f fronted: red brick; straight parapet; wisteria across the front." Are you Farrow and Ball-ing like loons? I ask. "Yes, of course," says David. Can I take it as read you are not an Ikea man? Not at all, he says. "All our glassware and china is from Ikea. It's very good for nightlights too. Candles do come cheap there." They are also after bath-taps. David says he's never needed bath taps before and do I have any idea how expensive they are? "I'll have to work for several minutes to pay for them," he says. Don't you mean almost several minutes?, I counter. He laughs. He is pleased. He has never affected any kind of distaste for money. When I later ask, why history?, he says that when he was a boy his best subjects were actually physics, chemistry and maths. "But my problem was I'm not a natural mathematician. The only time I'm really interested in numbers is when they have a pound sign in front of them." David, I say, the only time I'm interested in numbers is when they have a pounds-off sign in front of them. "Deborah," he says, "we move in very different worlds."...