EDEN CONFIDENTIAL: London's most exclusive gentlemen's club, White's - where ... trends now
No gentlemen's club is prouder of its reputation as a bastion of the Establishment than White's, founded in 1693 and lying just a couple of hundred yards from St James's Palace.
But is change afoot behind its bow-windows, through which generations of noblemen have looked disdainfully at the outside world?
I ask because the club, where King Charles held his stag night before his wedding to Lady Diana Spencer, has, I can disclose, elected a member who, on occasion, dresses in billowing robes and headdress.
Not a woman, of course – the fairer sex remains rigidly excluded, though White's once or twice tolerated a visit by Queen Elizabeth, a photograph of whom, surrounded by well-nourished members, now adorns its loos.
I refer, instead, to Khalid bin Bandar Al Saud, Saudi Arabian ambassador to the United Kingdom.
Pictured: Khalid bin Bandar Al Saud, Saudi Arabian ambassador to the United Kingdom
'I think he's the first ever Saudi to make it,' a devotee of several St James's clubs tells me, adding that the process of being 'put up' for membership of White's is full of pitfalls.
By way of example, he cites the case of an eminent hotelier who, aware that he faced being blackballed, asked the member who had proposed him how his page in the candidates' book was looking. 'Well,' came the reply, 'think of a bowl of Beluga...'
Evidently, no such indignity was suffered by the 46-year-old ambassador – helped, perhaps, by the fact that he was educated at Eton, in common with a sizeable percentage of White's members, Nicholas [now Lord] Soames among them.
No gentlemen's club is prouder of its reputation as a bastion of the Establishment than White's, founded in 1693 and lying just a couple of hundred yards from St James's Palace
Nor will his marital connections have harmed him: his wife, Lucy, with whom he has two daughters, is a niece of Ralph Percy – the Duke of Northumberland.
No one at the Saudi Embassy was available to comment on the ambassador's private arrangements. White's declines to comment, though it may feel it's pulled off a bit of a coup.
The late Lord Charles Spencer-Churchill – known as 'Nutty' – invited the similarly named Prince Khaled bin Abdullah to join him for tea in the White's tent at Ascot, but was turned down. 'I leave Saudi Arabia at this time of year to get away from tents,' explained the Prince.
Dame Kristin Scott Thomas transformed Scarlett Johansson into a Royal Navy captain in her debut as a film director, North Star, last year.
And for her second-in-command, she cast Mark Ebulue, an alumnus of the London Nautical School, after they bonded over their naval
