Former Editor of GQ Dylan Jones | Why London is the Best City in the World

0:00You're listening to Travel Secrets with Tanya Rose, the podcast that shares wisdom for fellow travelers.

0:09Welcome to Travel Secrets with me, Tanya Rose, the podcast sharing wisdom for fellow travelers. Each week, I ask my guests to reveal their six travel secrets and the holidays and adventures that surround them. I would just like to say thank you to Mason Rose, the sales and communication agency that represents some of the finest hotels around the world for partnering with Travel Secrets, the podcast. Today, my guest is the brilliant journalist, author, editor and friend Dylan Jones. We have known each other for many, many years. When you reigned supreme for 22 years as the editor of GQ, your books are unbelievable and your biography is sitting next to my bed and will be taken on my trip to Tangiers next week and I think is coming out in paperback next month.

1:00It is indeed. These foolish things. These foolish things. Remind me of you. Exactly. It's fantastic. I mean, I've dipped in and out, but I want to do it from cover to cover. So I will be taking the hardback and I have a signed copy. So thank you very, very much indeed. There are a few unsigned copies out there somewhere, but you know. If you want one. Exactly. You pay more for that. You are such a prolific writer. Your books are just fantastic. Your GQ Man of the Year event that I came to with Frank Bowling, who ran the Bel Air for many, many years, was the best party I have ever been to in my life.

1:34I sat next to one of the Osmonds, which was great. We had an Osmond? You did. I did not know that. And I sat next to him. Wow, which one? Well, I can't remember. You can't remember, can you? And isn't it awful? Because I said to him, he said something, I'm an Osmond. And I didn't like to say, well, which one are you? Because I knew he wasn't. It is strange because there are, occasionally, you'll be introduced to a famous person. And they say, I had a fantastic time at the party. And I had no idea that they were there. I mean, they were laden. They were dripping with celebrities when it was in its pomp.

2:04But anyway, very good to see you. It was lovely and it's wonderful to have you. You are a man of great taste. You probably travel or have travelled as much as I have. So I cannot wait to hear your travel secrets. No one has travelled as much as you have. Maybe not. Maybe not. But I know you're on your way to Mexico tomorrow. So you're pretty much a traveller. so before we go into your travel secrets perhaps you can just tell us a little bit about yourself and how travel has impacted the person that you've become i always think that um and i'm sure everyone says this but i do i do think it's a privilege and i think that the uh the industries that you and i have worked in for um a number of years have afforded us um an entry into lots of different worlds uh and yeah i i um we were talking earlier and i think it's terrible when people in my industry abuse that i think it's awful um because it is a fantastic world and also i do think as this part of the of the leisure sector has expanded becomes increasingly fascinating because it is a part of the luxury world now did you grow up traveling my father was in the Air Force.

3:14So we moved around a lot, Malta, Cyprus, Italy, and then dozens of places in the UK, lots in London, American Air Force bases. And I do think that growing up on and in the vicinity of American Air Force bases probably helped with my sort of fascination with America, with American culture, et cetera, et cetera. So, yeah, I suppose it did. Your books really are amazing. And your biography, I cannot wait to read. But your book on David Bowie and on you too. And I actually sat next to Paul McGuinness the other day at lunch. Aha, who I'm having dinner with this evening. No. Yeah. Well, I sat next to him at lunch.

4:03So please do send him my best regards. I will do. I will do. He was the loveliest man. He's fantastic. He and Kathy occasionally come to stay with us for the Hay Festival. And when they were younger, my younger daughter Georgia would say, I love Paul. He sounds like God. And he has such a kind of deep, sonorous voice. But he's brilliant. So modest. Very modest. And also he created or co-created such an extraordinary brand with U2. And he's a brilliant man. No, he really is. So do send him by lot. I will do. So let's get into your travel secrets. What is the number one destination that you think everyone should go to once in their lifetime?

4:45Well, this is two questions in one. OK, you can have two answers, please. Well, I don't want everyone to go to my favourite travel destination. I've got two answers. I suppose my favourite urban experience is Tokyo. But for a beach holiday, for a family holiday, for some years it's been Mystique. I've never been to Mystique, but so many of our mutual friends have houses there and they keep saying, you must come, you must come. Didn't David Bowie have a house there? David Bowie had a house there Mick Jagger still has Tommy Hilfiger has Brian Adams but the great thing about Mystique and I suppose this is a cliche is that it's incredibly glamorous but it's quite difficult to get to and it's it's really rough and ready there are only two places to eat people don't walk around with big watches and it's not it's not it's not kind of glamorous it's really kind of down home and casual and friendly and i think people have the wrong idea about you because they think it's a club they think people are snooty but it's not likest bart's or anywhere like that and those are not my places i don't want to go to somewhere and have to show off for two or three weeks i want to relax and you can relax and it's a very nice place and i'm again it's um it's uh it's uh uh some being um discovering somewhere like that is is um again I mean, it's a privilege.

6:11It can't be anything other than a privilege. What are the restaurants? Is it Basil's Bar? Basil's Bar, yeah. Is that a food place or is that just a bar? It's a bar. It's a restaurant. It's a discotheque. And is it run by someone called Basil? It is indeed, yeah. Yeah. And there are lots of stories about Basil, none of which I can say on your podcast. Yeah, that's for the uncut version. And then Japan. I went to Japan many, many years ago when I worked for the Savoy, so I haven't been back. it's changed so much. I first went 40 years ago and then it felt like I'd gone to a different planet because I think the one thing that is special there are so many great things about Japan but it's very particular it doesn't feel like anywhere else in the world it's very inclusive and that's deliberately so so when you go there you feel like you're being you are immersing yourself in a very particular place and a particular culture and the cultures remained the same i mean for instance i mean i've been a lot for work i've been a lot for pleasure and i took my family there maybe 15 years ago and we spent the first three days in taxis because i wanted the girls my daughters to to see tokyo it's a big city as you know and it's quite difficult to get around um and then for the rest of the time we took the subway yeah we took the underground i mean i when i first went in 82 um as a model would you believe um and um but it was bewildering it is less bewildering now but i think that's to do with age and experience as much as anything else uh because the subway at the time the underground system was impenetrable but we went everywhere by um uh tube for the rest of the time we were there and we were coming down from our hotel to the tube station I think we were in Shinjuku and there's a huge potted plant on the platform with the tubers and my kids have been born and brought up in London so that they are urban and I said that will still be there when we get back at five o 'clock and I go of course it won't because in London it wouldn't be of course it wouldn't but but um the japan i mean what but of course it was there at five o 'clock we saw we know i went to find it it was still there and of course because why would you steal and so there's a very particular culture there and the violence is mainly gang related and sort of kept away from polite society my daughter went there my daughter younger daughter georgia um didn't have a gap year and of course if you don't have a gap year now it's like some massive infringement like you know and because of COVID.

9:00And so she saved up a lot of money and she went to Japan by herself last year and she was basically there largely on her own for three months. But it's one of the safest places in the world. But it's got this fantastic mixture of incredible forward-thinking, extraordinary technology and beautiful architecture with deep historical culture. and they don't clash. They're very different, but that fantastic juxtaposition makes for a really amazing place and it's just continually fascinating. I went, I've been many times, I went, probably the longest I was there, I was there for three weeks when the World Cup was there and we travelled all over, went with friends, various friends, going all over the place, Osaka and Sapporo and lots of different places.

9:51and it's I remember we were shopping once in Ginza we were shopping and we didn't buy anything it was raining and as we were leaving the shop assistant came with us with an umbrella down to our next door nothing in it for him he wasn't going to benefit from this he was just being incredibly polite also the food which is the greatest food in the world and it's also it's largely meat based which you wouldn't think because you just think of sushi But anyway, I can bore for Britain about Tokyo and Japan. Fantastic. What is your most unexpected travel experience? I remember when our first daughter was born, Edie, we went to Barbados.

10:37And Sandy Lane was closed. And we stayed in the hotel next to Sandy Lane. I can't remember what it was called. and of course being naive young parents you know you didn't realize that the kids get jet jet lag too so the um she was six months old and that was probably the the the worst holiday of um the worst nice holiday of my life and I do tell young you know young parents I say beware go to Europe trust me because if you travel long haul with a small baby it will not be fun and actually that That really does upset the routine, doesn't it? It really does. That was brutal. Have you been back to Barbados subsequently?

11:17Only as a stop off to get somewhere else. Because you go to Mystique. Yeah, exactly. Go to Mystique. We did the relaunch of Sandy Lane, actually. Did you? When it reopened, yeah, 20 years ago. How very glamorous. And it was very glamorous. I bet it was. I don't, Barbados is not my island in the Caribbean either, but. Where do you go? St. Bart's. I love it. Oh, dear. I'm going to move swiftly on. What is the most overrated or underrated travel experience you've had? I've been to New York, I don't know, 50 times in my life, mainly for work. New York right now is the most overrated place in the world.

11:58It's expensive. It's dirty. It's just not a nice place. The first time I went there in 1984, we were doing a big party ID at Dance Oteria, which was a big big club at the time and we were flown over on mass and we were there for a couple of weeks we had such a great time but even though it was it's very visceral it's it's an exciting fast uh city i've always found it very parochial really parochial and we went to very conceited um you know we were working for id magazine we thought we were the toast of the town we thought we were this we were that and i think that kind of arrogance kind of carried us a long way particularly at that time when id like the face um was we weren't just commenting upon swinging london we knew that we were part of it uh and that arrogance was i i think it fueled us so we went to New York and we found it very very parochial in this way that um you know you have to go to this restaurant you have to go to this restaurant and if you have to go to this restaurant you have to sit at like table 42 because if you don't you'll know one and we're like no we don't I mean but I do find it kind of um because it's so driven by status uh it just feels very old-fashioned It's still an exciting place.

13:27It has great energy. But I think the mentality, the psychology of New York has always been a little bit backward in that sense. But yeah, at the moment, it's dirty and expensive. I have breakfast every morning in Sant 'Ambrose, you know, those cafes that are everywhere, which are very lovely, but very basic. Yeah. And it would be normally$60,$70. And it was$200 each meal. And I was thinking, my goodness, this has become very expensive. No, it's unsustainable. The thing I do love about New York is the way that everyone has an opinion about new buildings, which I think is brilliant. And there is a real sense of community.

14:05There is a real sense of a fabric to the city and that you are a New Yorker, even though it's been kind of colonized by realtors. And it's, you know, it's there's no edge to New York in the way that they used to be. That's the thing about London. I hope even though London is a very difficult place for young people to live because there's such a huge difference between rich and poor and that's always bad for a city. I do think that somewhere in the city there are people in dark corners breaking things and that's what you need for a culture to thrive, that sense of regeneration. Well, London is a wonderful city.

14:46I love living in London. And I go all over the world and I come back thinking I'm so happy that I live in London. I love it. But one of the books you wrote was about the 80s, wasn't it? And there's so much going on in London at the moment for the 80s, isn't there? Like exhibitions. Yeah, there's lots of, there's a big exhibition on Lee Bowery. The Face Exhibition opened at the National Portrait Gallery two days ago. And there's a big exhibition on the Blitz Nightclub, which is opening at the Design Museum in September. But London has great IP in pop culture. it has it is the most culturally vibrant city in the world and has been since um the end of the second world war there's no city like it and it is regenerative it is you know every there's a just a constant stream another generation of great artists musicians um uh writers filmmakers fashion designers um there's something in the water i mean it's just an extraordinary place and that continues and it is a tough place to live because it's more expensive than it used to be but it's uh it is the best city in the world of course it is and actually you used to run the men's fashion awards didn't you uh yeah i worked at the um i i was a chair of the bsc for 10 years that was enormous fun um but uh because london has the greatest you know the greatest young fashion designers in the world but it's not we don't have the kind of vertical system that we do in in milan uh and but people want to come to london so when we started it we knew that as well as supporting the younger designers that we had to encourage all the big design all the big british designers to come back to london people like burberry um and then we had to reach out to um um lots of international designers to come and show here so we got tommy hillfiger tom ford armani dolce etc etc and the other thing that i wanted to do um was to celebrate savorot um and i remember speaking to some some guy who was meant to be in charge of the savorot association or something like that somebody like that said oh you'll never do that because they don't talk to each other anyway we did it we got everyone to talk to each other and we did lots of sponsored events with tailors in Savile Row.

17:12I was walking down Savile Row yesterday. It's fantastic. It is fantastic. It's a centre of excellence. It's a centre of great tourism. It's a centre of great craft. It's just brilliant. And actually the old Savile Row and the new are very merged together now. There's none of this us and them. It's great. I love Daisy Natchebal's deck, which is renamed Natchebal. So she's the first female Savile Row tailor. It's great. Really, really good. It's really good, yeah. No, it's really excellent. Fantastic. Let's go on to your top travel tip. What is your top travel tip? Well, I don't think this is particularly interesting, but my wife worked for years in the fashion industry.

17:55So when we started seeing each other about 30 years ago, and we would go on holiday, she'd have like a handbag, like a TARDIS with everything in it. And I have huge pan technicans of, you know. Yeah, exactly. And she said, what are you doing? And it's taken a while, but now I'm like her. I take carry on everywhere. Even if I'm going somewhere for three weeks, I take carry on. Do you? Yeah. Amazing. And actually, if you go to, I mean, Mystique, for instance, you need shorts. You need some T-shirts. And that's kind of it because you're not dressing up to do anything. And I don't want to go anywhere where I have to dress up.

18:33And we're going to Mexico for a week and I'll take Macarrion. I'm so in awe of people who can do this. You don't? I don't. I take masses and masses of things, even for a weekend. I don't know. And I never wear it. Richard E. Grant was on this podcast last week and he's exactly like you. And I'm going on a trip with him to Istanbul. And he's promised to come to my house and pack for me so that I can do it on hand luggage only. He's going to teach me. It's true. Chuck it out. Chuck it out. You don't need that. I know. And the shoes. I never wear the shoes. I never ever wear the shoes. But I will still take things I don't wear.

19:08Will you? Of course, because I'm stupid. I could actually get away with a lot less. But you also have a uniform, don't you? You wear very much the navy blue, the white. I'm the most boring. During London Fashion Week, there'd be a lot of international press coming, which is great. And there used to be, we used to get a lot of attention from Japan, which was great. And invariably, they'd come and do interviews about this, that and the other. And there would always be someone would ask the questions like, what's your style regime? Which I think it would be a dim thing to ask, expecting me to, you know, to look like Lee Barry or something.

19:50I said, I'll tell you what it is. I get up in the morning. I put on a blue suit and I walk to work. And yeah, I think it's there used to be many years ago, a great designer called Joe Ponte. he wore one suit and he had four versions of it he had two suits for winter two suits for summer one for the day one for the evening but they were exactly the same cut and that was his uniform I think everyone likes a uniform and when you hit your uniform and if you're lucky you hit it young you don't have to worry it's like it's like when the ivy was the ivy yeah you know when the ivy was a great restaurant and the ivy was the place you had to go to for meetings because you wanted to flatter people well oh we'll go to the ivy and people love that they don't anymore because the ivy is not the ivy um and you went to the ivy and you sat down and you had a great lunch the food was amazing but the food was incidental yeah it you knew what it was you knew it was going to be great but you didn't i mean i very rarely go to restaurants for food that takes us nicely onto to the food and drink question actually because food and drink is so much part of travel and i love what you just said about going to eat is not about the food but what do you like eating where do you like eating let's just talk about food and drink i like places that it's like it's like cheers yeah you know where everybody knows your name it's where you it doesn't matter if it's your local caf a pub or or a restaurant I mean I will follow Jeremy King around London and the park which is his new restaurant which is very near where I live in top of Queensway in in Bayswater that's my new favorite restaurant in London a because it's a fantastic restaurant B because it's Jeremy King C because it's very near where I live um and if you go somewhere a lot they get to know you and when I was at um when I first started um GQ um I was very prescriptive about um where I ate and I went to the Caprice and I went to the Ivy and that was basically it um I remember having when the great Ed Victor who we both knew very well he was my agent for ages Wonderful man.

22:16And Ed was not just a great agent. He was a great mentor and he was a really dear friend of mine. I loved him dearly. And as you know, he used to call me up in the morning, most mornings, and say, Dylan, how are you? What did you do last night? And this question was basically just an excuse for him to tell you where he'd been. Because he always went to amazing places. I would start talking and said, Dylan, do you know what I did last night? I was in Tuscany with Ruthie Rogers and Alan Yentob and Alexander the Great and just tell all these stories. And when we were sort of courting each other in our early days when I became a client of his, we would take each other for lunch.

23:00We'd take it in turns. And one day we went to the Ivy and it was his turn to pay. We had a lovely lunch and blah, blah, blah. At the end of the meal, I put his napkin down and said, right, I have to go. and we stood up and we were walking out and I said, Ed, Ed, you haven't paid. And you looked at me like I was a Reuben and said, Dylan, I have an account. Ah, that's great. And I thought that was really cool and I'd never heard that before and I think that's great. Having an account in a restaurant is a very cool thing to do. I didn't even know you could have an account. There we are. And I agree with you on Jeremy King's new restaurant.

23:36It's fabulous because the tables are far enough away that you don't feel like you're being overheard by anyone. that you want anything on the menu. There's literally everything that you like. He is the most wonderful restauranteur. He comes and greets you, but he doesn't hover. He's a real pro. I think he's absolutely fantastic. I don't want to feel like I've somehow won a lottery by getting a table. It's like I don't care. I'm not a massive foodie and I don't like queuing. I don't want to feel like it's a privilege for me to be somewhere. I really don't. I just want it really nice and easy. I won't go to a restaurant where you can't have a reservation because I want to eat when I want to eat.

24:15Because it's like if I don't eat by a certain, I've got very low blood sugar level. I remember I didn't realize this until I was quite old. And we were in Milan during fashion week. And I realized if I hadn't eaten by about one o 'clock, I was a basket case. And I get that classic thing of getting hangry. I never heard that before. Where do you eat in Milan? Where's good in Milan? Oh, we used to. The great thing about Milan is there's like six restaurants. You know, it's there's very little to do. It's always the same. It never changes. And we used to, Bice was the big one. It's probably not there anymore.

24:55All the, you know, we just went to the same places. And I think that's the one of the most alluring things, one of the most endearing things about Italy, particularly places, you know, the cities, they don't change. Milan is the same now as it was when I first started going there in the 80s. You know, it just doesn't change. We've got a lovely hotel in Milan called Portrait Milan. Have you seen that? No, that's obviously new. Yes, it opened two years ago. It's absolutely wonderful. You haven't invited me because you're a horrible person. But you are invited. You're a mean person who goes to St.

25:26Bart's and doesn't invite me to fancy hotels. You can go to Milan whenever you want to. Actually, I've got a wonderful story about the Ivy. I went there with Albert Finney, who was my son's godfather. And the first time I met him, which was many, many years ago, he was thanking us for doing something we'd sent him somewhere and my business partner best friend Sarah Mason was looking over at another table and Albert was very miffed he said Sarah I'm the famous person at this table why are you not looking at me she said because Sean Bean is sitting over there and he's my very favorite actor in the world so Albert got oh got up and went over to Sean Bean and said Sean you don't know me and of course Sean Bean is like dying because Albert Finney is his hero and he said one of the girls at my table really fancies you will you come over and join us so she went bright red but it was absolutely wonderful i love that a very good friend of mine um is a very um storied um music writer called nick kent who now lives in paris and he was really important music journalist in the 70s for the nme and that golden generation of music writers in the NME.

26:32And he was once in a Chinese restaurant in Gerrard Street, I think, in London, in the basement, and he was having dinner with Iggy Pop and David Bowie, who he knew very, very well. And there was a waitress who kept looking over, obviously thinking, it wasn't their waitress it was like another waitress from another table thinking obviously that you know there's two very very famous people there anyway they're there all night and they're kind of everyone else has left and they're just there three of them having a chat and at the end this waitress came came over with a piece of paper and a pen and said i really hope you don't mind i'd love your autograph and she gave it to nick that is brilliant they weren't happy there's nothing and no one you don't know in the music industry actually so although you're very well known in fashion and magazines you really know so much about music did you meet David Bowie I mean you must have known him well enough to write those books on him I I knew him quite well yeah where did you first meet him I first met him when I was a film extra when I left St Martin's I was trying to make it as a photographer and I was a terrible photographer and I didn't really have the motivation for it I just wasn't very good and I'm bumming around doing various things but I was that that kind of arrogance that you have at that age I wouldn't do I didn't want to pursue something um that I didn't want to do so I'd rather do kind of crappy jobs in the hope that I would do something that I wanted to do in the industry yeah I was very single-minded so I worked in bars I I did lots of stuff and I was a film extra um I wasn't even a very good film extra because I only worked on two films.

28:21I shoot down Roger Moore's plane in Octopussy. Would I recognise you? No, because I'm that big. And it was a film in Shepparton or somewhere. And then I was in a very bad David Bowie film called The Hunger, in which he starred with Catherine Deneuve and they play vampires. Oh, yes. Terrible film. Yes, yes, with the hair. Yeah, I remember. And there was one scene that was shot in heaven, the nightclub, which I think it's still there in London. and this scene was Bauhaus were there playing Bela Lugosi's Dead as David Bowie and Catherine Deneuve go up and down this metal staircase and we're in the crowd.

29:01And then he came up in the afternoon asking and asked me for a light for his cigarette. And when you're kind of 20 years old, you can live off that anecdote for months. And then I got to know him professionally. I knew him socially and had a kind of light touch, a relationship with him over the years. I mean, how he was as a person is that he would have kind of intense periods, quite intense periods of, I think it's difficult to call it friendship because I think that it's kind of invidious if you're not famous and you have a relationship with a famous person. It's very difficult because there's always that issue.

29:43but we knew each other quite well for a period you got christmas cards etc etc and then you'd sort of that would be it you'd be kind of gone uh and when i did my book i did two books on bowie and i did an oral biography where i interviewed 150 people who knew him and lots of people had that same experience where you'd be you'd be the kind of chosen person whether you were a musician or a journalist or a love interest or makeup artist or photographer and it would work itself. And so many people, I remember talking to Tony McGee about it and it's like one day he just didn't answer anymore and he knew it was over.

30:23And I think a lot of people, particularly if you have an emotional or romantic investment, found that very difficult. But actually I remember Tony was really, he was kind of like me, is like, well, no, it's fantastic. I had like four or five years where I had a really good relationship with David Bowie and then I didn't, but I wouldn't, I don't begrudge those times. And you remember them. And I kind of feel the same actually. So it was, yeah, so when he'd come to London, he'd have dinner and stuff like that. It was nice, but it's. I've got a question because you did know him. Why do people say Bowie or Bowie and which is it?

31:03it's it is Bowie because it's it's the nice but I think when we I mean we were kids it was always Bowie I think it just depends where you're when you grow up you know but his son went to Gordonstone my school but he's much younger than me and he was called Zowie Bowie that's right yeah and then he changed it to Duncan Jones Duncan yeah exactly very different wonder why wonder why let's go on to the poignant travel secret what is your most poignant travel experience i used to go to the very first ones were the alternative fashion shows atst martin's and a couple of years yeah when all the blitz kids were there and you know boy george was there and steve lennard that was kind of amazing and then seeing the early vivian westward shows with all the drama and the extravagance when Malcolm was still alive.

31:56That was fantastic. But after a while, and there's a certain amount of extravagance, but they're trade shows. I suppose when you're in that industry and it's just another one. I've only ever been to one fashion show in my life. You don't need to go to another one. Which one was it? Well, it was amazing. I was invited to Paris to stay at the Ritz, which was incredible because it's a beautiful hotel. And it was Karl Lagerfeld's last fashion show. But he was ill, so he didn't come because he actually died very, you know, a few months later. But the actual fashion show was exquisite. Well, they are.

32:30And they're theatre. And it's a kind of amazing industry because they are trade shows, but they create out of that this extraordinary kind of extravagance. But you've seen one fashion show. You've seen enough. You really have. I asked you to bring a photograph. Yeah. Can you describe the photograph and tell us what that means to you? Yeah, it means a lot to me, but it won't mean anything else to anyone. It won't mean anything to anyone else. And it shouldn't because it's about family and it's a picture of us that was taken last summer in Mystique. Myself, my wife and my two daughters. I think one of the weird thing is that our house is just papered with pictures of us on holiday because why wouldn't you?

33:18I mean, it's a family unit. And then when did Instagram kick in? And everything stops. So I've got, again, like everyone else, I've got hundreds, probably thousands of pictures on my phone like everyone does. But you don't share them in the same way. So I think those, and we have a family WhatsApp group, like I suppose everyone does. And that's the way we communicate now. But, yeah, it's a not particularly interesting, quite anodyne photograph of us on holiday, but it's a family picture and that's our memory and it shouldn't be anything. I don't look upon travel necessarily as, I think lots of people now look, still look upon travel as kind of like a glamorous thing to do.

34:08And I don't, I just think of it as downtime. I mean, I love travel. Why wouldn't you? and I love going to new places and there are places I haven't been to which I'm looking forward to like going to Mexico tomorrow but I don't want to I don't want it to be performative and lots of people do and I get that I suppose it's a difference between going to the Cotswolds which I think is performative most of my friends have places in the Cotswolds but I don't want to go to somewhere where it's like going to the farm That's where I like going. We are so different. Because we have a house. Mystique, St Bart's, Cotswolds and.

34:52No, but we have a house in Wales, in the Brecon Beacons. And you don't bump into people. You don't go to the local pub and bump into someone. That's where my husband wants to live. And I want to live in the Cotswolds. Well, he's right. Maybe I should live with your husband. Get your husband to come and live with us. He grew up in Wales. He grew up in Pendine Sands in Carmarthenshire. and he says it is so beautiful you don't see anyone it's all you know you don't have to dress up and everything and I say but I want to live in the Cotswolds and I want to go to Dalesford and soho house and he says it's so ghastly but I love it I'm with your husband because soho um soho farmhouse is an amazing proposition we stayed there when it opened I've had lots of events there I've hired the place it's brilliant but if I go away for the weekend I don't want to bump into I just don't.

35:42And I think because I lead a very busy, frenetic, business-orientated London life, and I still love that because I think London kind of engenders that, and it's just I'm lucky enough to work in these industries, and I think you have to be connected in that way. When I'm not doing that, I'm not interested. It's like scenes. I don't like scenes. I've never been a joiner. I don't like gangs. I don't like scenes. I don't want to go on a holiday and be a show off. And I just want to disappear. And I do it in Mystique because it's a glamorous way of doing that because it's not glamorous. It's kind of luxurious, I suppose, is what I mean.