Venetia Thompson says that the pneumatic model — banned from the key enclosures — is no more of a ‘chav’ than the punters who throng at these increasingly vulgar events
‘What would we do/ usually drink, usually dance, usually bubble/All I want to do is tell you I love you/ That’s when I start promising the world to/ A brand new girl I don’t even know yet/ Next thing she’s wearing my Rolex.’
The sun has gone down and thousands of open-neck pale-pink shirts, blazers, Ray-Bans, blonde highlights and surgically enhanced perma-tan breasts bounce along to a surprise performance by UK rapper extraordinaire Wiley, singing his recent hit ‘Wearing my Rolex’. It is well received. Arms are waved in the air. Champagne bottles are swigged from. High-heeled shoes are kicked off. Someone singing along suddenly stops and asks their friend what it means when one ‘bubbles’.
But there were one pair of notable implants missing from this year’s Cartier International Polo. Those of Jordan, or Katie Price as she is now known, who was not only banned from the VIP Cartier tent, but also prevented from buying a table within the Chinawhite enclosure, on account of her being too much of a ‘chav’ to attend the ‘most prestigious sporting event of the season’. And here I was thinking that Chinawhite, Cartier and chavs were like the Three Musketeers; one for all and all for one.
After all, only chavs now frequent the London night club Chinawhite (despite their rumoured efforts to attract a more upmarket crowd). The club’s association with polo seems a little strange given how out of favour it is with the Sloanes, who have long since deserted it for Boujis. Still, it clings on year after year.
Like Burberry, Louis Vuitton and other luxury brands, Cartier too has fallen victim to the curse of the chav. One of their most popular products, the stainless-steel ‘Tank’ watch, now pops up on all manner of undesirable wrists (at least until they can get their hands on that Rolex, as Wiley sagely warns), including those belonging to the fake breast and nail brigade, bopping around in Pucci-esque dresses at Sunday’s polo. Cartier and Chinawhite should realise that whether they like it or not, it’s the ‘chavs’ that pay their bills.
So why wasn’t Katie’s money welcome last week when she attempted to get a table for her and her friends at the event? It’s a mystery. Her rejection is all the odder considering that she has recently had her breast implants reduced in size, dyed her hair brunette, and having always been an avid horse rider, learnt to play polo (even participating in a charity match last month). Which is more than can be said for most of the guests last Sunday, many of whom missed the polo completely in favour of another five bottles of champagne. This was despite the best efforts of a softly spoken Guards representative ‘reminding’ people that there was polo after lunch, and that ‘England were playing, so would they please take time out from their drinking to watch.’
Maybe it was too hot to sit and watch the match, and they had forgotten sunscreen (although why this would worry sun-bed addicts I am not entirely sure). Or maybe their five-inch heels rendered them immobile. Maybe they did in fact try to leave the Chinawhite tent but got stuck in the treacherous mud en route. Or it could have been the fact that alcohol was not allowed in the Grandstand. Whatever the reason, the North Stand (where the great unwashed non-members of the Guards Polo Club are housed — as far away as possible from the people who actually know the rules of the game, and of course the Royal Box) was decidedly empty during the National Anthem, and became even more so after the first chukka. Either no one told them that there were another seven to come or one seven-minute period was quite long enough to be without alcohol — though at least they were spared the two streakers who turned up towards the end of that match.
So who exactly were Cartier and Chinawhite’s esteemed guests, deemed so much ‘posher’, less ‘chavvy’ and more suited to polo than Katie Price? Kelly Brook, (former page three girl/lingerie model turned actress), Caprice (of Wonderbra fame — is there a theme emerging?) and Tina Hobley (apparently an actress on the BBC’s Holby City). Then of course there were the abundance of white stretched limo-riding City boys and girls swigging from their bottles of vodka while dancing on corporate tables in the Chinawhite tent, before later flailing helplessly around Windsor Park trying to find their limo while all the while wondering how they managed to miss the ‘racing’.
Tucked away in the corner of the Chinawhite tent was a gourmet sausage stand, the only available source of late-night food and thus the scene of a constant kebab-shop-style scrum, with men and women fighting over chips and Cumberland hotdogs. In a rare moment of civility, I was offered sustenance while in the queue by one kind individual who opened his blazer to reveal not a hip flask, but a pack of individually wrapped miniature Thorntons sticky toffee cakes sitting neatly in his inside pocket. How posh.
I was brought swiftly back to reality, however, when I spotted one hapless reveller being shoved into the recovery position by a corduroy-clad drunken stranger yelling into his phone, ‘I dunno what his name is. I saw him stumble out of the Chinawhite tent and collapse. He’s unconscious. What do I do with him now?’
If I hadn’t felt grass under my feet and seen a decidedly higher than average smattering of stars in the sky, I’d have thought that I was in Piccadilly Circus. Or hell.
It’s fair to say that the presence of Katie Price could only have raised the tone of an event which seems to have become the epitome of ‘chav’. Barring her was not only laughable, but also hypocrisy at its worst.
If tables in the Chinawhite tent can be bought by any City salesman who feels like a day out with his favourite clients and their WAGS, then surely Katie should have been able to buy one too. She could have explained the rules of polo to anyone who cared.
Cartier and Chinawhite are clearly deluding themselves if they believe that by barring Katie Price from the polo they are somehow retaining some last scrap of exclusivity. It was a desperate move that has so far only backfired and served to make the event even more vulgar (who would have thought it was possible?) by smacking a hefty dose of senseless classism into the mix.