I remember asking Terence Conran for a raise. Hugely skilled, voracious even, in the consuming arts of pleasure, Conran has been to me, variously, hero, friend, patron - lately antagonist and universal chump - but at the time, he was my employer.
He said: "My dear Stephen, you already live like a millionaire. What do you need more money for? Conran's theory, from which he claimed the privilege of author's exception, was that there was no need to own tiresome, expensive things if you had the use of them anyway. It's a good theory and one that I have applied often.
So, for my wife's birthday I spoke to two friends. One of them looks after promotions for Bentley, another one owns a champagne house. What better birthday treat than to connect one with the other? Drive a Bentley Continental, one of the world's most indulgent and luxurious cars, to Champagne, source of one of the world's most indulgent and luxurious agricultural products. A fine way for a replica millionaire to spend a couple of days and a little of someone else's fortune.
Bentley's reputation was made in France after an astonishing series of successes at the Vingt-Quatre Heures du Mans endurance race in the late s. Bugatti said that Bentley made "the fastest lorries on earth". One of these entered folklore. A group of wealthy socialites, jump-jockeys and journalists who lived around Grosvenor Square became known as The Bentley Boys.
This Barnato did on two-lane roads. And he won. My own adventure in the descendant of those fast lorries was to be a little less daunting, using the M20 and A An American racer once said that he wanted a car that was perfect neither for lugging the kids around nor for winning races, but one that was somewhere in the middle.
