Naomi Campbell must have been adjusting her makeup. She makes something of a habit of arriving late at events and no doubt punctual in her terms turned up 40 minutes after she was scheduled for the opening of her own restaurant in London this week.
It is one of those Fashion Cafe places; there is already one in New York and doubtless one will come to Hong Kong soon.
Sylvester Stallone and chums having spotted a nice gap in the market with their Planet Hollywood a few years ago, Naomi, Claudia, Elle and Christy are now doing the same with their Fashion Cafes. Don't expect good food, I hear it tastes like garbage. But then who ever suspected the super-slim of eating good food anyway? Anyway this isn't really about the Fashion Cafe. No, Naomi wisely chose a public holiday when there wasn't much news around and no doubt her unpunctuality gave even the tardiest reporter time to get out of the pub and write about the scene.
It is that very unpunctuality I wish to reflect on. No doubt being late is fashionable.
Of course the police were fuming at having to hold back the crowds for 40 minutes longer than they would have liked and it served as proof that celebrities think they have the right to write their own rules, in other words that the rest of us don't matter much.
I am told that in Hollywood you can gauge the standing of a star by the degree of unpunctuality they cultivate, the longer you wait the bigger the celeb.