This time I am going to break all the rules, readers, and tell you about a show you will not be able to see this week, simply because it will give me the chance to quote from the life and works of Dorothy Parker.
A show about the writer and wit as well as leading 30s songwriter Cole Porter, Parker and Porter, was supposed to be on at the Fringe Club this week, performed by a woman who would like to think of herself as our own Dorothy Parker, Teresa Norton. But, for reasons beyond Norton's control, the show will not go on.
Parker started out writing captions for Vogue, and went on to become one of the New Yorker's most acerbic theatre and book reviewers in those giddy heyday of the 1930s. But she was funnier still on her often unhappy love affairs, including one that ended in an abortion. A subject for comedy? Not in today's polarised America but back then she could say, 'it's my own fault, I shouldn't have put all my eggs in one bastard', without being hounded out of public life by the 'pro-life' lobby.
Gorbachev comes to town There was a point when being the nephew of Mikhail Gorbachev helped his artist nephew Yuri's career, and a point when it did not. When it didn't any more, young Gorbachev left Russia. That was in 1991 and since then he has enjoyed the life of an expatriate Russian artist selling his paintings all over the world. He also had a rewarding contract with Absolut Vodka which commissioned him to produce pieces featuring its product.
His style has been described as playful and primitive: big, bright idealised images of Russian rural life.
The big names lap them up: he sold works to the late Marcello Mastrioanni, Dr Armand Hammer and Mikhail Baryshnikov and even to his uncle (who was doing whom the favour there? I wonder) as well as our own David Tang Wing-cheung and Peter Sutch.
Seven of Gorbachev's works are in Hong Kong at the moment and can be seen tomorrow at the Island Shangri-la, until they go under the hammer tomorrow evening in an auction to raise money for the Bayanihan Trust, the organisation that does so much for those who do so much.
