Dance with Jack should put funds in Shapes

Published on Monday 30 January 2006 11:33

YOURS for half a million, a Vettriano original. Dance Me To The End Of Love, first exhibited in London in 1998, will be under the hammer at Shapes auctioneers, Sighthill, on March 4.

A female Scottish collector living near London fell in love with it, as you do, but is now prepared to part. Ally Black, a director at Shapes, tells me: "We don't know what the painting will fetch . . . quarter, half a million? Anyway, this is a coup for us. We're a small house, with only a handful in our team. It's brave of us, really.

"Unlike the big players in auctioneering, we take not a penny commission from the seller, provided the price tops 2000. We take commission from the buyer."

The so-called people's artist, Jack V's The Singing Butler sold for 740,000 in 2004. Shapes auctioneer Richard Longwill believes Dance Me could smash the existing record. Meanwhile, you can view the print these next two weeks at Harvey Nicks. Wallets out.

It's supper Mario

An even bigger buzz about the Bar Roma than usual. Owner of the West End ristorante Mario Cugini plans to celebrate its 25th anniversary in March with "something special". He's promising patrons he'll surpasta himself.

Meanwhile, he has brought for a week the world champion pizza maker, Maurizio Leone, and two of his most talented students, Alessandro and Simone, from Italy's Lazio region to show how it's done and how it should taste.

Pizza-maker since he was a bambino, Inter Milan fanatic Maurizio, 43, produces a five-foot square "carpet" from a handful of dough. For fun on Saturday night they covered a female Bar Roma staff member head to toe with pasta. As you'd imagine, she was good enough to eat.

Coming clean on city

Those commentators, rarely based here, who rhapsodise about Edinburgh, this idyllic Athens of the North, never walk through the Arcade at North Bridge. Filthy and garbage-strewn, it keeps escaping the city council's health and safety police.

They weren't drenched waiting for the shelter (dismantled for Hogmanay) to be restored at the council-operated airport coach pick-up point on Waverley Bridge. Exposed to the elements for all of three weeks.

On the brighter side, the screeching ring-necked parakeet, an exotic Indian interloper, is now among the most spotted birds in some areas. Not on North Bridge, I imagine.

• Bras that play Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik when unfastened are selling in Austria to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the composer's birth, so snap out of it, ladies.

• And cars increasingly are running efficiently on vegetable oil. Aren't radiators on such vehicles prone to spring a leek?

Harry's horseplay

One good reason why we should get the hell out of Iraq pronto. Harry the precious prince could be sent there next year - as a Household Cavalryman. Lord save us.

On joining the regiment, at his own request apparently, he will be issued with a horse (no polo pony for you, my son!) along with a silver chest plate, plumed helmet and regulation sword. Careful what you're about with a deadly weapon. If you prod an al-Qaida fanatic with it, fine, but not one of your barrack-room buddies.

The Iraqi insurgents must be rubbing their hands. Harry's basic training at Sandhurst suggested he was hardly officer material. In Baghdad, of course, the locals won't ever see him in the saddle in ceremonial clobber. The Cavalry at the cutting edge get armoured vehicles instead.

A pity. The lad would be more at ease astride a trusty steed. Haven't his adolescent antics seen him described as the back end of a pantomime horse, with property tycoon Prescott at the front?

Finally . . .

When a clock is hungry it goes back four seconds. Time it.