People — No gossip please

New York's 132-year-old University men's club would not seem out of place on Pall Mall. A forbidding tower of dark brick on 54th Street and...

New York’s 132-year-old University men’s club would not seem out of place on Pall Mall. A forbidding tower of dark brick on 54th Street and Fifth Avenue, it is obsessed by tradition and only admitted women in 1987 under the threat of law suits. But on Thursday the club took its revenge on the modernisers, asking Hillary Clinton, the First Lady, to leave the premises immediately. Her faux pas? Gossiping. Clinton, in town for a fundraiser, agreed to meet a friend, gossip columnist Cindy Adams, for a brief drink at the club. Adams duly presented Clinton with a bottle of her new perfume, Gossip!. But as the First Lady gave herself a short squirt, a waiter, who had been observing silently, promptly appeared and asked her to desist. “He stood over us,” said Adams. “Hillary and I were side by side, sunk deep into the couch, and in a thundering voice he bellowed: This is not permitted. We have rules here. We will not tolerate this’.” The shocked Adams said she managed to croak: “But this is Mrs Clinton!” The waiter then apparently told the women their behaviour was “unacceptable” and demanded they leave the premises immediately. Adams said they scooped up their shopping bags and “like scared rabbits scurried out” into the New York sleet.

Final bow

The wife of Czech President Vaclav Havel took to the stage for the final time on Thursday before bowing out to concentrate on her more demanding role as First Lady. Dagmar Veskrnova, who put her acting career on hold after marrying Havel in January, resurrected her performance of Strindberg’s Queen Christina to raise money for victims of last summer’s flooding in Moravia, many of whom are enduring a harsh winter with no homes. Theatre-goers who packed the auditorium of Prague’s turn-of-the-century Na Vinohradech theatre for the performance had paid between — 10 and — 15 a ticket, beyond the means of most ordinary Czechs. But as Katerina Honskusova, aged 28, pointed out: “People are here to see the wife of the president, not the great actress.” In her 25-year acting career, Veskrnova, aged 44, has tackled roles from Shakespeare to Chekhov. Her most controversial was in the 1970s film The Vampire of Ferrato, in which she played a topless racing driver who turns into a vampire when her car sucks blood out of her toes.

Bernstein sale

The autographed piano and other items that once belonged to legendary US composer-conductor Leonard Bernstein have fetched more than a million dollars in an auction, Sotheby’s said on Thursday. The figure was more than double what auction officials had anticipated taking in over the two-day event. Bernstein’s piano, batons, scores, furniture, awards and paintings from his New York apartment were sold to benefit the Bernstein Education through the Arts Fund, a national programme that seeks to involve children in the arts. The fund is headed by Bernstein’s son, Alexander. The centerpiece of the auction was Bernstein’s Bosendorfer piano, fondly nicknamed by the composer “my B-52”.

The full story

The wife of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was thrust into the eye of another storm in Israel over a newspaper report which alleged she had abused her position and tormented subordinates. Netanyahu’s office issued a blanket denial of the claims made about his 39-year-old spouse Sara by Yedioth Ahronoth, Israel’s best-selling daily. The newspaper whetted readers appetites in its Thursday edition by flagging some of Mrs Netanyahu’s alleged doings in an announcement that the full story would be splashed over eight pages. The report, which dominated radio chat shows for hours, was the latest salvo against the high-profile first lady. Journalists received an advance copy of Friday’s splash. Among allegations, attributed to unnamed officials and witnesses, was a claim that Sara Netanyahu kept an office in the prime ministry building, two secretaries and a media adviser at the taxpayers’ expense. The newspaper also alleged she had fired three nannies and two secretaries since Netanyahu took office 18 months ago: thrown shoes at a housekeeper because they weren’t polished properly and forced friends to address her as “Mrs Netanyahu”.