My youngest son, Oliver, has asked me to make a speech at his wedding. I am very flattered even to be invited as, given the Beckham family meltdown over the Brooklyn nuptials, you can’t take anything for granted these days. I’ve undertaken not to wear a slip dress of my own design, or dance ‘on’ Oliver to any of ‘our songs’, or speak for more than five minutes. I’ve worked out that this gives me up to 750 words to praise him and his lovely bride Lily; express what he means to me; convey my joy at his marriage to the incredible blonde bombshell who has been the apple of his eye since they first met at Manchester University; tell funny stories about his childhood and school days; and generally bring the house down without blubbing. For comparison, this column is 850 words.
The prospect of the happy occasion has also made me realise that weddings are probably the only time it’s acceptable to show pride as a parent, since pride is still one of the seven deadly sins, despite social media where – as no less than Claudia Winkleman once told me – you have to try to remember that it’s not a post, it’s a boast.
I hope I’ll be forgiven for saying something here as I won’t be able to fit it all in on the big day. The story starts in 1990, on New Year’s Day, when I met Oliver’s father for the first time.
I was on a trip to Rio with my father, Stanley. As soon as we got to our hotel on the Copacabana, he picked up the landline between our single beds (we were on a budget), saying he was going to call a hack of his acquaintance from his time in Brussels. After he’d introduced himself, I heard him say this as I gazed out at the crashing surf and brown, oiled bodies in dental-floss bikinis: ‘Well the thing is, Ivo, I’m here with my daughter Rachel. Yes… that one. Well, as you’re both on the FT, my thought was, you two might as well meet, and were you by any chance free for lunch? Yes… today.’
It was an order. Even though he was on deadline for a big feature, the man who at that point I only knew by his byline agreed to sock us lunch.
We took a cab to Wagner, a Teutonic-themed place in the business district with black and white photographs of schlosses, the Eagle’s Nest etc adorning the walls.
And so it was that my father introduced me to Ivo Dawnay, and Ivo introduced us to the house caipirinha made with mandarin juice, saying: ‘One’s not enough, two’s too many, three’s about right.’
After that it’s a bit of a blur, but I do remember Ivo had a drunken argument with Stanley about the razing of the Amazon rainforest. By the end of lunch I knew I was doomed to marry him. It was not so much a lunch as a handover. And this is where Oliver comes back in, our third child (‘three’s about right’).
Last year Oliver relocated to Rio and fell in love too. With the caipirinha. ‘You can get them anywhere, on the beach, in the street,’ he said. ‘Made with guava, passion fruit, lime. When my friends came out, they all went mad for it as well and I thought, why isn’t there an authentic, canned version made with Brazilian cachaca available?’
When they came back from Brazil he told us he was going to launch Caipi in a Can. ‘How will you get fresh limes and crushed ice into a can?’ I asked. Ivo negged too: ‘If it’s such a good idea, why hasn’t Diageo done it?’
Weddings are probably the only time it’s acceptable to show pride as a parent
We both refused to invest a penny. We didn’t want to encourage his entrepreneurial spirit. We wanted him to have a boring, steady job and be able to support a family. How wrong, short-sighted and stupid we were.
Back when Boris was in No. 10, we were in the rose garden one sunny post-pandemic lunchtime with his then chancellor. As we all goggled at the gleaming, gas-fired Sunak barbecue, Rishi asked one of my nephews what he was up to. He replied he was still a student but had a side hustle selling counterfeit branded sportswear. Rishi lit up with excitement. ‘Amazing!’ he said. ‘At this stage I’ll take anything!’ He was desperate for people to get off benefits and start businesses.
It took Oliver ten months from conception to can. Trump’s war with Iran ‘screwed up shipping’ and ‘delayed the arrival of rum in port’, but next month we are going to toast the bride and groom with his very own Caipi in a Can.
I might just end by saying how proud I am that my son is the first member of the family to have been kicked out of university and the first to have started his own company in his twenties.
Don’t blame it on Rio – I think Rishi would be proud too.
Comments