Where to begin with this epic bar tab (full version at the bottom)? It's so single-minded, so devoid of nuance. I hate it. When Petchesky first directed my attention to this abomination, which was posted a few places yesterday, I thought it could only belong to one man—Don Johnson, the "champagne king" and "beast of blackjack" responsible for several enormous tabs last year. But I'd only seen the grand total, which is the highest we've recorded to date. (£203,948.80 = $323,000, roughly.)
Upon closer examination, however, it became clear that Don Johnson had nothing to do with this effort. Don Johnson gets the joke. Whoever rang up this bill does not. And that person is Alex Hope, according to the papers. Hope is a 23-year-old foreign currency exchange wunderkind and a model of that British reserve we've all come to admire. Just check out his website. There's Hope poised soberly over the Financial Times. There he is stroking his hairless chin, prepared to dispense wisdom. See how reserved he is.
Hope must have been equally reserved when he swept into the Playground nightclub in Liverpool with a group of friends. He wore sunglasses so nobody would think him gauche:
I suspect he politely greeted Manchester City footballers Joe Hart and Adam Johnson and Wayne Rooney's wife Coleen, who were all in the club. He bought them drinks. Perhaps he quietly gave them one of his £500 champagne bottles.
Hope's first purchase upon entering the club appears to have been his most lavish—a £125,000 Nebuchadnezzar of Armand de Brignac (Ace of Spades) champagne. That's how you break a record. You don't do it in some spectacle of a climax. You get it over with. You snort at the record. And you keep buying drinks.
"Nice one, Hope! Now where the fanny at?" one of Hope's less-reserved friends might have asked shortly thereafter.
"Now look here," Hope might have responded. "I don't refer to women in such crass terms. I'm Alex Hope and I am a renowned foreign currency trader. I have a brand to manage. And my brand manager—which is also myself because Alex Hope is multi-talented—informs me that women should be treated with respect and not referred to as "fanny," even as a joke. That is why I have decided to buy each woman in this nightclub a drink."
By then, of course, the less-reserved women in the club were swarming Alex Hope and his party, according to once clubber who spoke to The Sun:
"After the big bottle came in they were mobbed by gorgeous girls.
"There must have been about 60 of them at any time vying for his attention and he then ordered shots for every single woman in the club."
Direct your attention now to the final drink order on the tab. That could only be Alex Hope ordering drinks—shots it would later be reported—for 42 of those women. They are not fanny shots. They are "pussy" shots. Direct your attention a little lower to the service charge and the gratuity lines. That could only be Alex Hope leaving a very reserved 10 percent tip and not a tuppence more. Don Johnson will eat this wastrel alive.