VIP clubs and ‘mystery blondes’: Imran Khan’s party years

Before Imran Khan turned to politics, he was a fixture of London’s social scene. Women adored him, recalls Ivo TennantJuly 30 2018, 12:01am, The TimesImran Khan in 1994CAMERA PRESSShareSaveAs soon as we emerged from our lunch in Le Méridien Hotel Imran Khan was recognised. He was no longer leading Pakistan on the pitch and was yet to make his mark on politics, but Piccadilly in London was then his playground. It was the land of Tramp, the nightclub in St James’s frequented by the glitterati, and he treated it, according to its owner, Johnny Gold, and his former team-mates, as his personal sitting-room.Gold said then that this was the biggest compliment he had received. “Women always want to sit with him. Like George Best in his younger days; they appear out of the woodwork, whether they are debs or South Americans. He likes a touch of craziness in his female friends, but you can’t say, ‘Ah! There’s an Imran Khan type.’ But he liked mixing in the upper echelons of society in London.”Khan with Julia Verdin and Caroline Kellett in 1987After more than two decades of political campaigning Khan claimed victory in Pakistan’s elections last Thursday, but during the 1980s and 1990s he enjoyed an entirely different sort of party activism. Khan was the handsome trophy that every high-society hostess sought to put on display — and the world’s most eligible bachelor made the most of it. “No man looks as devastating as Imran,” the model Marie Helvin said. “Everyone falls for him. He has a scent that is very attractive to women.”His aroma was accentuated by his abhorrence of strong smells and of tobacco and alcohol. Unlike Best, Khan eschewed the champagne, while the girlfriends he had — up to and including Jemima Goldsmith — could be defined by their breeding and appearance. Still, one or two would end up being labelled by the tabloids “mystery blondes”, the shorthand employed when a red-top picture desk could not put a name to a fleeting face.With the Marquis of Worcester and an unidentified woman in 1987REX FEATURESEmma Sergeant, the one woman he truly loved before his first marriage, is widely credited with introducing him into what was vaguely defined as society. The daughter of the eminent City journalist Patrick Sergeant, she was a dreamy, pre-Raphaelite beauty and a gifted artist. She knew not a jot about cricket. There is still a mention of her in just about every profile of Khan.The credit for Khan’s initial straddling of east and west really belongs to Jonathan Orders, a Wykehamist and MCC committee man whose brother had known Khan at Oxford University. He had already introduced him to one woman he had invited back to Pakistan, Susie Murray-Philipson, before giving a dinner party in 1982, the year in which Khan first led his country in a Test series in England.He was 29 and Orders had seen enough of Khan to know what sort of guests should be invited to his party. “If there were no pretty girls, his mind wandered. Emma was good-looking, but also attractive through being very talented,” he said. She was seven years his junior. That evening the two of them went on to a nightclub in London.With Ivana Trump in 1990REX FEATURESIn Pakistan Khan had not been accustomed to so many women being in train. Mark Shand, the brother of the Duchess of Cornwall, remarked at the time: “It was as if he was in a candy shop at first.” His new flat in Draycott Avenue, Chelsea, was close to Sergeant’s studio, Kings Road and Tramp. He had found his milieu, a hub away from Worcester, which he found exceedingly dull, and Hove, where he had also played his county cricket.Sergeant did not refer to her relationship with Khan as anything other than a friendship, so as not to embarrass him in Pakistan. She did not meet his mother when she visited the country in 1982: “It would have been very embarrassing for her and for Imran to meet me anywhere in their country,” she said. Shaukat Khanum’s advice to her son when he left for his first tour of England had been: “Don’t bring back a foreign wife.” She died before he did so.With Marie Helvin in 1991DAVID KOPPELThis relationship, affected by the long separations that are a cricketer’s lot, came to an end in 1986. Sergeant reckoned at the time that Khan would have an arranged marriage and their cultural differences were irreconcilable. Much the same had been the case with Murray-Philipson. “He was charmingly bashful and flirtatious, but I didn’t know what to talk to him about and was not impressed with the whole Pakistan set-up,” she said. “I felt wholly out of place.”The parties continued, not least with Jeffrey Archer. At a barbecue given in Fulham by Geoffrey Dean,’s cricket writer, Khan could not disguise his boredom when the food took a long time to arrive. He and a female guest disappeared — to Dean’s bedroom. “Unlike people such as myself who give the lot at a party, sparks and all, Imran does not perform,” Sergeant said. “His sense of dignity is such that he does not feel he has to make an effort with strangers.”With “a mystery blonde” in 1992A & A NEWSKhan states now, not altogether convincingly, that he recalls little of his so-called playboy past. Others do not forget him. He made an entry into cocktail parties “with his back straight instead of scuttling in and fiffling and faffling around”, as his friend Sarah Crawley put it. Lulu Blacker, a friend of the Duchess of York’s, was another woman invited to Pakistan. “He loves his posh friends,” she said. “He is a little bit of a snob. Imran did become cocky for a time since girls were throwing themselves at his feet, but his real friends would not take any rubbish from him. I certainly don’t look up to him.”Susannah Constantine met Khan through Blacker before she became a familiar face on television. She became his girlfriend when she was 27, initially trying to keep the relationship secret — although that was hardly possible given that Nigel Dempster, the leading gossip columnist of the day, was at the table next to them in Tramp. She took Khan partridge shooting at Longford Castle near Salisbury, where he appeared in jeans and gym shoes and borrowed the Earl of Radnor’s gun.With Susannah Constantine in 1989MIRRORPIX“He also wore a hideous sweater with pheasants on it, which was the equivalent of turning up at Burleigh with pictures of horses on his clothing,” she said. “It went into the bin.” Given his peripatetic life, they drifted apart after a year. Marriage was never contemplated. Emma Gibbs, Constantine’s Australian flatmate, dealt with any pomposity in the Antipodean way. “The second time I met him I said, ‘God, how are you?’ He did laugh.”With “a mystery blonde” in 1990DAVID KOPPELJulia Verdin, who was gossip column fodder at the time, appeared with Khan at a ball at the Hurlingham Club. Doone Murray, a former girlfriend of the Marquess of Blandford (now the Duke of Marlborough), was employed to do some administrative work for Khan and promptly fell for him. She disclosed her feelings to “a close friend” who in turn disclosed them to. “When we were together in his room the phone would keep ringing with girls desperate to meet him,” she said. Emily Todhunter, an ex-girlfriend of Taki, thecolumnist, went so far as to say in the 1990s that “a lot of women have been in love with Imran and he should aim to be a saint rather than prime minister”.Tracy Worcester, who was married to the present Duke of Beaufort at the time, told Khan three decades ago that he should go into politics. He espoused her various causes. She gave a dinner party for him and the cricket-loving Harold Pinter and told him he should be prepared to put up with the risk of death to gain justice for his country. So he has, his playboy years in Kings Road and Tramp apparently erased from his memory — if not those of his numerous girlfriends.