Silence from St Tropez 271…

Once, as I searched through the dusty old contacts book of a British evening
newspaper I came across the home telephone number of Brigitte Bardot.
St Tropez 271.
Every so often, perhaps when I’d had a couple of beers too many, I’d dial it.
Never got any answer, just an insistent and foreign-sounding bleat down the
line. But somehow that bleat made me feel exotically close to her.
But that was in 1978, I think, when I was tipped for journalistic fame. If I’d so
much as heard the living legend’s voice on her answerphone I’d have written
an exclusive interview.
Chance would have been a fine thing.
I never got so much as an ‘ello’.
So, when I arrived in St Trop under a sky bleached by the sun, I had this
nagging feeling that I still had some unfinished business with her.
Now don’t get me wrong I was well aware that old BB wasn’t going to be
any beaut any more – everybody’s seen the pictures, skin like a road map
and teeth on stalks … but even though she’s nearly seventy, I just wanted to
see her, talk to her. After all she was the star of And God Created Woman.
Well things don’t always work out the way you’ve got them planned and as I
dipped a sandled toe into the heat shimmer of the promenade I knew why
she still lives here.
Her anonymity is assured. There is no way she is going to stand out in the
crowd.
San Tropez is a haven for prunes in g-strings.
The beach has been turned into a parking lot for speedboats the size of
Cadillac’s and the still-rich-but-no-longer-young-and-beautiful pose like
crispy chickens on the decks, or creak along the beach on ridiculously thin
legs.
Amazingly, the beach, although it has fallen victim to overcrowding for
decades, is actually still unspoiled. It’s immaculate white sand goes on
forever.
It’s the people who haven’t survived. Yes, I’m sure 30 years ago they all
might have looked wonderful swaggering down Ramatuelle or Pampelonne.
from bistro to café, café to restaurant, in the hedonistic pursuit of spending
money. And I’m sure it was chic to dress down for everything from lunch to
a’mour.
But Just a Thong at the Twilight of their existence looks vulgar.
Anyway, with my crest fallen about as far as their arches, I decided to begin
my hunt for Ms Bardot.
Le Star beach bar seemed as good a place to start as any.
I got myself a blonde beer and leaned against the bar post at the corner of the
street in case that certain little lady came by.
Oh me oh my, what a place to be if your other choice is a rest home. There
were ghostly images of old men in hipsters and white slip-ons down by the
sea’s edge at Pampelonne.
Varicosed glamour girls wobbled past with threadbare French poodles and
wigs. No wonder Joan Collins bought a house here.
An Aston Martin purred by and then there was a convoy of Rolls Royces.
You know, when this kitchest of all kitches began in the 1950s St Tropez
was just a tiny fishing village. There wasn’t much to it really, a row fivestorey houses washed up against the quayside, a market still in Place des
Lices. and, appropriately enough, a cinema.
Nothing special, a sheet over an indoor washing line and an old rachety
flicker machine apparently. But the switch was thrown and glamour spun its
heady light. Wannabes arrived and sadly most of them stayed on to become
has-beens.
If only they’d listened to Brigitte when she said in 1986: “The myth of
Bardot is finished, but Brigitte is me.”
The quay is still there and the houses now look as if they’ve seen better
days. But the canopies that jut out onto the pavement are bright with acrylic
legends as bright as neons like Les caves du Roy or Aldo’s Piano Bar.
But away from these haunts of the once famous but still rich, a little inland,
is the charm. Painters still set up their easels as Paul Signac once did, and
there is the flower and food market on the Place des Lices.
Then there is the Musée de L’Annonciade with its masterpieces by Matisse,
Dufy, Rouault, Bonnard and Derain. Or the Maison des Papillons (Butterfly
Museum) and the Naval Museum in an old dungeon.

And as I wandered these streets of white stone I wondered why nobody had
ever thought of opening a museum of beauty … for there would probably be
my only chance of finding old Brigitte.

#BrigitteBardot #StTropez #animals #butterflymuseum