The professional nice guy is turning on the charm among the VIPs at Fashion Week, taking his place again at the heart of the social circuit.
How to describe Ricardo Simich - let alone what it is that he does? A mutual friend calls him "my favourite butler", which could sound a bit demeaning, but she means that he is kind and gentlemanly, and a very good host of other people's parties.
We met at the Westin hotel, because it is Fashion Week HQ and so full of people looking important, but in a fashionably languid way. He was wearing an enormous lanyard, on a white ribbon, which is the colour that denotes a VIP. He doesn't need any form of ID. Everybody knows who he is (he seats the front two rows where the VIPs go), even me. But is he a VIP? Or a celebrity? It's always been a bit tricky to see where he fits in on the social circuit he has inhabited for so many years.
How important is he? "Oh, I can't take that seriously at all. For one week a year, I guess, I'm important to a lot of other people, to the machine of Fashion Week. I know all the faces. And I've got a nice demeanour."
He does have a nice demeanour, but is that enough? What he is really good at is, he says, "schmoozing. Oh, but that sounds a bit cheesy." What he really is, is a sort of super concierge. He has always been very nice to me - partly his job is to be accommodating to journalists. But I have never been of the slightest use to him and would subtract rather than add any cachet to any of the parties he's been kind enough to invite me to. I think I've been to two of his dos and I once asked him if he could get me into a bash put on by the Nats to attract the under-40s, because I wanted to see who would turn up. He has ties to the National Party - his dad is the former Cabinet minister Clem Simich - and was hosting the do. There were some lefties outside, protesting, with placards. He invited them in, which was pretty stylish PR, I thought.
At some stage he told me I had to go and listen to some speech. I said, "Oh, it's that [rude word here] vodka man," which was very rude of me, I know, but speeches are boring. He rushed from the room, so I thought I'd offended him, but not a bit of it. He appeared again, carrying a full bottle of vodka which he thrust at me. I left the bottle under a chair and left the party, amused but mystified. I found out later that he thought I'd said, "get me some [rude word here] vodka, man!" But why would he oblige? Because he has a nice demeanour, possibly - although he might want to think about getting his hearing checked.
He wrangles the VIPs at Fashion Week, not that I know who any of them are and, as I was about to prove, I don't know anything about VIPs, or the Fashion Week scene. I was thinking about that bottle of vodka when I asked what he does if one of his VIPs wants cocaine. He didn't look at me as though I was a compete twerp, he's too good at his job for that, but he explained, kindly, that this is one of the myths of Fashion Week and that as far as he knows you can't get cocaine in NZ, currently. "So if you want to be in the glamorous world of drugs at Fashion Week, you're in the wrong country. I don't see people at Fashion Week walking around with glass pipes." He is, these days, quite prissy about drugs, but only because he used to smoke dope and now says he wouldn't recommend it because it's terribly bad for self-discipline and motivation, which he is now evangelical about.
He was wearing a Keith Matheson suit. He used to wear rather flamboyant outfits, and enough gel to coif a hairy mammoth, but now he looks restrained and elegant and grown up. He is, of course, on his best behaviour because he has to be during Fashion Week, not just because he now regards the event as networking, which he has got very serious about, rather than partying.
He says a funny thing happened after his dad, Clem, left politics before the last election. He "lost my taste" for the social scene. "Maybe I was always trying to impress him." Having met his father, I know that he's not the slightest bit impressed with the social scene. "Exactly! But maybe subconsciously ..." He has a dream about making lots of money and buying his parents a big, flash house so that he can "look after them beautifully in their retirement". I've been to their house. They live very modestly. I said I couldn't imagine his dad in a flash house. "No. He wouldn't give a shit. He can't stand all the trappings and trimmings."
His son used to be much impressed by the trappings and trimmings, and in awe of celebrity. He says he's not now (although he still thinks a flash house would be a "mark of success"). "No, no. I'm not at all. I think if you're impressed by celebrity, you're not very happy in your own life and you need to project glamour on to you. Because I wasn't shining in my own life and career as much as I would have liked. So you project what you think are happy, successful lives and you enjoy living vicariously through them."
His life is not now, or not just, hanging out in the glamour world with celebs (except during Fashion Week, of course) and having his picture in the social pages almost every week. His idea of fun is now going to the gym and running up Mt Eden; he has a personal trainer and has lost weight and hardly drinks. He has not, and it is a relief to hear this, become entirely pure. He said, at one point, "am I boring the shit out of you?" He was a bit, but I am the wrong person to talk to about personal trainers. Then he told me that he now has hangovers only on Saturdays and Sundays; "before it was five nights a week". So he is reformed, to a point. He still chain smokes. He says the motivation for this lifestyle change was "a, how should I put it? A disappointment of the heart."
Yes, well, I wasn't going to ask because he once sent me an email, after I'd told him I was off work with a bad back, telling me all about his bad back, the details of which I'm not going to go into but were to do with his sex life (or lack of it). When I reminded him of this, he said, "wasn't that a private email?" I said, "I'd only met you twice!" He said, mock-loftily, "but I have matured since then." Does he mean he's stopped blurting? "I have." Having complained about sharing that I really didn't want to know, I can hardly now complain that he's stopped telling all. But I do hope he hasn't altogether: it's a large part of his charm, which is considerable.
He tried his best to convince me that he's all boring business these days. He sent a follow-up email: "I am very much about BRAND - strategy - BUSINESS." Which is the sort of thing you'd expect from a PR practitioner. But he then wrote: "I hope business naturally flows in moving to enhance the positive in people's perception," which is pure, kooky, Simich.
He believes in something called "karmic energy". Did he mean that X would get hers? I thought that was fair enough, given the catty nature of the social scene, but he looked genuinely appalled. "No, no. I mean if you put out good stuff, you'll get good stuff." He had said, "I didn't want to be kooky here." He told me that he sometimes dreams about things and the next day, they happen. "I've got a little bit of psychic life to me."
The really big change in him is that he is now "corporate", which means that the PR business, One Agency, he runs with his mother, Anne Simich, is no longer concentrating so much on "the opening of an envelope" type events they were known for. He calls his mum Mother. But why does he? "I suppose it's a way of trying to be posh!" He is not all posh. "No!" She cuts his hair and he tells her everything, so she must be unshockable.
He says he doesn't like gossip (telling intimate details of his own life obviously doesn't count). But, really? He was BFFs first with the former Sunday Star-Times gossip columnist Bridget Saunders, then, after they fell out, with the Herald on Sunday's Rachel Glucina. He and Glucina have also since fallen out. I asked why and he said, after a long pause, "I like everyone!" That can't be true. "Well, I'll never say a negative word about anyone." It is a dangerous business falling out with gossip columnists and there was an item about his weight loss implying ... Well, what? "That I had Aids. Or was a drug addict." He doesn't seem to be particularly upset by this, although he said he did make a phone call to the paper, "and just said, you know, 'that's not on.' I just didn't think it was appropriate."
He said, "I would really like to fly the flag for everyone and say: 'hey, everyone be friends.' But I suppose that was a past era." A little plaintively and perhaps naively, for someone who has been such a part of that scene, he said it would be nice if someone had written, "he's got fit". "Because it's probably the single best thing I've done since I left school."
He said, "How do I end this part of the conversation as soon as possible?"
By telling me some gossip. He must have some about Pamela Anderson who was Fashion Week's VIP last year. "She had a lot of people back to her hotel room and they had a lot of fun." Doing what? "Well, what's she famous for?" Sex? "Righty oh. So moving on from that ..." Goodness, does he mean orgies? "Well, I'll just leave it as we've said it ... she really was infectiously lovely."
And that, really, is what he does. He is infectiously lovely in the hope that it rubs off on the luvvies and celebs and big egos, which to me sounds like the most unenviable job description in the country. He said, "My job this week is to be a nice guy." That is a funny sort of job description, but it's an accurate one.
