Two hours on the billionaires' street

London: Rolls-Royces and Range Rovers lined The Bishops Avenue as hundreds of guests poured into Royal Mansion, the boldest and brassiest house in the neighbourhood - quite a feat on a street where the Saudi royal family owns 10 homes.

Almost comically large men with impeccable manners, like aristocratic bears, checked invitations at the gates at 7pm on a Monday few weeks ago. Five hundred guests filed through the enormous marble foyer and into the 80-foot-long salon.

The swells nibbled blini loaded with walloping dollops of Russian caviar, flanked on one side by a silently rising and falling glass elevator and on the other by a platinum blonde in pointy leopard-print pumps singing jazz.

Somewhere in here, Mikhail Gorbachev was waiting to speak. The man who presided over the Soviet Union's going-away party was now the guest of honour at the 30th anniversary party of a London real estate firm.

Asked to explain why, Trevor Abrahmsohn, the real estate whiz hosting the party, said he and Gorbachev both supported leukemia charities and had Russian friends in common. Gorbachev and the Royal Mansion were both "icons," he observed, so the pairing made sense.

Five-figure donation

The Raisa Gorbachev Foundation, named in honour of Gorbachev's wife, who died of leukemia in 1999, said that the former leader received no fee for attending the party but that the foundation had received a "five-figure" - in pounds - donation.

The guests didn't appear to be dwelling on the details. All that mattered, it seemed, was that on a London night as cool as a bucket of diamonds, the Other Half was having what amounted to a big old cash bonfire.

"They spent £50,000 [Dh375,000] on caviar!" said one slightly wobbly blond woman, in a way that suggested she knew what she was talking about, even after a couple of flutes of bubbly.

Abrahmsohn and his company, Glentree International, handle some of London's priciest homes, with special emphasis on The Bishops Avenue.

No house screams cash like the Royal Mansion, which recently changed hands for about $100 million (Dh367 million) and has eight kitchens, a Turkish bath for 20 people and a 28-car underground garage.

Abrahmsohn said the new owners are the family of Hourieh Peramaa, a property mogul in her 70s who is originally from Kazakhstan. At the party, her daughter-in-law, Yassmin, 33, an elegant and towering woman.

Please have patience

Then Gorbachev, 77, emerged from a private room and made his way to a lectern. He spoke tenderly about meeting his late wife, Raisa, when he was 22 and she was 21. "We were a good fit," he said, softly. Gorbachev picked up steam when talking about his meeting earlier in the day with Prime Minister Gordon Brown. He said that the two had discussed recent tensions between London and Moscow and that he had told Brown: "We regard you and the Europeans as our friends. But you do not have enough patience with the Russians. Please have more patience. We can't create democracy like instant coffee."

He got his biggest cheer of the night at the expense of the United States: "I tell the Americans, you want us to have a democracy like yours. Well, we don't want to have a democracy like yours. We want a better democracy."

Gorbachev made a joke that resonated with his cash-bathed audience. "Many Russians bring their money to your country," he said. "Be careful, they might buy everything here!"

With that, he posed for a few photos and was driven off in a Mercedes sedan, waved on his way by Yassmin, a shivering statue in red chiffon.

It was 9 o'clock on a Monday night. Time for the roast beef course.