Ooh la la! TV chef Blanc’s spicy night ... at a Paris orgy
CELEBRATED for the haute cuisine at his Oxfordshire restaurant, Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons, Raymond Blanc has apparently also enjoyed something more spicy.
Oxford historian Lisa Hilton revealed last weekend that she had ‘persuaded a male friend’ to take her to the notorious Paris sex club Les Chandelles as part of her ‘research’ for a novel she was writing.
Thrice- married Hilton, 47, who penned the 2016 erotic art thriller Maestra, declined to name the bohemian buddy, but I can now reveal that he was Blanc, 71. ‘Lisa has told friends that he was Raymond,’ one of her pals informs me. ‘I hear he didn’t need much persuasion to go.’
Hilton wrote her breathless account of her visit in The Times. ‘What was I doing at an orgy?’ she asked. ‘Not just any old orgy either.’
With an apparent hint at the two Michelin stars Blanc boasts at Le Manoir, Hilton described Les Chandelles as ‘the Michelin three star of sex clubs’.
She explained: ‘Before going through to the back room, you leave most of your clothes in a tasteful little cubicle.
‘The low beds were covered with black sheets and the black sheets were covered with naked bodies. Some women together, some groups. Not wild ecstasy, but a lulling, almost hypnotic thrum of sheer, intoxicating pleasure.’ She added: ‘There was no question who was in charge. The women. Every woman in that room was a goddess. There was no sense of shame, or comparison. ‘They were all ages, all shapes and they were all beautiful. An almost wordless etiquette prevailed: women approached men. I have never experienced such a sense of power.’ Hilton could not be reached at her Venice home yesterday, while Blanc declined to comment. I’m sure Monsieur Blanc was nothing but a gentleman . . .