A waiter in central London spent much of Thursday evening trying to divide one bill across three cards, and sources close to the situation say the maths did not go well.
The table, we hear, included several claimants from that privacy case against the Daily Mail's publisher. A court ordered them to cover the paper's legal costs, roughly 13 million dollars, by the end of the month. Nobody at dinner mentioned it. What they mentioned was the starters.
"They were extremely polite about it," the waiter said. "But one of them asked whether the bread counted as shared."
Insiders describe a long, delicate negotiation over who had ordered the second bottle. Prince Harry, we are told, had the fish. Elton John, we are told, was seated near a window. Neither detail is relevant, and yet here we are.
The larger sum, the one with the seven names attached and the August deadline, went entirely undiscussed. A separate table of tourists spent the whole meal watching, convinced something enormous was unfolding.
