A book’s out called “The Patron Way: The Untold Inside Story of the World’s Most Successful Tequila.”
So the question is, so what? So the answer is: author Ilana Edelstein, a financial adviser who drops names like Cruise, Bowie, Hillary, Cher, Clint, etc, had a lover named Martin Crowley.
“We met in 1988,” she tells me. “A wild fast party life. On one trip to Mexico, visiting a tequila factory, he said, ‘Wow! Never tasted anything like it.’ The first bottle had a fly in it, and that’s where the phrase Spanish fly comes from.
“This drink, reserved exclusively for holy men, was a local gasoline slammed back in a shot glass. Martin discovered and financed it. We were creative junkies. I did the sex, drugs and rock ’n roll marketing. Half-naked good-looking sexy-dressed Patron girls. Hand-blown glass bottles, chilled glasses. Together we turned it into the world’s ultra premium tequila.
“The Paul Mitchell hair products owner John Paul DeJoria owns this good high today. Giving 10,000 cases to his friends, it’s become the $1.1 billion biggest tequila brand in the world.
“Hillary said on ‘Letterman’ it’s her relaxation shot. It’s all Cher, who made the DeJorias’ wedding, drinks. George Clooney and Rande Gerber sell their own brand of it. In a ‘Line of Fire’ closeup, Clint Eastwood’s posed with it. In a movie, David Bowie played a bartender, and center screen was our bottle. Roseanna Arquette’s a fan.
“Bruce Springsteen concert contracts included a bottle in his dressing room. Tom Cruise, at the Bel Air Hotel, had a cigarette lighter filled with tequila.”
We know what happened with the booze. What ever happened with the lover?
“What he became drunk with was success. He never married me. I ask myself all the time, why? For a while it hurt too much for me to write this book. We broke up two years before he died, and I was shut out of what should have been mine. I appealed but lost on a technicality. It’s a story of the cobbler needing shoes. A financial adviser, and the only one I didn’t advise financially was me.
“Look, I can only say he was the love of my life and I had an amazing ride.”
Nervous laughter
READER G.B. Makiver saw Bette Midler’s one-woman thing same night as Robert Wagner and wife Jill St. John sat front and center. Playing Hollywood’s old-time agent Sue Mengers, Midler says: “My parties had the biggest stars. I only put up with Henry Kissinger because he was f – – king Jill St. John!” The report is: “In the audience there were a few laughs but mostly gasps.”
Jude’s hunch
JUDE Law wishes he were uglier so he’d have more interesting roles. Like temporarily hideous to “play a hunchback with boils.” . . . Paris Hilton homes have designer cats, hamsters, birds, mice, teacup poodles, ferrets, over 600 pets . . . “American Idol” winner Candice Glover and runner-up Kree Harrison munched at Benjamin Steakhouse.
Coffee’s holiday
STARBUCKS. Sixth Avenue. 8:30 a.m. The latte line usually reaches Third Avenue. A recent morning, it’s empty. A Jewish holiday. To commemorate wandering the desert 40 years unable to get milk, on that one day those who observe abstain from dairy. Peering at the still uncomprehending lone customer like he’s a half-wit, the African-American server says, “Look, it’s Shavuous.”
Only in New York, kids, only in New York.
Sex, drugs and a rockin’ book
GRACE Robbins — widow of Harold Robbins, who sold 750 million books, reportedly was read more than the Bible — has written “Cinderella and the Carpetbagger: My Life as the Wife of the World’s Best-Selling Author.” Her reception here’s June 5. Nice little read — cocaine, champagne, three-way sex, modern marriage, big-time gambling with Vince Edwards and Bob Newhart, nice parlor games like male movie tars pulling pants down and measuring their private parts.
Like I say, sweet little warm-weather read.