The Blonde & the Peers

The London tabloids tried to be helpful.

WANTED--A PEER FOR TV.,the headlines cried. The salary offered: $1,000 a week.

Punch answered irreverently in the name of a nameless lord: "Have Monocle, Will Travel."

It all began when Vicki Benet, a French-born singer from Los Angeles, began a search for a genuine British lord to be master of ceremonies and do commercials on a series of half-hour TV films called Rendezvous with Vicki. Rendezvous is still merely an idea in the active brain of Vicki's friend and manager, Jack Elliott, ex-songwriter and Hollywood producer of TV commercials. Vicki is a 23-year-old platinum blonde whose generous measurements match Gina Lollobrigida's (36-22-35). By the time Vicki got to London three weeks ago, British nobility was forming a queue for the job.

My Lord--or What? No sooner had Vicki's plane landed than David James Douglas, 37, 7th Baron Nugent of Clonlost, presented himself ("Athletic and amusing," said Vicki). Soon after, over cocktails at a London club, Vicki inspected two more candidates, 41-year-old Thomas Percy Henry Touchet Tuchet-Jesson, 23rd Baron Audley ("charming") and Edward Arthur Donald St. George Hamilton Chichester, 52, 6th Marquess of Donegal and governor of Carrick-fergus Castle ("suave"). "I didn't know what to call them--my lord, or what," said Vicki. "They told me the correct way was to say Lord So-and-So, but in a few minutes we were calling each other by first names." That same day an application came from thrice-married Lord Stanley of Alderley, 47, a baron who knows the U.S. well. He endeared himself to Vicki by inviting her to the House of Lords so she could "case the joint," as he put it. When she emerged, having taken in many peers and a spot of tea, she announced: "I saw an awful lot of lords, but I couldn't get near them, and naturally I couldn't ask Lord Stanley who they were because he's after the job, too."

John Raymond Godley, 34, 3rd Baron Kilbracken, from Killegar House in Ireland's County Cavan, invited Vicki for a weekend on his estate, met her at the Dublin airport in a grey cutaway coat and topper with a bouquet of roses and shamrocks, and a coach and four. Vicki proceeded to stay the weekend in the 150-year-old mansion, whose highceilinged, chandeliered gloom has never been desecrated by electricity. "Did you do any hunting?" Vicki was asked. "No," she replied, "but I was photographed with a Black Angus calf."

From Soap to Beer. One nobleman wrote Vicki: "I am prepared to plug anything from Coca-Cola, which I don't drink, to the Democratic Party, though I prefer the Republican, and can be sour or sweet, bellicose or pacific, to order." Lord Scarsdale, 57, of the famed Curzon family, a 2nd Viscount, 6th Baron and loth Baronet all in one, enclosed a pamphlet with his job application, detailing the glories of his ancestral home, Kedleston Hall in Derbyshire. Not counting those with hyphenated names claiming to be direct descendants of William the Conqueror ("If they don't give their background, we don't even answer them") and two who claimed a royal bar sinister, the applicants for the TV job totaled 18, all of them impressively blue-blooded. Vicki was so overwhelmed that at one point she announced: "We may end up by taking back more than one." But last week Vicki and Elliott got themselves in hand and hired just one, the first candidate, Lord Nugent, whose family goes back to the 12th century.

Lord Nugent's assets, according to Elliott: "Autocratic bearing, beautiful speaking voice, wonderful, pure Oxford accent, good-looking." Added Vicki: "Well-built, quick-witted, fine sense of timing." With the deal closed, Elliott relaxed in his hotel room, happy with the thought of peerless plugs for "everything from soap to beer." As the phone kept ringing, he reached for it, murmuring, "I have no time to do anything but brush off peers." But Vicki seemed sorry that the contest was over. "They've all been perfect gentlemen," she sighed.

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