Sir David Tang: meet London's best-connected man who is friends with everyone from Kate Moss to Eric Schmidt

With Mrs Merton’s notorious question to Debbie McGee in mind, it is easy to assume that rich, powerful people amass friends by being rich and powerful. Sir David Tang may be both these things; however, his ability to attract friends — from Kevin Spacey to Eric Schmidt via Kate Moss, like the dashingly coiffured social magnet he is — stems from being a card-carrying hoot.

Tang may be hobbling from a hip replacement — a fact that seems as unlikely as his age: an unconvincing 60 — but in the space of 90 minutes, he proffers a thesis on the global economy; tells me that I must take up smoking so he can give me the kiss of life; relates the world’s most charming story about having to sit the writer Isaiah Berlin on his knee for the duration of an opera; and shows me holiday snaps of Kate Moss, as well as an image of the cancerous liver he recently had removed, and a photo of Stephen Fry taking a picture of a ballet dancer’s rear end. This, ladies and gentleman, is how one becomes the most popular man in town, whether that town be London, Havana or Beijing.

It is an irony that this quintessentially British knight — and patriotic part of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee flotilla — should hail from Hong Kong, somewhere he continues to consider home, despite three London residences. He arrived here at the age of 13 not speaking a word of English. An education at Cambridge’s Perse School followed (where he failed his English O level six times, despite passing Latin, French and Russian), then King’s College London, where he read philosophy, then law, after which it would be fair to say that the boy, now a billionaire, done good.

Embracing ‘serendipity’ — a word that appears in an artwork at his Belgravia home where we meet — Tang has found himself engaged in oil exploration in China, law in Hong Kong, and gold mining in Africa and Australia. He is the founder of fashion label Shanghai Tang, Hong Kong hotspot the China Club, The Dorchester’s China Tang, The Pacific Cigar Company, and Tang Tang Tang Tang, a lifestyle concept store aimed at supplying the desires of the Chinese middle classes, and a name designed to be sung to the opening bars of Beethoven’s Fifth.

He has also served as director and advisor to Blackstone, Tommy Hilfiger, the Savoy Group and British Airways. His philanthropy is extensive; he boasts an art collection, and a penchant for gambling that has more than once lost him everything. Oh, and he still has time to be the FT’s agony uncle. Recent topics include: ‘Why I hate afternoon tea’ and ‘Are stuffed animals acceptable in the home?’ His sign-off runs: Sir David Anthony Prise Wing-Cheung Tang, KBE, OBE, Chevalier l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, DSc, BA (he added the ‘Prise’ so that, when knighted, he would become ‘Sir-Prise Tang’).

Geordie Greig, editor of The Mail on Sunday, notes: ‘David Tang does nothing by halves. No one can be kinder, ruder, more opinionated, humbler, more discreet or gossipy, but no one is more generous. British knight, Chinese entrepreneur, Cuban cigar king, classical pianist, hip-hop aficionado, bon viveur, tee-totaller, always he is the man with the last word. He spans a social circle that is as wide, spicy and serious as it is fun and social. No one would be bored with him on a desert island, but remember he is very, very bossy. He would be in charge.’

Does Sir David collect people as he does jobs and titles? ‘I wouldn’t say I collect them, I value them. One should never expect friendship to serve as a currency for anything. My favourite Churchill quote is: “You make a living by what you get; you make a life by what you give.” I’m extraordinarily lucky to have so many friends across such a diverse group of people. One day I’ll be at Oxford, the next at some complete idiot’s lunch.’

The dazzle and enormity of the Tang Gang is such that I could legitimately ask the question I have long yearned to beg of an interviewee, namely: ‘How do you get to be so fabulous?’ Kate Moss (‘So funny, such a laugh’) may be a sphinx to her public, but for Tang she is a positive pussycat. She refers to him as ‘Uncle David’ and once persuaded him to get a tattoo in Bangkok. ‘She said: “Let’s do it.” And I said: “Absolutely not.” And she said: “You must,” so I said: “Oh, well, all right then.” ’ Crossword addict and friend that he is, he opted for a cryptic black square on his wrist.

Tang drops names with the casualness of one for whom such littering is merely a necessity: Mandela, the Queen, his surgeon, Jude Law, Sienna Miller, the Beatles, Mia Farrow, Terry Waite, Lord Denning, Kevin Spacey, Naomi Campbell, Jacob Rothschild, Dita Von Teese, Stephen Fry, Carlos Acosta and the last governor of Hong Kong are all ghosts at our feast of tea and coffee, supplied by a smiling maid. His Belgravia pad is an elegant riot of Oriental objets, gun memorabilia, books, perfume bottles, dog baskets and a Bachendorff piano. His other London abodes overlook Piccadilly and Hyde Park. Scattered about are pictures of Sir David with Moss, Law, the Camerons, Princess Diana, Castro, and the Pope, caught at parties, official gatherings, over lunch and the like. (‘I saw the Pope last week. It was rather nice. I said to him: “Will you remember me in heaven?” ’)

Tang’s latest flexing of social muscle is as founder and chairman of China Exchange, a debating salon held at Gerrard Street’s BT Telephone Exchange building, open to the public for a fiver, in which the great and the good and the still more interesting will give up an hour of their time to take questions, first from Tang, then from the audience. The setting deep in the heart of Chinatown is deliberate; the rubric to provide a forum for ideas that affect lives in Britain and China, be they regarding business, culture, governance, the environment, heritage, education, medicine, religion, economics, anthropology, architecture or philosophy. One imagines the roving intelligentsia musing: ‘What’s on at the CE?’ in the way they currently ask: ‘What’s on at the RA, RGS or BFI?’