Matthew Steeples alerts event hosts in London to Dr Nastro, Ian Thomas and their merry gang of party crashing cohorts
Last Wednesday, in London, around twenty gatecrashers arrived at a party I was co-hosting.
‘Invited’ by someone named Ian Thomas and a character who goes by the plainly invented moniker of ‘Dr Nastro’ (operating from papanastro@yahoo.co.uk), these degenerates appeared mostly brandishing a doctored invite that came without anything other than timings and an address. It came with a note above it from ‘Dr Nastro’ reading “Embassy of X, invites you to taste of X” and instructions to “please come early, no RSVP required”.
Amongst those to arrive and be turned away were usual suspects such as David Pun – no surprises there – and several badly dressed women with the scruffiest shoes known to man. Told at the door that they couldn’t come in (with Pun being urged to “get back to Harvey Nick’s”), these people resorted to yelling abuse at the staff and one went as far as to tell me I was “a racist” and claimed I’d “be prosecuted”. He ranted at a distinguished lady and described her as “a dirty woman” and, as he left, yelled: “Elitist, comprehensive school educated bigots”.
Others in the ‘party’ numbered two ‘Housewives’ from Fulham. I nearly caved in and let them in given how ‘Desperate’ (not in the Eva Longoria sense) they looked, but rightly the doorman sent them on their merry way. The IDS-lookalike muttered and moaned for a moment before heading off into the cold night whilst Mr Frizzy and the chap that pretends to be a jockey complained: “You’ve made us feel uncomfortable”.
The next morning, a missive was sent to my co-host by a man named Phil P. Kelly of a never-heard-of before Twitter account @HowToEnjoyLDN. He moaned: “When we made a choice and went all the way, to what turned out to be a gin tasting event, a member of your staff rejected us because we had not RSVPed! This surprised us, as no RSVP was specified in the original invite, copied below. Or was it? Can you enlighten us further?”
After reading the accompanying forwarded message, I contacted the source, Dr Nastro. He answered with various excuses and claimed: “This has nothing to do with me”. He added: “I’ve been told it was someone called Ian Thomas who creates a party list weekly and my name has been used to forward to his friends”.
In a further missive, without even yet even the hint of an apology, the not-so-good doctor added:
“I got a lots [sic] of emails sent to me. I don’t remember that one. Maybe I could have sent it on. I did not know this was your event. I don’t really go to these type of events. I mainly see Pun at art gallaries [sic] making a nuisance of himself”.
Told by return “’maybe’ is a very convenient word” by me, he then bizarrely responded with an invite to a preview event at an art gallery named ‘Unit London’ that very evening. He explained: “If you would like to meet here, we could talk about it”.
I responded with the comment: “I am astounded. You now invite me to someone else’s event. Is that even appropriate given what you did to my event by inviting people who shouldn’t ever have been invited?” and contacted ‘Unit London’ and alerted them of his plan to crash their event.
Dr Nastro’s last email followed minutes later: “I will not send anyone to your events again, you need to find who leaked your invite… I’ve just been banned from The Unit. Can we leave it at that?” We can now.