Money
Making money
Spectacular extravagances
There is plenty of advice around on how to save money. Nothing wrong with this new thrift, of course. But for a little light relief from all this hard-saving graft, we offer you these supersized morsels of money madness to snack on, writes Andrew Stucken
* The wedding of £19 billion steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal's daughter - described as the wedding of the century - reportedly cost a staggering £30 million. Quite an achievement, even for one of the world's richest men. How do you manage that kind of spending?
Booking all 600 rooms at the luxurious Grand Intercontinental Hotel was a good start. The extravaganza spread over several days at locations all around Paris and over 1,000 guests were flown in for the gliztfest. Among the countless sideshows were an appearance by Kylie Minogue and a Bollywood night packed with Indian superstars.
* There is a mobile phone on the market which costs a mind-blowing £150,000. This diamond, emerald and ruby encrusted handset is made out of the same titanium NASA used to build its space shuttle, and the screen from unscratchable sapphire glass. Unsurprisingly, the edition is extremely limited, with only eight phones produced for the ultimate in telecom one-upmanship.
* It is possible to buy chocolate which costs almost £50 per gram. Chocolate flakes are on the market covered with 23 carat gold leaf – which you eat with the chocolate. And while on the theme of gilded grub, no litany of conspicuous comsumption would be complete without a mention of the Beckhams.
We've sniffed out a chocolate truffle sprinkled with flecks of gold, available in the Beckhams' former family seat, the feted footballer belt of Alderley Edge. Coming soon to the Cheshire enclave of excess...diamond encrusted mobiles, no doubt (see above).
* Saddam Hussein blew a cool £1.2 billion of his nation's cash building a vast network of palaces. Constructed to awe and intimidate, some estimates put the number of these structures as high as 80 – after a building programme that bookended the 1991 Gulf War. Special features include indoor swimming and dolphin pools, bunkers and mosques.
Finally, another tale from the Middle East shows not all extravagances are what they seem. Urban myth has it that a sheikh commissioned a car built from solid silver. In fact, former UAE President Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan’s car was not silver, but made using a customisation technique with special polishing to produce a chrome-like finish.
