From Elizabeth Taylor to Grace Kelly. Cary Grant to Frank Sinatra and the Beatles. The party refuses to die for the glitterati at magical Monaco, writes JONATHAN McEVOY

Bernie Ecclestone is not harbourside this year — he was at home in rain-soaked Gstaad when I spoke to him — but he summed up the magic of Monaco thus: ‘When someone new wants to hold a race they always promise, “We’ll do this better than Monaco”. It is seen as the gold standard.

‘When people wanted to go to one race, they’d pick Monaco.’

I can see why looking over the sun-kissed harbour, hundreds of boats bobbing in the Principality for which clichés were invented.

Among the questions I most often get asked, such as what is Lewis Hamilton really like, comes which is your favourite race? I was told a rule of thumb when I started on the Formula One journey: if it starts with ‘M’ it’s a good one. Monza, Montreal, Melbourne and, obviously, Monaco. 

It is a good theory even if Montreal has lost some of its allure, given there are many other good city venues now whereas when I started there were not so many, plus hotel prices have spiralled into orbit and waiters expect a country estate as a tip for being so competent as to not spill your burger on your lap. 

But, 300 races or so later, the other ‘Ms’ remain in any top five or six in my imaginary rankings, with Melbourne second only to the town-cum-country where this weekend’s eighth Formula One grand prix of the season unfolds.

Money — the biggest ‘M’ of all in these parts — illustrates the story of Monaco’s special status in so much as Ecclestone cut the place a unique deal. In negotiations with the Prince, whose Grimaldi Palace teeters above the escarpment rising from Rascasse, the corner and accompanying bar of fame, he said: ‘I’m happy for you to have the race for next to nothing.’ The arch dealmaker with the deadpan delivery added: ‘But don’t try me.’

The last deal Ecclestone signed with Monaco was for $8million. They now pay some $15m. A new contract is being thrashed out to keep the race here beyond next year’s contract expiry and a few more million will be added to the total. But, even Liberty Media, the American conglomerate who took over from Ecclestone in 2017, realise there is some truth in the old Bernie maxim that Monaco gives Formula One more than Formula One gives Monaco.

That is debatable, but the two are symbiotic. That is why this little plot, barely more than half the size of New York’s Central Park, gets its slice of the action for a quarter of the hosting fee charged to petrodollar states such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

Up in the Grimaldi on Thursday, Greg Maffei, Liberty’s chief executive, and Prince Albert were on the friendliest of terms over cocktails and dinner. More talks over the race’s future will take place in the coming weeks and months. A successful resolution is as assured as can be.

The allure of the place is clear, though the irony is that if Monaco pitched for inclusion on the calendar as a fresh aspirant now it would not get beyond the ‘thanks, but no thanks’ correspondence. 

Too cramped, the road too narrow for today’s bigger cars, and if Liberty’s Formula One Group (F1G) could get their way they would insist on some extra space being introduced somewhere on the track to increase the possibility of overtaking.

But the Automobile Club de Monaco, who run the race, are a conservative bunch, under the 52-year-long presidency of the most august of all motor racing’s panjandrums, Michel Boeri, 84-year-old Grand Officer of the Order of Grimaldi.

Boeri is not minded to meddle with his fabled ribbon of Tarmac, and so the order set in qualifying, alas, remains the surest roadmap for the race.

At least the one-lap challenge is unsurpassed, even if the 78-lap race usually needs rain to season it.

Boeri, under pressure from Prince Albert, has ceded the right to F1G to produce their own TV coverage. The new arrangement began last year and for the first time a helicopter was permitted to provide aerial shots, which looked magnificent.

As for the track’s wonder, I annually take a pilgrimage to the swimming pool to marvel at the accuracy and nerve of drivers threading their 1,000bhp needles through the adjacent barriers. The speed of acceleration — and deceleration — appears to defy physics.

To go into the tunnel during practice, especially in the days of the big-beast engines, was so ear-splitting you would be advised to go straight to the audiology department.

Perhaps the place’s most iconic of sights is Casino Square, home to the cathedral of green baize sports. Churchill is said to have played there inscrutably. It was black tie in those days. Now you can wear T-shirts and scuffed shoes around the roulette, baccarat and chemin de fer tables. Perhaps the magic vanished when one-arm bandits were introduced in 1968. Belle Epoque died.

But before then, a young Scot travelled over here for the first time. His name was John Young Stewart, now Sir Jackie Stewart. He drove over here with Helen, now Lady Stewart, in 1964. In his excitement he left his suitcase on the roof of the car. He only realised as he approached Dover to take the ferry that their passports were missing.

Reunited with his documents, he got here in time and won the Formula Three race, by some margin. He was greeted by a well-wisher. ‘Mr Fangio’ was introduced. Stewart was gobsmacked.

He rates the Argentine the greatest driver in history and, despite Jackie not speaking a word of Spanish or Juan Manuel a word of English, they struck up a friendship (with the help of a translator). And when Fangio died in Buenos Aires in 1995, Stewart carried him to his grave.

60 years on, Formula One is celebrating Stewart’s association with this place — his face and signature on paddock walls. I caught up with him inside the McLaren motorhome at the side of the harbour.

He pointed at a yellow-and-black crane to show me where he is staying. ‘The fourth and fifth windows are my room.’ It is in the Hermitage, one of the grandes dames among Monaco’s hotels. Ecclestone used to stay there.

The other is Hotel de Paris. In previous times, you had to wear a tie in the American Bar. Not now. It is where Stewart stayed from his roaring days, Helen operating the stopwatch. He won here in 1966, 1971 dominantly, and 1973.

Stewart, his fame barely diminished by the passing of years, moved out of Hotel de Paris when closed for refurbishment. What a place it remains, though: a wine cellar of 450,000 bottles the staff built a wall around to protect from Nazi occupation. Its principal restaurant is the three-star Le Louis XV-Alain Ducasse. Marinated gamberoni from San Remo, delicate saffron rock fish gelee and gold caviar are yours for €205.

Stewart tells me about Princess Grace. She, Grace Kelly, an icon of Hollywood glamour at the apogee of the silver screen, married Prince Rainier III, Albert’s father, and lit Monaco’s golden age.

‘She was called Her Serene Highness, and that was absolutely right; it fitted her,’ rhapsodised Stewart, 84.

He remembers the Princess pulling off a coup de theatre. Stewart was scheduled to go to a function with the Prince. She was due to go to another event. They would all meet up afterwards. She had other ideas.

‘She said to me, “Why don’t you drive me, to Hotel de Paris?” So I did. She sat next to me; not in the back seat. Photographers were there. They went wherever she went. She then suggested I open the door for her and walk her in. She had a flair for the media.

‘I have a wonderful picture of her and me together, where she is showing plenty of leg. She was a beautiful lady.’

Stewart’s memories cascade. Of Grace asking Helen to look after a guest — Elizabeth Taylor.

Of the Beatles coming, all of them, and later just George Harrison, who turned into a total Formula One enthusiast. Of the Onassis and Niarchos yachts, of everyone being immaculately turned out. It was evening dress for cocktails in the Palace back then.

Of times spent in David Niven’s pink-painted house down the Riviera in Beaulieu-sur-Mer — the wonderful town where Richie Benaud of cricket fame based himself (and English wife Daphne) during the European summer.

Niven was friends with Rainier and Grace, and they and the Stewarts and Cary Grant bobbed together in the sea. The Niven house, down the road from where I write this, is perhaps the most desirable pad in the world. Niven was given to shout across the airport to Helen. ‘Ugly,’ he called her, with irony. So he would yell: ‘Hello, Ugly,’ from 200 yards away.

The winner of today’s race will be invited to the Palace for the traditional dinner. Lando Norris, the McLaren driver who is in such form for the rejuvenated team, lives up the road, like most of the current drivers. 

He talked the other day of having a suit ready in case he crosses the line first. He has not been up the hill to see Albert and Princess Charlene yet. He spoke of leading a quiet life. Mostly true, perhaps, yet the echoes of past excesses resonate even now.

Stewart, a novice in such matters then, was taken by his more worldly BRM team-mate Graham Hill — ‘Mr Monaco’, as he was known and an institution on its streets — to Rosie’s Bar, high up on the left as you approach Casino Square. Then on to Rampoldi, another watering hole.

Rosie Bar’s — real name, Chatham Bar — is gone now, a part of fading history. The eponymous Rosie Bernard wrote a book about it. It ran to 144 pages. But, then, she had the patronage of Sir Stirling Moss, Mike Hawthorn and Peter Collins, as well as Hill, to draw upon. And can it be true Hill partied so hard he got a champagne flute stuck in his leg, and raced the next day?

The moustachioed charmer, celebrating his third of five Monaco wins in 1965, was singing so loudly in Rosie’s that two gendarmes arrived to arrest him. He invited them in, bought them a beer, and the party went on.

A host of stars have called at the race over the years, from Frank Sinatra to Justin Bieber.

Several of the glitterati have high-stepped their Jimmy Choos from the Cannes Film Festival to sashay among the swanky folk on the grid before the lights go out. Every square inch of apartment balconies is crammed with craning necks, an estimated 200,000 attendees, but whoever counted?

Fact and fiction walk hand in hand around here. And the party refuses to die.