The unutterable vulgarity of Soho Farmhouse at Great Tew is nowhere better illustrated than in its ban on an adornment almost invariably sported by some of its patrons in other areas of their lives. I mean the tie.

Blokes like David Cameron – never to be seen without this gentlemanly accessory in his political persona – will happily shed it to ‘chill out’ here.

I consider it an impertinence to dictate to guests, which is what customers at Soho Farmhouse are, in the matter of what they wear. This is especially the case when the instruction is to dress down.

Where, I wonder, would the ‘no tie’ rule leave me, who am rarely seen in public without a colourful cravat at my throat? Cravats aren’t ties, I know. But who is to say how some jumped up minion at the La La Land that is the Farmhouse might choose to interpret the regulation?

Recently falling foul of the ukase was a party that included the Times columnist Janice Turner. With 22 members of her husband’s family, she was there to celebrate his mother’s 80th birthday.

“As we gathered at the bar,” she wrote last week, “the manager approached a smartly dressed older man in our party. ‘I’m sorry, sir, we don’t allow ties.’ Embarrassed, my husband’s uncle removed it. The rest of us fumed.”

For some reason, Janice did not name the Farmhouse, merely mentioning a “lush designer hotel whose restaurant attracts the chic Cotswold crowd” (which I suppose is one way of describing the entitled, pleased-with-themselves slebs that gather there).

What identified it beyond doubt, though, was the no-tie business common (dread word!) to all Soho House establishments created by Bampton-resident Nick Jones, and the fact that soon after the contretemps its famous members (and neighbours) David and Victoria Beckham walked in.

“[He was] in a flat tweed cap, body scribbled with tattoos,” wrote Janice, “and I wondered if anyone would tell him to remove a tie.”

The curious thing about Janice’s story is that at least one member of the party – the person who booked – must have been made aware of the dress code. Why, then, was the information not shared?

It would have been as well, too – if Mr and Mrs Beckham were to remain free of distressing contact with hoi poloi – for everyone to have been told of another strict rule barring visitors from talking to anyone not personally known to them. Oh, and taking pictures of the famous, or getting them on the sly as background to selfies.

Now I speak for myself and most, if not all, of my readers when I say we would go a long way indeed not to be present at any place patronised by footballer Dave, his grim missus and their shower of supposedly glitzy pals.

What a prize and preening prat he is might be judged from his response to being denied the knighthood he believed was his due.

In an email, which he admitted sending, he branded the honours committee “unappreciative c***s” for not recognising his work with Unicef. The marvel, you may think, was that he could conjure up, and utter, a word of six syllables.

As a hideaway haven for celebrities, Soho Farmhouse has a parallel in the private Caribbean island of Mustique, much in the news lately as the venue for the mysterious post-Yuletide visit by Boris Johnson and his current squeeze Carrie Symonds.

Mysterious, because it is (or at any rate was at the time of our going to press) unclear who paid for it. Bojo said it was a £15,000 freebie courtesy of Carphone Warehouse boss David Ross. Mr Ross said that he merely “facilitated” the jaunt.

The Prime Minister was perhaps fortunate that the story broke on the day his Cabinet reshuffle was reported. But The Times still managed a whole page headlined “PM faces holiday sleaze inquiry”.

As it happens, I have enjoyed the hospitality of Mr Ross on a number of occasions at his Leicestershire home, Nevill Holt, where he hosts an annual opera festival.

On my first visit I found myself speculating, in a macabre manner, about which of the various ancillary buildings had been the setting for the 2006 murder of Mr Ross’s stepsister Fiona Marshall.

She was stabbed to death, along with her new lover Richard Flippance, an engineer from Thame in Oxfordshire, by her jealous husband Alex Marshall.

When Marshall was jailed for life in April 2007, the Evening Standard reported: “He murdered them as they spent their first night together at her bungalow on Mr Ross’s £5m country estate.”

As I was to discover, the murders were on a quite different estate, nearby Brampton Ash, later put on the market by Mr Ross at £7.75m.

But Nevill Holt has its own very dark associations, as the scene of shocking paedophile activity during its days (till 1998) as a prep school – a ‘feeder’, in fact, for Uppingham, which Ross attended.

One former teacher was jailed for 10 years for sex offences with dozens of boys; the deputy head killed himself to evade arrest.

Google – and be gobsmacked.