Tonight a small leading role for my colleague-jury Dirk Kikstra. He was going to do a shoot with the girls and chose a nice spot for it. The Joshua Tree desert. It was there about 51 degrees and you had to sit in the car for about four hours. There and back.

Anouk, her makeup artist Marjolein, Dirk and his assistant made a trip out of it, booked a little house with a pool, made music deep into the night and went swimming with their clothes on. That kind of work. Because Fred and I are never off on the same day during the recordings of Holland’s Next but coincidentally are now, I let the desert pass me by and reserved two plates on a linen cloth somewhere for Fred and me.

It became the Polo lounge of the Beverly Hills Hotel. A bit of faded glory (but we will be that soon too, joked Fred), but the absolute best chilled pea soup and homemade hummus and yes, we drank a divine glass of Chardonnay with it.

When the troops returned from the desert (where quite a few tears were shed, you will all see tonight) we naturally caught up and I told about our visit to the Beverly Hills Hotel. “I should do that more often, I am the worst at networking,” said Dirk. And he has a point. Dirk now lives in L.A., but he mainly works in New York and Amsterdam.

Nothing wrong with that, but if you have Dirk's height, a rough two meters, flying from one side of America to the other and crossing the Atlantic Ocean is not really your favorite pastime. Moreover, you really get serial bags under your eyes from all those jetlags.

So Dirk decided to seek advice on how he could increase his name recognition in L.A. I was a big proponent of a membership at Soho House in West Hollywood. Everyone who is someone or at least knows someone goes there AND you can immediately go to all the other Soho Houses in New York, London, and soon in Amsterdam. And look, then I also benefit from it, because then we will have a lot of meetings there about our jury judgment.

Dirk's neighbor turned out to have been the songwriter for John Denver (I told you that everyone is someone in L.A.) and the subject also came up with him. Was a local agent the solution (preferably not, because Dirk really has the sweetest Wanda from Sticky Stuff)? Or where was a place where creatives meet? The answer turned out to be as simple as it was funny. “Just join the AA in Beverly Hills and you’ll be just fine.”