Flush with funds: Vijay Mallya's London manor has a gold toilet, reveals author James Crabtree

You can tell a lot about a man by the company he keeps and sometimes even by his washroom. James Crabtree, author and associate professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School, insists that to get to know people better, always visit their toilet. He speaks from experience; Crabtree still vividly remembers Vijay Mallya’s standout bathroom when he visited him at his London manor.

The absconding liquor baron was in a despondent mood when the author dropped by.

“I got about four hours with him at his mansion in London. When I visited, he was in a melancholic mood and very upset because it was the day before the Monaco Grand Prix. The poor man was sitting in his mansion on the edge of Regent’s Park and he was contemplating the fact that he wasn’t going to fly out to Monaco, but instead had to go to his other mansion and watch it on television like everyone else,” said Crabtree, at an event in Mumbai this week.

Golden lavatory
At this point, Mallya had poured himself his third whisky. Crabtree excused himself and went to use the facilities. “Here I discovered this vision in shimmering gold. A gold toilet with a golden rim and gold on top. Sadly there was no golden toilet paper. But it did have monogrammed fluffy white towels.”


The author went on to narrate how a toilet tells you a lot about a place, so remember always to make a pit stop. “The way an institute maintains its latrines can show you a lot,” said Crabtree. He also recounted how former RBI governor Raghuram Rajan used to tell amusing stories of not being able to find a functioning toilet in the RBI building. “He would say how befuddling he found it when he moved from Chicago, trying to find a decent bathroom in the building,” he said.