Surviving Jeffrey Epstein, a four-part docu-series that premieres this Sunday on Lifetime, offers a shocking account of the disgraced financier’s life. It includes several interviews with former associates and women he abused.
Among the scenes described is his lavish 40th birthday party, held inside his fortress-like French neoclassical townhouse at 9 East 71st Street, in 1993.
Christopher Mason, the longtime journalist and uptown wit, was then a young man who knew Ghislaine Maxwell (who is now languishing, Marie Antoinette-like, in a Brooklyn jail) from the London social whirl. She commissioned him to write a satirical ditty to fete Epstein, who she implied was her beau.
“Ghislaine was pretty specific and controlling,” Mason told Vanity Fair. “When I do those songs — and I still occasionally do them — my preferred way of doing it is to speak with as many people as I can so I can get a real idea of the person and as much comic information as possible. But Ghislaine was very clear that I wasn’t to speak to anyone else, that all the information was to come from Ghislaine.”
“She wanted me to mention that when Epstein was teaching at the Dalton School, he was the subject of many schoolgirl crushes… kind of an odd thing to want in a song about a man who appears to be your boyfriend,” he said. “But she clearly thought that that was something that was going to amuse him. Another odd thing that she wanted me to say was that he had 24-hour erections.”
Mason recalls Maxwell instructing him to change into Epstein’s white karate gi to perform the song, a cappella and sitting cross-legged in the middle of the drawing room. Grandees present included billionaire Leslie Wexner, the former owner of the $77 million townhouse where the festivities took place, whose mysterious connection to Epstein has never quite been defined.
And the song? It went like this:
Poor Jeffrey Epstein is 40, oy vey!
Life must be tough, his hair is already so gray,
He sure looks older, but it’s clear from his smile,
Ghislaine is lavishing him with her affections,
She claims he has 24-hour erections!
Sounds like he’s busy, now ain’t that berserk,
How does he find the time to get off to work?
He wakes when the cock crows while everyone slumbers,
He rivals Einstein when crunching those numbers,
He taught at Dalton: The naughty boy blushes,
To think of schoolgirls and all of their crushes!
Mr. Mason is available for bookings.
