It’s been a long, long time—years, decades, maybe even generations—since anyone accused Madonna of being fun. But last weekend, at the party for her fifty-second birthday, Madonna set out to prove she could set the standard for being no fun at all. The party was held at Shoreditch House, a club known more for its exclusivity than its party-hearty ambience. One anonymous guest described the affair as “like a wake,” and Madonna’s ground rules did little to dispel that impression. Dress code was black only. Not black and white, not dark colors—just black. Off-black might have been barely permissible. Adding to the excitement was the near-absence of music and the expensive but uninteresting refreshments:

[T]he Daily Mirror reports that guests noshed on over $100,000’s worth of champagne and snacks, including quail eggs with caper mayonnaise. But that wasn’t enough to entice even the guy from N.E.R.D. to come: ‘Pharrell Williams was supposed to have turned up, which would at least have raised the bar a bit on her lame guestlist,’ one club member said.”

Just to put this in perspective, the standouts on the guest list (according to those in attendance) were Claudia Winkleman, Billie Piper, and Paul Whitehouse. Absolutely no one in North America knows who these people are, and people in the UK who recognize those names are none too proud of the fact. It’s a pity Madonna couldn’t persuade her old friend Gwyneth Paltrow to drop by. It might have improved the tone of the guest list, and Goop could have taken the evening’s no-fun-at-all theme to a whole new level.