A look inside Donald Trump's three-storey penthouse and the benefits of living in a home the size of an Aga

If you’re the kind of person who enjoys looking in other people’s shopping baskets at the supermarket checkout and deciding who you’d prefer to go home with, then you probably also like nosing around people’s houses. You can tell a lot about a person from their interior decor, and so pictures of Donald Trump’s three-storey penthouse apartment, which re-emerged last week, came as little surprise to observers of the presidential hopeful and lover of the poorly educated.

Trump’s sumptuous home is straight out of the pages of Peter York’s 2005 book Dictators’ Homes: Lifestyles of the World’s Most Colourful Despots, which first revealed how heavily the 20th century’s most rotten tyrants subsidised the world marble industry. The country mansion of the Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych had gold, marble and a full-sized replica of a Spanish galleon. Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi enjoyed gold, marble and photos of Condoleezza Rice. In Saddam Hussein’s home, even the taps were gold; there was also, obviously, marble – and a doorway in the shape of a giant eagle.

Trump’s front door is made of gold and diamonds, and opens on to a palace of neoclassical horrors. His cornflakes are served in a glass bowl on the back of a golden elephant. His columns are Corinthian, his ceilings mirrored (which makes you wonder how he’s never noticed what’s on the top of his head). There are tassels on everything, except for the cherubs, and even his tissue box has its own lace holder. It’s a bit like a grandma’s house, if grandma had just taken part in a game show where she had to blow a million quid on velour scatter cushions before a buzzer went off and electrocuted all the Mexicans.

When I am worth ten billion dollars, I shall refuse to have squeaky leather sofas or horrible white carpets that would have to be replaced every time I dropped my gold-rimmed drink on the sharp glass coffee table and smashed red wine all over the place. But I do quite fancy the trappings of the “mass affluent”, as described last week by home insurer LV=. Concerned that some of its customers are not spending enough on their insurance premiums, it has warned that if you have a wine fridge, range cooker, underfloor heating or NutriBullet, then you’re probably richer than you think and should rethink your excess. That’s your insurance excess, not an underwriter telling you to check your privilege.

I have none of these things, mainly because there is not enough room in my house to squeeze in a NutriBullet among all the books, and because the average home in London is about the size of an Aga. But I’d rather have books to read than a strategically placed copy of Vogue Living. I prefer my breakfast cereal without elephants. And if I ever start to envy the wine-fridge-owning classes, I will try to remember this – it could be worse: I could be living with Donald Trump.

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