Graydon Carter’s big butter up

Graydon Carter (pictured), the curiously coiffed editor of Vanity Fair, has apparently devised a highly effective way of silencing potential critics of the Waverly Inn, the restaurant in New York's West Village he took over two years ago. He simply gives them prime tables and puts photographs of them dining at the eaterie in VF, an honour usually reserved for the very rich and famous.

According to the New York Post, this is how he placated Marilyn Dorato, the president of the Greenwich Village Block Association, and a hitherto long-standing critic of the eaterie. According to the Post's source she now "loves the very restaurant she railed against because she now has her own table and gets pictured in Vanity Fair . . . [The] Waverly Inn has limos and traffic galore, but you don't hear Dorato complaining."

And there seems to be truth in this. In the January issue of VF, Dorato and her dentist hubby, Charles, appear on a page of celebrity photos surrounded by Christopher Walken, Joan Collins, Kelly Lynch, Harvey Weinstein, Christopher Hitchens and Rosario Dawson.

Says Dorato: "I can see where people can get that impression, but the people who know me know that I couldn't be bought off by anybody. I am a welcome face at the restaurant, but I am not wined and dined by the owner. We pay our own way. I'm treated very well, but I don't think it's a payoff."

And Carter says smoothly. "If it weren't for Marilyn Dorato and people like her, the West Village would have turned into a mall years ago. Furthermore, she was a next-door neighbour and a friend long before my involvement with the Waverly - where, by the way, our neighbours are hugely valued customers."