"Eating a burnt-bacon cheeseburger and pecan pie at J.G. Melon."

That is designer Ralph Lauren’s answer to this month’s Vanity Fair Proust Questionnaire query: "When and where were you happiest?"

Ralph’s clothing empire generates $5 billion a year. But he’s my kind of billionaire!

***

Spent a ravishing Labor Day weekend in Watermill, Long Island, with Joan Ganz Cooney and Pete Peterson and selected VIPs that they just happen to know, because – well, all rich people know one another. In the Petersons’ living room is a needlepoint pillow that reads "You Never Know How Many Friends You Have Until You Get a Helicopter."

Considering the unending traffic on the Montauk Highway and Long Island Expressway, this is true in spades. (I am told that Mrs. Peterson, the terrific woman who helped invent "Sesame Street," says she will "lose the will to live" if she has to drive in traffic! Mr. Peterson, late of Blackstone high finance, has made sure this can’t happen.)

So, of course, we had a wonderful time staying at home, enjoying the weather, watching other people play tennis, eating, swimming, talking, gossiping, looking at the full moon and going to a big party Holly Peterson gave on Saturday night where important people like the Democratic biggies, Alan and Susan Patricof, rubbed elbows with Holly’s surfing buddies.

One young person seated with the latter told me, "All they talk about is who they’ve slept with!" Hmmm. Well, even that might be enlightening.

At my own table, I sat between Vogue’s Billy Norwich and photography’s Freddie Eberstadt, two of my favorite guys. I fear our conversation was less sexy, more pedestrian. We were seated with the delightful Mica Ertegun and we glimpsed Candice Bergen and Marshall Rose and Arlene and Alan Alda and Lally Weymouth and people like that across a crowded room. One day at lunch we hung with Christiane Amanpour and her handsome hubby, Jamie Rubin, and their charming little boy, Darius. Christiane is about to launch her own show, four days a week, on CNN beginning September 21. And this talented reporter-commentator will surely have a big hit with the gifted Kathy O’Hearn producing.

Another night I had the unique pleasure of sitting next to the great character actor/producer/director Bob Balaban (he played the American mogul in Bob Altman’s hit "Gosford Park") and the New York School chancellor, another one of my favorite friends, Joel Klein.

Yes, yes, we did fly home from the Hamptons in a jiffy on Monday night via helicopter, which I am sure cost Mr. Peterson bankloads of money, but as he does so much for charity and philanthropy, I feel he deserves to hand around a little pleasure to us lesser mortals.

***

Former president Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had been in the Hamptons only the week before. I am told they took a house in North Haven on Long Island Sound for a bit of R’n’R. Who did they see, for fun? Well, naturally, the Patricofs, who help keep the Democratic Party afloat.

***

The Dominick Dunne funeral at St. Vincent Ferrer tomorrow, Thursday, is at 2:30 (Lex and 65th) It will boast these speakers – his son Griffin Dunne; his sister-in-law Joan Didion; yours truly; his son Alex Dunne; his mentor, the famous Tina Brown; his beloved granddaughter Hannah Dunne.