THE guest list is worth £10 billion, the after-dinner entertainers cost £1m and so many private jets have been flying into Nice airport that special airspace has had to be created.

Philip Green, Britain’s foremost high street retailer, is throwing a three-day celebration this weekend to mark his 13-year-old son Brandon’s bar mitzvah.

Stonemasons and craftsmen flown from Britain have spent the past fortnight building a temporary synagogue from breeze blocks and timber on a lawn overlooking the Mediterranean. It is big enough to seat 300 people.

Guests at the £1,000-a-night Grand Hotel du Cap-Ferrat include Green’s fellow billionaire Richard Desmond, the publishing tycoon; Tom Hunter, the sports goods entrepreneur who rivals Green as one of Britain’s biggest philanthropists; and Richard Caring, the fashion supplier who owns Wentworth golf club.

But wealth and status was pushed aside yesterday when Brandon stood up and sang unaccompanied in Hebrew for more than 15 minutes at the traditional ceremony that marks his coming of age.

All eyes were on him, and Green’s wife, Tina, and several other women were in tears as he finished his chanting.

A family friend said: “Philip and Tina were very proud of Brandon. He had spent 18 months learning the chant off by heart and he did fine. He wasn’t nervous.”

Last night Brandon got his reward as the singer Beyoncé Knowles stepped down from the poster on his bedroom wall to sing live for the guests with her group Destiny’s Child.

Thirty security men circled the hotel grounds between Nice and Monaco to keep out paparazzi as the group performed hits such as Bootylicious and Bills, Bills, Bills.

It was Green who was left with the £4m tab for throwing the bash, his biggest since he flew 200 guests to Cyprus in 2002 to celebrate his 50th birthday with a three-day Roman-themed toga party.

Tom Jones and Rod Stewart were among the entertainers then but this time Green bowed to a “wish list” drawn up by his teenage children.

Technicians had worked round the clock to finish the stage on time, prompting rumours that it was being built for the wedding of the actress Cameron Diaz and Justin Timberlake, the pop singer.

Timberlake was another name pencilled in as a possible entertainer. He is a favourite of the Greens’ 14-year-old daughter, Chloe. But his £500,000 fee was scrubbed when he had to go into hospital for a throat operation and it was realised that he could only mime his hits.

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