High life
Title-tattle
Taki
New York Some of the biggest laughs I've had since the Queen withdrew the knighthood from Anthony Blunt, have been upon hear- ing some of the titles being bandied around this city by the most improbable of soi dis- tant nobles. Mind you, I'm not complain-
. ing. In a town where there is a murder and a rape for every commercial interruption it's nice to open the newspaper and read that Count So-and-so — a man I once knew as an apprentice in his father's garage in Modena — had thrown a not-so-tasteful bash for the proverbial hundred of his best friends; or that a lady — whom I knew on the Riviera during the Sixties, and who had climbed out of the nice red light district to become the mistress of a Milanese banker — was giving an intimate dinner for roughly half that number and being ad- dressed as Countess not only by the waiters, but by people who should definitely have known better, having known her before.
But perhaps I am being unfair. I like the fact that old tarts love titles. Having paid a certain price in order to get wherever they got, they want something extra for their trouble. As they should. A fat bank ac- count, lots of houses and jewels are hardly enough to make up for having some obese and sweaty entrepreneur spend most of his leisure time on top of one. My objection is to men assuming titles, not ladies, especially ladies of easy virtue. Although it's nice to know that despite the ravages of socialism men will do anything to be different, 1 must draw a line where titles are concerned. After all, it makes it very uncomfortable for People like me to be served in American restaurants. Let a man of European extrac- tion loose in New York and before you can say — or he can correctly pronounce Jack Robinson, he's stuck an honorific 'de' or a title in front of his name. The rest is easy. The American press and the great American public love a title more than a soap opera or a Big Mac. They also make a killing in business. Wall Street is full of Germans, Italians, Swedes, Frenchmen, even Brazilians, whose claims to titles are as real as the Soviet claims of innocence in the plot against the Pope. Even worse, American girls all think they are Grace Kel- ly, and that by marrying some greasy foreigner they'll end up ruling some nice lit- tle country somewhere on the Riviera. Which, as I said before, makes it very un- comfortable for me. No first-rate tables, no first-rate girls, as both are taken up by the phoney hordes that have infested New York In the last five years.
The worst offenders are the Italians. The propeller titles make it impossible to even begin to challenge them. For any of you who are not familiar with the propeller titles let me explain. When the last king of Italy, Umberto, left the country in 1946 after the closest of referendums, he was accom- panied by a large throng of his supporters. He had, after all, half the country behind him. While the propellers turned and the engines warmed up to fly him to exile, there were the predictable emotional scenes of an emotional people saying farewell to their monarch. Umberto had, during his last hours as King, ennobled certain of his closest and most loyal associates with what immediately became courtesy titles once the kingdom reverted to a republic. Italians be- ing Italians, however, took more for grant- ed than he ever wanted to give. Soon after- wards, some very highfalutin titles were at- tached to some incredibly vulgar names.
Needless to say, there are very few barons among the Italians I hear about in New York — which, incidentally, is very ironic. Baron Enrico di Portanova, whose father was allegedly an Italian waiter who married a Standard Oil heiress in Texas a long time ago, is suing some journalist for writing that he might be a baron of some new door (porta nova, get it?) but has no claim to the Portanova title. The only thing the hack forgot was that nobody has a claim to the new door title as not even the Italians ever thought of ennobling someone and calling him a new door. But never mind. The British over here are in the same boat as 1 am and no self-respecting waiter takes them seriously. And as they are hardly the world's greatest tippers, even when they try to pull rank they are not believed. So, my next crusade is to outlaw phoney European titles in New York. Let us all unite. We have nothing to lose but our lousy restaurant table seating arrangement.
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