High life
Winning streak
Taki
Southampton, New York
Ireceived a gift necktie from the King of Greece at the lunch I threw in his honour here in the Bagel. The design on the tie gave me food for thought. There were tiny white rocking chairs against the skyblue background. The message was clear. It’s time to hang it up. King Constantine is a valued friend who had advised me against competing in martial arts at my age. When he heard of my victory down south he figured I had lucked out — which I had — so in order for me not to press lady luck he went out and bought me the Brooks Brothers tie.
Pushing the envelope, whether in gambling or in sport, is what makes life exciting and so unpredictable. Do you ride good fortune and double up on the bets, or do you play it safe and go home a winner? If I knew the answer I’d be the richest man in the world, not that this interests me one bit. Take, for example, the stock market. The Dow is over 13,000, whereas only 25 years ago, it hit an all-time high at 1,050. A lady in Southampton told me today’s rollercoaster reminded her of the Roaring Twenties. We all know how they finished up: people throwing themselves from their Wall Street windows, bread queues, and a depression which only ended with the second world war. The smart ones, needless to say, made money, depression or no depression. Jimmy Goldsmith got out just before the 1987 crash, laughing all the way to the bank. His later bets were not as successful. Jimmy was convinced that stocks were overvalued, so he had gone into gold big time. He was way ahead of his time. Gold is now very high, but so is the market. Go figure, as they say in the lower echelons of café society.
And speaking of Sir James, a secretary of one of his friends, Fred Iseman, has filed a $24 million suit against her former boss for appointing her his ‘pussy co-ordinator’. (Her words in the lawsuit.) Iseman allegedly ‘assigned her to set up dates for him, line up accommodations that would fit the sexual activities he liked, buy him lubricant and edible underwear, and organise his dirty pictures’. Needless to say, Iseman’s lawyer denies the charges and accuses Fatima Monahan, the plaintiff, of using her position at the $2 billion private equity firm to steal $250,000. Iseman recently told me he remembers meeting me at the Goldsmith house, which I don’t doubt, but as far as the rest is concerned I am just an observer. I did go to Iseman’s house last week for a party, and left almost immediately. There were too many Russian hookers for my taste, and the men were below the low-life level. The trouble with Iseman is he’s a nice guy, and, although he speaks non-stop about moolah, he is friendly and has a very good sense of humour. I can see why Jimmy liked him. I have a bet with Iseman that his case will never go to trial. If I lose my bet Iseman’s reputation — no great shakes will take a further dive as the tabloids will go bananas with the story. Fatima has also charged him with asking her to engage in lesbian sex with his ex-wife and to have flown her to London to hand-deliver erectile dysfunction medication.
Iseman has told me privately that his exemployee is lying. He would, of course, say that. He is on the board of the City Opera, which is what makes me doubt his story. Vincent Meyer, about whom I have written before in relation to the case of the beautiful Philippine Lambert, is also on all sorts of musical boards in London. The moment Iseman mentioned the opera I began to doubt him. But not really. It sounds like sour grapes to me, unless Fred Iseman has completely lost his mind, something that doesn’t appear to be the case.
Further out west, in Chicago, my old boss and friend Conrad Black was terribly let down by the ghastly Marie-Josée Kravis and former ambassador Richard Burt. I almost came to blows with Burt at that infamous party for Barbara Black’s 60th birthday in La Grenouille. Sitting across from me he was so condescending that I told him that after the party I would drag him outside and teach him some manners. He changed course immediately and became almost obsequious. The Kravis woman I don’t know and never wish to meet. Her midget husband, a multi-billionaire, once threatened a friend of mine, Billy Norwich, with violence over something Billy had written. Oh, how I wish I had been there. (Billy is too nice a man to fight.) And, oh, how I wish Conrad did not have fishy friends like Mercedes Bass, la Kravis and Burt. All that woman needed to say was that she had perhaps been negligent in missing seeing the critical references to the controversial non-compete payments, but that there was no intent by Conrad to deceive. But, no, the low-life Kravis woman blamed her ex-friend and ran for cover. It almost serves the Blacks right for having such lunch-bucket pilferers for friends.
Which is not the kind of people the greatest Turk, Ahmet Ertegün, called cronies, and I will tell you all about who they were next week. In the meantime, I have to decide whether to rest on my laurels and go out a winner, or be squished by some gorilla down in Brazil in July.
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