High life
Hooked on your looks
Taki
St Tropez St Tropez used to be a sleepy little fish- ing village until Francoise Sagan placed part of her first novel, Bonjour Tristesse there, putting the sleepy one on the pro- peller-set map. That was in the early 1950s. Then Roger Vadim made God Created Woman, starring his then wife Brigitte Bar- dot — the whole film shot on location in St Trop — and in came the jet-set for good. The fishing village turned into a bohemian haven first then — as subtly as the ageing process — into a glitzy and ultra-expensive resort full of rock stars, fashion people, nouveaux riches and, needless to add, the hangers-on of all three. It took exactly a quarter of a century to go from the sublime to the intolerable, almost twice the time it took Monte Carlo and Cannes to go down the tubes.
But not quite. St Tropez had, and has, something its glitzier neighbours did not. People. From local fishermen to local squires to regular visitors who owned hous- es. And local government that kept build- ing development within an acceptable limit. What the locals could do nothing about was the crowds that flocked there looking for BB, or the rich who moored their enor- mous gin palaces in the port. What they have done is to go back in time every first week in October, when the stinkpots are ordered off the bay and only golden oldies under sail are allowed in. This is the Nioulargue regatta week for classic sailing boats, brainchild of a local grandee who had simply had enough watching the hook- ers swill champagne on boats fit only for Swiss admirals.
The 15-year-old event has become a fix- ture, so much so there was not a hotel room to be had. With a difference. They were full of young crews, no groupies, no druggies, no drunks. Well, almost no drunks. There was also a veteran tennis tournament, my last one for this year, a nice touch: old, beautiful and elegant wooden boats in the harbour; old, rickety but well-mannered players on the court. (My last turned out to be my best.) Although competing on land, I spent most of my time following the boats. And what boats!
Altair, Kintra, Thendara, Zaca, Agneta, Tomahawk, Columbia, Mariette, one legend after another. I'd spent a lot of time on Agneta and Tomahawk, because they were both once owned by Gianni Agnelli, and was delighted to see them looking as good if not better than when he was on board. Agneta had a small engine but Tomahawk did not. Once, in the summer of 1960, the awocato and I picked up two girls during the very early hours and went off sailing on her. Well, not exactly. We were becalmed for 12 hours, unable to communicate with anyone, and, worse, the two American girls refused to put out. Gianni, by far the world's most impatient man, nearly went mad.
Yet it was the Zaca, Errol Flynn's old boat, now restored to her former glory, which got the most rousing of cheers as she tacked to starboard and dropped her sails coming in. 'Errol Flynn, Errol Flynn,' yelled the French crowd, a tribute to the great seducer, almost 40 years after his death. It was also a tribute to romance and to his wicked ways. Flynn was a man. Can you imagine crowds cheering the boat of, say, midgets like Dustin Hoffman or Tom Cruise, 40 years after they've cleared out? So likely. Sadly, it all ended in tears, almost. At a Countess Camerana dinner, I ran into a platonic old flame. I had not seen her in 32 years, but was told she would be there. Reunions can be disenchanting. I knew her first as a young French girl, then she became Madame Malle, married to the director's brother, and she is now Princess Wittgenstein. Without the miracle of plas- tic surgery, without makeup or dyes, she looked exactly as before. With the same old-fashioned looks, the kind you can't lay a finger on. I stood there transfixed, remembering the sheer joy I felt as a young man at the prospect of loving her. Her eyes gave something away, however, and this has helped. But not much.
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