High life
Better a leg than one's soul
Taki
was dead drunk when Julia Mount rang me from The Spectator to tell me about poor Jeff. Of course I have been thinking of him ever since, but I am also slightly ashamed that when she called it was 10 a.m. my time and I was having one for the road. The road to hell. But not to worry, dear old Jeff. I've got a funny feeling you will bury most of us, and when you come right down to it, it's better to lose a leg than one's soul, as in the case of that arch- hypocrite and phony, Richard Ingrams, whose latest love affair seems to be with the unspeakable Gerry Adams.
Speaking of the unspeakable, the social- ist government of the Olive Republic of Grease is about to enact a law to put an end to all-night nightclub drinking. The labour minister, Evangelos Yannopoulos, was recently photographed in a disco bar by the name of Sodom with a stripper's bra on his head. If the greasy socialists think they'll get Greeks to work by the curfew, they've got another think coming. People who expect the state to pay them for doing nothing are not about to start working just because the nightclubs will close at 2 a.m. They will simply start entertaining at home, even if their women have to give up elec- trolysis in order to afford it.
Needless to say, Hillary Clinton is taking Greek advice and is about to ban all smok- ing in public buildings, whether they're pri- vately or publicly owned. This means that sushi bars, disco bars, gay bars, western bars, Latino bars, lesbian bars and others too perverse too mention, will not permit their customers to inhale. Hillary is the kind of resentfully woozy woman Bolshevik who, were she a cop, would give speeding tickets to cars going though a car-wash. She is foul-mouthed, dishonest and, as it turns out, not as clever as she thinks she is. If she ever did end up in jail, I predict that the draft-dodger would not pardon her.
One of the most incongruous pictures from Norway was the one of Tommy Moe next to the first lady Macbeth. I don't know what business she had going to Lilleham- mer, but at least she kept her trap shut. Paul Major (note the surname) unfortu- nately did not. Major is the US ski coach, and in one of the most ridiculous, but indicative of American thinking nowadays, statements, said that 'man-made snow should become the universal course in order to control the weather-driven ele- ment of chance'. George Orwell, where are you, now that we really need you?
Here we are, having spent most of our parents' and our lives fighting totalitarian- ism, and we are going to get it from the land of the so-called free. I wonder what comes after man-made snow? Perhaps man-made mountains.
In the meantime, the War Hero back home is sabre-rattling — against Japan, of all countries. I say of all because the Japanese Prime Minister, Mr Hosokawa, descends from a 450-year-old samurai fam- ily, and is the grandson of Prince Konoe, unjustly hanged by the Allies after the war. The irony is inescapable. A cowardly draft- dodger threatening the scion of gallant samurais over trade. I hope the Japanese call the emotional pick-pocket's bluff.
Which the cameras finally have. The error of the murderous Serbs last week was to bomb those innocents while Peter Jen- nings and the ABC television crew were there. Jennings went on the nightly news calling the Serbs terrorists and drawing repeated attention to the cowardice and inaction of the Americans. (He should have included the rest of Nato.) We all know the rest. The only thing I regret is that Jennings hadn't gone there earlier.
Finally, because I write this on St Valen- tine's day, I wish good luck to Hartley Booth. He has done nothing wrong. Who has not been infatuated with their assis- tant? But he's right to resign — for not having slept with her, that is.
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