High life
Johnny's busted flush
Taki
MGstaad
y spies tell me that Johnny Bryan is angry as hell with me for having written that he and I once raised hell for days and nights on end together. This surprises me because I did not go into details, nor reveal anything of a sensitive nature. After all, I ye been accused of many things but not of kissing and telling.
But speaking of kissing and telling, my guess is that Johnny Bryan is now consider- ing whether to sell his story to the press. As far as I know, Johnny is out of pocket, pay- ing out for what the taxpayer didn't for Fergie's frolics. One way he could recoup is through a sale of what he knows. And the
only man he trusts, Nigel Dempster, just happened to be staying with me last week- end. What follows is speculation on my part, because the Greatest Living English- man kept his cards very close to his chest throughout.
Here is the gossip columnist par excel- lence receiving calls from abroad on my telephone, and I wasn't even allowed to answer my own phone in case it was Bryan ringing. He even swore my cook and maid to secrecy, and I hate to think what he promised to the mother of my children, but none of them would talk. When I finally threatened to invite Ross Benson to stay, Dempster did admit that he and Bryan were talking.
Which to me means as follows. Johnny will obviously try and retaliate against those he believes set him up — namely Buckingham Palace. But such a tale will not sell. What will sell like proverbial hot cakes is his story about Fergie, the Fergie- loves-Johnny saga. In my not so humble opinion the Fergie-loves-Johnny tale would go for £400,000, the Johnny and Fergie ver- sus Buckingham Palace story a mere £75,000.
Bryan is a busted flush now that his love affair with Sarah Ferguson has been exposed. My guess is that he has already run up about £50,000 in lawyers' fees, start- ing with Carter-Ruck, my own nemesis. To pay the lawyers he might decide to spill the beans, which in turn would signal the end for him in Britain. But not necessarily in America, the place I advised him to go last week because there is no difference chez Uncle Sam between celebrity and notori- ety.
Having said all this, I wish him well. He's truly between Scylla and Charybdis this time, so he had better get some good advice. People like Latsis can afford royal company, but not Johnny. Needless to say, royals should not be allowed to run around with rich foreigners — especially Ameri- cans, who might exploit their royal links. Mind you, in Bryan's case he's the one that got exploited. He was doing some social climbing, not having understood that Fer- gie was not exactly social climbing material. In fact, the contrary. Nigel Dempster and the Daily Mail are being sued by the Paddy Dodd Nobles because the GLE called them Dodd Nobodys on account of the airs he claimed they put on when next to Fergie.
Everyone involved in this ludicrous situa- tion comes out a fool. Fergie's friends emerge as superficial, glitzy and most of all extremely stupid, Bryan as an ass for think- ing he could fool one and all and then believing that the royals dealt him a lousy hand. Even the Queen is proved wrong. She should throw everyone off the Civil List and tell them to stop acting like Taki and, if they refuse, exile them to Malta or Mykonos — preferably the former as I swim off the latter.
Jeffrey Bernard is away.
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