High life
Reduced circumstances
Taki
As some of you may have surmised, the greatest Greek since Melina Mercouri has suddenly become the poorest Greek since Diogenes. I realised how bad things are when I stopped by the Literary Re- view's offices the other day in order to buy a subscription, and Auberon Waugh in- structed his extremely attractive assistant Only to accept cash. Mr Waugh obviously knows the difference between being bank- rupt and being broke. But not to worry. Being broke will Probably make me a better scribe, and I will k finally be able to write about the human condition, and other important matters. No more stuff about drunken nights at Annabel's, no more front-line reporting from Gstaad's Palace, not a word about high jinks from private islands in Greece. From now on it will be Coach and Horses stories,• and how Jeff shared his last vodka and lime with the poor little Greek. Mind you, I hope still to be invited by My posh friends (Jeff's words, not mine) When their daughters or sisters get hitched, 9r when they decide to blow half a million in order to celebrate a monkey's trip from Sumatra to Kent. And speaking of going bust, I read that Adnan Khashoggi, a man "ho only last year was reputed to be the richest in the world, may soon be joining nle in penury. If he does, I'm sure he will , be going bankrupt, not broke, and I'm willing to bet Jeff's recent win on that. I first met Khashoggi when I was richer than he. He came to Gstaad and a friend of mine, Arnaud de Borchgrave, had him to dinner. I found him as charming as he was unpleasing to look at, a fat and short little man who looked 20 years older than he was. Khashoggi eventually made his pile by becoming the Mr Five Per Cent for the Saudi ruling princes. The pile grew and grew until finally Adnan lost his way and began to believe what his PR people were feeding the hacks. His opulent lifestyle, however, made the Saudis nervous. They began to distance themselves from him just about when Khomeini started to kill peo- ple. Then came hubris. Adnan struck out on his own, wheeling and dealing and trying to control the resources of whole countries. The Sudan proved his undoing (as it did for my ancestor, Chinese Gor- don). Once Numeiri was deposed, Adnan's deal went the way of Libyan democracy. Which I guess shows that the days when the United Fruit Company of America could ask and get the United States to invade Guatemala are over.
Now Adnan is in a cash squeeze, and I hear his £90-million yacht as well as one of his three DC9s is up for sale. Adnan needs $10 million per month to live, which means he has a lot of catching up to do if he's to join Jeff and Taki in our barrel. (Diogenes lived in one, and I'm actually contemplat- ing buying one.) Which brings me back to my own prob- lems. I wonder what the sainted one will call my column now that I can no longer afford to write from such exotic places at Spetsopoula, Porto Heli, and Scorpios. (For any of you who have never heard of these places, they are leper islands for extremely rich white trash in the Aegean archipelago.) Perhaps 'Low life' and 'Home life' should be followed by 'Dog's life'. When my daddy read about my losses in the Greek newspapers he rang and told me he was sure no jury would ever rule in my favour because of my abrasive perso- nality and ghastly lifestyle. My saintly 'Free range, eh? Prove it!' mother, on the other hand, wrote to me that she had lit a candle for me and that had I done the same I would have won. (I had, and didn't.)
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