Nothing but trouble
Taki
For the end-of-the-year issue, the joke to end all jokes: a few weeks ago I wrote about my acquaintance from White’s Bar, Osama (Harry) bin Laden, and how he had been sold life insurance by another friend, David Metcalfe. Now I hear from the latter that not only did people take it seriously, some earnest souls have even turned their backs on him. When I stopped laughing, I decided perhaps the joke had gone far enough. Let’s put it this way. By no stretch of the imagination has David Metcalfe ever met bin Laden — for God’s sake, whatever happened to that famous English sense of humour? — and any suggestion that he sold the cave-dweller anything is just too outrageous for words. No wonder advertising works. People will believe anything they see in print, especially when they wish to believe it.
Mind you, Harry Laden is a very generous fellow — just ask the boys in White’s — but even he would not go around buying life insurance, especially from a monarchist he’s never met like David Metcalfe. What he does do all the time is contact me and drop hints of his whereabouts, in order that I can write about it and confuse the spooks in the CIA who are looking for him. (Tora Bora, White’s club, Aspinall’s, Annabel’s, the Ecuadorian Galapagos Islands, Ecuador, even Langley, Virginia.) The man is very bold, but he also has no shame. He’s been nothing but trouble for me, and a woman in Palm Beach, Pauline Pitt, stopped speaking to me because of my friendship with him. Such are the joys of knowing people who are on George W. Bush’s hit list. But I must say, Osama did laugh like hell the last time we chatted. I asked him what the difference was between neoconservatives and women? He did not know. The answer is that you can sometimes find women on the battlefield.
Oh well, speaking of Ecuador, Neville Shulman, a good and loyal buddy to the great but ailing Nigel Dempster, has written a fascinating book about his adventures in the jungles and mountains of Ecuador — Climbing the Equator — with a foreword by Chris Bonington. As has Michael Ashcroft, written a book, that is, about how dirty the Dirty Digger’s doughboys play. Lord Ashcroft sent me a nice note with it because he used a column of mine. For once I had it right. When the Times started to attack him, my shit detector, as Papa Hemingway called his instinct, told me that the Murdoch creeps were trying to destroy a man on orders from New Labour. Back in the good old days, such people were either tarred and feathered, or ended up doing a Taki in Pentonville. Now they receive knighthoods.
Of course, it could be worse. One could have to deal with Bianca Jagger. The Nicaraguan publicity hound has outdone herself recently. Every time I looked at some moronic news programme concerning America, she was out in front of the camera railing against the execution of a thug who murdered four innocent people for 200 greenbacks a quarter of a century ago. (She didn’t get her way.) Murderers have now discovered new ways of escaping responsibility. Such as remorse-promoting and behaviour-modification sessions. Selfpromoters like Bianca Jagger get on the news by defending these modern ways of escape. Perhaps if there was less bullshit a father and husband like John Monckton might still be alive. La Jagger, who has stuck to her ex-husband’s name like superglue, styles herself a Unicef ambassador. This is an insult to hard-working, payingtheir-own-way ambassadors like Sir Roger Moore, who tirelessly circles the globe helping starving children.
And now for the very good news. At my advanced age I’ve become a ... bookie. Mind you, a top-of-the-line bookie, but a bookie nevertheless. My partners are Teddy, Zac and Ben Goldsmith, James Osborne and two geniuses whom we stole from Ladbrokes. The name of our firm is Fitzdares, and I will offer a very good bottle of champagne to the first reader who guesses why we named the company thus. The reason for becoming a bookie is obvious. There is no bookmaker today who treats his clients like Aspinall’s or Annabel’s do. We will. We will accept any bet, and only gamblers who have been introduced to us by friends will be able to play. Big firms today are only interested in online poker and fixed guaranteed returns. In other words, they will lay off any big bet and are too chicken to play. We will. Plus we will offer services like no other, from chauffered limos, to choppers and private planes. For big punters, that is. If we go broke, I can always rely on my Spectator salary to feed my children. Although having read the valedictory article by the exsainted editor in the Christmas issue, I’m awfully nervous about that, too. See you in the poorhouse, but perhaps not.
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