Trouble at club
Taki
New York
It’s been a hellish week for Pug’s Club. A week in which I was unable to lend my good offices against the violent outbreak of disapprobation and impropriety. What has been until today a relatively smooth path to the great and most exclusive club in the world was threatened by a member or members unknown, although there are only seven of us. Let me begin at the start: Pug’s was founded by Leopold Bismarck, Nick Scott and myself last summer. The club was named after the main character in Herman Wouk’s book The Winds of War, who was played by Robert Mitchum in the eight-hour-long mini-series. Pug Henry is a United States naval commander who is a friend of Franklin Roosevelt, known to Adolf Hitler and Hermann Goering, liked by Winston Churchill, and trusted by Joseph Stalin. He is sent on all sorts of diplomatic missions around the world, hobnobs with high Nazis, is toasted by Stalin in a great banquet in the Kremlin, flies over Berlin during an air raid, and takes command of a destroyer in the Pacific, winning the war single-handed.
While watching the film and laughing out loud at how ridiculously easily Pug solves his Herculean assignments, Nick had the idea to call the world’s most exclusive club after Mitchum’s character. Neckties and buttons were ordered and distributed, Tim Hoare was elected, and then, after some heated arguments, Prince Pavlos of Greece, Prince Heinrich Fürstenberg and Arkie Busson also joined. So far so good. And that is when the trouble set in. Due to the extreme exclusivity of Pug’s, all sorts of social climbers among the rich and famous began to drop heavy hints about joining. Count Bismarck stood firm when Nick Scott tried to sneak one of his relatives in. After a resounding blackball, Nick Scott retaliated by declaring no more Krauts welcome. Pug’s club day being the 20th of April, there were lunches in Harry’s Bar in London and on Harbour Island in the Bahamas attended by all the members except for yours truly, busy in Miami trying to purchase some gold.
The next thing that happened almost ended the brief life of the club. Three names were proposed and posted on the internet. (The clubhouse is located on my boat.) The names were Henry Kravis, an American billionaire and takeover artist, Sir Paul McCartney and — believe it or not — Woody Allen. Complicating matters, and before I had an opportunity to call an emergency meeting, Henry Kissinger was proposed. Now I’m a friend and admirer of Dr Kissinger, and figured it was the German connection — Bismarck and Fürstenberg — that had done the proposing. I contacted both men and they both vigorously denied putting up Henry the K. Paul McCartney’s proposal was a no-brainer. That was the work of Nick Scott, whose son is a musician and who, after all, is a Brit. Ditto for Kravis. If that vulgarian was not put up in secret by Arkie Busson, I am Monica Lewinsky.
Actually, I went into shock. How can anyone propose Woody Allen, a man who married his step-daughter after he got caught taking nude pictures of her. Or Paul McCartney, who looks like a woman in drag. Or Kravis, for that matter, a man whose Gadarene greed is legendary among Wall Street types. Is this why we started the club? And, after all, Henry Kissinger did side with the Turks against the Greek colonels.
Things mercifully settled down after a unanimous blackball for all those proposed by members unknown. What angers me is that the only one I absolve from this dastardly plot to ruin the club is Pavlos of Greece. No Greek names appeared, although Pavlos did mention once that he would like Demis Roussos to join us. (Fat chance.) But why is the German contingent denying putting up Kissinger? Or Hoare and Scott refusing to admit they proposed McCartney. After a week’s contemplation, I think I have found the culprit. It’s Arkie Busson. He has a show business connection with the mother of his children, hence the clowns Allen and McCartney. He is a zillionaire himself, like Kravis. And he’d like Kissinger to write the Arkie Busson saga one day. Eureka! Nick Scott is the executive chairman, so I had him fly up from the Bahamas to explain the atrocities perpetrated during my absence. He swore that it will never happen again, but it is very hard for me to believe him. It was Scott, you see, who made Osama bin Laden (Harry to us old hands) a member of White’s, and not David Metcalfe, as I had thought. Although I used to be a friend of old Harry, he has gone a bit over the top these past ten years. Scott should have known better. But he is easily distracted by booze and women, both of which cloud his judgment of people. Mind you, I prefer Harry bin Laden to Paul McCartney, but in today’s climate I would certainly blackball Osama, if only in order to safeguard my boat from a cruise missile. White’s should beware.
Things are now calmer at Pug’s, and my only wish is that they remain so. Yet I live in fear that Busson will mount another coup and try to sneak in some showbusiness type. Uneasy lies the head ...
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