PETRONELLA WYATT
According to one of those studies, British women are among the weightiest in Europe. 1 refer not to the size of their brains, but to that of their bums. Only the Greeks are fatter than we are This report has been compiled by Eurostat, the EU's office of statistics, so it could be a foul. Of course Brussels would say that British women are lard mountains. It's another attempt to undermine our self-confidence as a nation, the implication being that if we were part of Europe we would be as slim as the Belgians, only 9.8 per cent of whose women are a size 14 or over. How perplexing. To judge by the British media, most English women are, au contraire. on the verge of anorexia. Every time a thin woman appears in an advertisement some watchdog barks attention to the terrible dangers of such role-models for young women. Either these role-models have been singularly ineffectual or British women are indigenous body slobs. The Europeans, particularly the Italians, are obsessed with the hello figura. They would rather their houses fell around their ears than go out looking less than svelte. But British women prefer to have what Dr Johnson called 'bottom'. There is a sentiment in this country that human beauty is an imposture. Anyway, at last we have proof of what I have always thought, that the national malaise is the reverse of anorexia. Get starving, girls. A rolling 14stone gathers no Kate Moss. It makes one relieved that the Sophie Dahl poster for Yves Saint Laurent has been banned, not because Ms Dahl was naked, but because the woman is quite clearly a podge-ball.
The final curtain on the amazing Sotheby's saga is deferred yet again. After admitting to price-fixing with Christie's, the New York branch's former chief executive, Diana `Dede' Brooks, has had her jail sentence suspended. I recall when Ms Brooks attempted to fix my price. She is one of those New York ither-harridans — a combination of Nancy Reagan and Rosa Kleb. The occasion on which we met was a dinner given at Sotheby's in New York by David Tang, the Hong Kong business magnifico, who had just opened a branch of his finegoods emporium, Shanghai Tang, in Manhattan. Mr Tang had arranged for a Chinese ballet to form part of the after-dinner divertissement. Ms Brooks, it transpired, was not a balletomane. She behaved like a Syrian monarch's prudish wife who has just entered the banqueting hall as the orgy is in full swing. The dancers, she said, were wearing too few clothes. (What did she expect them to perform in, we wondered — full evening dress?) When I defended Mr
Tang, she turned on me with cobalt eyes. 'You British are so decadent,' she spat. 'That's why you don't count any more.' I am the world's most acute sufferer of esprit d'escalier, but I managed to babble, 'Then why is Christie's doing better than you when it is British-owned?' Now, perhaps, we have the answer,
On New Year's Day I flew from Budapest to London with Maley, the Hungarian national airline. A decade ago the planes were Russian and had no oxygen masks — as an economy. But since then the company has gone into partnership with Alitalia. What do you get when you cross a Hungarian airline with an Italian one? I'll tell you. A few days before my flight the pilot had landed the aircraft in Geneva. This was fine, up to a point. Unfortunately, he forgot
to release the wheels so the plane landed on its undercarriage.
As the New Year is upon us a young woman's thoughts turn to dust, or rather lust. I am up to my elbows in old parchment concerning the sex life of the man whose life I am writing. This is the 18thcentury radical John Wilkes. Before Christmas I encountered Michael Green, the laser-smart Carlton impresario, who said, rather tactlessly, 'Why are you writing a book about a boring dead politician?' Ho, ho. Mr Green had obviously forgotten that John Wilkes was the man in the interchange with the Earl of Sandwich. This occurred after Wilkes had helped to write a magnificently scatalogical poem called The Essay on Woman'. Sandwich: 'I don't know whether you'll die upon the gallows or of the pox.' Wilkes: 'That depends, my Lord, whether I first embrace your Lordship's principles or your Lordship's mistress.' According to my research, Wilkes was the greatest lover this country ever produced, in terms of numbers — an English Casanova. Indeed, he purloined one of Casanova's most pulchritudinous girlfriends, much to the chagrin of the Italian who complained about it in his memoirs. Who is the greatest lover in England today? There is simply no (me comparable. From time to time we see pictures of men such as Michael Winner who are indisputably well-endowed — financially. They presume they are Lotharios because they have persuaded penniless women half their age to sleep with them Then there was the late Alan Clark. He had a sort of grisly charm, but look at what he cajoled into bed — a series of hard-faced turkeys with not a swan among them. Who is the John Wilkes of today? Would readers please write to me at The Spectator with their nominees?
The answer, actually, could be the Prime Minister's father-in-law, Tony Booth. This is not as preposterous as it sounds. Promise. I have discovered that Cherie and that old rip her dad are related to John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of Abraham Lincoln. Many American boys in the 19th century were christened John Wilkes, after the Englishman whose struggle for the rights of the individual made him a hero in the United States. In this case, however, there was a more telling reason. The Booth family were cousins of the Wilkeses. This makes the pristine Cherie a relation of the author of the most obscene poem in the English language.
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