Perfect party
Taki
LMonemvasia
et's begin with The Spectator's summer party. Twenty-five years on, I still get a hell of a kick out of the annual rugger scrum, especially as I now avoid the crunch by standing and drinking on the Doughty Street pavement. It was there, outside the hallowed halls of the Speccie, where I made the acquaintance of my Low life colleague, as charming and talented as Jeffrey Bernard, without Jeff's misanthropy, but also without the Bernard self-confidence. A good fellow, Jeremy Clarke.
I'm probably wrong, but 25 years later — a time to hang up the gloves, as they say — there is no twilight feel of Aschenbach slumped in his deckchair where the Speccie and 1 are concerned. A quarter of a century is a long time, but writing for The Spectator feels as fresh to me as some of the girls I dined with following the party. One thing no one can take away from me is that in those 25 years I have never missed a column, except, of course, for the three-month hiatus when I was Her Majesty's guest, 14 December 1984 to 2 March 1985.
Although I have been known to announce that I've just been to the greatest party ever, this time 1 truly believe it was as close as it gets to a perfect bash. The occasion was Harry Worcester's 50th birthday, which like the Queen he celebrated not on his exact birthday_ The lady who gave the party asked me not to name her, so I won't; suffice it to say that she's very beautiful, young and married to a foreign sportsman (retired), and I suspect I sent her a grotesquely corny love letter sometime during that evening. Oy veh, I'm really in the you-know-what.
Why was it so special? Easy. Never have I seen such a collection of beautiful young girls, except in my dreams. The only sour moment was when I propositioned one of the few foreign girls there. Incidentally, she fitted Raymond Chandler's description of someone who thought of herself as exclusive as a mailbox, 'but, then, too many men had possession of the key'. 'Will you do me one small favour before I die of natural causes, and sleep with me?' I asked. 'I don't like the direct approach,' came her answer. And I'm afraid she was right, but then I had been drinking for a solid six hours, and maniacally so to boot.
As I've often written, I drink only when I'm happy, never to forget, the trouble
being of late that I'm almost always in a very good mood. Beautiful women and good friends have that effect on me, and the effect continued until nine the following morning when, thank God, George Vardinoyannis, among the biggest of Greek tycoons, picked me up on his way to the airport. Where I proceeded to get lost. Although George may be big, he's also damn nice. After a while he called the fuzz, told them I was suffering from amnesia, and in a jiffy they found me wandering about discussing the human condition with friendly strangers.
Landing in Athens the mother of my children took one look at me, pronounced me a jackass, and piled me on to a chopper which took us to Porto Heli for ... yes, you guessed it, another bash, this one staged by Cecil B. DeMille, for George and Ito Covas's 30th wedding anniversary. Four hundred Greeks and non-Hellenes partied until dawn, and then the Greek armada of close to 100 luxury boats lifted the siege of Covas bay and headed for islands unknown.
Even if I say so myself, four nights of non-stop Karamazovian shenanigans do take their toll, so now I'm going to be a good boy for a while, especially as I'm going on a sailing boat with my children and their mama. On the Riviera, a sweaty hellhole full of nouveaux types whom my London hostess would not dream of accepting a lift from even if she were bobbing on a life raft in the middle of a stormy Atlantic. This is the bad news.
The good is that the Greek fuzz have finally had a break where the November 17 terrorist organisation is concerned. These murderers have killed in cold blood with impunity for 27 years — and only recently one of the scum blew his hand off while trying to plant a device somewhere in Piraeus. Savvas Xeros, a 40-year-old painter of icons, has Sudanese links, and is obviously a small cog but civil libertarians have been busy asking for his rights to be respected while he recovers. I admit that a civilised country has a responsibility to do so, but where was the state when so many — including the British military attaché — were murdered in cold blood? If I were allowed a few minutes with him in hospital I'd get him to sing quicker than you can say 'ouch' by squeezing his blown-off stump, if only just a little bit. I am, after all, a civilised kind of guy, but what's a little pain when the good of so many is concerned.
Athens is filled with reports that the authorities know the identity of Mr Big — supposedly an aging professor in Paris — but I ain't so sure. I believe a deal has been struck. Xeros may have been given a faulty device on purpose. Mr Big is not the prof of Paris. He is someone close to the unlamented crook Andreas Papandreou, and probably still in or close to the ruling Pasok socialists. Take it from Taki Poirot. We've been handed a peanut while the Big Banana goes free.
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