High life
Some frank revelations
Taki
It was rather rudely pointed out to me by no less a person than the sainted editor himself, that what I wrote last week con- cerning the English was a load of rubbish. The English, according to the sainted one, have always been known not to complain, and to bear hardship in airports with a stiff upper lip.
Well, perhaps he's right, but it's wrong. I believe that stiff things should be used for better purposes, but then I'm not English. The irony of it all is that my old buddy Frank Giles, Lady Kitty's hubby, must have read my mind, because he com- plained non-stop for some 3,000 words in my favourite Sunday newspaper on 31 August. Not about stiff things, mind you, but about Rupert Murdoch. If any of you missed it, it seems that bad old Rupert fired Lady Kitty's hubby, and now Frank is doing an Evans and getting his own back.
As far as I'm concerned that isn't karate. (The way some people are acting in cricket nowadays, forces me to change the cliché.) And although I am contradicting myself, I have to confess that I really can't stand people who complain, in general, and editors who cry after they've been fired, in particular. Everybody is bound to get fired somewhere along the line, but not every- one pulls an Evans or a Giles. Take the case of the ex-sainted one, Alexander Chancellor. As soon as he got the axe he flew to New York, moved in with me, stayed drunk for a week, became the darling of the jet-set the next, then flew back to his family and became the Specta- tor's television critic. Oh yes, we threw a dinner for him, during which George Gale, Jeff, Wheatcroft and myself topped De- mosthenes in pathos and brilliance — or so we thought at the time. And that was it.
When my column was terminated by Esquire after five years, all I did was stay drunk for a week, chase after girls for another, then I went back to my wife and children and c'est tout. When Jeff gets fired — which is often, due to his propensity to tell editors to go and reproduce themselves — he writes a column about it, putting the blame on himself as usual, stays drunk for a week, and then goes back to the Coach and Horses, and Basta la comedic. But not our Frank.
If Rupert Murdoch were an Englishman, no doubt he would write his account of the incident. But, being an Australian, he ain't no cry baby. (And as we all know, Austra- lia gave us Shakespeare and Goethe, not to mention Homer and my ancestor Aris- tophanes, all non-complainers.) And speaking of Australia, Jeff and I plan to visit some time this winter. My best friend, who is also called Jeff lives in Sydney and he has spilled more booze than Jeff Ber- nard and I have drunk. He is a bouncer in a nightclub now, as his fortunes have been on a down-trend ever since he inherited his father's 30 years ago. He finally blew it all five years ago, and moved to Australia thinking life would be easier over there for a gentleman without means but with very expensive habits. He hadn't, of course, reckoned with that clown Hawke, a man who makes Papandreou look and act like a gentleman. But what the heck. It's a big country, and chances are we won't run into that ghastly man. Needless to say, not every Australian is a friend of mine. One, thank God, is already in that sauna-like place below, the other is about to become what Giles used to be, an editor, I shall name neither man because this is a high-life column in England's greatest weekly. But as the latter is, after all, an Aussie, I will give him a bit of advice. Don't do what Giles did and get yourself laughed about at the start of your career. Frankie boy had gone to Paris with the wife and rung the British Embassy asking if he could drop in for a drink. When the flunkey he was speaking to assured him that both he and Mrs Giles would be welcome, our Frank shot back that it wasn't Mrs Giles, but in fact Lady whereupon the flunkey interrupted him and said, 'Sure, sure, I understand, bring her anyway.'
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