Old friends
Taki
My, how things change. One of the first friends I made when I arrived in merry old England during the swinging Sixties was a cherubic, incredibly pink, forever laughing man called Charles Benson, the racing correspondent of the Daily Express. ;His claim to fame at the time was his position at the top of John Aspinall's suicide stakes list. Benson, whose eyes shut completely after a night of eating and drinking, headed the list for weeks on end, closely followed by other perennials such as Ian Maxwell-Scott and Daniel Meinertzhagen. The suicide stakes were for real. Aspinall used to post the list every Friday, giving the odds. However, there was an inherent weakness in the whole business. Aspinall assumed that a man who lost everything, or was hopelessly in debt, would commit suicide. The trouble was that none of the people on the list minded being in debt. After a while people simply stopped betting. And all those in the top ten, I am happy to say, are still around.
Benson was also terribly kind. As soon as we met, he sized me up and decided he liked me. So he took the time to show me around London. He took me to the best restaurants, ordered the best food and wine, introduced me to all his friends, and insisted that we go everywhere together. Not a single day, including Sunday, went by without Benson ringing me early and suggesting the schedule for the day. Both of us were enjoying ourselves until the day my father rang from Greece and asked me whether I was getting kick-backs from restaurants, nightclubs, and wine bars. Apparently my expenses were on a par with what an Arab sheik spends on hookers, and the old man had had enough.
Soon after that Benson decided that it wasn't fair that other foreigners he knew should be deprived of the knowledge he had imparted to me. He thought it only fair to show Robert Sangster, the Aga Khan, Mick Jagger, and others too rich to mention, the art of living well. Then two things happened. He won the richest backgammon tournament ever, the Dunhill invitational, and he met his future wife.
Carolyn was appalled by his friends. Her father, a colonel who is charged with filling up the holes which Prince Charles's ponies dig up on Smith's lawn, was adamant that his daughter should not be seen with riff-raff. Benson dropped his old friends and joined the royals. Sandringham, Balmoral, Windsor, Mustique and other favourite royal hunting grounds replaced Aspinall's and Annabel's. And Taki. It was very sad. The Queen had found a courtier but I had lost a guide. Three weeks ago, however, he remembered me.
I had mentioned him among social climb ers!in'England,1 and he wrote a letter to the Spectator describing his family background and accusing me of swinging from an olive branch while his ancestors were running around with royalty. I thought it was a low blow because it was so near the bone. Naturally, I was surprised at his distress when all I had wished to do was to express my admiration for his talented social mountaineering. Under the circumstances his letter of 17 January was extremely illuminating. I hadn't known, until he pointed it out, that his family had been climbing so persistently and so unsuccessfully for so long.
In his letter he points out that 'wicked Ralph Benson' married a royal discard. Usually people who render the monarch such a service wind up with a dukedom, at least. Poor wicked Ralph Benson. (Incidentally, it will be interesting to see if my friend Johnny Hesketh gets the first of a whole line of British dukedoms.) Anyway, back to the ancestor whom the Scout thought worthy of mention; Captain Riou, whom he describes as Nelson's right-hand man. Knowing the family, I would like to know if he got away with his eye as well? I see that Charles Benson, one of the last stylists on Lord Whelks's newspaper, says that 'Nelson's right-hand man was, sadly, killed'. My own ancestor, Rear Admiral Taki, was of course delirious with joy when he was wiped out fighting the Persians.
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