High life
Only half a dozen
Taki
I was sitting in the Palace Hotel's grill when the news of Margaret Cook's revenge came in. A South American friend of mine was appalled. He first tried the hell hath no fury angle. He then insulted British women. 'Only a puta would do a thing like that, and Britain is full of putas.' Although I objected, he persisted. 'No man should `Do you believe all this global warming junk?' suffer such a humiliation.' That is when I got his message. My amigo was outraged about the low number.
Now, before any of you start writing abu- sive letters, my buddy is a macho, and us machos find it very amusing that Robin Cook has suddenly joined the pantheon of Lotharios. It is a bit like passing the first round of a local tennis tournament in Torquay and having your name inscribed among the Wimbledon champions. If Cook had any brains he'd come out from hiding and start making up numbers. After all, if Gordon Brown makes up numbers which have nothing to do with the truth, why not Cookie?
Then there is the problem of the effect his conduct will have on British foreign pol- icy. Can Cookie ever be taken seriously by the French, the Spaniards, the Greeks, not to mention the Italians? Of course not.
And what about the Belgians? In Brussels, all people do is eat chips and copulate. The next time Cook shows his face he'll be laughed out of town. Blair should get rid of him for Belgian sensitivities alone. But seri- ously. Does greatness and great womanis- ing go hand in hand, or is it just macho talk? Dunno, but back in the good old days, I think it did. The only thing I didn't like about my hero Napoleon was that he spent more time looking at maps than in the boudoir. Whereas Talleyrand and his son, the Comte de Flahaut, hunted the fair- er sex non-stop. Flahaut was the lover of three queens — mind you, Napoleonic queens, two of them Napo's sisters, while Talleyrand had an affair with the Duchess of Dino grandmere, mere et fille. (Eat your heart out, Alan Clark.) Louis XIV had countless mistresses and was a great king. Louis XVI had none and look how he ended up. Catherine the Great was a sex maniac, as well as a great ruler. Ditto Peter the Great. Elizabeth I never had a sexual relationship, at least not according to Bill Clinton's view of what constitutes sex, yet she did OK. Henry VIII needs no comment. Oliver Cromwell, as far as I know, would have been laughed off his horse in a Mediterranean country, as would George Washington. And Winston Churchill. Hitler got very little nookie, whereas Benito got a lot. Both ended up in the `merde'. Go figure, as they say in the Bagel.
Needless to say, we're all slaves of our genes. Being oversexed is a necessary con- dition, but by itself not nearly enough. Cookie's troubles derive from his emotion- al illiteracy — the inability to empathise with other people's emotions. If he had shown a modicum of courtesy to his wife she would not have revealed that the best number he ever managed to get in a singles bar was a zip code. Had he been kinder, she would have made him out to be a Byron-like figure, insouciant, devil-may- care, humorous, romantic and swashbuck- ling, rather than the pathetic figure who admits having committed adultery to his wife — the equivalent of pointing a loaded gun at someone's head during a drinking competition. Never admit is the sine qua non of Don Giovanni-ism, and, despite Leporello's bragging, it served the Don very well un il the end. Real women don't want to kno . And women who don't know don't spill bans. Cookie should have read Da Ponte instead of Marx.
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