High life
Cruising for a bruising
Taki
ohn Latsis, the tycoon who has put the ferry-boat turned luxury yacht at the dis- posal of the Prince and Princess of Wales, is known for his generosity as well as for his vulgarity. At a recent press conference in the Big Olive he answered newsmen's questions with questions of his own. For example: 'Do you take it up the b— as often as you seem to?' His language caused an uproar, but then Latsis gave an enor- mous amount of money to a charity and all was forgiven.
Such, then, are the charms of the man who seems to have bought his way into the lives of the British royal family. As I have previously written on these pages, he used to address me as Mr Theodoracopulos dur- ing the Sixties. Then it became Taki, and when he really struck it rich he stopped speaking to me altogether. This is not to say that Latsis puts on airs. To the con- trary. I sometimes think he acts as vulgarly as he does in order to make sure people do not think money has changed him.
Mind you, he does have a few skeletons in his closet. In a terrible book three years ago, a Greek journalist tried to suggest that Latsis was a fraud and a crook and the greatest briber of all time. Latsis threat- ened to sue but in the end did not. I believed very little of the book and defend- ed him in a Greek newspaper. It was yellow journalism at its worst, and the hack did not prove his charges.
What Latsis is guilty of is a rather poor record during the war. Details have been published ad nauseam in the Greek press, and Latsis himself has joked about it. His appearance, too, leaves something to be desired. He wears a toupee as well as make-up and dresses. . . er. . . . in a colour- ful manner. There is no trooper anywhere on earth that swears more. Still, his gen- erosity far outweighs his vulgarity, because the latter only hurts Latsis himself.
But the problem is not the Greek tycoon. It is whether royals should accept the hos- pitality of people whose behaviour is not exactly that of Caesar's wife. The fixer of the trip the press has named a second hon- eymoon is, I believe, ex-King Constantine of Greece. He is a friend of Latsis and has been known to accept the freebie almost as often as Princess Michael of Kent. I wouldn't be surprised if Latsis turned up in Scotland during the month of September. And if the Queen was suddenly forced to pay taxes, I'm sure Latsis would buy Bal- moral from her and give it to her free of charge.
Needless to say, the Greek press has had a field day. The Waleses have been por- trayed as leeches of the rich in leftist papers, and Constantine criticised for being always in the company of people who can- not read or write but are capable of count- ing to six thousand million.
Given the yellowness of the Olive Republic's press, most of the charges are ludicrous. But something somewhere is wrong. I cannot put my finger on it, except to say that Constantine has not learned any lessons in 24 years of exile, and Prince Charles's unhappy manner shows that run- ning around the Med on foreign gin palaces is a pastime for Taki types, not the future king of England.
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