High life
Booked solid
Taki
f any of you think the quality of life in London ain't what it used to be, try visiting it for a couple of days after living in the Big Olive for a while. I did so last week, and it's the last time I'll complain about rude Italian waiters, arrogant and dumb hoorays, moochers at Annabel's and class- obsessed bores of the female persuasion. Even the garbage that habitually piles up in Egerton Gardens didn't bother me. At least it was inside the plastic bags, whereas the Greeks simply throw it out on the street and use the bags as luggage.
The reason for my visit was to appear on the Wogan show. My publishers, Viking, got me on to it to try and sell a few copies of High Life, but I was so nervous I forgot to mention the book, although I did drop The Spectator's name twice. Oh well, I'll make it up to them next time. And there will be a next time as Viking is also publishing my Ballad of Pentonville, at present being edited by Tony Lacey. Further good news reached me while in London that Atlantic have bought both the High Life collection as well as the prison diaries for American distribution.
The prison book was originally bought by the Simon & Shuster editor Joni Evans. At the time she was married to one Dick Snyder, head of S&S, but a rancorous divorce action took place while the poor little Greek jailbird was putting pencil to paper. My new editor was an Irishwoman by the name of Alice Mayhew, and may He who looks over us keep her away for the duration. Not only did she sit on the manuscript for months on end, she was also unfriendly and downright rude about the book's content. (She's a liberal of the American kind, i.e. intolerant of an" opin- ion that she doesn't agree with.) So I pulled the book, and now it's being published by young people I like and I'm raring to do on a tour trying to sell it. In fact, Charles Glass and I might go together, as Atlantic is also publishing his book on being kidnapped in Lebanon. I will do a mea culpa about happy dust, and Glass about trusting the Lebanese.
Needless to say, Terry Wogan is my NBF, and I must admit he is the first public person I've met who is nicer in real life than on the ghastly box. In fact, everyone connected with his show was nice, and it's a pity some . of those blow-dried airheads from the States don't come over for a lesson in manners.
Mind you, it wasn't all literary discus- sions and public appearances. I found time to attend a grand dinner at Mark's Club given by my friend Claus von Bulow (jealous as hell because he is not writing an opus about the nick), at which I sat opposite an old flame and got tremendous- ly randy as a result.
But my London stay became worthwhile on my last evening. I went to Fellini's, a new Italian place on the Brompton Road which Bill Lovelady and a Roman who looks like Mao Tse-tung run in unison. All I can tell you is that the place was crawling with pretty girls. Added to that was the music: Cole Porter by a great pianist and, when he took a rest, Pavarotti on records; and in between, Lovelady on the guitar. Needless to say, I got so happy I passed out, and then it was time to fly back to the Olive Republic, the only country whose electoral system favours the second party at the expense of the first.
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