High life
Still at sea
Taki
y story of last week about Princess Michael, Robert de Balkany and the fight that saw the former being asked to vacate his boat's premises would not bear repeat- ing except that it gets better. It seems that the princess has stayed angry. Only last week she ran into Amin Aga Khan, the brother of the Aga, and regaled him with her Greek tragedy. Amin, a kind man, was sympathetic, but could only offer some tea.
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Now Balkany may be a bad-tempered man at times, but he also knows how to take care of himself. This feud will run and run, as they say.
The reason why I say it gets better is the following: the Greek who gave Prince and Princess Michael shelter after their hasty migration from Spetse is a man by the name of Elias Papageorgiou. I have known this individual — rather I have known of him, as we do not speak to each other for 25 years. Libel laws prevent me from saying what I really think of him.
Papageorgiou started off training as a merchant marine captain, bought a ship and eventually was involved with Tidal Marine, a shipping company that crashed spectacularly some time in the mid- Seventies. One of the partners in Tidal Marine was shot dead in New York, the other went bust. The banks took the hit.
Papageorgiou is now in a different line of business. He owns and operates a hotel in Mykonos, and recently became the proud owner of a Camber Nicholson yacht that was built 25 years ago. This, then, is how he came to rescue the Kents. He is not my favourite person, although I'm sure his opinion of poor little me is not exactly that of a loved one either. Suffice it to say that he makes Robert de Balkany seem to pos- sess plenipotentiary dignity by comparison.
What bothers me is not that the Kents went cruising with him. That's their busi- ness. I don't even find it humiliating that they are shuttled between the yachts of louche Greeks, as Peter McKay wrote last Sunday. Nor do I mind, as John Junor does, that minor British royalty accept hos- pitality on the yachts of people they barely know. What bothers me is that the hacks who repeated my story didn't bother to mention The Spectator, which after all had the courage to publish it.
It is ironic, but whereas our resident sage, Paul Johnson, like his namesake the good Doctor Johnson, goes walking in Scotland with Simon and Virginia Fraser, the sainted Editor's wife rubs shoulders with the divine Diana, Nigel Nicolson treks in Spain and Jeffrey Bernard suffers in dig- nified silence in hospital, we have the Prince of Wales cruising on Latsis's mega- yacht and his cousin hopping between Balkany and Papageorgiou.
There is something wrong here. The Speccie is not only the most elegant weekly in Britain, but its hacks are acting the way royals used to. Perhaps they should put us all on the Civil List and he done with it.
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