HERE'S THE DOPE

Taki Theodoracopulos looks back on

25 glorious years — bar three months in the slammer — as High Life columnist

SINCE man has been around for between half a million and a million years (though he did not emerge from the caves until something like 6,000 years ago), 25 years of High Life must seem a mere bagatelle in the grand scheme of things. Still, the subject of this reminiscence is not grand schemes but man's day-to-day folly, which is rather more fun.

In October 1977 The Spectator was owned by Henry Keswick and edited by Alexander Chancellor. It sold about 7,000 copies. There was no colour, and the paper was newsprint. Simon Courtauld was the managing editor and George Hutchinson the deputy editor. Auberon Waugh wrote Another Voice and Jeffrey Bernard the Endpiece. There were no ads to speak of.

How did High Life start? Well, as is the case with everything that works, not the way I intended it to. I had been trying to crack the Speccie for a while, but the editor found the Greek political stuff that I was writing much too right-wing. I was 41 years old, jobless, and still ranked in Greek tennis and

number one in karate. But sporting glory was obviously not in my future.

I had just become the father of a little girl, and had gone to Turin to buy the mother of my child a Fiat car. I remember dining at Gianni Agnelli's with Niki Lauda, his newly reconstructed plastic face glowing in the candlelight. Lauda had been horribly burnt at Nilrburgring, but had recovered quickly enough to win the drivers' title for Ferrari. I remember it as being very eerie. The next day, I took possession of the Fiat and took off for Paris. I was advised to drive slowly for the first 1,000 miles.

Boredom on the motorway brought on the Muse. I decided to switch tack. Close to 1,000 words were memorised on how one can tell an Englishman in a European nightclub. (They look at the bill with flashlights, argue with the waiters when overcharged, never have the right currency, wear thick tweeds that smell of horses, dance without rhythm, and at times scare the Arabs with their red complexions.) Nothing new, of course, but I rang Chancellor and asked if he cared to see it. 'I'm having a drink with a rather boring MP,' he answered. 'Why don't you join us and let me see it?'

As it turned out, the MP was a then unknown Norman Lamont, and Alexander liked the piece (it was written in a French accent). Courtauld, an old friend, pushed my case and I was offered a twice-a-month column called High Life. Jeff was switched to Low Life. Soon after, High Life went weekly.

Jet-setters don't read, or did not read The Spectator back then. So, what to do? Easy. I invented the quintessential English jet-set couple, Mark and Lola Winters, based on Martin and Nona Summers, a twosome I ran into everywhere I went. I then began to chronicle their life. The trick worked. The story made the rounds after Nigel Dempster identified them, and people started to read the column.

A quarter of a century ago, journalists were not exactly, er, welcome in polite society, but I already had many friends who chose to ignore the fact that I would write about my shenanigans at their parties. Mind you, I always asked permission first, and after 25 years, and a couple of hundred balls, I have only once been asked not to

write about a party. It was at Highgrove, and I didn't (until now).

With Maggie Thatcher coming to power in 1979, the place exploded. Many English friends got married at about that time; there was a ball in the country almost every weekend in June and July during the late Seventies and early Eighties (Hanbury, Fraser, Morley, Guinness, Bridge, Dodd-Noble, Gilmour). At Harry Worcester's wedding I was introduced to Princess Diana. I was drunk and slurring my words. She thought that I suffered from epilepsy, or had a severe speech impediment, so she took my hand and lip-synched with me. 'Oh leave him, Ma'am.' said a cruel Nicky Haslam, 'he's just sloshed.' At John Aspinall's Nuremberg-like party — 2,000 Boy Scouts stood at attention holding torches — I'd gone to the magnificent garden for a lie-down with a sweet young thing when we were trampled on by strange creatures. They turned out to be dwarfs dressed as apes, who were there to run around the grounds, the way they used to during Roman times. Following a Niarchos wedding in Deauville, I mentioned cocaine in my column for the first time. In fact, it was a first anywhere, as libel laws were even stricter back then.

Studio 54, needless to say, provided copy made in journalistic heaven. (`No sane person goes into the lavatory of Studio without a surgical mask as if in an asbestos plant during an explosion. Masses of humanity sniff, snort, sneeze, cough and expectorate. Steve Rubbell, the owner, is seriously thinking of taking out the toilet bowls as redundant') But soon it was my turn. On 24 July, 1984, I was warned at Heathrow by a customs officer that an envelope in my rear pocket was about to fall out. 'Oh thanks.' I wisecracked. 'If only you knew what was in it!' He crooked his finger and I ended up going to the pokey for four months for possession of cocaine. Charles Moore had replaced Chancellor by then, as Algy Cluff had bought the Speccie from Keswick. I used my one telephone call to ring Doughty Street and got Clare Asquith on the telephone. I told her that I resigned forthwith, whereupon she asked me whether I would be filing from jail. Then Charles got on the blower and told me that, had I been the Speccie's religious correspondent, he would have fired me. 'But as the High Life writer, we expect you to be high at times.'

While inside. Charles had the great idea of having me switch columns with Jeff, as Bernard had found a patron who was paying for him to spend the winter in Barbados. Alas, I did not manage an Archer, and my streak of never having missed a column came to an inglorious end. After three months I was out, but soon back in court. An old tart by the name of Rosemarie Marcie-Riviere (now tarting down below) sued The Spectator for comments that I had made about her. For 13 days we all defended ourselves as best we could, but the presiding judge — a ghastly hypocrite — took a great dislike to me. 'What does Taki stand for?' he asked. 'Little Virgin Mary,' I answered. He as not amused

(although that is what my name means). He instructed the jury in a manner of which a Stalinist court would have approved. Algy and I went half and half when we got the bills. In the column following our Waterloo. I wrote that I would like to find out the name of the German pilot who bombed the Temple in 1942 and call my next son after him.

By this time The Spectator's circulation had taken off and Charles Moore moved on. with Dominic Lawson replacing him. The first telephone call that Dominic received was from the Israeli ambassador. 'Congratulations, and the first thing you must do is get rid of that Taki. . . . ' But Dominic stood fast.

After he had left to edit the Sunday Telegraph and Frank Johnson had become the chief, I quickly got the new editor and Conrad Black, by now our proprietor, into deep shit with a column I had written about the Puerto Rican parade in New York. The Big Bagel papers picked it up, and demanded my head. Rudy Giuliani suggested a boycott

of all Black-owned newspapers. and the Anti-defamation League demanded my deportation; as did Giuliani. (The fact that I'm an American citizen escaped them.) But both Frank and Conrad stuck by me, whatever the cost, and I believe it cost them both. Then came my big coup. In 1997 I wrote how Osama bin Laden, known as Harry' Laden to us his friends, was a very popular member of White's, held court at the bar and bought drinks for everyone, and that he had been made a member by the Duke of Beaufort despite the objections of Nicholas Soames. Most fell for it, starting with Ephraim Hardcastle, who objected. When he rang White's, the hall porter said, 'We haven't seen him lately.'

No sooner had Boris Johnson become editor than he clashed with Conrad Black over a column of mine that Conrad judged had been 'written by Goebbels'. Boris kept me on and Conrad forgave me in no time, but it was a close call.

Which brings us to the present. It might sound corny and sentimental, but writing for The Spectator has been the one constant and wonderful happenstance of my life. Every other column I got — and I got plenty — was because of The Spectator; four owners, five editors, 25 years: a hell of a ride. The only thing to say to those who have worked, or work, for The Spectator — and they know who they are — and to our wonderful readers is F. Harry Stowe, Nthich in Greek means THANK YOU.