Meeting Ron
Taki
New York
The scene is Tramp, about ten years ago. There's Johnny Gold, the genial host of the second-longest-running nightclub in London history, Mark Shand, the English lothario, writer, elephant-rider as well as the future Queen Camilla's brother, and the poor little Greek boy. Nobody's feeling any pain. Oh yes, there are also a few ladies present, but I shall keep their names out of it, Johnny, Mark and yours truly all being happily married men. In comes Ron Atkinson, escorted to our table by the great maitre d' Guido, who announces that `Meester Atkinson would like to sect with your highnesses ... '
Guido is Italian and tends to exaggerate. Shand pays absolutely no attention to the latest arrival, in fact he's almost rude. Gold and I stand up, shake hands, and get back to the business at hand. After a while the penny drops — for Mark, that is. 'Are you the Ron Atkinson?' and so on After a while, the girls lose interest as football talk wins over sex. So what else is new? Mark told me later that he went on partying with Ron until dawn. They're both obviously football crazy. I can see the point of staying up all night waiting for a lady to make up her mind, but to talk about football — no way. That was the first and last time I saw or heard of Ron Atkinson — no, I do not watch football — until last week. Of course, I feel sorry for the poor bugger. Atkinson, as every newspaper has gone out of its way to point out, is no racist, yet the punishment has been disproportionate to the crime. One dumb word and 30 years of hard work down the toilet (sorry, loo). Why not bring back hanging and be done with it? Hang everyone who utters a racist word, intentionally or unintentionally, and it would fix the problem once and for all. The fact that more than three quarters of the country would be up for hanging is immaterial. Eighty per cent of the British people do not want Brussels to rule them, yet that is what's going to happen.
The fact that black people use Atkinson's word routinely is immaterial. It is a horrible adjective and insult, but it is also inconsistent. African-Americans use it more than Ku Klux Klaners. Just take a look at one of the funniest films ever, the all-black-cast Barbershop, and you'll see what I mean.
Inconsistent is also the only way I can describe what took place in the Bagel last week. Donna Mills is a dreadlocked Manhattan supreme-court judge who was on trial for drink-driving. The arresting officers were both black and had literally to help her out of the car as she was too intoxicated to move. Mills's drinking buddy, another black woman, testified that the judge had been imbibing Scotch whisky steadily for seven and a half hours the night of her arrest. No matter. The judge, who wrecked the Rolls she was driving against three lesser parked cars, insisted her only crime was 'Driving while black'. An all-minority (read black) jury acquitted her in less than an hour. I guess it gives a new meaning to the old adage of being drunk as a judge.
And speaking of being drunk, was that grand old aristocrat Richard Desmond under the influence or what? If the New York Times is correct, the porno-scumbag challenged Jeremy Deedes, a gent of the old school, to step outside. Needless to say, one shouldn't sink to Desmond's level, and Deedes did not, but I would have. I'm 67, Desmond 53: it would have been a fair fight. And, hopefully, my Germanophilia would have taught him a sharp lesson in manners and Germanophobia. Perhaps in future. But I do regret not being on the Telegraph board; it would have been interesting.
Otherwise everything is hunky-dory. The sun is shining, the Bagel is great fun, Mayor Bloomberg has killed more small businesses with his smoking ban than I've gotten plastered in my life, and a Rutgers University student newspaper showed a frightened Jewish man suspended on a carnival-style contraption above a burning oven. 'Knock a Jew in the oven!' read the caption. 'Three throws for one dollar.' (A contestant is throwing a bail at the target.) University officials said the school would not cut the funding that the paper receives, citing the First Amendment. Go figure, as they say in Brooklyn.
Previous page
