High life
Perfidious Albion
Taki
New York M y last week in the Bagel. New York in May is as social as Gstaad in February, and the liver could do with a rest. There are four great parties coming up, culminat- ing with a ball at the Botanical Gardens for the wedding of Liza McFadden to my countryman George Melas. After that it's Paris and Nicolas de Stael time — I've just bought the great Russian's greatest paint- ing, and I'm meeting his daughter at an Aleko Goulandris lunch to commemorate the purchase. And then on to London for some more fun. London has been off-limits for the poor little Greek boy for a year. The idea of a bunch of forgers and liars as in the Guardian — having escaped pros- ecution, whereas my friend Jonathan Aitken has had to pay the full price for try- ing to expose them for the forgers and liars they are, turned me off the place. Last week's Spectator exposed the Guardian-Observer plot to keep quiet about the Guardian's deputy foreign editor receiving £327,000 on behalf of a Ghanaian Cop from a Libyan top spy who was in Lon- don intimidating dissidents. (The Observer railed against MI5 but forgot to mention the spy's Guardian connection.) Now I ask you, dear readers, how is it Possible for such double standards? I can understand when the Home Secretary's son is caught selling marijuana and is rewarded With a place at Oxford, as I understand When the Home Secretary's brother is accused of assaulting a 16-year-old girl (imagine what they would had done to Aitken if his son and brother had acted similarly), but the Guardian-Observer's memory failure takes the cake. There is something really rotten with the media and the government, and I for one am quite happy to stay away.
In fact, if it weren't for the mother of my children insisting I keep my flat in London, I would have moved everything to Palazzo Taki (soon Palazzo Pinochet's ground- breaking ceremony will take place; while building Palazzo Taki I used only Egyp- tians named Fayed wearing loincloths; this time I will use only Cubans with beards and in battle fatigues). My friend John Radzi- will, son of Prince Stas and Grace Dudley, has just finished building a Polish palazzo in Gstaad, which is really good news. (One old money gent equals five nouveaux vul- garians.) Radziwill is a hell of a fellow. Married to Eugenie Karras, a childhood friend of mine who can buy me out with the change in her pocket, they have two tall and very good- looking sons whom I hate running into late at night when I'm promoting some sweet young thing. I was a friend of the late Stas, and will always remember when he proudly took John to St Moritz and encouraged him to try the four-man bob. It was the Polish national team and John was appointed brakeman. They then sped off like the proverbial bat out of hell. Except that John fell off without anyone taking any notice. Hurtling down at an incredible speed, the brave Polish driver finally yelled `Break!', but his order fell on deaf ears. John was by this time having a drink back at the club. The Polish bob ended up some- where near Zurich, and the three Poles were observed wearing plaster casts for the next couple of seasons.
Oh well, it could have been worse. John's mother's husband, the late Lord Dudley, father of the present earl and poet, was once victim of the most unfag-like behaviour at Eton. His fag tried to hold him down and bugger him, but some beak heard his anguished cries for help and pulled the fag off him. Some years later, in the trenches of the Western Front and in the middle of a murderous German charge, with dismembered bodies all around him, Dudley felt a strange presence. As the smoke cleared, he saw his old fag staring at him, his ardour obviously undiminished despite the corps-a-corps fighting. Ah, they don't make Old Etonians the way they used to.
And speaking of not making things the way they used to, I just read a book about Diana Mosley, to me the greatest beauty and greatest of wives. I am a friend of her son Alexander, and the idea that Diana and Sir Oswald were a threat to their nation and had to do a Taki is one more proof of the hypocrisy of the English. (Two little boys growing up in prison is straight out of Dickens.) But I can't stay away. Not with a royal birthday party, a Lady Powell dinner for Henry Kissinger and Royal Ascot coming up. Fasten your garter belts.
Previous page
