High life
Blood, sweat and oil
Taki
Ifind it splendidly ironic that the Naval and Military Club, once the home of Lord Palmerston at 94 Piccadilly, may be forced to vacate the premises because the free- holders, the Al Marzouk (as in souk) brothers from Kuwait, need more room for their goats and camels, not to mention their birds. In fact, it is as laughable as the claim by some Afro-American clown that Ludwig van Beethoven was black.
Westminster council should read the Kuwaiti Shylocks the riot act. Only a few months ago British men fought and died so those rich towelheads could stay in the pink, and this is their thanks. The council should repay them in kind and give them 15 years in Pentonville for wearing their pyjamas in public.
Needless to say, now that the Sabahs are back in power, we can expect only blood, sweat and higher oil prices from them. Our blood and sweat, that is. Had I known about the Palmerston house last week, I would have addressed the House of Lords, where my new best friend, Lord Longford, gave me a splendid lunch.
And speaking of more recent lords, James and Geraldine Hanson threw a bash at Claridge's last Thursday that would have got them 25 years in a Kuwaiti nick for upstaging the head camel-driver. The evening was in honour of James's partner and old friend, the newly ennobled Gordon White, a man who deserves the honour if only for the beautiful women he's gone in with. James, Gordon and I go back to the days before the second Arab invasion. We used to spend our summers in the Hotel du Cap, in Antibes, but that is where the similarity in our lifestyles ended. They had suites and cabanas; I had a tiny room in the attic. The good thing about my room was that one got into bed as soon as one entered the room. In fact the room was smaller than the bed. Still, with a window on each side, I thought I had the only air-conditioned cubicle in the hotel.
James and Geraldine dined every evening at La Bonne Auberge, run by a lady known as une bonne fourchette. Although James was very generous and invited me to dine regularly, there were some nights when I had to fend for myself. Those were hard times, but I made the best of them by helping myself to James's cigars and wine cellar. Madame was in cahoots. She thought I was his poor nephew and took pity on me.
Last week, however, I didn't need to trick anyone. There I was, sitting with my old buddy Charles Benson, a shining bea- con of failure in the midst of a sea of suc- cess: Jimmy Goldsmith, Kerry Packer, Robert Sangster, Lord King and John Aspinall, all rich and famous, all at one time or another benefactors of Benson's.
I attended the dinner with the mother of my children, which needless to say cramped my style a bit. This was the bad news. The good was that Alexandra and I ran into our old friend Louis Jourdan and his wife, probably the only couple in Hollywood who know the difference between Harold Rob- bins and Harold Pinter. (I prefer the for- mer.) More good news was making up with Joe Dwek after an icy period of nine years. Joe was sweet. 'You made me suffer for nine years,' he said. That is when Aspinall inter- vened. 'Your people have been suffering for five thousand years,' yelled the Zulu, `Nine more don't make any difference.'
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