High life
Eurotrash
Taki
There were more parties in New York last week than there are herpes in Studio 54. If things go on at this pace, I shall be applying for a liver transplant before the winter is out. My friend William Lewisham, a serious young man who would rather be known as an American Wall Street stockbroker than the English vis- count he is, gave the first 'Eurotrash' party of the autumn season. Eurotrash, inciden- tally, is the name all rich Europeans who live in New York go by these days. This year's party was in honour of another friend of mine, Giovanni Volpi, son of the Duce's last finance minister. Old Volpi was a hell of a man. He became one of Italy's richest men, was made a count, and, most important of all, survived the Fascist downfall and left all his gold to his widow and son. Old Volpi had Giovanni when he was over 70 years of age and living the quiet life in Lausanne. Giovanni's mother is a formidable old lady who used to give the Volpi ball every year in her palazzo in Venice. The guests had to pay homage to her only son, a little blond boy who used to sit on a throne in the middle of the vast drawing-room. The guests used to pat the little boy on the head, play with his hair, and whisper 'ma che bello' to his mother. The result was that when Giovanni grew up, all his hair fell out overnight. He also developed an extraordinary fear of people touching him, and the terrible habit of con- stantly picking his nose in public. As I have been a friend of Giovanni's for over 25 years, I was looking forward to the party. I hadn't seen him in two years and I wasn't surprised that nothing had changed. As I came in Giovanni was nowhere to be seen, but William soon showed me to one of his bedrooms where Giovanni was sitting on the bed, picking his nose and watchin8 television. So William, Giovanni and I sat around the bedroom shooting the breeze, as they say in America, and before we knew it most of the pretty girls had left, probablY thinking that we were a Ibunch I of homos. And then it was time to check if we could walk a straight line, speak without slurring our words, or if we had been speakin8 nonsense. I failed all three, while Giovanni failed only the straight line test, and Lewisham passed all three with flying col- ours. Well, there was no point feeling more of a fool, so I left early and headed for another party given by a wonderful American ex-ambassador, Francis Kellogg, who I suspect has something to do With cereals, too. That is where 1 really made a fool of myself. First I had a long talk w!rb my friend Claus von Bulow, whose case, cidentally, was coming up this week. Theo
was spotted by the mother of my children as I had cornered the host and was trying to convince him that he was just the nicest, most generous man in the world. She saved him from me, but soon 1 went after others and the party was over. So it was Xenon time and more psychobabble until I ran into an Italian, not of the Volpi class, far from it in fact, and he reminded me of a girl whose lover he had been last year, and then I became violent and the next thing I knew the owner had the bouncers drive me home in his limo, which was damn nice of him as the usual thing is not to bother with such niceties but just to throw the recalcitrant party out.
But things improved the next day. Tom Wolfe, the best American writer, and pro- bably the nicest writer in the world, was giv- ing a party for the premiere of the Hollywood film of his book, The Right Stuff. Tom is a good friend, and, typically, has been savaged by a phoney Marxist type for defending me. Tom has written over ten books, and what he has done to radical chic and limousine liberals, both labels invented by him, I wouldn't do to Arthur Scargill. The film was three hours long and it seemed only half that. It is the story of the United States' entry into the space age, from Chuck Yeager's flight breaking the sound barrier in 1947 through the six flights of the Mercury astronauts. Chuck Yeager, famous for his daring in the skies and willingness to risk his life by pushing planes to their limits, was present, now over 60 years old but still trim, with hooded eyes and a terrific smile.
The film shows the press to be what it is, an extremely thick-skinned bunch of keyhole peepers, and Lyndon Johnson for the opportunist vulgarian that he was. Walter Cronkite, an arch phoney as far as I'm concerned, got upset about the press, but he would, I figured, get upset if something was to happen to Gaddafi. 1, on the other hand, had a marvellous time. I sat between Bill Buckley and Bob Tyrrell, two liberals but nice all the same, and enjoyed myself without psychobabble for a change. But intellectual evenings do end, so the next day I flew to London and Jessica Man- Croft's wedding and the last thing I remember was getting dressed for it.
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