High life
A laughing matter
Taki
New York I write this slightly under the weather having just attended Barry Humphries's Broadway opening of Dame Edna Everage — The Royal Tour. We're at Sardi's, known as the rendezvous of shattered dreams not to mention wallets — and, just like in the movies, we're waiting for the papers to come in. Outside, a steady drizzle adds to the atmosphere.
But not tonight, Josephine. The papers arrive and Dame Edna has knocked them for six. The Royal Tour is a resounding hit — never have I heard such loud guffaws, more spontaneous laughter, warmer applause — and it couldn't happen to a nicer guy. Barry Humphries (a friend) is an enigma. Better read than most Oxbridge dons, witty and sharp, but always kind to those less cultured, he gives off gossamer vibrations of the interior life. This is why his show — all exterior — works as beauti- fully as it does.
There is nothing quite like an opening night on Broadway. I imagine for those involved it's like waiting to do it for the first time — with a girl, that is. Standing outside the theatre, smoking the last fag before curtain up, I asked Oscar Humphries, Barry's extremely good-look- ing 18-year-old son, if his dad was nervous. 'Very,' came the answer. Once the curtain went up, I realised why. It is one long ad- lib involving the audience, an outrageously brave thing to try, especially with Ameri- cans, a people whose humour has by now replaced that of the Germans as no laugh- ing matter.
The infallible test of genuine poetry is that it forces us to recall emotions that we ourselves have had, with the very form and circumstance of their passion. Ditto gen- uine comedy. I am not in the PR business, but this show is a must. Never have I laughed as long and as hard as I did tonight, and never has Dame Edna been funnier. At Sardi's, following the show, there is almost a bitter-sweetness feel of loss, because the Dame has gone, replaced by Barry.
But enough of gravitas. I sat with Stanley and Lisa Weiss, old friends of the Dame and yours truly since the Sixties, and the Hunts. Stanley writes terrific stuff about trouble spots of the world. Having made his fortune with oil in Mexico, he turned hack in his fifties and is laughing all the
way to the bank. Stanley and Lisa came up from Washington, where they live in a house slightly smaller than the white one besmirched by the First Scumbag. Harry Hunt is straight out of central casting — a good-looking, wiry, upper-class old Wasp, but to be viewed with suspicion. He knows the difference between Rambo and Rimbaud.
Monica (unfortunate Christian name, but what the hell) Hunt is beautiful and German. She was only three when in 1945 she was decorated by Field Marshal von Runstedt for having shot down a B-17 over Dusseldorf. Alas, her daughter Antonia has never shot down any airplanes, but she's made up for her lack of patriotism by breaking American men's hearts. Including mine. Ah, the tragedy of bodily craving, made far more painful by the mother of my children sitting next to me and telling me that I'm an old fool. (As if I didn't know.) Mind you, it's not all fun and games. Last week a very rich man took me out to lunch at 21 Club and offered me lots of stock in his company in return for running my tiny organ on his website, whatever that means. At first I thought he was being dirty, so I volunteered that I wasn't exactly starving, and even offered to pay the bill. Then my friend Sam set me straight. About webs and all that. It would, needless to say, be the final irony. Taki and his tiny organ making money without really trying. We are already a succes d'estime, so much so, in fact, the monorchist who runs the New York Times — and, I repeat, monorchist, not monarchist — has decreed that anyone caught reading Taki's `Top Drawer' section of the New York Press will be immediately assigned to cover the Gore campaign. Oh well, it could be worse. They could be forced to review the books about Alastair Campbell, as floccinaucinihilipilificating as it gets.
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