High life
Spring fever
Taki
New York My, what a difference a season makes. Last winter, while languishing in north London, each day — as poor old Oscar put it — felt like a year, a year whose days are long. Now the opposite is true. I have just spent ten days in my favourite city and they flew by as fast as Mussolini's Alpine heroes fled when the Greek army counter-attacked in Albania in 1940. I guess it is the ultimate irony that good times fly, while bad times drag on. This time, however, it may have had to do with spring and London.
When I was young and didn't know any better, I defined spring by a school holi- day. Nowadays it is the quickening of the pulse that signals spring has arrived. And ever since 1976, the year I began writing regularly for the Spectator, the pulse — heartbeat, rather — has been getting me into deep trouble every spring. Emotional- ly that is. When I asked a noted shrink whY it is that it happens every spring, he came up with some mumbo-jumbo about hor- monal changes. Which only proved to me that shrinks are over-rated, over-paid, and mostly over there (in Hollywood and New York). The truth of the matter is that every spring I land in London following a long New York stay, where feminist women resemble aggressive used-car salesmen on the make. Naturally, the English fair sex benefit from the comparison. This year needless to say, it will be worse than ever• After Pentonville and New York I feel vulnerable enough to fall for anyone, even a female hack, although I wouldn't bet on
it. (I* guess I am condemned to a never- ending chase of sweet young things who think Jill Tweedie is a trapeze artist.) And speaking of the young, I was surprised to see an enormous picture- poster of Lord John Somerset staring down on me as I drove through Sidney Street, SW3, on my way in from Heathrow. Johnson Somerset is 20 years old, and he used to ring me and Oliver Gilmour angling for an invitation to such places of learning as Annabel's and Aspinall's. Gil- mour played hard to get, preferring such older intellectuals as Professor J. Astor (a financial genius) and Mr Charles Davis, (a musical prodigy). I was in love with John- son's sister and like a good Greek worked through the family. Anything Johnson wanted, Taki provided, including some experienced ladies I used to know when they worked the Piraeus docks and sailor bars. Then some PR genius had the bril- liant idea of putting up a poster advertising a glossy monthly that takes people like Koo Stark seriously, with Johnson Somer- set's picture on it. They put it up all over London, drawing great crowds of young girls that oohed and aahed and blocked traffic.
That is when Oliver Gilmour began ringing Lord John Somerset, proposing drinks and even dinner. So did I. He totally ignored us, however, which was well done as far as Gilmour was concerned, but grossly unfair to me. Typically, the man who has become the praetorian guard of London's latest sex symbol, is Sebastian Taylor. Not only do Johnson and Sebastian spend their weekdays and nights together interviewing young hopefuls, Sebastian was the second person to be invited down to Badminton for lunch during the horse trials. (Needless to say, Her Majesty was the first.) Which brings me to an even sadder story. When last week I drove to Easton Grey to visit a friend, I heard about an Argentinian bounder who was ill in bed with a nervous breakdown, one that had Occurred as a direct result of Sebastian Taylor's visit to an ancestral seat that with some luck could have been mine. It seems that when the Queen left Badminton House after lunch in her Range Rover, she was followed by Princess Michael (whose Problems at the time were dismissed by a Wit as just a stormtrooper in a tea-cup) and by — heaven forbid — Taylor. When Bounder Basualdo — who had lined up to Cheer the Queen hoping his visa would be extended -- saw his old comrade in crime
two — yes, only two — cars away from the monarch, he let out a mighty shriek and
fell back rigidly in the mud. He has run a high fever since, and the tragedy is that neither Lord John nor Sebastian have even bothered to ring him. But such is life, especially in London. Next week I shall tell you how a jailbird is once again the arbiter of the New York scene (no, it's not me), and in the mean- time I count the days to my return. But this time I'm avoiding Sidney Street.
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