High life
Kissing and telling
Taki
New York According to an English general, the definition of a gentleman is one who has never made a lady feel less than one, which, alas, makes your correspondent somewhat of a cad. If the general's defini- tion is correct, James Hewitt is a gent. After all, he spoke very highly of the Princess of Wales once he spilled the beans for money.
On the other hand, my definition of a gent is one who does not kiss and tell, which makes James Hewitt an unspeakable shit, cad, bounder and many other things libel laws prevent me from writing. Better yet, under my definition, women like Roseann Barr, Barbra Streisand, Madonna and Hillary Clinton are hardly ladies, but perfect examples of the encroaching prole- tarian brutalism that has swept America and is about to take care of Little Britain.
A couple of weeks ago, The Spectator ran an article on the late Sir Robert Stephens and his disclosures about ladies he had bed- ded. Although I was appalled when I saw the tabloid headlines, I must admit he got the benefit of the doubt. Stephens must have known he was going to snuff it, and, being a naughty man, he spilled them. It is no excuse, but there are extenuating cir- cumstances. Death concentrates the mind, but it also confuses it, and he sure was both dying and confused when he wrote his opus.
When Miss Wyatt wrote that men simply do not kiss and tell, she got it almost right. Some men do. For example, Kirk Douglas wrote a long autobiography which — if he had not named every woman he had seduced — would have bored an usher in a long-running Pinter play. Eddie Fisher, the crooner who married Liz Taylor, ditto. He wrote a memoir which was worse than Dou- glas's because it had more gory details about you know what. Even my hero, Erroll Flynn, wrote My Wicked Wicked Ways and spilled some beans, not all. Needless to say, all three were actors. Peter Viertel, the lefty writer, and the man who is still married to the divine Deborah Kerr, is also part of the group. He named ex-lovers who are still around and he named them recently. I will not name his book because some young Speccie readers may go out and buy it.
So, there you have it. Sir Robert Stephens, whose autobiography I have not read, somehow emerges as not quite the cad the others I've mentioned are. There is something naive about his kiss and tell, perhaps it stems from his working-class background. Douglas and Viertel did it for ego. They are insecure, like most of their fellow liberals, as well they should be. Fish- er and Hewitt did it for the money, some- thing that does not at all surprise me or anyone else. Flynn was like Stephens, naughty — c'est tout. Which brings me back to yours truly. My father taught me a very long time ago a very neat trick: If you want to seduce a woman, never speak to her about another woman.' The biggest no-no, of course, was spilling the beans. Especially a la Hewitt. Now that the world knows it happened, I think even worse of him. When the unreadable — even in a long-running Pinter play — opus of la Pasternak came out, I went ballistic for a while. Yet, deep down — and I wrote it in this space — I thought he was making the whole thing up, which made it funny in a way. (For years I pretended to be the secret lover of a royal princess who is so physically repulsive I'd rather watch a Pinter play. A lady I had never met, incidentally, and I did it because some friends of mine were sleep- lug with her because she was royal.) Now that the divine Diana has admitted she committed hubba-hubba, coutchi- coutchi with Hewitt, I am Orlando Furioso at his treachery. She should have spotted a kiss and teller from afar. The place is full of lovers who keep their mouths shut, and she picks the logorrheic Hewitt. Oh, yes, I almost forgot. There's someone else who writes about his women, but he is the only man permitted by The Hague Court of Good Taste to do so. It is my colleague and friend Jeff Bernard, soon to be knight- ed, I hear. It's about time, too. Diana, who loves the sick and the infirm, should pay him a visit quite soon. Jeff will make her forget James, or my name isn't Tacky.
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