High life
I don't give a damn
Taki
Private Eye no longer has any influence, and is read only by the kind of people who think Robocop is art. Never mind. The damage has been done. Johnson the sage is already taking care of Rusbridger — the low-life gossip columnist turned editor so I won't concentrate my guns on a man who is to editing what rap is to classical music. Suffice it to say that he has been caught publishing total falsehoods — as in the case of Lady Soames — yet has man- aged to avoid Aitken and Hamilton-like punishment.
Take my own case, for example. I do not read the Guardian but am told by friends that I get murdered in it week in and week out. In the words of Rhett Butler, however, I don't give a damn, because I am having too good a time to bother with what low- lifers think of me. The Guardian cannot get to me because I publish my shortcomings each week in these here pages. This is not the case with Baroness Turner of Camden, a lady whose inability to sue the Guardian due to lack of funds (Letters, 19 July) has had a devastating effect.
After my boat was blown up three years ago, I hired some 'specialists' to get the culprits. We had nothing to go on until some 'intermediary' came forward and demanded moolah or else. My specialist had his picture taken next to the 'interme- diary's' daughter as she was going to school. The bad guys got the message. They even became polite and asked for a meet- ing. They had already blown up my boat, and two of my associates' houses. Everyone was very, very scared as the Olive Repub- lic's ridiculous thief — sorry, Prime Minis- ter — Andreas Papandreou was too busy hiding ill-gotten assets to protect law-abid- ing and tax-paying citizens. The people who worked for me and had their houses blown up asked me for one thing only. Not to write about the case. When Helena Smith of the Guardian rang me — long after the bad guys had turned good — I agreed as long as she did not mention certain facts that might hurt those incapable of defending themselves, i.e., people who work for me. She filed her story and sent me a copy. What appeared in the Guardian had very little in common with what she had written. I was not sur- prised. Rusbridger, after all, cares about fairness as much as I care for gay and les- bian pride.
The irony is that it is newspapers such as the Guardian and the Express — now owned by the socialist-loving Hollick chappie that often have poor relations with their staff. The best owner-worker relations seem to me to be enjoyed by the Telegraph group.
The trouble is that people like Rus- bridger are lowering the standards every day they're allowed to publish. When my friend Jimmy Goldsmith died I was expect- ing the worst and I sure enough got it: a supposedly quality paper like the Mail on Sunday headlining a total fabrication about the Goldsmith will. The Express was even worse, not to mention, of course, the Guardian.
Mind you, I don't really mind. Both Jimmy and I always agreed that living well is the best revenge, and, boy, did he ever? He squeezed more into his 64 years than the low-lifers could ever imagine. He even chose how and where to die, which is much more than the ugly hacks will ever be able to do. No, Sir Jimmy left like the patriarch he was, having said good-bye to his close friends and to his family. He then peaked, as far as I'm concerned, by dying privately and with great dignity. The hacks will never understand such courage because so many of them are devoted to perpetuating a fraud on others. But enough. I am off to a private Greek island where the species is unknown. What bliss!
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