Non-stop bop
Taki
The last thing I was planning to write about was the royal connection at the Worcester ball I attended in Oxfordshire last week, but after the fuss the up-market press has made about it, here is the last word on the subject from one hack who actually knows. 'To suggest there is a mere inkling of a liaison between Princess Diana and Philip Dine shows how little the up-market Writers know about seduction. I've seen some lulus in my time, and nothing a woman does ever surprises me, but I'm willing to go and live in North Korea for theremainder of my life if there's any pining going on between Diana and any- one except her hubby. Although I hate facts because they do tend to get in the way of a good story, here are a few about that fateful night. It is true that Diana danced almost non-stop, but it was with constantly wng partners. The time she danced With Philip Dunne, Prince Charles was still ..,around and, if I'm not mistaken, he was 'lancing near her. rkTo suggest that Charles left in a huff is kte suggesting the Jewish lobby is not the most powerful lobby in Washington — suriply not true. Charles, like myself, is a serious man who enjoys classical music. himself unlike myself, he failed to fortify himself with enough alcohol to drown out the Zulu music. However, he left in ex- cellent spirits, as they say, and she con- tinued to bob up and down, also in excellent spirits. Where the up-market press failed totally vias in not reporting that Diana did meet a great seducer after her husband left, but it Wasn't Philip Dunne. In fact it was me, but all We did was to shake hands after Nicky Raslam presented me to her. Now 1 want to know why no one bothered to write about Taki, or the fact that most of the time she walked around with a roly-poly Irian with thick glasses who would not be considered a catch even in the Soviet Union — one Dave Ker, who is happily Married and has about ten children. The reason they did not is obvious. The facts Were getting in the way of the story. .But here are some more hurdles to the Diana and Philip 'romance'. When Dunne `tvent ski-ing with the royals last winter he had never met Diana. He knew Fergie, as most of his age group tend to do. She — Diana --visited him once, but Philip's girlfriend was there. The latter is a great friend of mine, and I can swear he Dunne her no wrong. Katya wouldn't stand for it. As I said previously, the hacks know as much about seduction and secret liaisons as, say, the late great Fred Astaire knew about un-coordination. People who are carrying on do not dance or even talk in public, and certainly do not visit in broad daylight with a retinue of friends. My quick handshake with Diana should have made me the numero uno suspect if Fleet Street knew anything about what middle-class people refer to as boffing, but this is another matter altogether.
I did feel a certain amount of pity for my gallant opponents of the Sunday Tele- graph, whom the Spectator challenged and defeated at tennis in the Vanderbilt tennis club last week. But more than pity, I felt admiration for them. They reminded me of those Polish lancers who attacked my great-uncle's panzers on horseback in the autumn of 1939. What conspicuous cour- age. It is not every day that men who know how to read and write go up against a bunch of almost professionals who have spend their formative years learning how to top-spin, slice and undercut a tennis ball. The husband of Alice Thomas Ellis literally bled all over the court but insisted on finishing the match. Peregrine Wors- thome got hit by me a couple of times when his partner gave me sitters at the net, and all he said was 'dash it all'. And then there was the Cambridge don who got hit in the groin by a smash and whose voice changed completely by the end of the match. Although the score was uneven, theirs was the moral victory.
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