Verb. sap.
Sir: Your High life columnist accuses me (23 March) of having 'spent all last year bombarding editors with epistles deman- ding Taki's dismissal'. Not so. I did once write a single letter in confidence to the editor of The Spectator suggesting that it was perhaps time his readers could be spared repetitious gossip about a few mega-rich nonentities by a middle-aged Levantine boringly boastful of his inability to hold his booze. The very antithesis in fact of Jeff Bernard, an idiosyncratic stylist in far greater need of money. My letter was leaked to Taki, whose bread and salt I have gratefully eaten and of whom, along with his children and their mother, I have always been fond.
Our spoilt Peter Pannaiotis insists however on being the cynosure of all eyes or nothing, so for the past year the only word I have heard from him at our chance encounters has been the one the editor of the pull-out-and-throw-away section of the Sunday Telegraph was once so proud to be the second man to utter on prime-time British television.
Alastair Forbes
Beefsteak Club, King Street, London WC2
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