High life
Uninvited
Tala
After ten weeks in England I am about to take a holiday in the birthplace of presidential bruised egos and non-operative deodorants. It is very warm in Greece now, but it promises to get warmer once the summer is over and election time rolls round. However, I don't want to write about Greeks just yet. Heaven knows I'll have to soon enough. For the time being, the Wedding, critics, the press, and my life in general — but not necessarily in that order — will suffice. I spent the wedding day in the company of the Kaiser's great-grandson. He is a very polite, half-English young man, not at all as boisterous and aggressive as his ancestor. What I don't understand is why he was not invited. The Kaiser was, after all, the first-born grandson of Queen Victoria, and bygones are supposed to be bygones. Furthermore, I'm still not convinced that the Great War was the Kaiser's war, and that the Allies were as innocent in stirring it up as history has us believe. But who am Ito ask such questions? Grace Kelly was there, right in the front, and if one wasn't in the Cathedral one could always catch her in the film High Society during the wedding breakfast. That's about the only thing which the media did that I have approved of in the past two weeks.
The reason I am writing of my companion on the day of the wedding is because I have decided to name-drop incessantly, if only to please the Observer critic of High Life, Low Life who wrote that my unabashed snobbery was my most endearing quality. I might bend over backwards to please the Observer reviewer, but not the rumpled old man who wrote about the book in the Sunday Times. (You know, the paper whose editor rang the embassy in Paris and asked if he could bring someone to dinner and the flunkey said, 'Sure, and bring Mrs Giles', whereupon the intrepid editor answered, 'Well, it's not exactly Mrs Giles, it's Lady Gi. . . ' and the flunkey cut him off and said, 'It's all right, bring anyone you like.') That reviewer said that he prefers the Swiss Pub to Charlie Bestegui's ball in Venice. I am sure he does, and I'll do nothing to make him change his opinion. He belongs where he belongs, and I don't, fortunately. He also probably prefers the Lyceum to the Coliseum, but imagine what a boring world it would be if there were no low lifers around.
I will, however, do everything in my power to stop my men from burning down the Guardian when the revolution comes — only in order to ensure that Stanley Reynolds gets out alive and well. And despite his liberal credentials there is a tanker coming his way soon with the compliments of Taki.
Once again, my baseball bat will be coming in handy, just as soon as I discover who at the Standard wrote that John Travolta will play me in a film of the book because he is greasy-looking enough for people to believe it's me. Perhaps Oliver Reed, if he lost 40 pounds, might be a good choice, but even he is a bit too common to portray me accurately. However, that is enough name-dropping: back to the night of the wedding.
Apparently the worst party was the one given by Sabrina Guinness in order to make sure everyone knew that she knew the heir to the throne. It was in reality a loo life party, as the lavatories were so crowded that people were lining up outside them as if it was St Paul's Cathedral on Wednesday morning all over again. I wasn't asked, perhaps because Sabrina has borrowed most of my sweaters, and refuses to give them back.
The last man I will try and offend is that modern slave-master George Weidenfeld. I should refer to him as Lord W, but it's not name-dropping in my book so I will stick to the plebeian version. I saw him at Annabel's and took a friend along to say hello and introduce him, and what do you think the old porker did? Just because he was in the company of Barbara Walters, a woman of indescribable vulgarity (an American TV journalist, you can guess) the man snubbed me. He quickly introduced me to her and fled. I wonder what he was thinking. Just because I did write once that I preferred older women, did he think that I liked them that old?
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