Taki

I am trying to decide with some friends which is worse, English weather or English football. The former is improving as I write, but the latter’s problems are terminal. There are too many ‘directors of development’ and other jargon-packed non-jobs that interfere with the very simple process of developing football. Send them all to Iceland, bring on a dentist, and cut footballers’ salaries by 90 per cent, and you just might one day learn to win. But on to far more important things than ghastly football, like the wonderful garden party given by my friend Richard Northcott that brought back some very pleasant memories. There’s something rejuvenating about running into old girlfriends, despite the wrinkles and the sags. Memory speaks.

The two most beautiful words in the history of the world, in any language, are ‘Molon labe’, the accent on the second syllable of both words, the ‘b’ pronounced ‘v’ in the second. These two little words were the laconic answer of King Leonidas of Sparta to the offer made by the great Persian king Xerxes of not only safe passage, if the Greeks laid down their arms, but also a settlement of lands of better quality than any they currently possessed. You know what I’m talking about. The Hot Gates, or Thermopylae in Greek. The year is 480 BC, the month is August, and the Persians number more than 1,250,000 fighters, accompanied by 1,800 triremes in support.

I always thought the Freuds a pretty sordid bunch, and after the latest revelations it seems I wasn’t far off. I first met Clement Freud when John Aspinall employed him as an adviser for food and wine. He was lugubrious and aggressive, and none of us punters liked him one bit. He was not a gambler but talked as if he were a big one. While crossing the Atlantic on board the QE2 back in 1974, he tried to pRlay the tough guy with me over — yes, you guessed it — a lady, but it didn’t work. But there’s no use giving him the business now that he’s dead, so all I will say is that I found him just a bit less loathsome than his painter brother and leave it at that.

Marion, Baroness Lambert, was hit and killed by a London bus last month while shopping in Oxford Street, a cruel irony if ever there was one. ‘At least it was Bentley,’ was how Steven Aronson, the writer, put it. Marion was a very old friend of mine. She had endured the worst tragedy that can befall a mother, having lost a beautiful young daughter to suicide. Philippine Lambert had been sexually abused by a family friend, a sordid story that I first broke in these here pages and later in the Sunday Times. It was a vile affair and I won’t dwell on it, but it cemented a very strong friendship between us because the alleged abuser was a very rich man with powerful connections who actually warned me to desist. I did nothing of the kind, and wrote the story three times.

Shelter Island is nestled in the Long Island Sound, ten minutes by ferry from Sag Harbor and a good 30 from the horrible Hamptons with its Porsches, mega-mansions and celebrity trash. It is where, on my last week in the Big Bagel, I was taken back to the Forties and Fifties for a weekend. Shelter Island is what the Hamptons used to be: tranquil, beautiful, rustic, unspoiled, with lovely ponds bordered by shady oaks and maples. The pace slows the minute you get off the ferry and step into the peaceful enclave. There are forested hills, secluded coves and quiet beaches. The sea is hardly the Mediterranean, but there are no migrant bodies, and not a single mega yacht to spoil the surroundings. The island is not about to join the Hamptons circus any time soon.

Write about things you really know was the advice Papa Hemingway offered wannabe writers, so here goes: the French Open is still on, Wimbledon is coming up, and I’ve just read a lament by some French woman about how professional tennis and big-time sports have become ever more ubiquitous and ever more out of reach. Duh! A former model by the name of Géraldine Maillet has made a documentary about the 2015 French Open, not exactly a stop- the-presses kind of story. It was released on DVD just as the 2016 Open began. The French Championships, as they were called before the Open era began in 1967, was my favourite tournament — Paris being Paris and the Parisian girls being, well, beautiful and easier than most.

New York Let’s face it, sleaze is to professional party-givers what jail is to a burglar, an occupational hazard. I’ve been reading about parties in Cannes, described in glowing terms by stars-in-their eyes hacks who should, but do not, know any better. Well, dear readers of The Spectator, I’m afraid I’ve been there, done it all, and believe you me, squalor is the operative word. Obscene publicity-seekers posing as role models, sartorial decay, and a chronic inability to keep their clothes on is the order of the day. Cannes used to be fun, during the 1950s. Eden-Roc, the restaurant and swimming-pool of the Hotel du Cap, was terra incognita to the Hollywood crowd.

   New York I have never seen anything like it. If Adolf Hitler were running for president, he would match Donald Trump’s negative coverage. If Benito were in the race, his notices would be far more favourable. When The Donald emerged as the last man standing, certain New York Times columnists became unhinged. One hysterical woman pundit accused Trump of ...not having any money. The one I liked best came from a colleague of hers, who is usually unreadable because of his wordy and flat prose. That particular fool had declared that the word Trump would never appear in his column. Once Donny baby had wiped the floor with his opponents, the fool did mention his name, describing him as ‘an unbelievable joke’.

New York It was the best of times — downtown — and the worst of times — uptown. Let’s start with the horror near the park: cranial atrophy, unrelenting grossness, overarched and overgrown eyebrows, posterior-baring bondage outfits, and de haut en bas attitudes were the order of the night. Never has a museum site been more desecrated by a freak show, and the Met — maybe the best museum in the whole wide world — should be ashamed of itself. A great institution such as the Met always needs funds, but allowing a freak show of publicity-starved clowns is not the answer. Let’s take it from the top. The Metropolitan Museum gala ball used to be a chic affair, where social-climbing millionaires could buy a table for the evening and invite their betters.

   New York I went downtown to Katz’s the other day and had a pastrami sandwich that made me want to shout. God, it’s good to be bad and eat bad, but not necessarily act bad. That’s the trouble nowadays. People take care of their health, eat properly, exercise obsessively, do mental gymnastics such as crossword puzzles, and then go out and act like slobs, use the F-word non-stop and talk with their mouths full. If I hear one more time that 60 is the new 40, I will punch the first octogenarian, male or female, who crosses my path. Some buffoon who recently took up tennis has written a book about how this might stop him from getting cancer.

I read this in an American newspaper (it was written by a woman who used to edit my copy for a New York glossy, but I will withhold her name to save her embarrassment and social atrophy): ‘He’s hosted Kim Kardashian and Kanye West for Thanksgiving, regularly cruises with Justin Bieber on his party yacht...’ The mind boggles. Is it possible to read such crap without throwing up? How would you, dear reader, like to spend Thanksgiving with Kim and Kanye, or go cruising with Justin? (I’d rather fail a syphilis test than have a Kardashian as a guest.

My, my, the rich are under attack everywhere, and I thank God the Panama Papers didn’t include the name of the poor little Greek boy. Legality being my middle name, I took legal advice and stayed away from offshore trusts and shell companies as soon as my daddy died. Steer clear of Mossack Fonseca, they advised; everything’s gotta be on the up and up, which means that I now depend on the munificence of my children and their mother for walking-around money — and that includes change for coffee and a pack of fags now and then. Mind you, it beats being on a Panama list and having all those hacks poring over my not-so-hard-earned moolah. What bothers me is how the word rich has now become a pejorative term.

New York Harvey Keitel, the actor, rang up to invite me to a Marine shindig where General Petraeus would be guest speaker. The venue was Carnegie Hall, and I arrived late having had a tough session at the karate dojo. I was also very dehydrated. Next to me was a beautiful young woman by the name of Aimee, who introduced me to her fiancé, a familiar-looking young man with a friendly manner. I looked at his place card and it read ‘Rupert Friend’. That meant nothing to me. Finally, I asked him whether we knew each other. We did not. Still, the guy looked awfully familiar. Aimee untied the Gordian knot. ‘Perhaps you’ve seen him in Homeland, the TV series that got as good as it gets — for a while, anyway.’ The penny finally dropped.

   New York Even after all these years, I’m still at times floored by the scale of the place. And it’s always the old reliables that stand out: the silvery arcs of the Chrysler Building, the wide avenues, the filigree of Central Park, that limestone monument to power, the Rockefeller Center. Curiously, the recent trend for tall, slender and glassy housing among money-laundering Russians and Chinese does not mix with the city’s motto of ever bigger and grander. It’s as if the transparency of the glass structure is teasing the authorities about the origins of the owners’ wealth. Come in and take a look, we have nothing to hide. Last week I sat in Central Park reading the newspapers at a comfortable 70 degrees.

My old friend and one-time doubles partner Ray Moore has stepped down as chief executive of the Indian Wells Tennis Tournament for telling the truth. As Rod Liddle wrote in these here pages a couple of weeks ago, ‘There is nothing more damaging to a career than telling an unfortunate truth.’ Ray Moore was a very good South African tennis player and is a very nice guy. He once partnered me to a final in a major tournament and we have stayed friends for 40 years and more.

On 17 November 1813, Marshal Ney, the bravest of the brave, had been the last to march out of Smolensk amid harrowing scenes. The hospital wards, the corridors and the stairs were full of the dead and dying. Napoleon had gone into Russia the year before with 500,000 men and was now leaving with fewer than 40,000. Ney had only 6,000 under his command but was determined not to fall into Russian hands. The Russian commander Miloradovich had already failed to capture Prince Eugene, Napo’s son-in-law, and the great Davout, so he set his heart on capturing the 43-year-old son of a barrel-maker from Lorraine. Ney did what he knew best. He charged. The first frontal attack failed at the last moment as the French ranks were raked with canister shot.

   Gstaad Going up on a chairlift with the town’s doctor, I asked him, ‘How’s business, doc?’ ‘Never better,’ said the kind medical man. It seems the richer we get the more medical help is needed. ‘I get calls 24/7 for all sorts of ailment relief, especially coughs and colds,’ said Dr Mueller. ‘Rosey students, as opposed to local kids, are the most demanding.’ I’m not surprised. Le Rosey has the highest fees of any place of learning — anywhere — so it’s hardly surprising that some of the little monsters think a cold or a cough is something money can do away with in a jiffy. When my boy was there he suffered from a sleeping disease. He would feign sleep as soon as classes began.

   Athens I am walking around downtown Athens watching as thousands of migrants field pitches from smugglers offering alternative routes to Germany and Austria. I ask a friendly policeman 50 years younger than me why he doesn’t arrest the smugglers and throw away the key. ‘Others will take their place quicker than we put the handcuffs on them,’ he tells me. ‘And they pretend to be migrants the moment we approach.’ Smuggling people is big business, and most of the bad guys are Afghans, as far as I can tell. It is grim stuff, especially where children are concerned. Victoria Square is a tree-lined park where long ago my grandfather owned a large family house. The area is no longer chic, hence the influx of migrants and smugglers.

The rich are under attack nowadays, never more so than in America, where The Donald continues to trump his critics, amaze and surprise his fans, and drive his haters to paroxysms of sexual fantasy, with Trump as the main actor. National Review, where I got my start 40 years or so ago, devoted a whole issue to rubbishing Donald Trump. There were contributions from great conservatives, such as Thomas Sowell, and great clowns, like John Podhoretz. It was an issue that inadvertently looked in opposite directions while hating The Donald. William Kristol’s bit was in there — the one where he calls Trump vulgar. That he may be, but coming from a true vulgarian like Kristol, it’s a bit rich.