Taki

 Gstaad The American newspaper that prints only news it sees fit to poison good things recently announced ‘The end of snow’. ‘The planet has warmed 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit since the 1800s, and, as a result, snow is melting…’ Bring on the Pulitzers, snow melts! The Big Bagel Times also thundered that Europe has lost half

Damn, damn, damn! It has to be me, and all these years I’ve been thinking it was Hollywood. By the time you read this it will all be over, like the Olympics, but I had someone play 12 Years A Slave on my television set — it’s called Apple TV but I’m incapable of making

 Gstaad Walking into a dinner party for 50 chic and some not-so-chic people in a nearby village last week, I was confronted by a tall man with horn-rimmed glasses who called me his neighbour, but then added, ‘No, you’re not my neighbour what’s your name?’ No cunning linguist I, nor used to being barked at

 Gstaad ‘On ne touche pas une femme, même avec une fleur,’ says an old French dictum, one not always adhered to in the land of cheese, or anywhere else, for that matter. However hackneyed it may sound — don’t you hate it when a hack declares an interest in order to gain brownie points for

Call me sentimental, but I’ve never seen a better opening ceremony than the Sochi one, evoking Russia’s great past in literature and in many other things. The ballet sequence was tops, especially the acrobatics by the black-clad dancer portraying the cruel officer in War and Peace who seduced Natasha. All those hysterics about boycotts and

Gstaad A heavy snowfall diverted 40-odd private jets from landing in Saanen airport, thus the one per cent of the one per cent who came to Gstaad for a grand wedding last weekend used conventional methods of travel. Actually, it was more of the 100th of one per cent whom lefties complain about, 650 of

Gstaad If a catastrophic avalanche were to crush the Davos convention hall, where the fat cats of this world were meeting recently, I’m afraid there would be a lot of discreet raising of glasses by many so-called populists, basically envious haves who have plenty but don’t particularly like people who have more than they do.

OK, folks. We’ve had enough of Hollande and his rather silly antics, although I do understand the man. Ever younger is not a bad policy, in sport as well as in sexual matters, but it does give off a certain bad smell (it’s called a Saatchi) and is something real men actually never get caught

Al Goldstein, who died recently and made the front page of the New York Times, was among the world’s most disgusting men. But hardly as repellent as Charles Saatchi and certainly without the coward’s bullying manner — against women, that is. Goldstein founded Screw magazine during the Sixties and pushed hard-core porn into the mainstream

Gstaad Although no longer a regular habit, extended benders now turn me into a sort of magnetic field that picks up pearls as though they were iron filings. They are jewels of insight not the kind tarts hang around their necks to alert the viewer of their availability. Take, for example, a description of a

Welcome, Mr 2014, if you turn out as good as Mr 2013 was, we’ll get along just fine. Throughout last year, I got happier and happier. In fact, it keeps getting better and better and at times I think there must be something very wrong with me. But I should not tempt fate, nor the

This Christmas our thoughts need to be with our fellow Christians who are being threatened in the Bible lands. No ifs or buts about it, they are being told either to join the Sunni-led opposition to Assad and renounce Christianity or die. After decades of protection by a secular-leaning dictatorship, Christians are being given ultimatums

 New York I’m in an extremely happy state as I write this because a young Englishman flew over the ocean just to have lunch with me and ask for my daughter’s hand in marriage. This is how things used to be done, but alas no longer. I will not reveal his name until it happens

New York   Nature is at her best right now, the leaves still holding, Central Park awash in golden browns and reds. I go there every morning, half a block away from home, and under a giant elm I put the creaky body through its paces. Twenty push-ups, 30 deep knee-bends, 25 kicks over a

You know you’re old when people start writing kindly about you. Especially when they are colleagues. First Jeremy Clarke, now Deborah Ross. Debbie could of course be spoofing — if you look down at your bag of popcorn you’ll miss me — but thank you very much anyway. When my new boat is ready there

Everyone’s doing it, so I might as well jump in too. After all, I knew so many of the people involved, including JFK and his widow Jackie, and — sorry for the name-drop — even the actor Rob Lowe who plays the slain president in the film that’s coming out for the 50th anniversary of

I suppose the secret of death is to choose not to expire the same day as famous people. I read in Lapham’s Quarterly that JFK, C.S. Lewis and Aldous Huxley all met with the man in the white suit on 22 November 1963. John Jay Mortimer, a friend of very long standing, died last week

New York Hot money from China, India, Russia and Singapore is pouring into London; hotter money from the same countries is flooding into the Bagel. London has become unaffordable for the average Joe around Kensington and Chelsea, as has the West Village in downtown New York. Well, unaffordable is relative. There is a delicate social

If, according to a Viennese wit, psychoanalysis is the disease that calls itself the cure, then Steve Cohen’s deal with the US government is the highway robbery that calls itself justice. In brief: Steve Cohen is a bald Wall Street hedgie whose $18 billion fund, SAC, has scored Madoff-like returns over the past 20-odd years.

 New York He came from a wealthy background but was always in trouble. His parents were not particularly religious, but nevertheless insisted that little Jimmy read the Scroll of Torah and grow up to be a good Jewish boy. You can imagine their horror when they found naked pictures of Hedy Lamarr and Brigitte Bardot