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Hugo Rifkind

Wednesday, 21st January 2009

If the bankers start saying sorry, then we’ll have to forgive them. It’s much too soon

I’m not sure I can deal with contrition from bankers. I thought it was what I wanted, but I now think I was wrong. ‘The first stage is to fess up,’ said Stephen Hester, the new RBS chief executive, around about the time everything was going properly tits-up on Monday. And it felt, strangely, like we were about to be robbed. Again.

At first, I just thought I was angry about the ‘fess’. There are some men who can say ‘fess up’ instead of ‘own up’ or ‘confess’ and not look like berks. Not him. Many black Americans could probably manage it. Barack Obama could carry off a ‘fess’ should he ever feel inclined, although I’ve a hunch that he never will feel inclined, not even if, by the time you read this, he has already burned the White House to the ground with a faulty Illinois waffle iron.

Coolio on Celebrity Big Brother, he could fess. ‘Yo, Ulrika, I need to fess up about drinking the milk,’ sort of thing. It’s not just because he’s a rapper. Almost anybody on Celebrity Big Brother could fess. Even, at a push, Tommy Sheridan. Some of the younger ones would fess without even thinking about it. Such is the pervasive nature of hip-hopism. You have to talk like that on Celebrity Big Brother, otherwise people think you are aloof. Or worse, some sort of toffee-nosed posh snob, like that Page 3 girl from the Daily Star that they kicked out in the first week because she wouldn’t get them out for the TV cameras. I don’t think she even said ‘yo’. These days, even white, middle-aged Presidents are allowed to say ‘yo’. They probably feel it shows that they are down with it. They may also use phrases like ‘down with it’.

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Alex Tocilescu

January 22nd, 2009 2:05pm Report this comment

Mr. Rifkind, some kind soul has scanned the whole book and put it on the internet (probably illegaly, though). You can find it here:

http://psydj.tv/text/verisimilitude-harry-nicolaides.pdf

And this is the infamous passage:
"From King Rama to the Crown Prince, the nobility was renowned for their romantic entanglements and intrigues. The Crown Prince had many wives - major and minor - with a coterie of concubines for entertainment. One of his recent wives was exiled with her entire family, including a son they conceived together, for an undisclosed indiscretion. He subsequently remarried with another woman and fathered another child. It was rumoured that if the prince fell in love with one of his minor wives and she betrayed him, she and her family would disappear with their name, familial lineage and all vestiges of their existence expunged forever".

Bryan Lindsay

January 28th, 2009 12:33am Report this comment

Dear Mr. Rifkind,
Poor Harry Nicolaides, he really is a loser! The comments on page 115 about the "Crown Prince" are common knowledge here in Bangkok, at least among the chattering classes (yes, we have them too!) Unfortunately, he didn't realise the need for discretion in such matters.

We must all hope that a pardon will soon be granted to Harry and to the others presently incarcerated for similar "offences", and that the authorities will see sense and drop the increasing number of lese majeste cases piling up in the courts

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