High Life

Wednesday, 4th March 2009

The enemy within

Gstaad

Thirty years ago this week my daughter was three and my son had not been born. I had left Gstaad for gloomy, strike-ridden, non-stop power cuts London, and the mother of my children was peeved at me as I had begun circling the daughter of the Belgian ambassador to the Court of St James. The Speccie was selling 7,000 copies, the New Statesman 70,000, and Jim Callaghan was asking the press what crisis they were banging on about. Oh yes, Jeffrey Bernard’s column followed mine and it was called ‘End Piece’. An appropriate name for England’s oldest and most elegantly written magazine, as it looked like curtains as far as the country was concerned.

Then Margaret Thatcher happened and most of you know the rest. It all came back as I watched The Making of the Iron Lady last week. Not the ambulance drivers blacking patients, not the bin-men letting the rubbish fill the streets, not the dockers blocking food supplies and letting them rot, but the night of her fall. I was at Harry’s Bar with Maya Even, Alistair McAlpine and Alexander Hesketh. The two men had come from the Lords. Except for Maya we were all drunk and swearing loudly against the pygmies who had brought her down. Instead of a lefty plot — after all, she was unflinching in her determination to put an end to socialism in Britain, and she had managed it — it was a Julius Caesar assassination without the daggers. I got to know Lady T after her fall. She and the great Denis used to come to Gstaad in the summer and lived just above the tennis courts of the Palace hotel. She had begun work on her memoirs. John O’Sullivan introduced us and Sir Denis asked me what the ‘cock-*****r’ business was all about. He used to have his G&T around five in the afternoon on his balcony, and watch as Nigel Armstrong and I hit endless crosscourt forehands and backhands, training for upcoming veteran tournaments. ‘First man to miss is a cock-*****r,’ one of us would yell, and we’d keep hitting until someone missed and the dreaded word would be shrieked. Sir Denis thought it rather funny.

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Fritz

March 5th, 2009 11:04am Report this comment

The terrorist label, thanks. Not all countries agree, see Hezbollah, but why is Hamas different?

Bill Corr

March 5th, 2009 7:19pm Report this comment

Only a true cad would find it a matter for quiet and satisfied amusement that the insufferably sanctimonious and holier-than-thou Swedes now find that all - all - their towns and cities have an immigrant problem and that Swedes' lives, present and future, are and will continue to be enriched by the presence of Somali rapists and Kurdish heroin dealers, among others.

Swedes of all kinds and classes - most notably Olaf Palme - hectored the civilized world about cruelty and wrongdoing in Dixie, Rhodesia, South Africa, Vietnam, Northern Ireland and so on ad bloody nauseam; now the Swedes have cities which resemble Beirut - without the good weather - and we can enjoy the spectacle without undue guilt.

We would enjoy the spectacle more if our own political class had not permitted Britain, and now Ireland, to be similarly enriched.

Gil

March 5th, 2009 7:42pm Report this comment

We still wait for Taki to tell us how Mossad was linked to Madoff. Until then lets treat his ramblings as those of a wind up merchant.

Does anyone else see the sick irony of Taki accusing one country of Apartheid (incorrect factually) while making hateful comments about Islam?

Fritz

March 5th, 2009 10:11pm Report this comment

Gil, you overlooked the last sentense. The reality is more complex than prejucices. Germany is full of sleepers, go to any university, but nobody would ever attack Germany, however crazy they may be, whatever it does. Germans turned Muslim returning from abroad may be something else.

Morgan Kane

March 6th, 2009 2:13pm Report this comment

Poor old Taki.
Still reliving his halcyon days at Le Rosey, cheering as newsreels show his Nazi heroes marching through the streets of Athens.

Graeme Anderssen

March 7th, 2009 7:24am Report this comment

Is there some mix up here? Should this Israel basher not be writing for The Guardian? This regurgitation of Palestinian rhetoric is tiresome. We have here the "repeat the lie often enough and it becomes truth" in action. What apartheid? What "criminal acts"? Why does this bleeding heart have nothing to say about the criminal acts of Hamas? And a nations right to self defense? Oh - if its Israel, then it's a "criminal act". It is enough to make you sick.

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