Gstaad
OK, sports fans, it’s time to spill the beans. Some time last year, I wrote about rich man’s kick-boxing, the art of punching and kicking at someone holding up pads. It’s the best conditioner I know if done correctly and non-stop. I also call it the most Christian of sports because there’s a lot of giving it out and receiving nothing in return.
It goes something like this: left jab, right cross, then another left jab and right cross, then left front kick followed by right roundhouse kick, then left front kick again, followed by right roundhouse kick, and then the whole thing all over again. It takes about one minute to complete ten cycles. Which means one’s thrown about 40 punches and about the same amount of kicks. Then, after a break of about a minute or less, you start all over again but this time with variations: more left or right hooks, some uppercuts, more low round kicks (because although high ones can be very effective, they leave the kicker very vulnerable to counters).
If this is boring you, it’ll be over soon. Left jab, right cross, left jab, left jab, left hook, right uppercut, low left round kick, low right round kick, left kick, right kick; on and on it goes and you feel like a champ (you look like one, too – even though I say so myself – after 60 years of boxing and martial arts). Finally, it comes to an end. It’s been 30 minutes of throwing leather and kicking padded thighs. The sweat is pouring and the few visitors watching are not about to get in and mix it with you.
Three weeks ago, however, things changed. My tough Turk trainer, Cureyt, put the pads aside, gloved up, and we started sparring. He’s 6ft 2in, and 28 years old; I’m 5ft 9in and 86 years young. Spectators who had been awestruck that someone my age can kick and punch as hard as I do were equally awestruck when the Turk turned me to jelly. He faked a right cross and when I covered he landed a left hook to my liver that did more damage than 60 years of hard drinking in dives from London to the Bagel. The fact I had been drinking vodka until late the night before did not help matters. Sparring since then has become compulsory because it separates the men from the boys. The wife had sent out a video of rich man’s kick-boxing. But for some strange reason Taki looking like a harpooned blowfish after a vicious shot to the liver has not yet made it on to celluloid.
Never mind. When fighting in a dojo or in a gym, and especially in the street, valour and discipline are all-important, as are courage and cunning. Wild swings that knock men out are Hollywood fiction, although these days street fighting is for suckers. Don’t try it. Every bum and coward is carrying, and if they’re ever caught after slicing or shooting someone, they’re either suffering from mental issues or have had such a disadvantaged childhood they deserve a break. The days of hitting someone and waiting for him to get up before you land another blow are as long gone as high-button shoes.
Karate, kick-boxing and judo are the healthiest of pursuits and come in handy at times. There are no ‘love yourself’ notices in dojos, at least not the ones I frequent. The love stuff is American-inspired crap, and I apologise to manure for mentioning it in the same breath as self-love phonies.
Otherwise, it’s been dinner parties galore. My close friend Aliki Goulandris gave a great dinner for 14 of her closest and I sat next to her and Bernard Picasso, grandson of you know who. It was delightful. He spoke English and when I asked him why he said that he had a terrible Parisian accent that embarrassed him. ‘Do you sound like Jean Gabin?’ I asked. ‘Yes, something like that,’ said the most charming of men, who had a very pretty wife to boot. My advice to him was to speak French, because everyone loved Gabin, especially in his gangster roles.
Wafic and Rosemary Saïd blew into town and threw a dinner for 20 at the Palace Grill with wines to test the willpower of a pope who has sworn off the stuff. Then came Christopher and Lynn Mills’s dinner at home. Their beautiful chalet contains more books than all the dwellings of Gstaad combined, a fact that says a lot about Christopher Mills and the town’s other residents.
That’s the good news, but the even better news is that a man called Kenny, writing in the Bagel Times, found your correspondent ‘stomach-churning’. My friend Mark Brennan sent me the item from the Bagel, and it was like an unexpected present. Causing discomfort to a phony working for that phoniest of newspapers – especially one who, horror of horrors, attended ‘William Paterson University in New Jersey’ – makes me forget the blow to my liver and want to buy people drinks. I was taught early on never to snub people, but the line has to be drawn somewhere. Glenn Kenny, of the New York Times, educated at William Paterson University of New Jersey, had his stomach churned by Taki; it’s just too good and made my week.
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