High life | 13 September 2012

Gstaad

It was far, far worse than the Rodney King El Lay riots of 20 years ago, and it made last year’s London summer fires look like a kindergarten’s Guy Fawkes party. This was our Kristallnacht, and then some. They had hard faces, harder than a hedge fund manager’s when told a good corner table is unavailable. They came early and there were lots of them. Squat and dark, tall and wide, their fists at the ready, their firebombs hanging like war medals off their badly cut coats. They had pickaxes aplenty, but few brains to accompany them. They screamed abuse, their foul-smelling breath escaping like radiation from a nuke, and just as deadly.

Four billionaires were instantly hacked to death, among them Bernie Ecclestone, whose small size made it impossible to find any of his remains. Seven multimillionaires were also lynched. I fought like a tiger but had both arms broken by the mob, and am typing this with my nose. More than 100 chalets have been torched. I am sending my report to The Spectator plugged into an emergency hospital unit. Gstaad no longer exists. The last thing I remember was their hyena-like laughter as I was passing out. And the horrible smell of burned money. God help us poor little rich people. This is the end.

Well, not quite. Not for the first time I have allowed my imagination to run a bit wild. There were reports of city slickers from Berne coming to Gstaad to demonstrate against us so-called foreign tax-avoiders, but then no one showed up, a bit like finding a beautiful naked woman in one’s bed who happens to be dead. If I sound like a poor man’s Raymond Chandler, it is on purpose.