Broken streak

New York

Ain’t that a bitch! What else can one say? The way I figure it, it was 357 columns without a miss for the first seven years, then, after a Pentonville break, 1,275 straight until last week. The lawyers broke my streak, but then they would. And in my 30th year, too. Well, what the hell, all good things come to an end, but at least only Claus von Bulow rang to inquire whether I had dropped dead. Actually, I ran the offending piece on my website, www.takimag.com, so it did see the light of day, and 100,000 visitors got to read it, so there.

What’s interesting is how things have changed in the past 30 years. Libel laws are supposedly not as strict as they used to be, but don’t you believe it. For example, I will not mention politically incorrect things one was permitted to write in jest back then. When Liberace died of Aids, I wrote: ‘Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, and if you had liked pussy, you’d still be with us.’ Charles Moore thought it in very bad taste, but too good to keep out.

I suppose what I miss is the crummiest end of Grub Street. Now it’s all sex and celebrities; before there was a great emphasis on the bizarre. Hacks back then invented things. Not about brain-dead people like Britney or Paris, but stories which in their perversity and cruelty might as well have been true. One thing is for sure: the readers were amused. One person who was always in the news was Prince Aly Khan, the father of the present Aga. Aly had a reputation as an indefatigable lover. He went on record saying about the English, and the upper-crust English at that, ‘They called me a nigger, and I slept with their wives.’