High life | 1 September 2016

Just about this time of year, 42 years ago, Dunhill’s of London, the famed tobacconist, had a bold idea. Its president, Richard Dunhill, flew 32 backgammon players to New York and had them board the QEII for the return trip to Southampton. The backgammon players were a varied group. As with cricket of old, there were gentlemen and there were players. For players read hustlers and small-time con men. Among the gents were players such as Michael Pearson, now Lord Cowdray, some very nice Americans, like Porter Ijams, whose aunt was canonised, and yours truly.

The hustlers were a more amusing bunch. There was Jean-Noël Grinda, a French tennis player who was 6ft 7in tall and took up more space than a lifeboat, and his ‘close collaborator’ Philip Martyn, now posing as a gentleman (Grinda and Martyn were partners in crime but pretended not to know each other: ‘Je ne connais pas ce monsieur…’); a small dark person called Joseph Desiree Dwek, possessor of five passports — Israeli, Lebanese, Egyptian, British and US; the American Tim Holland, a golfer friend of Sean Connery; and the eventual winner, Charles Benson, an Old Etonian who made his living tipping losers for a grubby Fleet Street daily. (Benson was my first English friend and he cost me plenty.)

First prize was £100,000, an enormous sum at the time, and the ‘players’ took it very seriously. The rest of us were busy getting pissed and chasing the few women on board. (I didn’t win the tournament but won something better.) Meanwhile, back in Blighty, Nigel Dempster was announcing the results after each day’s play in his gossip column in the Mail — caustic comments included. Nigel had approached me and had asked if I would ring him daily with news from on board.