High Life | 23 May 2009

New York


This being my last week in the Bagel, the butterflies have arrived with a vengeance. Stuttgart, I am told, will be no picnic. Two top judokas, one Japanese, the other German, are in my age group, which I find quite ironic. My boat is named Bushido — the way of the Samurai warrior — and my admiration for the Wehrmacht’s fighting qualities and spirit is no secret. The greatest fighting unit ever — and I include the Spartans, and the US Marines — was Rommel’s 25th Panzer Regiment of the 7th Panzer Division. I only hope the father of the German I will meet in Stuttgart was not a member. If he was, goodbye title.

I can’t remember having spent a more pleasant two months than these past two. New York has been marvellous, the weather good, the training just about perfect, the boozing satisfactory. Lunching with my friend Dominic Dunne, the writer, and Chris Meigher, the publisher, I was informed by DD, who not only covered the trial, but knows more about this vile person’s background than anyone else, that Phil Spector ain’t doing too well in the pokey. It seems that Spector asked the warders to allow him to keep his wig while he’s awaiting his appeal to come through. (He owns about 30 of them, and changed them throughout his trial.) The jailers said no, and for obvious reasons. A wig is a perfect place to hide drugs, something Spector is synonymous with. He then appealed for permission to wear a hat, and was again turned down. That’s when he suddenly discovered religion. He demanded to have the largest yarmulka ever delivered to him, and this time the powers-that-be gave in. So the murderer of an innocent woman, whose only crime was to resist him, now walks around wearing a yarmulka ‘as big as a sombrero’, which goes to show that rediscovering one’s Jewishness has its advantages.