High Life | 31 January 2009

Gstaad

A single plug by Sir Roger Moore late last year has turned me into a Papa Hemingway-like literary hero. In his Proust questionnaire in Vanity Fair, Sir Roger was asked to list his favourite writers. Poor little me was mentioned among some good ones and, presto, you’d think I’d written The Catcher in the Rye, Tender Is the Night, A Moveable Feast, The Sun Also Rises, as well as The Red and the Black. People I have never heard of have written asking about my style, writing habits, sources of inspiration, even my daily routine. (Do you write standing up like Papa, or in a soundproof room like Proust?) Needless to say, I’m very grateful to Sir Roger, and, although I thought he included my name as a joke, if I were selling something — say Jaguar cars, or an American Express card — I’d be ringing his agent and making an offer the knight could not refuse.

So much for making it in a jiffy. Other good news was that Kaká told Sheikh Mansour to shove it. For once the good guys won. Milan and Berlusconi are not Chelsea and Abramo-whatever-the-Russian-is-called. Milan nurtures players and some of them have begun and ended their careers with the club. Under the Russian, Chelsea has played outside the moral rules of the game. (A bit like Juventus and the New York Yankees.) Manchester City, now rolling in oil moolah, is trying it the Chelsea way. But it won’t work. Further good news would be if City is relegated and Sheikh Mansour gets taken by the middlemen while oil prices go down to single figures. Now that would be like scoring with Keira Knightley and Anne Hathaway in two successive nights out, something only to dream about, I suppose.