I’d rather live under communism than the tyranny of social media

At the time it felt like a century, but it was only 12 years. I began this column in 1977 and the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, which meant an end to the anti-communist tracts that my first editor, Alexander Chancellor, described as quasi-fascist efforts to subvert democracy. By 1977 I had been trying to get something published in The Speccie for a couple of years. I only achieved it when I abandoned right-wing politics and wrote about how one could always tell an Englishman abroad. (Brits would use flashlights to check their bill in dark and crowded Parisian nightclubs, making them persona non grata with waiters at Jimmy’s.)

Twelve years seemed a lifetime back then, and when the wall finally came down I gave a ball that was an alliterative triumph: To Celebrate the Collapse of Communism. I took the ballroom of the Savoy, a hotel that has now gone to the dogs, and named each table after a fallen commie dictator. As journalists and the hoity-toity are unreliable guests, I kept one large table, the Fidel Castro, without placements for late arrivals. I think we were about 300 (many had come over from the States).When at around midnight Jay McInerney and I went to the river entrance to do something illegal Joan Collins swept in — she was appearing in Noël Coward’s Private Lives at the time. Like a true star she thought we had been waiting for her since the beginning, and thanked me. I love Joan and love that she thinks as a star should think. (And dresses like one, not like a homeless person.)

Those first 12 years of writing this column seemed to last a lifetime because unusual and somewhat tumultuous events took place over that period: I had two children, wrote two books, and competed in two karate world championships as Greek captain.