You know you’re old when people start writing kindly about you. Especially when they are colleagues. First Jeremy Clarke, now Deborah Ross. Debbie could of course be spoofing — if you look down at your bag of popcorn you’ll miss me — but thank you very much anyway. When my new boat is ready there will be a cabin built exclusively for Deborah Ross. The only thing she really got wrong is the moolah. If I’m a billionaire, Lord Sugar is a gentleman. This sounds a bit phoney, but if I were a billionaire I’d give 850 million away; 150 million greenbacks, or 100 million quid should be tops for everyone. One can fly private, own a boat and a decent house and take care of the children and grandchildren. Billions make people very strange and suspicious of others, and make their children even stranger. The insane idolatry of money warps minds and character quicker than any drug or liquor. I have known many billionaires in my life — inflation churns them out regularly nowadays, as does criminality in the old Soviet Union — and the only ones who live normal lives and have normal children are both Greek and although very distantly related have the same surname.
They say there is nothing more dangerous than innocents on a manhunt, and I’ve seen a few floozies play Jane Austen while trying to land some ghastly Russian slob who can count up to a billion but can’t read. Actually, I don’t mind that — a girl has to make a living, after all. What I do mind is men going after a billionaire’s daughter, most of them being ugly as sin, so stand up and be counted whatever your name is, you son-in-law of Bernie Ecclestone. If this guy comes to Gstaad this winter, where his father-in-law owns two chalets, I plan to move out.
What I don’t find funny at all is the latest scandal of the thought police and gay lobby in America. My friend Alec Baldwin loses his temper — he’s Irish — and calls a photographer a cocksucker. NBC suspends his show for two weeks (what the network is doing is waiting to see the reaction) so he has to apologise to the usual suspects, who are shocked, shocked that such a homophobic slur is still used in this day and age. Anyway, why is it homophobic? And since when is it a gay slur? Some of the grandest ladies I’ve known have been extraordinary cocksuckers. The English aristocracy wouldn’t be what it is if it weren’t mostly made up of cocksuckers. Why is the homo lobby GLAAD picking on an Irish–American man who supports a very large Catholic family and who grew up poor on Long Island, unlike the man who joined in the Baldwin-bashing, Anderson Cooper, son of Gloria Vanderbilt, and a man who hid in the closet for ten years and is now out banging the drum for homos. Most likely he does it for the publicity, and because no one watches CNN in general and Anderson Cooper in particular any longer.
Plus another thing: black rappers in America use the N-word ad nauseam, and rap savage hate, boast sexual degradation of women, and call gay people faggots. Jay-Z, a freak billionaire, boasts about the heroin he used to sell, uses the N-word non-stop, and ends up on the cover of Vanity Fair! The networks in America and Britain show mostly mass slaughter as supplied by assault rifles, and are replete with fires, explosions, guns and mayhem. People regularly walk into schools or malls with high-powered rifles and shoot children and innocent bystanders. Black professional basketball and football players in the States are regularly arrested for violence against women, murder — three black NFL stars are under investigation for murder this season only — and newspapers don’t even bother writing about those arrested under the influence with guns in their cars. Yet when Alec Baldwin uses the C-word, he gets canned and the tabloids go wild. American colleges are the only ones in the world who pay for student athletes not to attend classes but to graduate literally illiterate. What they’re really doing is pumping out criminals because less than 1 per cent of college athletes make the pros. Once out in the real world with absolutely no credentials or education whatsoever except a useless degree they more often than not go into crime. But Alec Baldwin is the bad guy.
So good old George Orwell had it right after all. Soon only the omnipotent state will be permitted to state an opinion. Outspokenness will become as rare as good manners and only rappers, pop stars and brutish celebrities will be allowed to make their vile pronouncements. Oh yes, I almost forgot, and professional athletes. And, of course, Bill Keller, the world’s dumbest columnist, writing for the New York Times. I’ve never met the fellow, but if he were dumb enough to marry Emma Gilbey, why shouldn’t he be dumb enough to fall for the jihadist line in Syria. You know who I’m talking about, those nice guys who beheaded a wounded man in hospital only to find out that he was one of theirs while parading his severed head around. According to Keller, Assad is the bad guy. And I guess Baldwin is, too.
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