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‘What’s Taki like?’ is a common response to my telling someone I’m a contributor to this magazine.

‘What’s Taki like?’ is a common response to my telling someone I’m a contributor to this magazine. People seem to think we regular contributors are jolly shipmates together, living out of hammocks in the hold. The prosaic truth is I’ve met Taki just twice, on each occasion at a Spectator party. The first time was on the steps at the old Doughty Street office while a mid-summer ‘At Home’ bash, measuring about a Force Nine on the Richter scale, was raging inside. Conscious of his career as an international black-belt karate champion, I bowed smartly and correctly, and shouted, ‘Oss, sensei!’ — which means, ‘I salute you, teacher!’

In my thirties, I trained with a Shotokan karate club and got up to the purple and white belt grade. But it was the bowing I was best at. I genuinely loved the ceremonial prelude to the violence, and the old- world virtues of deference and honour that the bowing symbolised. By bowing to Taki at our first meeting, and adressing him as sensei, I was presuming on this knowledge as a way of ingratiating myself, I suppose.

His response to my bow was reserved. All I got in return was a belated inclination of the head. And quite right, too. Only a fool would go to a party in London and feel obliged to return the formal bow of every drunk who’s been to a karate training session and knows the form.

In appearance, Taki is a spry, well-proportioned man. On that midsummer evening, he was comfortably and expensively dressed, clean shaven, and his fine hair was neatly barbered close to the scalp.