What Barbara Black’s choice of friends says about her

I’m not usually nonplussed, but this is very strange: the memoir of Barbara Black, the wife of my good friend Lord Black, simply doesn’t make sense where certain people she writes about are concerned — persons I happen to know well.

The list is not long, and I’ll start with David Graham, her third and extremely rich husband who was the biggest bore I have ever met — and believe you me, I’ve met a few in my long life. Out of kindness, no doubt, she fails to mention what a terrific bore he was (he was also the cheapest man I’ve ever come across; he’d be dead before the credits in a cowboy film, being so slow on the draw). He was such a rube that one time, in St Tropez, I finally told him: ‘Never, but never speak to me again, I beg you.’ He looked askance but was too much of a bore to insult me back.

Okay, next: Barbara Walters. Lady Black writes how TV Babs snubbed her after the fall, but what did she expect from someone like that? Barbara Walters is so superficial she’s considered only moderately intelligent even in Palm Beach. Exactly 20 years ago, in Montreal for the Mulroney-Lapham wedding, I was in deep you-know-what. My mistress had left me for a man who looked exactly like a pig, and my darling Alexandra was hinting that she’d had enough of my philandering. In deep funk but in a brilliant setting, and in dinner jacket, I had a chat with Barbara Black and my then proprietor Conrad, who said he was sure everything would be all right once I turned on the charm. ‘You have to choose,’ said Barbara.