High life
Swiss rolls
Taki
TGstaad he Swissair flight from London to Geneva last Friday was noisier than usual due to the presence of a large contingent of bread-roll-throwers on their way to that Sloane and Hooray haven, Verbier. The last time I heard so much hooting and shouting was at Andrew Fraser's bachelor party almost ten years ago. And_the racket got worse when James Blandford and I were observed waiting in line to go through Customs, a fact not lost on the Swiss officials who waved both of us right through. The Swiss are among the most law-abiding people on earth, and they could obviously tell at a glance that both Blandford and yours truly are reformed characters. Which is more than I can say about most of my fellow passengers.
Soon, however, all this was left behind as I drove up to Gstaad, now empty of rich Arabs, nouveaux riches American tycoons, and German playboys. My first stop was the Château de Rougemont, the winter residence of my friend and mentor Mr William F. Buckley, a man who has forgot- ten more things than all the academics who are against Mrs Thatcher will ever know. On that particular evening Bill and his wife Pat were combining a grand dinner with a harpsichord recital by the marvellous Bruce Kennedy.
This is my 32nd Gstaad visit in a row, and I can't think of a better way to start it than a dinner chez les Buckleys. As an added bonus, John Kenneth Galbraith and his wife were there, and the Olympian economist kept us in stitches with his stories. Galbraith is as amusing in person as he is wrong about politics, and he is very wrong about the latter. But he's a great raconteur, and his timing is perfect.
I have a particularly soft spot in my heart for Professor Galbraith because while I was in Pentonville there was a move to oust me from the Eagle Club. Buckley, Jack Herninway and Basil Goulandris quashed the idea — proposed by a man who has the dignity of Kurt Waldheim and the morality of Hugh Heffner — but it was the good Professor who wrote a letter to the club saying that 'In view of the fact half the membership of the club belongs behind bars, it would seem unfair to zero in on Taki.'
During the second world war Galbraith was a colonel charged with debriefing the high Nazis before the Nuremberg trials. He spent a long time with Albert Speer and with Herman Goering, who at the time was going through drug withdrawals and was a pitiful sight. Speer and Keitel told him that they were all drunk for the last six months of the war, all with the exception of Hitler. The Prof wasn't impressed by any of them, not even Speer, whom he calls a liar. Ribbentrop turned over two letters to Galbraith, both proposing that England attack the Soviet Union with Germany, both addressed to Vincent Churchill.
While he was in Germany, Galbraith was given a musical box that played 'Tales of the Vienna Woods', by a general grate- ful for the good job he was doing. He put it in his pocket and went to the lavatory. Next to him stood a famous French politi- cian, who, upon hearing 'Tales of the Vienna Woods' playing just as Galbraith started to pee, began to shout, 'Ca, alors, mais c'est impossible. . . .' Galbraith has seen the Frenchman many times since, and the frog's reaction has always been the same as the first time.
The next night my childhood friend Aleco Goulandris gave a party for his birthday, and I think I overdid things a bit. The last thing I remember saying to my host was that last year he had the ex-King of Greece, the present King of Spain, and the future King of England staying with him, and that this year he was stuck with Taki. Not for long, was his answer, and the next thing I knew I had been dispatched to the palace. Oh, well, there are worse places to be exiled in, and next week I will tell you all about an ex-beauty queen from Israel, who makes Ivana Trump sound frugal by comparison.
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