High life
Pleasure palaces
Taki
Rougemont 1461,..ccepting other people's hospitality is a very English trait, so for the life of me I cannot understand why the press kicked up so much fuss when Prince Charles took his children and a few close friends on a Greek tycoon's boat. Is it perhaps because mem- bers of the media are against freebies? Or is it because they thought it undignified for an Englishman to accept the hospitality of a Greek?
Well, I'll get to that in a jiffy, but first a few truths about Greek shipowners. Throughout all the years my father and I owned a boat we never once chartered it out but often gave her to friends for a cruise. I am not going to name names, but there are people who read The Spectator who have cruised on the Bushido while I was not on board. Hospitality, an unknown trait in Britain, is second nature to Greeks, rich and poor alike. Whereas most Brit- owned boats I know are crappy, smelly and crewed by Maltese low-lifes, Greek-owned pleasure palaces are beautiful, clean and crewed by wonderfully professional sailors. Of all my friends who own boats, not a sin- gle one charters his out, something very few Brits can claim.
Let's face it, Greeks are generous with their possessions and open with their feel- ings, Brits are tight-fisted, buttoned-up and generally miserable. But enough of Brit bashing. Let us now have some fun. Here is what Max Hastings's organ had to say about Prince Charles and John Latsis: `Freebies from men like John Latsis com- promise the Prince and set a bad example to his sons .. .' Now the first person who can come up with proof that Max Hastings has ever paid for anything can have a free- bie on my new sailing boat.
Lynda Lee Potter was even worse than Hastings. 'This unpleasant Greek isn't offering such largesse out of kindness .. one day Prince Charles may be useful and other such rubbish. She then goes on to say that Latsis boasts about a bevy of mistresses, spends billions on celebrities but is tight-fisted with his workers.
Needless to say, la Potter has never met Latsis and doesn't know anyone who has. Potter has no access to Greek shipowners. nor is she about to get any. So, take a chair, Lynda-Lee, get out your notebook, and start scribbling the truth for a change. Lat- sis made his first money after the war sup- plying the Greek army. He had the presence of mind, and the integrity, to guarantee return trips to the faithful who had to see Mecca once in their lifetime. (Others used to dump poor, uneducated Muslims in Mecca and disappear.) This, in turn, put him in good stead with King Idris of Libya, and, later, with the Saudis. I knew John Latsis when he had a crappy caique as a pleasure boat, and I saw him later, when he was a billionaire. He hadn't changed one bit. He always swore like a trooper, and he always made jokes about all the women he was bedding. He has never had a bevy of mistresses, has been married to the same woman for nearly 50 years, and is a man who has given away hundreds of mil- lions to poor people.
All the dirt British hacks are dishing against Latsis is based on a Greek book called The Gangster. No one believed the book and very few people read it. (There are no libel laws in Greece.) Now British hacks are reviving the stories in order to punish the royal family. The one I liked the most was written by Ross Benson, who should know better. According to Benson, Latsis made his first big hit when a German officer gave him his fortune for safe-keep- ing before he left for the Russian front. As everyone knows, most German officers left the Fatherland with large steamer trunks packed with deutschmarks and gave them to unknown and very poor Greeks to keep. (Ross, while I'm at it, Mrs Latsis is not called Eleni, but Henrietta, and Zolotas is a Greek jeweller trade mark, not the name of Sheikh Yamani's wife.) Spiros Latsis, John's son, now runs the show which is mostly banking. The British royal family has a standing invitation to use the Alexander. All Prince Charles did was to take them up on it. The Alexander is hardly used because Mrs Latsis prefers a smaller yacht, and the three children have boats of their own. I hope Charles and his group had a wonderful time, I wish Latsis the best of health (he's not well) and I hope from now on the envious and bitter hacks spend some time discovering the facts between filing their expenses.
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