High life
Laugh-a-
Taki
0New York n the day it was announced that the head frog had refused permission to his two-time rescuers to overfly frogland, I asked the owner of Mortimer's to put up a sign outside his restaurant warning frogs to stay away. The owner, who is a close friend of mine, and who fought in France during the second world war, thought it a good idea, but finally did nothing about it. Some of his waiters, however, did. There was no frog red served for a day or two in the trendiest restaurant this side of Birleyland. On that very same day I realised I was supposed to attend a party in honour of a famous French dress designer. Naturally the party went on without Monsieur Taki's presence, but what amazed me was the fact that I was the only one not to go. When I expressed my amazement to the girl I was to have sat next to that evening, she summed up what I have always known but keep forgetting because of the circles I move in: people who take dress designers seriously cannot be expected to understand words such as dignity, honour, patriotism, and last but not least, indelicacy.
Needless to say, I did go to a party, that of Lord Warwick's, and enjoyed it tremendously, especially when I toasted the only prime minister in Europe who has any balls. And speaking of that particular region of male anatomy, I did have the best laugh I've had since Jeffrey Bernard threatened to beat me up for saying the Brits are mean, when I read what the 39th President of America had to say about the Libyan raid.
The peanut farmer (whose greatest accomplishment in the White House was to give us a buffoon like Rafshoon, who in turn had Carter change the parting of his hair from the left side to the right) once again exhibited the kind of foot-in-mouth rhetoric we were used to during his non- presidency. Carter's way of criticising the bombing was to say that if his daughter Amy had been killed he would spend the rest of his life looking for ways to retaliate. Why didn't Carter raise his voice in the same fatherly anguish when the 11-year- old was shot in cold blood by Gaddafi's killer in Rome? Not being Carter I cannot answer, but can only laugh at his weakness, and at the regret some wags voiced that someone had not got rid of that ghastly Amy long ago.
Another who made me laugh out loud was a slob by the name of Jimmy Breslin. Breslin is a fat Irishman who writes a column in the New York Daily News, and who hates the English even more than he hates the police. Any police. He is not particularly critical of those who blow up people, as the IRA has been known to do, but calls Reagan a baby killer. But please don't get me wrong. It wasn't Breslin's bullshit and horrible appearance that made me laugh, it was his winning a Pulitzer prize that caused it. I assume he won it for his compassion for the criminal, or for his double standard. Whatever the reason, it was good for a damn long laugh. As was the Greek National Tourist Organisation's reaction to the bombing of Tripoli. Once the word got out that the first to congratulate Gaddafi was the Greek version of Jimmy Breslin, and that Papandreou had also been the first to condemn the raid, the neo-Hellenes began to see dollar signs. Or the lack of them, rather. In no time at all, the Greeks Put together a special 60-second television commercial using the actor E. G. Marshall' `Greece, that lovely land, is getting a bum rap,' began the actor. It finished by having him say that Athens is the safest airport in the world. Now although my last few drachmas ate dependent on tourism — as the shipping and industrial side of the Taki fortune have gone the way of Breslin's integrity — I had to roar with laughter when I heard the commercial. Greece is a haven for Aral/ killers, and every Greek knows it. What is important is for the Americans to realise it. Athens airport has the worst record for safety in Europe, and probably the world,' No wonder the Greeks had to hire as good an actor as E. G. Marshall for the commer- cial (and apparently even he needed a 10' of takes, so hard was he laughing). ould But it required all the control I could, muster not to roll on the ground when read which company — and four others was still doing business with Gadda0. Who other than Occidental Petroleutn, whose chairman and big cheese is none . other than the heir to the throne's closes,.' Yankee friend, Armand Hammer himsell And I thought comedy was dead.
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