High life
Rushed off my feet
Taki
New York Athough I had nothing to do with the by now infamous William Cash article, a few Bagelites have gone out of their way to call me an anti-Semite in print because of my 18-year connection with The Spectator. Barry Diller, ex-head of Paramount and a fiercely competitive and compulsive story- teller, even cut me on Park Avenue. (It made my day.) One George Rush, a gossip columnist who wears a wig, wrote that I'm a racist who was fired from another Bagel weekly for my racist views. (Untrue.) Rush, I plan to do something about. Five years ago, Anthony Haden-Guest tried to pull his rug off and faced a million dollar lawsuit as a result. They settled out of court. The only thing that is for sure is that I will not settle after I de-wig the bum.
What I didn't like was the sainted edi- tor's response to Bernard Weinraub, the highly hysterical L.A. correspondent of the Bagel Times. (See last week's cover story.) When the hysterical one mentioned gas ovens the sainted one should have hung up. Even worse was the letter from Leon the Wiesel, of the New Republic. I imagine being called a filthy magazine by those per- verts is a compliment, but still.
Catching hell in the Bagel because of the Cash article is predictable, and has every- one talking about The Spectator, but then I open the Sunday Telegraph and see that Petronella Wyatt is doing the same. Two weeks running. (She must be pushed for copy.) She calls me upwardly mobile, when in fact I've always thought of myself as downwardly so. But she should know all about upward nobility, what with her old man licking the right boots and becoming a lord. This makes la Wyatt honourable, but somehow I don't think so.
But enough of unpleasant and hysterical people. Last week Nadine Johnson and Jacqueline Schnabel, two beautiful ladies, gave the best party of the year at Indo- chine, the Vietnamese restaurant where all the pretty models hang out. I saw old friends like producer Michael White and his old Rocky Horror Show star Nell Camp- bell, together with famous for I don't know what people like Kelly Kline — her hubby Calvin makes underwear and other things — and some whose names I failed to catch because of too much fire water. I remem- ber having a long chat with Francesco Clemente, the painter, but whether it was about art or women I cannot tell for sure. In fact, I think he said women are art, or maybe it was me.
Rounding up the week was one of the most extraordinary parties I've been to in a hell of a long time, the trouble being my host asked me not to write anything about it. In view of the fact that I've been chasing my host's ex-wife, I better not. Suffice it to say that if a bomb had gone off that night, half of the world's capitalists would be at present making deals somewhere else. Better yet, David Tang, China's answer to J.P. Morgan, flew over all the way from Hong Kong for it. If this column is uneven, it is because three days after, I'm still recovering. The last time I saw so many beautiful blondes was in a Leni Riefenstal film. Next week I'm back in London, and by then I should be ready to start the Christmas celebrations.
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