High life
Thrills and spills
Taki
No matter how I try, I don't seem to be able to get away from the Kennedys. Take last Saturday night, for example. It is more or less the worst night of the week, even in Palm Beach, but that is when Donald Trump decided to give a party in his 105- room hut, Mar-a-Lago, once the house of Mrs Post of cereal fame. Among his 600 guests were such elegant folk as Prince, the black rocker, Eddie Murphy, the black actor, Estee Lauder, the queen of cream Who is as white as her products, my old friend Turgut Ozal, the numero uno Turk, about 200 models provided by John Casa- blancas, whose only redeeming feature is that his sister Sylvia dropped the Aga Khan In favour of a 22-year-old Taki long ago, and one gatecrasher — Anthony Shriver, son of Eunice Kennedy and the late Sar- gent Shriver, brother-in-law of Arnold Schwarzenegger and first cousin to Willie Kennedy Smith, the non-rapist.
No, I was not there, and just as well. In such circumstances, and with such vulgari- ans crawling all over the place, one has to get out of it as quickly as possible, so when Shriver drove his Cherokee Jeep at 95 mph through the gardens, I would most likely have been passed out somewhere inside, thus out of harm's way but uninformed. My source, obviously an ex-bullfighter, saw the whole thing while making expert veronicas against the flying jeep. Others, however, were not amused. These were mostly poor types, called valet Parkers in pc language, but even in Palm Beach taking the life of a valet parker can land you in the stammer for at least a night. Not that Shriver even got near. To jail, that is. He first hit a tall security-beam pole, bounced off into an electrical pole, crashed through a shrubbery and finally came to rest in the middle of the lawn having churned up large patches of it and having re-arranged the hedges and rows of flow- ers. The amazing thing is that the Donald said nothing, despite the fact that Shriver had crashed, both the party and literally. I imagine the fact that Shriver's grandfather was such a crook must have impressed Trump. Or perhaps he's just a very good host. One thing is for sure. The cops, too, were impressed — or perhaps in awe of Teddy and his gang — because no charges were filed.
The fuzz had a point. As Shriver pulled his Patton-like charge on private property, no charges could be pressed unless Trump filed them. And the Donald went on record saying that the Kennedys had had enough trouble and he didn't wish to cause them any more. This is a Christian way to act, but even Christians should stop and think. The Kennedys have done for safe driving what Fergie and Johnny Bryan did to the House of York, starting with when Teddy left a young woman to drown when he drove off a bridge back in '69. There have been many other incidents that have been hushed up.
Mind you, when my friend John O'Sulli- van heard me complaining about the Kennedy thuggery, he reminded me that I, too, had pulled a similar stunt in Palm Beach. Which I had. But I was 16, and when I raced Sean Flynn, son of Errol, all over the Everglades Club golf course, it was empty and at five in the morning. Shriver is 28. Which brings me to Jamie Blandford. At least Blandford has never killed anyone, and as far as I know, not even injured or maimed. I've known Jamie for far too long not to admit that there is definitely some- thing wrong, but he's no Kennedy. What he needs is a better class of friends, and I don't mean that in a snobbish way. He should just stay away from the rich white trash he hangs out with, and for heaven's sake, he should not go to Palm Beach and meet the Kennedys.
Jeffrey Bernard is unwell.
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