The party's over
Taki
FRougemont
or the third year in a row my Palace hotel dinner-dance for 100-odd friends did not come off. Two years ago, at the Eagle club, it was the disc-jockey's fault. Last year, at the Olden, it was mine. I chose the wrong wines, and perhaps the wrong room. This year my friend John Sutin got me a wonderful jazz band, the wine was very good, but everyone got up and left after dinner. Come to think of it, party-giving is a talent I obviously do not possess.
Even my ball to celebrate the collapse of communism 11 years ago did not take off. We were 350 back then, the mix was just right, one third pretty girls, one third socialites, and one third literati, yet by one in the morning people were starting to go home. I remember 1 had my eye on a girl I hardly knew, and had placed her at my table, next to Ludovic Kennedy. Just as 1 began to put the moves on her, the mother of my children came over and warned her off. Final score, Nina one, Taki zero.
Alas, bad parties aside, I'm also lagging badly where sweet young things are concerned. The word is out that I'm not the marrying kind, a disaster for someone who has used the bait for years, in fact almost as disastrous as having Norman Foster build a bridge across the Thames. My dad kept many a mistress, as did his father, but neither gentleman had to deal with Princess Alexandra Schoenburg-Hartenstein. The last orders I got from the Field Marshal were to shape up or else. No more falling in love, no more dirty weekends in far away places, no more nothing. It's enough to make a man feel like a Japanese wife, but I have no one to blame but myself. I'm the one who promoted her to Field Marshal, and she in turn has demoted me to a gigolo-like level.
Anyway, at a recent Gstaad dinner party given by English friends of mine, I was sat next to a deeply unpleasant Englishman. I failed to hear something my host said about a painter, and when I asked whom he was referring to, the man made a rude remark about how ignorant I was. Ironically, I know the painter in question well, but my hearing ain't what it used to be. The reason I let it pass was because it's very rude to fight in other people's houses. The man clearly suffers from an inferiority complex.
Still, what I'd love more than anything is for this creep to recognise himself and ask me to step outside. I once fought a man outside a Paris nightclub, and managed a quick win — despite my heart not being in it. (He was Greek.) For some strange reason, I do not think this guy will be challenging me any time soon.
That's the only trouble with Gstaad during the holidays. All sorts of professional (uniquely English, I'm afraid) freeloaders disembark and one has to rub elbows with them. Mind you, I spent a wonderful New Year's Eve at my friends the Amons, and later at Valentino's. Before that it was Jocelyn Stevens and his dame's turn, Dame Vivien Duffield, that is. Their dinners are always great fun and the wines are as good as they get.
As 1 write, the snow has finally come, although I was hoping it would stay away one more week, as I'm in the middle of an extensive karate instructor's course. Karate teaches one humility — there is always someone tougher, no matter how good one thinks one is — and it also comes in handy at times. Boris Becker could use some lessons, if only to evade his wife's lawyers. I feel for Boris. He played his heart out all these years and now half of his nnoolah will end up in Miami. It's called the screwing you get for the screwing you got.
I shudder to think what shape my finances would be in if I had been sued for all the promises I made to girls throughout my life. The trick is to go out with ladies, something Boris bas yet to realise.
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