High life
You read it here first
Taki
If any of your friends miss this week's Speccy tell them not to worry. The light, back-of-the-paper columns will appear in about seven days' time in the Londoner's Diary section of the Evening Standard. The reason for this is the inability of Rory Knight Bruce (the editor of the diary) to infiltrate what is known as the food- throwing classes, or gain membership of night-clubs such as Annabel's or Tramp.
The reason I am picking on Rory is not because he has crashed at least three of my dinner parties at Annabel's and ordered Château Mouton Rothschild 1947 each time, nor is it because he has dragged some terrific freeloaders along with him; it is because he picks up items from 'High life', runs them one week later, and invariably fails to mention that they first appeared in 'the best-written weekly in the English language'.
Take for example the Birley brouhaha, and the socks that were thrown at an Arab's head. If you read Londoner's Diary in about a week you will learn that all is now well between Mark Birley and his son Robin, although I can't say that the latter is at this precise moment one of London's most popular bachelors. Not by a long shot. But this time it is custard pies, 3,000 of them to be exact, that have caused the problem. Let me explain.
As I wrote two weeks ago, the Birley children suffer from a compulsion to throw things indoors, preferably at rich Arabs, Hooray Henrys and other such objection- able characters. Having learnt their lesson by being banned from Annabel's, they proceeded to invite 200 Hoorays and Sloanes to the birthday party of Damian Aspinall at a Chelsea warehouse, order 3,000 custard pies, and have eight profes- sional pie-throwers attack the guests.
Needless to say, I had smelled a rat and left at five minutes to midnight, when the stuff began to fly. Others were not so lucky. Claus von Bulow has been hospital- ised a la Prince Charles, having slipped in the ankle-deep custard and chipped his hip. Isabel Goldsmith was outraged be- cause her designer dress was ruined. (Poor thing, perhaps we should start a whip- round.) The worse case, however, was my friend Harry Worcester. He was the one the paparazzi followed all the way home, and whose wife Tracy smiled for the cameras while looking like a negro min- strel. The pictures of Bunter and Tracy covered in cream will be around for a long time, and whenever Harry calls a client — he's a chartered accountant — a pie in the face will be uttermost in the client's mind.
At present 50 of the worst-hit guests are planning a revenge on Robin and India Jane, but I for one am not advising them. In fact I hope Robin does it again, but invites pinkoes for a change. And speaking of commies, I saw a couple of them at the book party for Charlie Glass. My God they're an ugly lot. And have such cheap blondes with them. One of them, a Stalin- ist by the name of Cookbrown, or some- thing like that, even tried to take some chairs from our table, and then some chips. Poor thing, I guess the collapse of com- munism has upset him so much that he ' doesn't know what he's doing.
What worries me a little is my English- speaking Greek daily, which is about to be launched. The Marxists have already thrown one Molotov cocktail into the premises, so I'm seriously planning to edit it from Charlie Glass's flat. That way, the next time they try, they might get some lefties rather than the poor little Greek boy.
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