Skiing with Ii Duce
Taki
JParis ust before I left Gstaad, I acted as auctioneer for a charity started by a lady who lost her young son to brain cancer. Things were not exactly hunky-dory as the guests were mostly Swiss burgers used to sitting on their hands. A pair of 1930s skis were not moving a Swiss franc when I had a brilliant idea. I announced that these very skis had once been used by Benito Mussolini on a brief visit to the region. The bidding went ballistic in no time. One old lady was bitterly disappointed when she lost out on the Duce's skis. 'He was a good man, clearly an authoritarian but not as had as Bush,' she told me later on. (More about the Duce later.) When a pair of skates came up I pronounced them the very same ones that Marie-Antoinette used to glide on when romancing with Fersen on a frozen pond in Versailles. More money for brain-cancer research, although I'm not sure there was skating back then.
As always, however. I outsmarted myself, while auctioning a 1940s peasant potty, which I falsely presented to be the first potty ever used by Adolf Hitler. One man demanded proof. 'This is hard to produce,' I told him, 'because the Fuhrer was rather constipated as a child ... ' The crowd then really loosened up and we managed a record amount. I could not have been more pleased, and was asked by a Swiss banker if
I would do that for a living. (The answer is no.)
More than 30 years ago Philip Morris hired me to do backgammon auctions on the basis of one I had done in Gstaad which turned out to be a great success. They flew me to Munich with my friend John Lucan. the missing Earl of, where 400 black-tied German businessmen awaited. I began with a few jokes about Hitler and the place emptied in no time. 'Mister Taki, what have you done?" said the Philip Morris representative pulling out the few hairs he had left. It was the shortest of careers. Oh well, 30 years later I tried it again and things went better. The idea that one cannot make jokes about certain subjects is an outrageous one, one that is obviously meant to control people's thoughts. It does not work with yours truly. This new creed of political correctness was invented by coercive bureaucrats striving to alter our culture while controlling our behaviour and our thoughts. I remember, during the war, German officers speaking openly against Hitler, mind you, in the safety of our drawing room in Kolonaki Square. But back to the Duce.
He seems to be making a hell of a comeback, at least in the hearts and minds of the people in pastaland. Let's face it, Musso passed lotsa social and economic legislation that was quite valid, innovative for its time and even copied in part by FDR's New Deal that ended the Depression. The leader of the National Alliance, Gianfranco Fini, Musso's intellectual heir, has criticised fascism's racial laws and has travelled to Israel. (He also retracted his statement of ten years ago calling Benito 'the greatest statesman of the 20th century'.) Although Mussolini and fascism were demonised after the war, both the man and the system enjoyed popularity from most of the country up until the war began. The Italians are an intelligent people, understand history, and are now reexamining fascism in a less doctrinaire form — Forza Italia.
And speaking of an un-intelligent people, what is it about British MPs that makes them go ape over Brazilian buggers. Clive Betts wants his boyfriend to have a Commons pass. I've said it before and I'll say it again. People get into trouble because of the type of whore they get into bed with, not because they like whores. I've been whoring all my life, as have many friends of mine, but not one whore has ever sold a story to the scummy tabloids. Perhaps it's because we're not important enough, but I doubt it. It's because we choose the right kind of person, no ifs or buts about it. Madame Claude knew all about choosing the right kind. Not a single one has ever talked, and her favourites really knew what was going on from the Elysee all the way down to my little flat at the Plaza-Athenee. Choose the right bugger, boys, and sneak them into White's, not the Commons.
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