‘Bicycle cards are perfect for “rifling” as
long as the reverse bend takes place’
— Dear Mary, p69
High life
Taki^
I was not on the winning side of the debate,
despite giving it the old college try. Thank god
for my South African friend Simon Reader,
who coached me just before I went on. Mind
you, my side felt a bit like Maxime Weygand,
the French general who, in June 1940, was
happily smoking his pipe back in Syria when
he got the call to take over the French army.
The Germans had already taken Holland
and Belgium and had breached la Ligne
Maginot, Gamelin had thrown in the towel,
and Paul Reynaud had called for a fresh face
to stop the mighty Wehrmacht. ‘Gee, thanks
a bunch,’ said Weygand, but took it like a real
Frenchman and surrendered to the German
army a couple of weeks later.
Two months ago, when I was kindly invit-
ed by The Spectator to defend the Donald,
he was yet to do an Annie Oakley on his
foot. But I’ve always loved lost causes, espe-
cially one who is up against a woman who,
however inadvertently, will continue Oba-
ma’s strategy of destroying western hegem-
ony. I was happy to see Conrad Black again,
who by the way debated without notes and
wiped the floor with everyone. The one that
didn’t race my motor was a boring American
man who heads Democrats (yawn) Abroad.
He kept name-dropping locations he had
visited during the campaign, as if any of us
gave a damn where he’d been.
So what else is new? Daniel McCarthy
wrote in these pages that Hillary will push
for globalist economics, and that, with the
support of Beltway insiders — read neocons
and other architects of the Iraq disaster —
she will be an interventionist and nation-
builder. All I can say is heaven help us. My
only hope is that Saint Theresa doesn’t do
a Blair and follow that Clinton woman like
a lemming.
What fun it was to be back in London
for four days of partying that made me
want to shout. One thing men no longer do
in America is have fun lunches. They are
too busy chasing the mighty buck. There
are only ladies who lunch, and they are
Low life
Jeremy Clarke
There were six of us round the table to cele-
brate Trafalgar Day. We ate the same dinner
served to Her Majesty the Queen aboard
HMS Victory for the bicentennial: smoked
salmon with two sauces (lumpfish caviar and
dill); roast beef on a bed of cabbage with
Dauphinoise spuds; and plums poached in
red wine. We drank gin, home-made red
wine, white Burgundy, Madeira and Marsa-
la. Our host, chef and chief inspiration wore
the HMS Jupiter T-shirt presented to him on
his voyage from England to the first Gulf
war. Our hostess wore an unprecedentedly
slinky black cocktail dress. Catriona’s hairmostly over the hill, pulled to the extreme,
and widows. Not in good old London. Bel-
lamy’s, for example, is as good a place to
lunch and spend the early afternoon in as
any St James’s club. Gavin Rankin runs it
like a club: the service is impeccable, the
food excellent, and I didn’t see the kind
of low-lifer from the Gulf one runs into
nowadays in chic London establishments.
I lunched there with my very old friendTimmy Hanbury, who had brought along
Zuleika Dobson. Iona McLaren is the most
attractive young woman in London, and
she has the brains to match. She is the Te l -
egraph’s books editor and boy, I wouldn’t
mind turning into a tome as long as I ended
up in her hands. She’s named after the
Greek priestess Io who was loved by Zeus
and changed into a heifer to protect herself
from Hera’s jealousy. Io visited Prometheus
and described her tribulations in Aeschy-
lus’ play, and her story is also told by Ovid.
From now on it will be told by Taki.
Perfect English rose looks aside, she
seemed unaware of that uniquely English
upper-class pas de deux of meanness of spir-
it and snobbism. Instead, this truly beautiful
young woman exudes an approachable and
immensely welcoming air. Lucky Timmy,
unlucky Taki. Then there was a dinner by
yet another Tim, Commodore Tim Hoare,
followed by a Pugs club do chez la prin-
cesse de Hanovre to welcome two new Pugs
members, making us 21 and closing the
membership until one of us drops off. (I am
apparently odds on to be the second mem-
ber to leave the club feet first.)I have said it before and will say it again:
if I lived in London I’d have died long ago.
This time it was close. As I was leaving my
hotel not having gone to bed, the hall porter
had the bad idea of ringing the mother of my
children in Gstaad and informing her that I
was not looking my best. It was 6 a.m. After
a brief chat, I was given permission to go on.
At the airport, although flying first class, I
was questioned time and again by a cheeky
chappie as to whether I was feeling well
enough to fly. My answer is always the same.
I am not flying the bloody plane but sleep-
ing in it. And I suffer from a speech impedi-
ment that makes me sound funny at times.
I was taken to my seat and the next thing I
knew a kind stewardess was telling me we
were back in the Bagel. (How I got through
security I’ll never know.)
After a couple of days everything is back
to normal. Karate starts today and judo fol-
lows tomorrow. Isis, in the meantime, has
executed 284 human beings in cold blood
as the so-called Iraqi army is closing in on
Mosul. (The Kurds are doing the fighting
along with some Iraqi militias.) While this
cold-blooded murder is going on a UN offi-
cial is seeking a war-crimes inquiry into the
Aleppo bombing. UN officials are as useless
as the tax-dodging gigolos of EU infamy.
Give me Iona any day and then some.If I lived in London I’d have died
long ago‘Trick or Trot?’