Taki Taki

Beneath contempt

Broadsides from the pirate captain of the Jet Set

issue 01 October 2005

Gstaad

I can’t remember exactly how long ago it was, sometime during the late Nineties, but I do remember that at the time I was sort of running a section of the New York Press called ‘Taki’s Top Drawer’. I say sort of because I’m not exactly a hands-on editor. In fact, I’m no hands at all, a writer’s dream, even if I say so myself. Then one day I read about how a Murdoch rag had entrapped Freddie Windsor in a cocaine scandal, and blew my stack. Windsor I don’t know, and his mother comes across as an egregious braggart and phony, but entrapping an 18-year-old just because he’s related to the royals I found to be worse than shooting a healthy horse, beneath contempt and all that.

So I summoned my greatest writer at the time, Toby Young, and suggested we entrap Rupert Murdoch in return.

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