A note from Jeremy Sykes enclosing an article about a friend of mine who died 40 years ago last Tuesday, on 5 July 1965. In his kind letter, Jeremy Sykes assumes that I knew the man who died in his Ferrari returning from a Parisian nightclub so long ago, and he is absolutely spot on. In fact, I was with Porfirio Rubirosa until 3 a.m. in New Jimmy’s, the legendary Montparnasse club, and had left only because I had to be on court in Nice the next morning for a tennis tournament. (That’s how we trained back then: in nightclubs doing a fast mumbo.) Rubi left Jimmy’s after 6 a.m., drove through a deserted Paris into the Bois de Boulogne on his way home across the Pont de St-Cloud. As an ex-racing driver — Le Mans, Sebring and a one-off in a Formula 1 — Rubi was going much too fast.
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