Taki Taki

High life | 15 September 2016

Get rid of all those ridiculous biking events and bring back pankration

issue 17 September 2016

I’m jittery and fragile but free of plaster and in the dojo, slowly turning lean and muscular. Never listen to your doctor is my message. Instead of two months in a cast I spent only five weeks, and I’ve just finished a brutal three-day course of karate with both the leg and elbow still intact. Yippee!

The message was loud and clear. If you’re drinking vodka at 4.30 a.m., don’t lean backwards while sitting on a ledge. When the doctors sew you up and place you in a cast, don’t listen to them; take it off early. You have nothing to lose but the plaster. And the moment you’re free, get back into the dojo.

It was back in 1964, when I was still on the tennis circuit, that I saw something strange advertised outside an auditorium in Cannes.

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