High life | 24 March 2012

Gstaad


It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas, with a 24-hour non-stop snowfall, an empty main street, and the closing of the Palace hotel as well as of the Eagle club. (I give the traditional closing-day speech at the club, and this year’s was judged to have been politically incorrect.) The older I get the more I like it off season, the toadies and parasites of the truly rich having followed their masters to places like St Barts or the Bahamas. Tarts, pimps, art dealers, jewellery salesmen, real-estate sharks, you name them, we’ve got them. During the season, that is. One disgusting little man of Lebanese–Israeli origin even managed to infiltrate my backgammon game and passed his catalogue around. It’s a sad day when one can’t even relax over backgammon without a Japanese-made Modigliani being shoved in front of one. There are also some magnificent unsigned Picassos and some extremely rare ones spelled with one ‘s’.