Last Saturday afternoon, in Venice, 31 Spectator readers, plus Martin Vander Weyer, the great Taki and I came aboard the Cunard cruise ship Queen Victoria for the inaugural Spectator Mediterranean cruise. The first chance we had to get to know one another was a pre-dinner drinks party in Hemispheres, the ship’s nightclub. I was late, and apprehensive about how things would go. The ship’s commodore, a lonely, courtly figure encased in a starched white uniform, was there in the Spectator readers’ midst offering his right hand to anyone who wanted it. I removed a flute of champagne from the offered silver tray and plunged in.
The first reader I spoke to said, ‘My name is Fanny and I am bisexual so there’s hope for you yet.’ The second reader I spoke to pulled me slightly aside from his wife and said, ‘Why don’t Sussex girls like gang bangs?’ I shook my head. ‘It’s having to write all those thank-you cards afterwards.’ The third, a big South African, nearly broke my hand and said: ‘What is the point of being alive? Jeremy, let me tell you in one word: pussy. The rest is all bullshit, my friend.’ From this moment on, I thought that the cruise was going to be just fine.
Then I saw that the great Taki was in the room. Thrilled to bits, I went over to greet him. His journey by air from Switzerland had been fraught with delays and difficulties. He had boarded the ship seconds before she sailed. And the ship’s authorities had insisted he suffer the indignity of a lifeboat drill. Able seaman Taki had had to practice putting on a life jacket. His eyes looked pleadingly into mine.
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