My unlikely friendship with Sir David Barclay

This might surprise a few people, but I was very friendly with our late co-proprietor Sir David Barclay, a man who treasured his privacy and was not drawn to alpine high jinks and gossip. It was an unlikely friendship. We met on the slopes a long time ago. I had just finished a run and was taking off my skis when he approached me and asked if my name was Taki. I nodded, and he said: ‘I like your column.’ After all these years, I have a standard answer when a rare compliment comes my way: ‘What is an intelligent person like you doing reading the rubbish I write?’ His answer was quick and to the point: ‘I own The Spectator, I have to read it, but I still like your column.’

And that, as they say, was the beginning of a beautiful friendship. David and his wife Reyna refused to play the games people play in resorts. Midnight revelries with bizarre caricatures of nouveaux-riche phoney tough guys were not their cup of tea. Nor were long, languorous, drunken lunches up at the Eagle. Instead, David and Reyna would take a season membership at the club, come up once a week at most, lunch at a corner table at the end of the main terrace, leave a large tip and take the chairlift back down while some of us were still arriving for lunch. They were extremely polite to everyone, especially the staff, but did not mix with anyone else. Except for yours truly.

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This, needless to say, did not endear the Barclays to ambitious hostesses or other pushy types who use Gstaad as a place to network. They knew who he was and what he owned, but they couldn’t get near enough to talk business.