Gstaad
The jokes about keeping a mistress are old and I’ve yet to hear a truly funny one (‘The difference between a wife and a mistress is like day and night,’ and so on). Like many other good things, mistresses have fallen out of fashion, the closing pay gap between the sexes being one of the main reasons for their demise. History tells us a lot about great men who had mistresses, which most great men did. Beauty and physical attributes aside, the most important quality for a kept woman was her discretion, with a capital D.
Which brings me to the downfall of ex-King Juan Carlos of Spain, whose wife Queen Sofia I count as a very good friend. I first met him before he had become head of state-in-waiting under Franco. He was a polite young man and we hung out together during the Monte Carlo tennis tournament with Manolo Santana and Nicola Pietrangeli.
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