Gstaad
I thought of Nietzsche while the mayhem and destruction of monuments was going on. Decadent bourgeois society was in the great man’s sights, but then he went bananas. Later on, young Nietzscheans believed that what was needed to save the world was an insurrection of sons against their fathers. But things do change, and mostly for the worse. Imagine if Mr N. and his followers were around today — the past four weeks to be exact. They’d be exhorting fathers to kill their sons. And daughters.
My higher thoughts were interrupted by a telephone call from a woman who spoke with what sounded like a parody of a female voice. She was French and a journalist for France 2, a major television station, and a programme by the name of Complément d’enquête, a French sort of Panorama. She had read my daughter’s book on Gstaad and wished to speak to me about the place. ‘As far as I know, Nietzsche was never here,’ I said. She didn’t miss a beat. ‘But others just as famous have been.’ I trust hacks in general and TV hacks in particular as much as I trust the BBC to cover both sides of a story, so I declined. Then a funny thing happened. The female voice that sounded like a parody of a female voice rang the wife, someone who has never willingly spoken to a member of a profession she has very little love or respect for, and convinced her that I should speak to her. I suppose it was her little-girl manner and the voice that did it. I agreed.
What followed should be included in textbooks for wannabe TV journalists. Isabelle — that’s the reporter in question’s name — had assured me that her assistant would use a mobile telephone-like device to film and record.
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