I’ve got end-of-season blues. I know I say this every year, but this has been a particularly fun winter, with friends throwing goodbye parties, dinners and lunches since the beginning of March. My liver has done a Gaddafi and taken a brutal revenge on my body, and the right ankle is doing a Saif as
Up to London to collect my PhD from the London School of Economics. It is Dr Taki from now on, and Jeremy Clarke can eat his heart out. If he’d stay out of pubs and do some research instead, he, too, might one day get a PhD. Like Dr Gaddafi and Dr Taki. Actually, my
Sitting in my study, whose windows are covered in icicles, one feels cocooned from the elements, as if in a prison cell with the doors unlocked. The snows have finally come, the horizons are totally white, clouds and snowy peaks intermingling in a rhapsody of white, green and blue, the last two provided by pine
I haven’t got that much time left, but I’d gladly give ten years of my life to see that homicidal maniac Gaddafi strung up from a palm tree alongside his warthog sons, especially Hannibal Gaddafi, an expert in imprisoning and torturing helpless servants and beating up women in posh Western hotels. What a ghastly world
I write this on Valentine’s Day, having run into the King of Greece early this morning in the local bank asking a teller where he could buy a Valentine card for his queen. (He received a blank stare for his trouble.) After 47 years of marriage, it’s nice to know that even kings bring Valentine
Philosophy has been known to be a bit of a struggle for many of us, except, of course, if we happen to be professional footballers, pop stars, film actors, reality TV performers or hedge-fund managers. Although in last week’s Spectator Quentin Letts offered a primer on how to pretend to be an Egypt expert, the
In 1940, Leo Amery, speaking in the House of Commons, rebuked Neville Chamberlain and his colleagues with the Oliver Cromwell quote, ‘In the name of God, go!’ This was after the fall of France with England on the brink. Those asking for Mubarak to go are on the street, not in parliament, which doesn’t exist
About 15 or so years ago I received a very polite letter from Belgium asking me to list three of the most pompous and self-important people in the UK. It came with a self-addressed return envelope and stamp. The writer was known to me as ‘l’entarteur’, a man who would approach the pompous and vainglorious
Gstaad Having spent a great part of my life charting the decline of civilisation, I am not at all surprised at the goings-on in Tunisia, especially as I never considered the place to be civilised. How apt that the arch crook dictator Ben Ali (Baba) slithered away to Saudi Arabia, itself a beacon of democracy
Gstaad Back in 1975 Adam Fergusson, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, published a very important book with a very apt modern title, When Money Dies. It was about the nightmare of Weimar hyperinflation, something our so-called leaders might well think about, which of course they will not. We are so dumbed-down by
Six hours into the new year and already there was trouble. My own bash to welcome 2011 with 50 of my nearest finished around 5 a.m., so I rolled down towards the Palace hotel still looking for some action. I had a very pretty German girl in tow, Fiona, a friend of my son, so
My son J.T. managed to seriously shorten my life by inviting close to 75 young people to my house for an end-of-the-year party, among whom I found some seriously beautiful girls who were out way past their bedtime. My routine for my children’s bashes is a simple one. I train hard either in judo or
New York This is a bad time of year for atheists. So much so that they are showing signs of desperation. In the cesspool that is Uncle Sam’s capital, an unusual Christmas message began appearing last week on the side of buses and trains: ‘No god? No problem!’ Some 270 of these ads have gone
This is in praise of younger men. An outrage is about to take place at Preston Crown Court, where on 7 January 2011, a beautiful 27-year-old ballet teacher, Sarah Pirie, will be sentenced for ‘abducting a 15-year-old’, who was not named (unlucky chappie) for obvious reasons. In my not so humble opinion, this is dead
The irony is such that the word itself loses meaning. The ultimate Afghan conman, an oxymoron if ever there was one, is someone Hollywood couldn’t make up. A catch-him-if-you-can type of script wouldn’t make it past the first rewrite. Even ‘based on a true story’ wouldn’t help. If it weren’t for the dead and maimed
The actor Harvey Keitel and I are good friends and we go way back. For any of you who hate movies and Hollywood as I do, Keitel is your man. He was on Broadway for ten years then made Mean Streets, the first of many gritty films with Robert De Niro depicting young Italian toughs
Tony Judt was a very clever and learned Brit who taught in the Big Bagel and who died last August of that dreaded Lou Gehrig disease. He was extremely brave until the end, writing and lecturing from his wheelchair, and so convincing was he that some nice guys managed to ban him from speaking just
This is a good time to be in the Bagel. Walking briskly under changing autumn skies amid colours that still carry their summer clothes is an inspiring experience. Heaven knows I need it. Early morning means judo training — hangover or not — and on foggy days I walk through the park as if in
Those who have just enjoyed their final Downton fix of the year may be interested to read Taki’s opinion of its creator, Julian Fellowes, in this week’s magazine: It was during a von Bülow lunch in a St James’s club which is also mine, and I was seated next to a plump, bald man who
I began thinking about this column one week before I noticed that Craig Brown had pinched it. Actually written what I meant to write one week before I decided to write it, which I guess cannot be called plagiarism just because I had thought of it first. (If I had, that is.) It’s about the
