Taki Magazine

I saw her standing there giving me the once over. Or thought she did.  She was young and pretty and was smiling. Not for the first time I felt confident. The champagne was working, so I approached her amidst the bedlam. “Who are you?’ I ventured. “Who do you want me to be?” she countered. “The future Mrs Taki…” I tried, but I was already losing heart by the millisecond. She turned out to be Lisa Johnson,  happily married to Luke, a friend of mine who is the boss of Channel 4 and a tycoon in his own right, and whose parents were celebrating their golden anniversary. Talk about making a fool of one’s self in public.

Well, they say there’s no fool like an old fool, but judging by the crowd that packed the 20th Century Theatre last Saturday night, I was the only one in the place. The only fool, that is. The rest of the morons were up in the Cotswolds, for la Hurley’s wedding to Sabu, the jungle boy, now a major star in Hello! as well as back home in India. Mind you, had Hello! been present at the Paul and Marigold Johnson bash I would have been as surprised as to find a list of great punch lines from the works of Elie Wiesel. Never mind. Not everyone can be shifty upstairs, and we should not blame those who would rather get and spend and sell their wedding to Hello!. There is a pandemic of self-aggrandisement and Gadarene lust infecting society right now, and la Hurley’s and Sabu’s shenanigans reflect it. No real harm done, in fact Hello! has now become the Debrett’s of the criminal classes. It is closely studied by those heavily tattooed, beer-bellied, bullet-headed men who like to visit country houses during the week, and grand London residences during the weekend. In case they can’t read, Hello! magazine also provides pictures.

Needless to say, I flew over for Paul and Marigold’s party and had a wonderful time mixing with people I have little in common with, brainwise, that is. My high moment came when I had a cigarette with the greatest living playwright, Sir Tom Stoppard, outside the theatre, incidentally one in which a 17-year-old Lawrence Olivier made his first appearance on stage. It is a wonderful old place, with a grand skylight, now serving for special functions like the Johnson bash. Grey Gowrie, David Hockney, Raymond Carr, William Shawcross, Alan Bennett, you get the picture. A band played on the stage, and Daniel Johnson, the oldest son, gave a witty and heartfelt speech about his parents’ marriage of so long ago. There was none of that toe-curling sentimentality which features in across the ocean anniversary parties. Daniel did not compare his father to Rousseau and Voltaire. He declared him their superior and that was that. Tongue firmly in cheek. I particularly liked the part where Paul fires off polemic missiles while Marigold desperately tries to ward off the arrows in return. “Paul is offence, Marigold is defence,” was the way Daniel phrased it.

We are all, friends and foes alike, in awe of Paul’s creative talents, and he is Britain’s greatest polymath. Only two weeks ago he wrote in the Spectator how a crocodile works. Who on earth, except a croc expert, would know such things. Especially when he recounted how one particular croc grabbed and stowed away the German ambassador to the Belgian Congo who was peacefully jogging during the Congo’s first day of independence in 1960. Some independence. When I queried Paul about this, he insisted that the poor German diplomat was gobbled up by the insolent croc and that included his monocle, his pith helmet and his copy of… Mein Kampf. The latter was definitely made up but Paul insisted it was true. 

There is not much a high-life writer can say about Paul’s intellectual achievements, but let me try. Countries where the imagination is profoundly feminine, like France, have sanctity as their ideal—whereas England has its Puritan morality and Germany its scientific efficiency. Paul has a “Beatific Vision” of life that is far above morality as it is outside science. His intellectual love of God is clear and undeniable, and should have silenced atheists like that Dawkins chappie long ago, but we are, after all, living in a free country. At least for the moment. However difficult it is to write of the relations between romantic love and devotional religion, Paul has managed it, both in his prose and in his life. Although he has gone on record saying no working journalist should accept titles, the Americans, who recognise rare talent, have awarded him the highest civilian honour Uncle Sam can bestow. Chalk one up for president George W. Bush.

So far so good. The next day I staggered over to the Bismarck house for a terrific lunch of oysters and other delicacies, then made my way back to Gstaad after a lightning trip that had me contemplating the wording of my demise once the small plane I was in hit some very rough turbulence. “He died the way he lived, on his way to a party.” Better that than to be in the company of neocons inside the Beltway.

The Spectator.