Alec Baldwin

You know you’re old when people start writing kindly about you. Especially when they are colleagues. First Jeremy Clarke, now Deborah Ross. Debbie could of course be spoofing—if you look down at your bag of popcorn you’ll miss me—but thank you very much anyway. When my new boat is ready there will be a cabin built exclusively for Deborah Ross. The only thing she really got wrong is the moolah. If I’m a billionaire, Lord Sugar is a gentleman. This sounds a bit phony, but if I were a billionaire I’d give 850 million away. 150 million greenbacks or 100 million quid should be tops for everyone. One can fly private, own a boat and a decent house and take care of the children and grandchildren. Billions make people very strange and suspicious of others, and make their children even stranger. The insane idolatry of money warps minds and character quicker than any drug or liquor. I have known many billionaires in my life—inflation churns them out regularly nowadays, as does criminality in the old Soviet Union—and the only ones who live normal lives and have normal children are both Greek and although very distantly related have the same surname.

They say there is nothing more dangerous than innocence on a manhunt, and I’ve seen a few floozies play Jane Austen while trying to land some ghastly Russian slob who can count up to a billion but can’t read. Actually, I don’t mind that; a girl has to make a living, after all. What I do mind is men going after a billionaire’s daughter, most of them being ugly as sin, so stand up and be counted whatever your names are, you sons-in-law of Bernie Ecclestone. If this ex-coke dealer comes to Gstaad this winter, where his father-in-law owns two chalets, I plan to move out. Unless, of course, if he’s still dealing and selling pure Colombian. (Just kidding.) Or am I?

What I don’t find funny at all is the latest scandal of the thought police and gay lobby in America. My friend Alec Baldwin loses his temper—he’s Irish—and calls a paparazzo harassing his baby daughter and wife a cocksucker. MSNBC suspends his show for two weeks (what the network is doing is waiting to see the reaction) so he has to apologize to the usual suspects who are shocked—shocked that such a homophobic slur is still used in this day and age. Anyway, why is it homophobic? And since when is it a gay slur? Some of the grandest ladies I’ve known have been extraordinary cocksuckers. The English aristocracy wouldn’t be what it is if it weren’t mostly made of cocksuckers. Why is the homo lobby GLAAD picking on an Irish-American man who supports a very large Catholic family and who grew up poor in Long Island, unlike the man I suspect is behind the hounding, Anderson Cooper, son of Gloria Vanderbilt and a man who hid in the closet for ten years and is now out banging the drum for homos? Most likely he does it for the publicity and because no one watches CNN in general and Anderson Cooper in particular any longer.