When Harry Met Taki
Things have never been grimmer. Wall Street wolves have become billionaires while rigging the system, rats like William Kristol are showboating on television and spreading lies about The Donald, and the most dishonest couple since Bonnie and Clyde are getting themselves ready to reinhabit the White House.
In times such as these, there is only one thing to do: lighten up, and then some. I remember it as if it were yesterday. It was the late ’90s—my friend John O’Sullivan was visiting me from New York, and we were sitting on my Swiss lawn admiring the Alps while sipping some good white wine. Osama bin Laden was already at that time the world’s most hunted man. So John and I concocted a scenario for my next Spectator column, one that was going to have some pretty strange consequences for yours truly for some years to come. Let’s take it from the top:
As I wrote that evening after three bottles of white, Osama had gone to school in Switzerland, at the famed Rosey School, the school of kings, as it was then known because lots of royals from Europe had attended. His schoolmates had called him Harry Laden, and he had been quite popular because of his predilection for buying drinks for everyone at the very expensive Palace Hotel in Gstaad, where the school has its winter campus. (In the spring and autumn the campus is down by Lake Geneva.) Harry kept a large suite at the Palace, known as the Kandahar Suite, and entertained lavishly every weekend. He was also on the Rosey ski team, one that included Gianni Agnelli, John Taki Theodoracopulos (my son), Jean-Claude Killy, and Edsel Ford. The team was undefeated for three straight years.
After graduation, Harry Laden disappeared for a while, but surfaced at London’s White’s club, a prominent St. James’s gentleman’s club, where he quickly became one of the most popular members because of his generous habit of buying everyone drinks at the bar and even lunch and dinner at the premises. Harry dressed at Anderson & Sheppard, London’s best tailor, and had his bournouze shirts made at the same premises. He wore his native dress at White’s and also during racing at Ascot. The Queen herself had invited him to her box.
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