Otherwise everything is hunky-dory. The last week in London was one I shall not soon forget. During Pugs’ annual lunch I was honored to speak on “The Practicality of German U-boats on Lake Chad,” a speech that was assigned to me by Pugs’ president William H. Gimlet. He intended to humiliate me because even in my drunken state I know that there was no practical purpose of posting German U-boats deep in Lake Chad. Still, I battled on and was warmly applauded after I finished, especially by our oldest and most distinguished member, Sir Christopher Lee. Now there’s someone with a CV to make one’s head spin. Two hundred seventy-six films, numerous plays and personal appearances, and now at 90 years young he’s still working. He is off to Rome to finish a film he started in Berlin. Sir Christopher and I sat next to each other and talked about my movie career, which was a bit like my unlicensed electrician talking to Thomas Edison. After that it was Lou Lou’s for lunch and dinner daily, with my buddy John Rigas throwing a great party at Asprey.

If someone had told me that I would one day cheer against Germany and the German chancellor I would have taken very long odds, but it happened last week. I was with the two good-looking Greek princes, Pavlos and Nikolaos, and when Greece equalized the score at 1-1 in the second half, I almost cried. Here we are, nine million Greeks—I am not counting the two million invading Muslims who have parked themselves in Athens—against 80 million Germans, and when they scored against poor little us, that awful Merkel woman rose like a frog and did a dance that Salome would have been ashamed to perform.

England got its comeuppance and Sir Bob Geldof, Roger Taylor, Edward Hutley, Nick Scott, and the commodore all drowned their sorrows on their respective boats. I will now sail back toward Côte de Pollution and head for London and the Spectator summer party that the editors have promised me will be attended by Jessica Raine. If they have been lying to me it will be curtains for Taki. I will commit seppuku right then and there, in the deputy editor’s office to boot. I owed her a wedding present anyway.