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I always thought the Freuds a pretty sordid bunch, and after the latest revelations, it seems I wasn’t far off. I first met Clement Freud when John Aspinall employed him as an adviser for food and wine. He was lugubrious and aggressive, and none of us punters liked him one bit. He was not a gambler but talked as if he were a big one. While crossing the Atlantic on board the QE2 back in 1974, he tried to play the tough guy with me over—yes, you guessed it—a lady, but it didn’t work. But there’s no use giving him the business now that he’s dead, so all I will say is I found him just a bit less loathsome than his painter brother and leave it at that.

Sexual depravity is something unknown in the Taki family, but I suppose it should go hand in hand if one’s name is Freud. I never read Sigmund, but wasn’t he always banging on about depraved sexual matters and dreams? What he should have been writing about is male abusers imposing their views on women in Muslim societies. We Christians are taught from day one to worship women. Mind you, Western feminists see it the other way round, that our culture is all about men controlling women. The feminists then say that the Islamic State appeals to men who desire that sort of control over women. In other words, our culture and the IS are one and the same. Leave it to feminists to find a roundabout way to get it as wrong as that.

The Orlando terrorist was a wife-beating control freak, but some ludicrous woman in Washington, D.C., by the name of Epstein declared the killer “the outcome of American culture, not the Islamic State’s.” The ludicrous NY Times reported this bullshit with a melancholic straight face. I laughed out loud. Thank God I’m back in London, because things are getting very confused over on the other side. Everyone sounds as hysterical as The Guardian’s Owen Jones, a man with many fetishes, I assume, the least being inhaling jockstraps. The next thing you know, this trans business will be taken seriously.

But if you thought comedy was dead, you obviously haven’t read anything by one Laura Collins-Hughes. Here she is writing about The Taming of the Shrew: “The ending, which finds Kate docile at last, is meant to be winsome. But when she gives her final speech, reminding women of their duty to their husbands—it always makes me feel sick. It always makes me cry.” She then goes on to tell us of her despair of the play and of its most toxic line, when Kate exhorts other wives to place their hands below their husbands’ feet.

All I can say is I’d rather fall in the hands of the Islamic State than spend any time with these humorless harridans. It’s a Shakespeare comedy, for Christ’s sake, not a Trump political manifesto, and this witless woman reminds me of the touchy-feely Jews who think The Merchant of Venice should only be produced in Nazi concentration camps. (What about in the West Bank?)

I suppose what the world needs are more laughs, but everyone seems to be so uptight nowadays, as uptight as that great aristocrat Philip Green. Boy, he looked like a lizard caught in a mosquito net while trying to look tough and spitting back answers to MPs. In Winnie’s words, some tough guy, some testimony. He should be forced to pay back 600 million pounds or so, or to live in Monaco the rest of his miserable life, a very close call. Green is the type who gives his boat a name that is directly the opposite of his own character. Lionheart suggests a courageous, proud person. Although it is none of my business, I think he should name his boat Pensioner, in honor of all the thousands he’s screwed à la Maxwell.

Finally, Pugs celebrated its tenth anniversary last week, and our annual lunch was among the best ever. I say so because we sat down at 1 p.m. and sort of finished at 8 p.m. That’s what’s called a successful lunch. Nick Scott was voted yet again president for life; Bob Miller was elevated to vice commodore; our commodore Tim Hoare brought twenty bottles of the best red wine this side of Lafite; both Pavlos and Nikolaos, Greek royal princes, attended; and the only sour note was our president, who with schoolmarmish sincerity made fun of the poor little Greek boy’s malapropisms when using such words as “lambent” and “sclerotic.” I cordially endured it and then got very drunk. Nice to be back in London again, especially if I wake up with the right—Leave and never ever look back—result just as you’re about to read this.