It’s a topsy-turvy world when the deputy editor of the Spectator, a lady, is in Afghanistan, while the high life correspondent of the same magazine cowers in a Belgravia basement wearing full body armor and his Wehrmacht helmet. Obviously it should be the other way round, but now it’s a women’s world and we men have been put out to pasture. And it gets worse. Apparently, while about to go out “in the field,” Mary Wakefield was told “rather you than me,” by a private security man. “Better an IED (improvised explosive device) than Taki,” answered my fiancé, making me angry as hell and not willing to take it any more.

And speaking of trashing Taki, I noticed last week that Sir Philip Otton, former Lord Justice of Appeal, had the same birthday as Rudy Giuliani, former mayor of the Bagel. The two men have something else in common. Both tried to ruin my life and partly succeeded. Otton presided over a libel case brought against my person and the Speccie in 1986 by a woman who claimed I had called her an old tart. I had not but had intimated that she gave away her favors like a Frisbee. (The old girl left us about ten years ago while swimming in her pool in Argentina, just like that other high class tart, Pamela Digby Churchill Hayward Harriman did in the pool of the Paris Ritz, where else?) Otton made that infamous German judge, Ronald Freisler, look like Mother Teresa. He instructed the jury in the manner I would if I had the fortune to preside over the crimes of Robert Mugabe or Tony Blair. He asked me twice while I was in the dock what the word Taki meant. It means little virgin, and when the courtroom rocked with laughter he held it against me. What was the poor little Greek boy supposed to do? Give a false name? I was under oath. The then-owner Algie Cluff and I went down for the count, and the lady in question fainted for the cameras. Ten years after her death, her husband approached the mother of my children, in Salzburg of all places during a Figaro performance (talk about calumny) and told her how sorry he was that he had perjured himself during his testimony. “It’s all in the past,” said Alexandra, “and we understood even back then that you had to do what you did.” What bothered me more was that Otton went back to the Garrick club, ran into Alexander Chancellor, an ex-editor of the Speccie, and reputedly told him how sorry he was I had gone down. As my father was alive, I had to sell an enormous house in the Hamptons to pay for the damages—Algie and I went half and half—but what the hell, it was only money, and I thank Otton for the lessons he taught me: Never make jokes in court, especially about how stupid judges look wearing those wigs.

Giuliani, however, was worse. Rudi is a hater like no one else I know. He made his reputation as a prosecutor of the inspector Javert type. Whilst he was mayor, I wrote a column in this here space about the Puerto Rican parade. It was a caricature in the true sense of the word. Nobody in England took it seriously, but a Spanish newspaper in the Bagel and the Noo Yawk Times did. I made things worse by telling the Times who rang my telephone off the hook that some of my best servants were Puerto Ricans, which they are. When Giuliani threatened to deport me—he was seeking the Puerto Rican vote but never got it as he was tough on crime—I told the Times he could shove his ugly bald head up a camel’s arse as far as I was concerned, I was an American citizen. Years later he cut me at a party, an act that took years off my life. Alas, Giuliani was a very good mayor, just like Otton was a very good judge, but both men were bad for Taki. I hope both men had a miserable birthday (just kidding).

Mind you, it didn’t take long, did it, for those ghastly politicians to revert to type and start lying their heads off. While in opposition both Tories and Lib-Dems attacked the government for allowing radical Islamists into the country. Two weeks in power and the Tory-Lib-Dem gang is allowing Zakir Naik, a hate-monger like no other, to come and lecture in Britain. As if there weren’t enough local hate-mongers around. Nick Clegg claimed that that poor Asperger’s hacker would never be extradited to America, but now is humming and hawing. One simply cannot trust these bastards. The Blair-Brown cabal tried to stay in power forever through social-engineering. Turn Britain brown and laugh all the way to free limos and grand houses. Keep everyone on welfare and to hell with the suckers who work and produce the moolah. I happen to like and trust Duncan Smith, but his job is a very difficult one. I don’t think Cameron has the bottle to back him all the way. One way or another, I couldn’t care less. My next wedding date with the deputy editor is July 1, following the Spectator party. You are all invited, especially James Butterwick, who wrote such a kind letter. Yipee!