It was from New York’s glamorous Studio 54 where I first reported about widespread cocaine use:

No sane person goes into the lavatory of Studio without a surgical mask as if in an asbestos plant during an explosion. Masses of humanity sniff, snort, sneeze, cough and expectorate. Steve Rubell, the owner, is seriously thinking of taking out the toilet bowls as redundant.

But soon it was my turn. On July 24, 1984, a customs officer at Heathrow Airport told me an envelope in my rear pocket was about to fall out. “Oh, thanks,” I wisecracked. “If only you knew what was in it!” He crooked his finger and I ended up spending four months in the pokey for possessing two grams of cocaine. I used my one telephone call to ring The Spectator’s office and got Claire Asquith, granddaughter of WWI-era Prime Minister Herbert Asquith, on the telephone. I told her to notify the new editor, Charles Moore, that I was resigning forthwith, whereupon she asked me whether I would be filing my column from jail.

In my 35 years of being a columnist at The Spectator, I have served under seven editors, five of whom are old Etonians, all of whom have edited a weekly staffed by probably as effortlessly elegant and professional a crew as could exist in Evelyn Waugh’s fevered imagination of the illusory upper classes. An example of this nonchalance was Charles Moore’s reaction when I resigned after being busted: “Were you our religious correspondent, I’d immediately accept it. But you are our high-life writer, so we expect you to be high at times.”

Now that’s what I call noblesse oblige. After paying my debt to society, the new editor, Dominic Lawson, son of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, suggested I write more about politics and life in general rather than the lighthearted stuff I had been doing. I was thrilled. The first thing I did was spill the beans about Mark and Lola. Some wrote that they were canceling their subscriptions because I had misled them. Lawson thought it hilarious.

When I reported about New York’s Puerto Rican Day Parade, writing that Puerto Ricans were useless, foul-mouthed thieves, New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani threatened to boycott all of Conrad Black’s newspapers—he owned many in America—and to deport me. The Spectator not only refused to fire me, but then-editor Frank Johnson introduced me to the American ambassador in London as the Puerto Rican ambassador. Lord Black eventually lost the Telegraph group, to which The Spectator belongs, and our present owners, Sir David Barclay and his brother, have been extremely supportive of my antics.

About 15 years ago, I wrote how Osama bin Laden, known as Harry Laden to his friends, was a very popular member of White’s Club, held court at the bar daily, and had been made a member by the Duke of Beaufort and Churchill’s grandson Nicholas Soames. Neither the Duke nor Soames, both good friends of mine, said a word. American newspapers went wild and Vanity Fair sent its best reporters to interview me. I had made the whole thing up but told them I was too scared to give any more details. After September 11, 2001, some Americans stopped speaking to me, calling me a traitor for fraternizing with a mass murderer. A member of White’s, insurance broker David Metcalfe, sued me because I had included him in my group with Harry. I had to give him an apology and took the opportunity to reveal that this story, too, was a hoax. The Spectator’s staff enjoyed it greatly despite the hate letters we received.

When Boris Johnson took over as editor he was already a Member of Parliament, but when he became London’s mayor, he had to give up the editor’s chair. But before he did, he fought tooth and nail on my behalf when the Israeli embassy decided I was “worse than Goebbels” in criticizing Israel’s policies in the West Bank. When the Israelis demanded he fire me, Boris answered that he would if they evacuated the occupied territories and apologized for 45 years of oppression. Again, noblesse oblige.

Which brings me to the present. It might sound corny, but writing for The Spectator has been my life’s one wonderful constant. I have been given columns the world over—the Sunday Times, Vanity Fair, Esquire, the New York Post, Tatler—all because of the Speccie. When I first began 35 years ago it sold 8,000 copies. Now we sell close to 100,000 each week and are read by close to a million. I plan to retire in five years if I live that long, forty being a nice round number, then write books. I have nothing to say except superlatives about my fellow scribes and the people who produce the magazine weekly without fail. Every week we have grand lunches at the magazine, which is housed in a very grand house next to Parliament. We have famous guests whose brains we pick and whose legs we pull. Once a year, the first Thursday in July, we give our summer party where every prime minister has attended since I’ve been there. If ever I am fired I shall certainly miss the place. In fact, I am already thinking how empty my life will be in five years. Long live the Speccie.