Aristophanes was a comic genius before the Marx Brothers, but he also gave good advice to the Athenians: Stop the war! In his play Lysistrata he had the women going on strike—no more nookie—until the men stopped fighting. During the plague that killed the greatest Athenian of them all, Pericles, Aristophanes advised the young to isolate, meditate, and masturbate, advice still valid to this day. Greece, with roughly the ...

As everyone who has not been in strict isolation in hospital with the virus knows, Harvey Weinstein was recently condemned to death for sexual assaults against six Hollywood wannabes. Actually, he was sentenced to 23 years in jail, but in view of his age of 67, it would have been far more dramatic and fitting for Hollywood had the judge given him death. Following the sentencing, the women who had testified against Harvey all ...

Look at it this way, we’re all doing Desert Island Discs nowadays, and unless you got the bug, it’s a damn good thing, too. I did the Desert Island bit around thirty years ago, with Sue Lawley the presenter, and we got along fine, even after I commented on the air that she had nice legs. I suspect today would have been a different story, but another good thing that the virus has brought is that the #MeToo crap is off the ...

Like everyone who was alive back on Nov. 22, 1963, I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing when news of the president’s assassination flashed through. (I was coming out of New York’s 21 Club after lunch.) JFK was not only one of the youngest-ever presidents, he was also probably the best-looking, and, of course, the first Catholic in the White House. He was truly mourned by his fellow Americans, and in fact the ...

Desperately boring times, but very healthy ones. No parties, no girls, not too much boozing, lots of smoking and reading very late into the night. And nonstop training and sport. What else can one do when locked in with one’s wife and one’s son and with nostalgic thoughts of a time when people gathered in groups? It seems very long ago, but do any of you remember when people gave parties? Desperate times demand desperate ...

No use datelining anymore, I’m here for the duration. Even the ski lifts have been ordered closed, chiuso, geschlossen, fermé. The only way to ski now is in the old-fashioned manner, à la Hemingway: Climb up with skins, peel them off, and enjoy the one and only run of the day. Not only is the climbing beneficial to one’s health, it’s also the only thing free in good old Helvetia. Mind you, if too many people do it, the ...

GSTAAD—I was hoping to leave this virus-besieged village for the Bagel, especially after some jerk drove up from Milan and, not feeling his best, attended a party given by a woman who is as obese as Vivien Duffield and just as pushy. An item appeared in the press about the shindig and some people thought it was yours truly. The jerk was described as 76 years old, muscle-bound, and a playboy. I am 83, loose as a goose, and a ...

GSTAAD—I shoulda been a weatherman. No sooner had I announced snow to be a Gstaad rarity than it came down nonstop. Then it rained, so everything’s hunky-dory. Older rich people who don’t ski are happy after the scare of a snowfall, while younger types who do indulge are over the moon. Happy, happy Gstaad, but not really; the coronavirus news has some scared out of their wits, in fact this alpine village is beginning to ...

GSTAAD—It feels like a sepia-tinged melodrama, one directed by the great schlock-master Sam Wood. Driving up the winding valleys through the 17th-century villages and the Castle of Gruyères on one’s right, the heartbeat quickened as Gstaad beckoned in the distance. It meant beautiful women, parties galore, challenging snow-covered slopes to swish down on, and a friendly atmosphere among the lucky few who knew about the ...

I was not aware that there is a Spectator/Takimag fan club that meets in French-speaking Switzerland, and having contacted me we have agreed to meet this week up here in Gstaad. A very nice English voice over the telephone informed me of the existence of the group, asked if I was interested in speaking to them, and told me how long the two best weeklies in the world have been read by them. My response was a resounding yes, and ...

GSTAAD—Lenin Moreno is in trouble despite his very unchristian first name. For any of you unfamiliar with him, Señor Moreno is the president of Ecuador, a tiny South American country that I like very much because if you’ve met an Ecuadorean man, you’ve met them all: There are 16 million Ecuadoreans, and 8 million of them, the men, all look like identical twins. One of my closest friends on the tennis circuit back in the ...

I find myself detached from mainstream culture. It started with the demise of nightclubs like Annabel’s, and the people that frequent them with names like Lil Nas X, Dua Lipa, Lizzo, Fat Joe, Pusha T, DaBaby, and others of their ilk. All real names, incidentally, lifted from saccharine, slush-like descriptions by gossip columnists of nightclubbing celebrities. Yep, things sure ain’t what they used to be—after dark, that ...

I never thought I’d get back to this silly subject ever again, but the Markles, as I now refer to them, have a way of getting our attention—and embarrassing Al Capone in the process. (As the feds were closing in on him, Al was told Chicago was getting too hot and he should move to Canada. “Canada?” growled Capone, “I don’t even know what street that’s on.”) Well, for any of you who, like Capone, have never heard ...

I write this from the once-upon-a-time small alpine village of Gstaad, Switzerland, now a mecca of the nouveaux riches and vulgar, snow and manners having gone with the wind. Global warming is still a maybe, as far as I’m concerned, but the visual evidence right here in the Alps is undeniable. The glacier I used to ski on almost year-round has disappeared, and man-made snow is pumped out daily in its place. The reason I’m ...

Did any of you know that most of the 20th-century monsters—Stalin, Mao, Hitler, Ceausescu, Duvalier, and even the Ethiopian mini-Napoleon Mengistu—were rather good writers who could form better-than-average sentences that said that power grew out of the barrel of a gun? I read this in a Big Bagel weekly that was once known for its wit but is now so blinded by hate against The Donald that it’s turned into a rag, surpassed ...

GSTAAD—I’ve been hitting the books rather hard lately, the ritzy-glitzy crowd having gone the way of natural snow. There’s great skiing, they tell me, but it’s man-made white stuff, a bit like going to bed with a plastic doll instead of the real thing. I know, skiing is skiing, but it’s somehow different for me; I need the true white powder, and I don’t mean the Colombian marching stuff, either. My friend Peter ...