Steal this story

National Review, April 13, 1992 by Taki Theodoracopulos

A FEW YEARS ago, the gifted Frank Johnson wrote a story in the Sunday Telegraph concerning the boorish behavior of Princess Michael of Kent while on a flight from Los Angeles to London. No sooner had I read it, I was faxing him the following message: "Your column is to be published next week in Fame--congratulations! Under my byline--hard luck."

I simply could not resist the story. It was a gossipy item, and for a writer like me, gossip is desirable, but second-hand gossip (which his story was) is essential. So, just to give you an example of Johnson's stuff, here's the item. It seems the princess, known in Blighty as the pushiest person since Sisyphus, demanded that the seat next to her be kept vacant. The trouble was the seat was already occupied by a certain Lady Oliver (a/k/a Joan Plowright), wife of Laurence Olivier, and a very well known actress in her own right.

Their egos clashing like cymbals, neither lady would move. The princess got louder and louder, and finally the captain warned her that he would put her off the flight. Oh yes, I almost forgot. There were no other available seats on first class, and Princess Michael was in effect demanding that Lady Olivier be moved back with the plebs. It was too good a story not to publish third hand, and to hell with fact checking.

Then there is the gossipy book. Last winter, while in hot pursuit of a blonde who wouldn't give me the time of day, I decided that a change of climate was just the ticket. I flew her to Barbados, but for the first three days she kept her nose buried in a rather bulky paperback. In moments such as those, it is essential to knock the book, even if it's Le Rouge et le Noir. In her case, it was the biography of that arch gossip himself, Andy Warhol, written by his one-time amanuensis, Bob Colacello. "How can you read that kind of thing?" was my complaint, along with others.

But as things turned out, I was wrong. Once she finished it, I took a brief glimpse at it, and it was the start of a beautiful friendship. The opus was one long gossip. Most of it cannot be repeated in an elegant publication such as NR, but suffice it to say that I forgot about the girl while immersing myself in a world of drugs, drink, and all-round debauchery that would have made Lord Byron blush.

Colacello knew all the secrets of the underground world of Warhol, and he held back little. Whether it was true mattered not a lot. The book was lively, amusing, alluring, and very, very wicked. When I was through, I felt I knew Warhol, and a terrible man he was. But the book also defined the age, a period where money became more important than manners, and celebrity replaced achievement.

Which brings me to the importance of gossip. There are two kinds: the puerile kind, which is time-wasting by half-wits, and the other, which informs and helps to define the age. Much of what we know about medieval history is sheer gossip. For instance, King John of England is known to us as Bad King John because of the insance prejudices of a couple of monk chroniclers--for no other reason and certainly with no proof. Our knowledge of Charlemagne is based on hearsay, as is evident in the Einhard biography of him. This also applies to my own country's mythology. Homer's poems about the Trojan War and Ulysses' wanderings could not have survived without the impulse to pass on a good story.

But what about academic history? you may well ask. In my not so humble opinion, it would be dry as dust if it neglected the intimate moments. Without those glimpses into private lives, history is dull as well as intellectually dishonest. The serious argument is this: Can a historian write the life of Frederick the Great, for example, without Voltaire's letters about him--letters full of catty, bitchy, witty remarks? I say no. As a historian one cannot. As a bore one can.

When I read history, I always find that it's the gossip that gives the flavor--and often the substance--of who people were and what life was like. In fact, one cannot build a character without gossip, public accomplishments being simply not enough. If they were, we'd have passport-like descriptions, and c'est tout.

The telling, intimate glimpses of the JFK White House written by insiders gave some hints of the hanky-panky that went on, but it took the gossips a generation later to reveal the flaws of America's royal family. Without the gossip, Ted Kennedy would be one of the most respected senators of his day; although even without it, his friend Christopher Dodd would not. (When Dodd was dating a ferocious female Sandinista, it was said that although liberals had often been accused of being infiltrated by Communists, this was the first time it was occurring the other way round.)

Needless to say, gossip can also be extremely destructive. Private Eye, the satirical gossip sheet read by every Englishman who counts, has ruined more lives than Ted Kennedy has had hangovers. Despite its allure, its unrelenting concern with sex and money oversteps the bounds of decency, but I guess that is the price one pays for freedom of expression. Mind you, the gossips knew all about the dreadful Robert Maxwell's plundering of pension funds, but British libel laws prevented them from exposing the porker.