Taki's ten rules

Taki Theodoracopulos, better known as Taki, is a journalist and writer, living in Gstaad, London, and New York. His column ‘High Life’ has appeared in The Spectator for the past 25 years, he has his own website (www.takimag.com), and he has also written for National Review, the London Sunday Times, Esquire, Vanity Fair, the New York Press, and Quest Magazine, among others. In 2002 Taki founded The American Conservative magazine with Pat Buchanan and Scott McConnell. He is also publisher of the British magazine Right Now! and has been writing for GstaadLife since its first season in 2003/4.

By the time you read this there will hopefully be some snow, but in case the white stuff never comes, here are a few tips for visiting jet-setters and social mountaineers how not to get into trouble a-la-Silvio Berlusconi. As most of you know, the former Italian prime minister is in hot water after his wife publicly demanded an apology from him for chatting up women. Veronica Lario, Berlusconi's wife of twenty years and mother of three of his five children, wrote her letter to La Republica, the newspaper formerly owned by Carlo Caracciolo, an impeccable enemy of Silvio's and until the tycoon's death four years ago, Gianni Agnelli's brother-in-law.

I mention Agnelli because he was probably one of Italy's greatest Don Juans, and for the wife of Berlusconi to complain to the man whose sister was Agnelli's wife makes it doubly wicked. Italians are known to be flirts, and I for one agree with them.  All seductions begin by flirting. Flirting is the key which turns the engine on. It is as simple as that. Without flirting you cannot seduce, and without seduction the race becomes extinct.   The British newspapers used the term “playboy antics,” to describe Silvio's badinage with young attractive women. The Brits would, wouldn't they?   But not everybody who uses chat-up lines is a playboy otherwise you'd have fifty million Italian playboys and ten million Greek ones. Show me an Italian or a Greek man who doesn't flirt and I'll show you a pervert. Flirting has never ruined a marriage or driven a wife to drink.  Coldness does that. And no one is colder than a Brit.  Men who flirt usually service their wives regularly, and everyone else who they can get hold of. Nothing wrong with that, we Europeans need more people and less immigration. But more about those tips I promised.

About two years ago the writer, Rachel Johnson, rang me and asked me for some advice while researching her novel, Notting Hell.  Basically she wanted to know how to handle  a wife, a mistress and - hopefully - a few girlfriends. I wrote ten basic rules which she used to shape her novel. So here, at last, are Taki's ten rules for playing away, or having one’s cake and also eating it, straight from the horse's mouth:

1) Always remind your wife that you love her and will never leave her for anyone else, ever. 2) Always remind your prospective lover that, if she gives in, you will never leave her and that you love her more than your wife. 3) Always promise marriage. Promising marriage has served me well these last fifty years, although if one is past 60, one should promise that the last will and testament will look very kindly upon anyone who has had carnal knowledge of the soon-to-be deceased. 4) Never raise your voice or show anger. Always fake jealousy with both your wife and lover, and especially with your mistress. 5) Deny, deny, deny. Never admit the slightest indiscretion. Confessions are for amateur adulterers. 6) Be very generous before and after the affair. Women talk, and word that one is generous gets around quicker than bad news. 7) Marry a beautiful woman, preferably upper class and sure of herself, and cuckold her with lesser, uglier beings. She won't mind and they will be flattered to cuckold someone superior to them. 8) Be romantic. Whisper and write notes to both the wife and the lovers. 9) Make love to everyone concerned regularly. Well serviced women do not go looking for trouble. 10) Always be in a good mood and always make them laugh. Show me a man who makes women laugh, and I'll show you one who scores…a lot.

Follow these rules and even without snow you will enjoy yourself in Gstaad and I guarantee your wife will not write to the Anzeiger von Saanen to demand an apology.

Comments

[Ron Mwangaguhunga]

At the risk of incriminating myself I will not comment any more than saying that my old acquaintance Taki will never lose the gift of being the most interesting man in the room. Cheers, Ron Mwangaguhunga

http://ronmwangaguhunga.blogspot.com

[Thomas Mallon]

Hey taki, how do you manage to rope in all those conservatives, seeing you are such a lecher?

Buchanan, Thomas Woods, Angelo Metera...

[Claude Ravier]

You should expand the 10 rules and publish them in a counter book to "The Book of Rules"..... It would be a huge success.