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But I’m hardly in a mood for jokes. Reading what Israel is doing to Lebanese children is the mother of all downers. In fact — and I hate to use sporting similes for such tragic events as Qana — rooting for Israel is like rooting for Chelsea, the rich bully who whines while running roughshod over the weak and helpless. (What a perfect and timely article by Matthew Syed in the Times about Abramovich, who rather than being investigated is in Belgravia.)
I may be biased, but what I’d like to know is who the terrorist is: the one who has killed 750 civilians and 100 fighters, or the one who has killed 33 soldiers and 18 civilians? The Spectator’s editors may disagree with the poor little Greek boy, but the proof is in the numbers. The Israeli high command sounds like George Michael. They insist their behaviour is not in any way abnormal, obscene.
But enough of this depressing stuff. America and Israel have lost all moral restraints, as has Tony Blair, so like a coward I’m shutting my eyes and concentrating on a sun tan.
Last week I told you about a southern Italian judge who has put the pretender to the Italian throne under house arrest. Here are the facts: Victor Emmanuel of Savoy is not the brightest of fellows, but he is as guilty of shakedowns and living off the immoral earnings of women as I am of cruising Hampstead Heath looking for George Michael types. I have known Victor for close to 50 years and can vouch for his character. The trouble is he’ll say anything to shock, and he has been caught on tape bragging about how he will kneecap people unless they sell real estate to his associates and juvenile stuff like that.
Consider this. Just before entering the cathedral in Madrid where his cousin, Prince Felipe of Spain, was getting hitched, he punched his half-brother, the Duke of Aosta, in the gut rather hard. It was a very unregal gesture, but one which had me rolling on the floor. Aosta has for years pretended to be the pretender to the Italian throne, so Victor lost his patience and cooled him. When I asked him why, Victor showed me how the punch travelled, rather than explain to me why. That’s the kind of person he is.
When the headlines exploded in the anti-monarchist Italian press, I thought I saw an Aosta finger stirring the pot. Not so. Victor Emmanuel was a friend of Berlusconi, and many Piedmont military and police officers hid their monarchist tendencies. A southern Italian judge approved wire taps on him just as he was allowed to re-enter Italy after a 50-year exile. In two years of listening to his wild bragging and wilder threats to all and sundry, the authorities managed to assemble quite a dossier against him. What I guarantee is that in the past two years of my life, and I have been a very good boy recently, they could have gotten the same goods on me — or anyone else, for that matter.
No, Victor Emmanuel does not need moolah. He made plenty by selling Augusta choppers to the Shah back in the Sixties, and his wife is from a rich Swiss family. What he needs is someone to convince him that he is his own worst enemy. But so are many of us. He managed to involve the most intelligent and nicest royal of all, King Simeon of Bulgaria, a saintly figure who would turn in a penny lying in the street, by inventing a story which was straight out of A Thousand and One Nights. That’s Victor for you. Worse, Italian justice is slower than Bushido. After 50 years in exile, Victor will regret the day he was allowed back in.
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