Of despots & strong coffee : How your humble correspondent had lunch with a doctor, Ben Johnson & two prostitutes
What with the Colonel being being in the news this morning unlike Nu Labour, I am not ashamed of my links to north African despots & feel that I should have declare my connections with the good Colonel’s family in the interests of openness & to pre-empt any FOI requests, Therefore I will relate a little tale from a few years ago now - not long after Gaddafi senior decided that it was Luxembourg that was the Great Satan & not America, & his soccer mad son, Al Saadi plus not inconsiderable entourage, flew into the UK in a brace of Lear Jets.
At Customs (& probably in the Nothing to Declare channel) the party were stopped & asked to hand over their firearms - reluctantly they did so, filling a waiting shopping trolley. They were then politely asked to surrender all of their guns. After vociferous complaint & considerable gnashing of teeth they were duly handed over. This resulted in another shopping trolley being half filled. Due disarmed (yes its true what you have read about the UK & firearms law gentlemen apart from when it comes to shooting police officers from your embassy), they piled into the waiting motorcade, resplendent in the blackest of sunglasses & sped off to the Dorchester Hotel
Now, while they were in residence in London, their British fixer had arranged a meeting with for his employer with 3 stout bulldogs. Presenting themselves, at the appointed time, the fixer informed said bulldogs that his employer had had been out on the toot the night before & was still in bed, so would they mind waiting. Said bulldogs slumped onto suitably comfortable sofas & started ordering rounds of coffee (in The Dorchester at that time, 1 double espresso & 2 large cappuccinos with biscuits came to £32, but then again the biscuits were expectionally nice!), charging them to the Colonel's tab.
It got to lunchtime & our soccer mad despot hadn't appeared but he sent down his physician & personal trainer to have lunch with his guests. The doctor was erudite, well educated & completely charming. If you are the sports mad son of a North African dictator, who do you have for a personal trainer ... ? Ben Johnson of course.
So, the 3 bulldogs, the charming doctor & Ben Johnson sat down to dim sum in the excellent Chinese restaurant at the rear of the hotel. After 20 minutes, Ben starts to look a bit shifty & disappeared only to come back 5 minutes later with probably the two tallest, blondest ladies available in London, excused himself, no doubt to spend the afternoon working out.
& in fact I spent another day waiting to see Junior & was it a complete anti-climax? Of course. The meeting when it finally happened went predicatably nowhere but I am sure that my MI6 file notes exactly how many expressos I can consume in a 24 hour period, espcially when they are on the Colonel's nickle
Comments
and 2 tall blondes?
Posted by: Curtis | September 24, 2009 11:31 AM