Evil Diaries: Name-dropping

Some readers may have noted the Labour Party’s declared policy for the future of abolishing non-dom status. Its chief mouthpiece is Wes Streeting, prospective minister for health. I not too humbly suggest to Wes that he should read up the current legislation. If he then thinks that non-dom status should be stopped in English law, I am afraid we are headed to domination by the intellectually inferior. I know people who have already skidaddled from London rather than see the fruits of their hard work in developing industrial and commercial interests on the Continent rubbed out.

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Last Sunday I caught an item on Frank Auerbach, now 92 and an established artist of the first rank – he has sold work at Sotheby’s at £5.5m. That is quite a lot for a living performer. His parents got him out of Berlin by 1939 whereas they themselves got murdered by Hitler and Co when herded off to Auschwitz. Frank Auerbach, who is clearly quite a bon viveur and conversationalist (chums like Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud), lives in Camden basically exclusively to paint. Well worth a Google search.

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I had lunch at Sotheby’s some years ago and was invited to speak to the assembled 20 guests of Mugger and Gina Miller (she of the Remainer tendency). I enjoyed that. Before lunch I had hobnobbed with the Earl of Dalmeny (a Rosebery by birth). He was charming. I was therefore sorry when he got divorced from his wife, Lady Caroline, who, it turns out, is now romantically linked to Jules (for Julian) Irens whose father, Mark, now dead, I used to know and for whom I acted. (The Earl’s sister married Zia Mahmood, a contemporary of mine at Rugby and who now lives in the USA where he is a world class bridge player.) Jules left Marlborough, started as a sergeant in the French Foreign Legion and went on to be a major in the Gurkhas. I understand that he is a cool dude. Certainly, the Daily Mail’s picture discloses that he has not gone to seed.

Fairly old readers may have come across the book, Beau Geste, published before world war two and centred on the French Foreign Legion. The film, starring Gary Cooper, was a huge success: I expect it still is.

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Last Sunday I watched the final of the Carabao Cup where Liverpool came out top. Carabao Cup, I hear you remark: what on earth is that? It is in fact the branding by an energy drink bottler called Carabao. I bet most people do not know this. Admittedly I am indolent by nature and unlikely to take up swigging the juices of Carabao. Carabao’s marketing people must like football tickets more than advertising common sense.

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Finally, my chum Nick Mordin draws my attention to competition for Alphabet, parent of Google (Nasdaq: GOOG). He thinks that GOOG has hit a serious blockage to the future of GOOG. We’ll see. Now $138. I’ll deal with my ZOOM based interview for Master Investor’s 9th March exhibition, to which all right-thinking investors will trot, later.