On Tina & Harry

Having been away in Europe for the last two months, I haven't the foggiest whether Tina and Harry Come to America has been published in the United States, or if it has been reviewed by every newspaper and magazine in the country. Being of an older generation and computer illiterate, I'm not exactly an Internet freak-in fact the only thing I can do is read e-mail and send my copy by it-at times, that is. In Switzerland, England and America, where I have help, everything is hunky-dory. Anywhere else I type and fax, which is a hell of a lot easier for the editor than pieces from some of my colleagues in the London Spectator, who write in longhand.

But back to Tina and Harry. Like most of us, I first checked the index, and when I saw my name listed on five different pages, I bought the book at once. Sorry, but that's how it goes. Mind you, even if my name were not included, I would have grabbed it, as I know most, if not all, of the characters involved. The author is Judy Bachrach, a contributor to Vanity Fair and a lady who sure did her homework. In my case, she did get everything right, quoting me correctly and even going so far as to protect me when I revealed to her that when Tina Brown first came to my house as an unknown who had just been named editor of Tatler-to ask me to become her travel correspondent-I was in the midst of something the state frowns upon. "The interruption made him nervous because there was an eccentric sort of party going on, the kind of party Taki would later describe as 'to be imagined, not talked about.' He told the butler to stand aside, and answered the door himself. Just in case. 'I thought it was the fuzz,' he recalled."

Well, in case any of you get the wrong idea, this was in the mid-70s, and the most powerful woman in the ruling Labor Party at the time was upstairs getting laid by a married gossip columnist. Others downstairs were taking drugs. If the fuzz had come in, the scandal would have made the Lewinsky lechery a mere bagatelle. The only thing Bachrach got wrong was my father's profession. She writes he was a shipbuilder, which is news to me. Daddy was an industrialist and shipowner, and had his ships built in Newport News, Yokohama and Seoul.

As I said, Bachrach gets most of her facts right, but the book is harmless. It was rumored that it would be a hatchet job, and lots of people got all excited. It is nothing of the sort. Tina Brown is a workaholic whose career Bachrach traces, revealing a few of her lovers before she married the much older Harry Evans. Nothing new or wrong with that. Harry ditto. There are some hints at sexual shenanigans, but the author sits on the fence, naming no names. Just as well. The idea of an over 70-year-old man screwing some middle-aged female journalist is not exactly a turn-on.

Tina I've known for 25 years. She hired me three times and fired me three times. I hold absolutely no grudge against her. I like to take on the big boys, some of whom were her friends. She always hung out with phony lefties like Martin Amis, Christopher Hitchens and the unreadable Salman Rushdie, not to mention Hollywood scum. As an editor of a glossy society mag, she had to be nice to fatcats. Bachrach is snide at times about Tina's snuggling up to the rich and famous, but then the author also refers to the Saul Steinbergs as ruling Park Ave. Some rulers. Bianca Jagger is described as a leading socialite. No, Judy, Bianca couldn't make it in Kosovo or in Grozny, let alone in the Big Bagel. Sarah Giles, a very old friend of mine, is said to "have great social aspirations, including going out with Mort Zuckerman." Bachrach is obviously misinformed. She lives, after all, in Washington, DC. Zuckerman is a social climber par excellence, whereas La Giles is a terrible gossip and shit-stirrer, but very well born.

What I enjoyed the most about the book was the description of Evans rewriting Zuckerman's columns. Drafts and drafts were produced before Evans gave them the final touch, always under the John Hancock of Mort baby. Beats burning the midnight oil, eh Mort?

Let's face it. Tina is a nice Jewish girl who had an excess of ambition, suffered from terrible insecurities, made it big as an editor during the celebrity-mad 80s and 90s both in London and New York, and after 20 years at the top is still giving it the old college try with her latest mag. Unfortunately, whereas once she had to deal with Si Newhouse, she now takes orders from the grotesque Clinton-worshipper Harvey Weinstein, a man so ugly and vulgar he'd be denied entrance to an Albanian whorehouse.

All big-time editors are insecure, including Tina and Harry. The word was out that Graydon Carter had suggested the book, but personally I do not believe it. Carter has his own magazine to worry about, and although there is no love lost between Graydon and Tina, I've never heard either of them knock the other in public. "The reign of the couple, alternately brilliant and hapless, was over," writes the author. Not necessarily, says I. The gradual stilling of cheers is normal. After all, not all of us wish to hog the limelight nonstop like the disgusting couple who lived in the White House until earlier this year.