Ta k i
on the riviera
From left: Lady Moore, wife of Sir Roger Moore of James Bond fame; the legendary Hotel du Cap; Gianni Agnelli with Heidi von Salvisberg, 1967.
A recent libel case won by Lady Moore, wife of Sir Roger Moore of James Bond fame, called for my testimony in London, and for once I was happy to oblige. Roger Moore is a friend of very long standing, as is his son Jeffrey, who lives 50 yards away from me in Gstaad. British hacks are notorious for never allowing facts to get in the way of a good story, but in this case The Daily Mail paid dearly for involving the wrong Kiki. Let’s go back 54 years, when a very young Taki arrived on the French Riviera and 74 Q U E S T
was extremely lucky to hook up with the prettiest Swedish girl in that sunny place for shady people (Somerset Maugham’s description). Her name was Kiki, she was 16 or 17, and moved in with me in a tiny room without bath in the Hotel du Cap, made famous by the great F. Scott Fitzgerald as the hotel where Rosemary meets Dick in Tender is the Night. After two or three weeks of unbridled passion, all hell broke loose. I opened up Kiki’s bag looking for cigarettes and found a wad of francs worthy of a drug
dealer and then some. Under vigorous interrogation, Kiki admitted that it was a gift from an older man, a disgusting individual of unknown origins. The love affair ended on a sour note, although Kiki went on to marry one of the richest Americans and take him to the cleaners. I wrote about that ill-fated romance a couple of years ago in the Spectator. A gossip columnist read it, put two and two together, and got five. He figured my Kiki was the Kiki of Roger Moore, as she, too, is Swedish, and ran the