Prince Andrew and a confusion of dukes at the Spectator

Though I hardly ever read The Spectator these days, I am always happy to scan its weekly emails informing me of what I'm missing. This week, the mag's editor Fraser Nelson - who aspires deludedly to best Madame Arcati's prophetic skills, given his love of making predictions - is a-huffin' and a-puffin' about what he calls Andrewgate: the appalling demolition of Prince Andrew at the hands of anti-royalist knockers, 'unnamed advisers' and other plotters.

I may be missing something here but midway through his advert he writes: 'For my part, I look into the politics behind Andrewgate. Cameron, I understand, was shocked to see how quickly these unnamed advisers laid into the Duke of Edinburgh... '

Does he perhaps mean the Duke of York aka Prince Andrew? Juicily, Nelson adds, 'And Taki has some new gossip about the duke's American host, Jeffrey Epstein.' Since I have no intention of reading Mr Nelson's doubtless invaluable insights into the 'deeper, darker forces' behind the royal scandal, nor Taki's, I shall never know which duke he was thinking of. I fear it matters little.

'My Low Life encounter with High Life Taki'

A noted Arcatiste writes ...

I've only met Taki once and it wasn't a pleasant experience. I had been invited to the launch of his book, High Life, Low Life, by the publisher Jay Landesman (father of Cosmo), an old friend of mine. Taki marched up to me when I was perusing a copy and snatched it out of my hand and demanded to know who invited me. I think he recognised a Low Life when he saw one - which I was happy to be if he was the other! Veritas.

Taki's Magazine: Despair at Amsterdam's pink ice rinks

The rightwing, 70-something Greek rich boy Taki Theodoracopoulos, whose prejudices are freely displayed in The Spectator each week, has his own online publication, Taki's Magazine. A book advert on the site for Patrick Buchanan's Churchill, Hitler and the Unnecessary War is a clue to the ambient political hue.

Just before Christmas, Flemish journalist Paul Belien wrote a wonderfully unreconstructed piece for Taki on Amsterdam and the "homosexual parody of Christmas" that had descended on the city. The evangelist cock-cunter despaired that the Pink Christmas Festival - with its pink ice rinks and "gay X-mas open-air market” - would become an annual event, a vile slur on the cockless/cunt story of Jeezus.

He feared Amsterdam was turning into the "world’s showpiece of depravity" before blaming Muslim youths (and not Christian) for increasing attacks on gays - if true, we can only hope they're not heartened by Taki's Magazine.

Belien raged at "secularist fundamentalists" who have turned Christmas into "a mockery with two Josephs (or two Marys) amidst pink Christmas trees ... It is time for all men of goodwill to raise their banners and fight: for the family and the right of child (sic) to live and to be raised—like Jesus—by a father and a mother, instead of two fathers or two mothers; for green Christmas trees; for words and concepts like Christmas, bishop, chapel, abbey, monarch and empire; in short, for God, sanity and tradition. "

As I recall, Jesus had two fathers: one in the sky, the other adoptive; Jesus was a feared symbol against empire and priests, and he expressed little interest in royalty. And the call to "fight" sounds suspiciously un-Christian to me. I think Mr Belien and his editor need to have a rethink. Click here to read Belien's piece.