only ever been 27,000 and 75 per cent of them are still on the road. They must have been special from the start. Despite being the £79,995 entry-level model, the Vantage soon shows you why. ‘Feel’ in a car is hard to define but there’s no doubt that driving this one would bring a smile to the most car-weary face. It’s a muscular beast, good-looking, with a refined pugnacity in its graceful but strong lines. The VH (vertical/horizontal) architecture of the chemically bonded, extruded aluminium underpinnings is as flexible in application as it is rigid in performance. It is used across the new Aston range (seven variants in two and a half years), including the DBR9 racing car. The Vantage, however, is in some ways a very traditional sports car: two-seater, conventional manual gearbox (six-speed), a fairly simple dash, front engine, rear drive with the 4.3-litre chain-driven V8 set low behind the axle and the gearbox to the rear of the seats to give a 49–51 per cent frontrear weight distribution. The turn-in from the steering is so direct it feels like a midengined car; brakes, clutch and gearchange are on the masculine side. Very satisfying if that’s what you like. Some cars invite you to drive them, some simply wait to be driven, this one challenges you to drive it. It wants to be used hard, with the full 302lb.ft of torque not available until 5,000rpm and the maximum 380bhp at 7,000rpm. Yet it’s also a tolerant car, permitting you to go from virtually standstill to 100mph in third. Almost a shopping or commuting car. But not really. The head-turning it provokes, the V8 yowl above 4,000rpm, the eagerness, the handling and the sheer, grinning pleasure it brings to motoring make it an occasion each time you open those solid, upward-swinging swan’s-wing doors. And once inside with the cosseting leather seats, aluminium knobs, glass starter button and the all-round integrity of the fittings, you begin to see and feel what’s special about Astons. Those of the motoring press who tested this car on tracks where you can legally push it to its 175mph limit reckon that, at the outer edge of performance, it can’t quite match the Porsche 911. But none of them minded that because they all loved the car, they all said there’s nothing else like it. There probably isn’t. And so, second time round and bereft of baronesses, did it live up to those memorable first impressions in the Tuscan hills? Emphatically yes, with only one minor reservation: the speedo and rev dials are attractive but still slightly hard to interrogate at a glance, though the former is supplemented by a digital display that catches the eye more easily. I’m not quite sure what needs to be done — something subtle and slight, just enough to set them off a little more. That said, you don’t want too much to distract your eye from the road when you’re behind this particular wheel.

THE SPECTATOR13 May 2006 56

High life Double standards Taki

New York

After his second smash-up in three weeks, Patrick Kennedy was escorted home by obliging cops and to hell with any test for booze or drugs. Tests are for the lower orders, not Kennedys. Chappaquidding one’s way out of trouble is in the Kennedy tradition. A smash-up is followed by a cover-up, then by denial of responsibility due to circumstances beyond their control, all neatly presented in a press conference for genuflecting hacks, and then on to rehab. Congressman Kennedy says that he doesn’t remember anything about the crash. He would, wouldn’t he? He was speeding, driving in the wrong lane and, after smashing into a barrier, was unsteady on his feet, his speech slurred and his eyes red and watery. Witnesses at a local bar said he had been drinking. Kennedy insists he had not. The cops took his word. A nice touch, that. Thirty-two years ago, his father Senator Ted and his cousin Joe, also a Congressman, flew into Athens as guests of the newly elected democratic government following seven years of military rule. Ted and Joe rang me up for dinner, and asked my then American girlfriend to bring along a couple of her friends. She did, and we lived to regret it. After Joe and I had left for a nightclub, Teddy got horribly drunk, undressed himself and started to break poppers. The girl, Anita Clifford, panicked and ran all the way to my house, where she proceeded to ring her father in Connecticut. A prominent attorney, he flew over the next day to confront the senator but Teddy and Joe had flown out that day to visit. . .the Pope — on Gianni Agnelli’s private jet, to boot. I was so angry

‘’Iceberg! And it’s melting...’

that I put the story on the UPI wire, but the Athens bureau chief at the time, John Rigos, a very close friend of mine, refused to send it. ‘Why make enemies of such powerful people?’ This was 1974, only five years after Chappaquiddick. Three years later, when I started this column in The Spectator , the story saw the light of day. A few American papers picked it up, but it was mostly ignored, although never denied by Kennedy or his office. Mind you, there was no crime committed against Anita. It was her word against his, as far as the drugs and the shedding of clothes were concerned. Unlike five years earlier, no one died. What bothers me about the latest Kennedy mess is the double standard. Unnamed superiors forbade the cops from giving Kennedy a sobriety test. Now, of course, it’s too late, and we’ll never know whether it was booze, cocaine, pot, crystal meth, you name it. Personally, I don’t believe a word any Kennedy says. Patrick Kennedy is known as the dumbest member of Congress, which is quite a feat. He was in rehab only last Christmas, assaulted an airport guard a couple of years ago after he tried to squeeze an oversize piece of luggage through the metal detector (he settled the suit for 25,000 greenbacks), and soon after that caused $28,000 worth of damage to a rented yacht in Martha’s Vineyard. The coast guard was called in to escort a female off the rented boat after a battle royal. Kennedy’s insurance coughed up. The Kennedy saga is a sad one. Two brothers assassinated, another killed flying a dangerous mission in the closing days of the second world war, a sister also killed in a flying accident, one Kennedy dead via an overdose, another killed while skiing — no wonder the media and even the fuzz cut them some slack. Not to mention the death of John Kennedy Jr and his wife and sister-in-law. I used to be quite friendly with Pat Lawford and Jean Smith, but we eventually fell out. The Kennedys are like gangsters of old. One is either totally loyal to them, or one gets the chop. After I began to protest at the horrendous manners exhibited by clan members like Robert Kennedy Jr and his cousin William Smith, Steve Smith (no longer with us) made a veiled threat. I told him to shove it, and it was the end of a not-so-beautiful friendship. Back in those days, everyone was taking drugs in public places, and the Kennedys would suddenly appear and grab other people’s stashes. In 1982, there was an ugly incident at Xenon, the Bagel nightclub, in which Matthew Kennedy and I were involved. Much too sordid to mention in the elegant pages of the Speccie . I suppose people in power always take advantage, and, as I said, the Kennedys have certainly paid a very heavy price. But just as Prescott refuses to resign over getting caught out — just think of Lambton and Jellicoe — so do the Kennedys believe
that the world owes them. Patrick Kennedy has no business being in Congress, just as Ted Kennedy had no business running for the presidency after having left a young woman to die in a car while he covered his tracks. Once upon a time none of these people could have remained in politics, but then, once upon a time, Two Jags would have been the laughing stock of his local, not a Don Giovanni. Shame on you, Tracey Temple.

Low life Just the ticket Jeremy Clarke

I’ve got my ticket. I can’t quite believe how I managed it — I keep studying it under a magnifying glass and holding it up to the light to make sure it’s real — but I’ve got one. And like a lover who has to introduce the subject of the loved one into every conversation, I tell people who aren’t remotely interested in Saturday’s FA Cup Final all about it. It’s a kind of revenge. Village life consists mainly of people pinning you up against a dry-stone wall and telling you things that neither concern nor interest you. Have you ever driven through a rural area and remarked how village after village appears to be deserted? Friends, they aren’t deserted: we’re all hiding from the village bores. A branch of Alpha, the nationwide evangelical Christian outreach programme, meets at our house once a month. The organisers, a mixture of church ladies and chapel women, are all what they would call ‘on fire for Jesus’. I have no problem with this. I used to fitfully smoulder for him a bit myself, and then I went out. But what irritates is the assumption, if I should encounter any of them in the kitchen, that I’m still alight myself. Last week I listened patiently to a very nice Christian lady relating a breathless tale about a recent Alpha convert, to whom God had spoken directly. God had told him to go to west Africa, of all places, which he did, and since his arrival he’s been doing ‘great things’, apparently, with ‘the orphans’. Frankly, the only thing I’ve been interested in this week is whether Dean Ashton is going to be fit to play. I’ve been dwelling on it morning, noon and night. But I listened politely, as I always do. But I have grown tired, so very tired, lately, of splashing about in the shallows of other people’s preoccupations. I’ve had enough. If you are seen as a good listener, people just don’t stop. When I worked as a

cleaner in a mental hospital, and word got round that I was a good listener, patients literally queued up in an orderly fashion. Well, I’m a listener no longer. From now on I’m going to talk instead of listen. And this Alpha woman was going to be the first to find out. I clenched my fists, shook them at her in triumph and said, ‘I’ve got my ticket!’ She looked at me. I’ve got my ticket? Was this perhaps a new evangelical Christian catchphrase, current among the young people; a modern equivalent, perhaps, of ‘Bound for Glory!’ Was I telling her I’d made a recommitment? She backed her instinct. ‘Why, Jeremy, that is marvellous news!’ she beamed. ‘Praise the Lord!’ I removed my Cup Final ticket from my wallet and proudly showed it to her. I didn’t let her touch it. I just held it under her nose and let her look and marvel. ‘It’s a miracle,’ I said, humbly. Then I told her about how West Ham’s ticket allocation for the match at the Millennium Stadium, Cardiff (capacity 75,000), was a paltry 23,000. (West Ham could sell three times that amount.) And I told her how the club, in tune for once with the sentiment of its supporters, had put out a statement last week saying how‘very disappointed’ it was to have received so few. On Merseyside they must feel the same way: a Royal Mail delivery van was robbed last week and a consignment of Cup Final tickets was

stolen. Worth doing, I told her, when Cup Final tickets are fetching £1,000 a pair on the black market. I put the final in perspective for her. With so few tickets among the bumper crowd, it’s going to be like the miracle of the three loaves and the five fishes in a way. It’s 25 years since we last reached the FA Cup Final. Cardiff town centre on Saturday morning will be one gigantic claret-and-blue knees-up. Ticket or no ticket, everyone’s going. I know of one 50strong coach party going down from Barking, of whom only six people have tickets. And I know of two women, no tickets, don’t even like football, going just for the sex. I detected that she was losing interest in my shallow preoccupations. But I had a lot of politely listening to other people’s banalities to avenge. My main worry, I went on, was getting carried away and drinking too much, like I did a fortnight ago at the semi-final. It wasn’t until I read the match reports in the papers the next day that it all started coming back to me. She started to look desperate. ‘I’d better carry these tea things in,’ she said. (She was protecting herself with a tray of cups and saucers.) The vicar, one part diffidence, one part arrogance, one part psychosis, came in. She was off the hook. ‘Vicar! I’ve got my ticket!’ I said, reaching for my wallet.

clever dick byCrispin Whittell

An explosively funny new comedy about mistaken identity, espionage and the Manhattan Project

WithJenny Gleave, Jennifer Higham, Corey Johnson, Jamie King &Adrian Rawlins

18 May to17 June

www.hampsteadtheatre.com 020 7722 9301

Swiss Cottage

THE SPECTATOR13 May 2006 57