Keir Starmer and Albania

Apologize for one of my fallow periods, just when we most need optimism, but happy to loan space to my landlord Richard Heller's take on Albania's snub to Keir Starmer.

SIXTY HORSES WEDGED IN A CHIMNEY… They said it could never happen. Well, actually it has not happened. My mentor Beachcomber’s challenge remains, to find an event to fit this sensational headline.

ALBANIA SNUBS BRITISH PRIME MINISTER. They said it could never happen, but now my ex (hold down repeat key, subs) friend Keir Starmer has made it so. I think of all those years before it even became independent when Albania was an exotic joke to British readers (see under Byron, Lord.)

I think of all those Albanian rulers or would-be rulers who will now be snickering in their graves. Its first independent sovereign, the German princeling Wilhelm of Wied. The French mocked him as Prince of Vide (naff all). He did his best to fit in with his new subjects. He even changed his name to Skanderbeg the Second. All to Noah Vail. He stayed for a few months in 1914, never took to the Albanian national sport of armed vendettas, and scuttled back to Wied.

After the war the Albanians wanted an English icon as monarch and offered the vacant throne to C B Fry, the great cricketer (although this may have been an organized prank by his chum Ranji). Fry took it seriously but turned down the offer because he could not afford the £10,000 a year they asked him to pay as a subsidy. (By gum, I wonder how much Dotard Trump would pay for the thrones of England and Canada and all the others and headship of the Commonwealth? We’ll never know because he has not got any real money of his own and Putin cannot afford to advance him any more “on tick” after bailing out his business empire.)

Then we had the native Albanian chainsmoking monarch, King Zog. He was always good copy, especially when he escaped one of his sixty assassination attempts (I’m pretty certain a world record, wake up the Guinness book people!) or searched for a bride to give him an heir, finally lighting on the beautiful (she was, although Royal brides always were so in the 1930s) Hungarian Countess Geraldine Apponyi de Nagy-Appony. Then fleeing with her from the Italian invaders with his two-day old son and the remains of the Albanian Treasury.

Then, postwar, Albania’s greatest gift to mocking copywriters, Enver Hoxha. Who could forget him? For ever, Enver, even before I first circulated his immortal New Year’s Day promise to the Albanian people. Forget his vicious tyranny, long before the invention of the cliché machine, inspiration for so many easy media stories … Mad Marxist isolation … Land in a time-warp… shaving off rare visitors’ beards… pillboxes on every beach to repel invasion of the workers’ paradise… Norman Wisdom films taken as social realism… the sweeping searchlight against escaping swimmers which blighted evening meals on the waterfront in Corfu… remember all that?…

Then the first post-Communist ruler, Sali Berisha, whom I called a beacon to the Balkans. He did rather well until virtually the whole country’s savings disappeared in a Ponzi scheme. He is not snickering in his grave because he is still with us and seeking a return to power. But he is certainly entitled to a live snicker after being patronized by Douglas Hurd, in spite of the MCC tie which I gave him to wear for their meeting in memory of C B Fry…

The present snickering ruler of Albania is a Mr Rama. I wonder if he is related to Harry Rama, who seems to be co-leader of that orange chanting cult in London’s Oxford Street?

Mr Rama was a big chum of Tony Blair. I think he gave him some free holidays, but it is so hard to keep track of that set of hosts. He was certainly advised by Blair’s mysteriously-funded Institute on how to be a better ruler of Albania. It would be ironic indeed if Tony Blair taught Mr Rama how best to snub Keir Starmer. Subs, hold down HML button (Hollow Mirthless Laugh) as long as you can bear.

Very Bad Taste Warning. If you are upset by VBT, please look away now. Albania is now unavailable as a “hub” country for Keir Starmer’s “strangers”, and he himself ruled out Rwanda, even though they sponsor his favourite football team, Arsenal. I wonder if Keir Starmer has thought of asking Greenland to become a “hub” destination for the migrants he does not want? It’s got lots of space in a “hostile environment” and in time, his good buddy Dotard Trump might get to handle the problem in his place.

My old friend (105!) Her Serene Highness Princess Marianne zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn has died. She was known as Mammarazza for her snatched snapshots of all her celebrity chums over so many years. I remember she got frightfully waxy with Andy Warhol when he got in the way of her attempt on me. The Wittgenstein in her handle always intrigued me but when I finally got the chance to ask her if she had any connexion with Ludwig she replied testily “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” But then she defused the tension with a characteristic wink and added “Just Sayn”.

My goodness, how we roared!