What on earth are we to make of all the goings on in Corfu?
"You couldn't make it up" – unless you are a writer of fiction.
But there it is, splashed across the papers for a week and the story has still got legs, as journalists say.
Let's just recap on the cast. A very rich Russian who is described as an "oligarch", though I can't find the word in the 1993 edition of the BBC English Dictionary.
A more up-to-date check on Wikipedia tells us that "business oligarch" is a term which "came into wide circulation after the collapse of the Soviet Union, in reference to a small group of individuals who acquired tremendous wealth [and] significant political influence."
The Guardian describes Oleg Deripaski as an "aluminium magnate". Either way it seem he owns billions and they are in a bigger currency than roubles.
And he owns a "yacht" which turns out not to have sails but to be a scaled down model of a cruise liner, but more luxurious.
Joining him were Jacob de Rothschild, the youngest son of the 4th Baron Rothschild and a scion of a banking family from the last century, when such people were just called very rich.
And then our own Peter Mandelson who – in the very week the story has blossomed – has set about charming the House of Lords in his new role as Trade Minister.
And finally George Osborne, the man the Conservatives are promoting as their next Chancellor of the Exchequer.
And it seems it has all come out in the open because Mr Osborne split on Mr Mandelson, against the strict social rules of these very rich posh people, who then got his friend Mr Rothschild to split on Mr Osborne – and for his sins got the Press pack to start to unpick his own relationship with this Russian aluminium magnate while he was European trade Commissioner.
All I can really think is that they all deserve each other. But we don't.
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