Frappuccinos With an Oligarch

I find out what makes...these people tick!

In early February, she was the only one of the seven oligarchs I reached out to in order to solicit their views on the accelerating wealth gap.

She asked me not to reveal her identity, for fear that other oligarchs might cease to invite her to their parties, at which they spend more on the catering and hiring Bon Jovi to sing a few songs, than you and all your ancestors combined have earned since the dawn of time. But my guess is you’ll be able to figure out who she is if I tell you she started out with a tattoo removal clinic in a strip mall in Thousand Oaks, California, and then moved, successively, into parking lots, online porn, and pharmaceuticals, and is now estimated to be worth around $80 billion.

Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan’s megayacht Ostentatia

She wanted to meet at the compound she is having built near Oamaru, on New Zealand’s South Island, in anticipation of the rest of the world ceasing to be able to sustain human life, and of flooding causing the rich countries of the Global North to be overrun by desperate refugees from the Global South. Wishing to avoid anything resembling impropriety, I suggested as an alternative the Starbucks across the river from me in Teddington.

I and her heavily armed security team cleared the place, and she and I and her entourage — three former Men’s Fitness coverboi personal assistants, her hair and makeup person, two masseurs, her personal chef and his four-person kitchen “brigade”, three attorneys, her taster, her psychotherapist, an accountant, a Tarot card reader, and a partridge in a pear tree, though of course I’m only kidding about him, her, or it — made ourselves comfortable. I fired up the recording app on my Google Pixel 6a.

A LEGEND IN HIS OWN MINEFIELD

Forbes, Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal agree that your net worth will exceed $100 billion by the end of 2025. You own homes in New Zealand, the Hamptons, Manhattan, Beverly Hills, London, Paris, Nice, and Rio de Janeiro. You own a fleet of Boeing 757s, and an archipelago in the Caribbean. You are reportedly bidding on Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan’s megayacht Ostentatia. All this while around 14 million American children live in "food insecurity”, and God knows how many millions of children around the world aren’t just food-insecure, but downright hungry, or even dying of malnutrition. How do you sleep at night?

OLIGARCH

Oh, please! Soundly. I worked hard for what I have. At the time I started my first tattoo removal clinic, everyone thought I’d lose my blouse. For the first six months, it appeared they were right. I wouldn’t wish the uncertainty of those months on anyone! Whole Foods? Forget about it! I shopped at Trader Joe’s. And maybe you’d like to bear in mind that there are now 121 people on my payroll, not just those with me today, but gardeners and housekeepers and what-have-you at all my different residences. And I’m told there are several Maoris helping to build my compound in New Zealand. I’m doing my share.

And those 121 people, including several Maoris, aren’t the only people I’m keeping from poverty, mind you. Do you have any idea how expensive politicians are these days? You wouldn’t believe it if I told you.

A LEGEND IN HIS OWN MINEFIELD

You bribe politicians?

OLIGARCH (rolling her eyes)

No, hotshot, my three senators and nine representatives all vote to make me and Jeff and Zucky and the Google Twins richer at the expense of the vast majority of their constituents out of the goodness of their hearts.

I’m being sarcastic, Brighteyes. And the Supreme Court justices! Talk about greed!

A LEGEND IN HIS OWN MINEFIELD

You bribe Supreme Court justices?

OLIGARCH (coyly)

Oops. Did I admit that?

A LEGEND IN HIS OWN MINEFIELD

I imagine you’re pretty enthusiastic about Donald Trump?

OLIGARCH

Donald Trump, the stupid, incompetent, infantile, delusional, corrupt, hateful, petulant, vulgar, treacherous, soulless fascist and fecal stain on American history whose occupancy of the Oval Office only one whose knuckles become seriously abraded after walking more than a few hundred feet would celebrate? Well, let’s say I have my serious misgivings.

A LEGEND IN HIS OWN MINEFIELD

…while enjoying the prospect of another gigantic tax break for the obscenely rich?

OLIGARCH (winking)

There’s a little bit of good in everyone.

A LEGEND IN HIS OWN MINEFIELD

What I don’t get is why, when you’ve got nearly $100 billion, you feel you need even more.

OLIGARCH

It hasn’t been the money for years, Sunny Jim. It’s the score.

A LEGEND IN HIS OWN MINEFIELD

The…score.

OLIGARCH

This is our tennis. Every one of us wants to be No. 1 — that is, to have a more gigantic fortune than everyone else’s. With Tesla going to hell, one of us is going to knock Elon off his perch. Me and Bezos and Zucky, Warren Buffett and Larry Ellison and the Googlers, we all want to be that person. Well, maybe not Warren. But he’s what, around 112 now and short a marble or two.

Sorry, dear. Must get into Central London to close a deal on Harrods. If it goes through, I’m going to insist that the apostrophe be added.

At her signal, her whole entourage leapt to its feet, and went out to the armada of Rolls-Royce Cullinans that had lined up on Teddington High Street. It fell to me to pay the £148 tab her entourage had run up, In fairness, though, her accountant did transfer $11 million into my current account within 24 hours.