Message from beyond the grave

To announce the show to the press, I wore this suit of watches. It looks expensive, but I got it on tick…

We met another old friend in Munich — Christine Kaufman, the former actress and ex-wife of Tony Curtis who now runs a highly successful cosmetics business. Christine looks fantastic. Tony should have had the sense to stay married to her. 

As Wimbledon got underway, my friend John Murray, who motivates leading tennis stars using positive thinking techniques, invited Hanna and me to join him for strawberries and cream. John is credited with helping Vince Spadea to end a 21-match losing streak… and as it’s Vince himself who makes that claim, I believe the publicity!

Vince is quite a guy — confident, fired up, fully focused and an intensely positive thinker. Shaking hands with him is like getting a jolt of high-voltage energy. We talked about his plans for the future: when he retires from pro tennis in a few years time, Vince wants to go into business.

It’s certainly hard to imagine him lounging beside a pool. I advised him to consider a line of sports clothing: to succeed in business it’s vital to have a product that you understand and believe in. And for one of the most stylish dressers at Wimbledon, that should be easy! 

In every war around the world at any time in history, it is the children who are the truly innocent victims. They have no knowledge of politics, but they are the future of every country on earth — and our most precious resource.

During the campaign last year to get the Israeli branch of the Red Cross accepted into the international community, I was haunted by the thought of Arab children who could not get the medical aid they needed — doctors were ready to treat them at Israeli hospitals, but there was no way to get these youngsters out of the occupied territories and through the checkpoints.

Thanks to the committed teamwork of the Red Cross negotiators, there’s one problem less in the Middle East. Palestinian children can now reach hospitals safely, in Red Crescent and Red Crystal ambulances. It’s a small victory for sanity in a mad world, and I’m proud to have played my part.  

I met some of those children, and their Israeli friends, with Camp Simcha, a charity which organises amazing holidays for them in Britain and other countries. My friend David Goodman collected me by helicopter to give the children a show — he spent half the day whizzing thrilled youngsters through the sky, and the other half speeding them down country lanes in his three Ferraris.

David, of course, was the biggest kid of them all!