One of the walks I particularly enjoyed in Paris took me along the Left Bank, starting say at the Palais de Justice and threading along the riverside until it was time to cross to the Tuileries.
There were plenty of opportunities to take this stroll. On three occasions, I took it while attempting to keep track of the protracted legal saga of Sir Elton John and the fake statues of Greek Gods he bought on impulse after an agreeable Sunday lunch with his pal Gianni Versace almost exactly 11 years ago (and one year before the Italian fashion chief was murdered in Miami).
Wheels of justice can turn slowly in France. Each time I attended the court, I was told by helpful staff that the case had been adjourned. The judge himself stopped once to explain the delays to me (expert evidence had to be verified) and even promised to ring me with the eventual judgment dates. I missed a couple of listed hearings because of other commitments, only to be reassured that they, too, had been postponed.
At last yesterday, sadly without that call ever coming (the thing dragged on so long, my circumstances - shall we say - altered and we lost touch), the five-page document confirming Sir Elton's victory streamed from an acquaintance's fax machine.
This was great news for Sir Elton - plain monsieur in French eyes, of course, and appropriately pictured here in fake Mme Tussauds form - and for Simon Yates, the British expert whose original assessment of the works as bogus is belatedly vindicated. "Brilliant," the normally calm and collected Simon exclaimed when I rang to break the news.
More whimsically, I rather liked the mélange of currencies used during the proceedings:
* $US360,000 (a figure I had previously seen expressed in French francs) as the purchase price of the four pieces, supposedly signed by the 18th century Italian sculptor Luigi Grossi but in fact made in a Chinese workshop within the last few decades
* 38,000 euros damages for résistance abusive
* 78,020.93 euros in costs.
All of this - plus what I imagine will be whacking interest on the purchase price though the amount has yet to be calculated - was awarded to the singer against an Parisian art and antique dealer, Jean Renoncourt, whose shop on the Quai Malaquais lies on the route of that old walk of mine.
Hercules dwarfed by Hebe in one of the fakes
The nearest I have ever got to attending an Elton John concert was when he was playing at the Wembley Arena and four of us hired a taxi. The women were dropped off for the show, the men took refuge in the pub.
That does not mean I dislike his music, or rather all of his music. I just find a little of it goes a long way. And I have never really forgiven him - or I suppose, to be fair, his otherwise excellent lyricist Bernie Taupin - for some of the sloppiest lines in pop history:
Even when you died/The press still hounded you/All the papers had to say/Was that Marilyn was found in the nude
Good tub-thumping, down-with-the-press stuff? Well, not if read literally. It means that the only aspect of Marilyn Monroe's death reported by the papers was the discovery of her body naked; that would have taken up no more than a paragraph in each rag, hardly a degree of coverage that amounts to "hounding".
The rogue word is "was". Taupin should have omitted it and written "All the papers had to say that Marilyn was found in the nude" (and then, taking account of Philip H's point in the comments below, worked out how to make it scan).
Small, pedantic point. But my exclusive knowledge (exclusive in journalistic terms since I was the only reporter in France, it seems, who kept tabs on a self-evidently interesting case) of all the rigour with which Sir Elton pursued old Renoncourt gives me the excuse I need to air my semantic little grievance.
But getting back to his case, he was of course fully justified in hammering away, from the moment in 2001 that his insurance re-valuation (in which Simon was heavily involved) found the statues to be bogus, until justice was done.
The affable Maitre Bernard Duminy, Sir Elton's lawyer, declares himself "fully satisfied" with the outcome, as well he should since it was entirely in keeping with what the singer had demanded.
What this will mean for the dealer, I have no idea. He apparently bought the pieces in Venice, so may or may not have some sort of claim against the supplier there. He can appeal, but that would seem a hopeless as well as costly route.
But I was taken with one small detail of the judgment. Having won his case, Sir Elton now has a duty to return the four statues of - using the French versions - Hercule et Hebée, Eros et Psyché, Diane et Actéon, Eurydie et Hermès.
But m'learned friends at the Cour d'Appel de Paris ordered that Renoncourt should pay every centime, in advance, of the cost of getting them from Elton Towers in Old Windsor back to where they were, until July 9 1996, on the Left Bank. And given that they are now established as cheap fakes, that may not be worth his while.
Simon Yates, Art Detective exemplaire, at his London studio with an unrelated objet d'art
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