Famous games of dice: a new history. Part 5 in a series.
There is no grander exposition of late Western capitalist decadence than the annual Formula One world circus, with it’s touring show of obscenely rich playboys racing brightly coloured toys around circuits of aspirational cities – the cars, the playboys and the tracks covered in the logotype of monstrous corporations and all of it draped in the vulgar colours of gold, diamond, champagne, and tall skinny women. When they play dice, they play for yachts, for share issues and for flesh. All the riches in the world must surely corrupt, and the vices of the human soul are left to run riot in places where the average man cannot see, will never know, and can only imagine in his nightmares. What happens behind closed doors where law does not exist and money can buy anything? Dice made from human bones, nazi gold, blood diamonds and the pelts of extinct animals. Games where trafficked slaves are bet against crashing currencies. Orgiastic fancy dress parties themed on the Third Reich. Strip Dice.
Strip Dice: Sixteen East European dancers fresh out of a container from Baltimore, sixteen men in Schutzstaffel black SS uniform formal wear including an illegitimately-fathered prince of a European dynasty, a smattering of the American industrialist aristocracy, an Israeli media mogul, the owner of a down-at-heel English football club, the inevitable tobacco lobbyists, arms dealers, sons of tyrants and of course a couple of race team owners. Six dice, origin dubious. Forty-eight bottles of Krug Clos Du Mesnil 95, and a near unlimited supply of finest Colombian cocaine provided by the cartel who’s F1 attaché is present and taking part as Sanitätsstaffel - a member of the SS Medical Corps. Three comedians with material in very poor taste, a BBC Radio One DJ with a bizarre gangster-style dialect, a wrangler for the dancers, private rooms for the post-dice retirement and distribution of ‘prizes’. One silver-plated pistol loaded with six blanks. A complementary gold-plated F1 racing car 1:48 scale, for all guests except the dancers. No cameras. No mobile phones. No line to the outside world. Do Not Disturb, for sixteen hours.
