One day, lunching at the Elysée, Alexis de Redé found himself sitting next to the wife of the then Mayor of Paris, Mme Tibéri. She asked him what he did in life. Nothing, he replied. Impossible, she said, there isn't a soul who does nothing. 'On the contrary, I'm always very busy,' Alexis assured her. 'One never has enough time in which to do nothing.'

Of course, he was joking. As the late Baron recounts in this bizarre book, he worked very hard all his life – first of all as a highly paid grand horizontal, living in a precarious ménage à trois, often on board their luxurious yacht, with the wealthy Chilean Arturo Lopez