Kim Jong-il

Though basically no one outside North Korea knows or cares, on 16 February it will be the Dear Leader’s birthday, 69 according to DPRK records, 68 according to ex-Soviet.

Our man in Peking, with escort, at the DPRK reception (chud.com)

Ever resourceful, Flashmen managed to sneak an emissary into the cocktail party marking this event at one of the DPRK’s few overseas missions – their embassy in Beijing. While declining to wear the essential evening wear of a fez, our Man in Peking nevertheless attended in a white dinner jacket and dark wayfarers (to avoid detection). After some badinage around playing polo near the Great Wall, an interlocutor questioned the necessity of sunglasses at night in a Beijing winter. An eye condition from too much time spent in the Alps was the response.

The Guardian has an amusing quiz from a few years ago on this rather odd fellow (Kim Jong-il, not the Flashmen emissary), here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/quiz/questions/0,,2014129,00.html

Black Trouser Day

Charlie Wilson in his office with an Enfield rifle (photo reproduced in The Times, Marcy Nighswander/AP)

All Flashmen are deeply saddened to learn of the death of Charlie Wilson. Immortalised in print by George Crile, and in a subsequent moving picture, Mr Wilson played a crucial role in ramping up American funding to the Afghan resistance to the Soviet invasion during the ’80s.

Mr Wilson’s association with the CIA, US Navy, recreational binge drinking and generally cavalier attitude to conforming to the moralistic norms of an American political career, seem to have jaundiced some commentators against him. Others see his funding for the mujahadeen as the catalyst for today’s more acutely global threats.

For Flashmen though, anyone who gets their shirts tailored with epaulettes, enjoys champagne and travels regularly to the aid of those in Central and Southern Asia’s more idiosyncratically dangerous regions, deserves a salute.

According to the Los Angeles Times, Mr Wilson will be buried with full military honours at Arlington on 23 February.