Winston Churchill and the Madness of King Farouk I.Farouk I of Egypt was certainly one of those mad

Winston Churchill and the Madness of King Farouk I.Farouk I of Egypt was certainly one of those mad ruler types, comparable with Nero or King George III.  King of Egypt from 1936 to 1952, King Farouk had several bizarre eccentricities throughout his life.  He was of course your typical rich, spoiled, hedonistic monarch.  He was known to eat cavier for breakfast straight out of the can, drink 30 bottles of soda a day, sleep with numerous women, and owned a huge collection of fine clothes, jewelry, furniture, and priceless antiques.However the madness of King Farouk went well beyond your typical playboy excess.  During official state banquets he liked to start food fights.  Once after having a nightmare where he was attacked by lions, he went to the Cairo Zoo and shot all the lions in their enclosures.  He had a collection of 100 cars, all painted red. He then forbid his subjects from owning red cars, so that he could drive around Egypt like crazy without getting picked up by the police.  Yes King Farouk was his own special kind of crazy.When the famed British Prime Minister Winston Churchill visited Cairo in 1943, he would certainly learn the hard way of King Farouk’s nuttiness.  After the visit Churchill noticed that his pocket watch was missing. One of Farouk’s other eccentricities was kleptomania.  Despite being one of the richest men in the world, he loved to partake in petty theft.  He would often disguise himself and shoplift markets and stores.  When he visited others he often stole items from their homes.  He even hired a professional thief to teach him how to pick pockets.  Yes, Farouk of Egypt, the pickpocket king, had picked the pocket of the great Winston Churchill.While a monumental achievement in the annals of petty thievery, King Farouk would make his greatest score yet.  When his Brother in Law, the Shah of Iran died in 1944, his body was flown to Cairo for a second funeral.  During the funeral, King Farouk somehow managed to swipe the Shah’s ceremonial sword and medals right off of his corpse.Eventually the excesses of King Farouk caught up with him.  In 1952 he was forced to abdicate by his disgruntled subjects and ordered to live in exile.  In 1965 the morbidly obese former king collapsed and died after eating an excessively large, extravagant dinner, and lighting up a $100 cigar. -- source link

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