‘A match between me and Britney Spears would be a fine business idea. A sort of Beauty and the Beast contest!” said Bobby Fischer.
Before we close the books on 2012, it’s worth mentioning one remarkable book, “Bobby Fischer Comes Home,” by Grandmaster Helgi Olafsson.
It details Fischer’s pathetic final three years in Iceland, after he was freed from Japanese detention in a visa dispute in 2005.
Fischer was bored much of the time and looking for another adventure, so he raised the Spears idea after reading that she played with Justin Timberlake.
Nothing came of it. But Fischer spent two hours talking about music, chess and other matters with Patti Smith in August 2005, when the punk poet/singer was in Reykjavik on a European tour and asked to meet the reclusive American.
Olafsson arranged a meeting for him with Vishy Anand when the Indian GM visited Iceland in 2006. Fischer tried to convince Anand that a 1984 world championship draw played by Garry Kasparov and Anatoly Karpov was pre-arranged, but Anand refuted his analysis.
Olafsson finally broke away from his paranoid friend when he couldn’t arrange matches with Anand or Kasparov — and Fischer demanded $10,000 “sincere money” from him “to prove which side you are on.”