Most people in the Tory party think they know all they want to about Peter Tatchell, the campaigner for Outrage, the action group for homosexuals. But he has one secret that may, I imagine, cause certain MPs to seethe with fury: Tatchell has been accepted into the Army.
Not now, of course (even though, as announced yesterday, an independent commission is looking into lifting the ban on homosexuals), but in the late Seventies. While working as an undercover journalist, he applied for, and was offered, an Officer’s Commission in the Royal Artillery. As a result of his brief but impressive training stint, he was offered a place at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst. He declined, to the evident disappointment of the college’s powers-that-be; they wrote him a letter expressing their “great regret” that he was not taking up his place.
“I reveal the news,” Tatchell told me, “in my new book, We Don’t Want to March Straight.
Talking of which, this forthcoming book (published 13 July) is raising eyebrows in the publishing world on account of the title’s remarkable similarity to Ed Hall’s new publication, We Can’t Even March Straight (published 4 May), on the same theme. According to Hall, the publisher Cassell was originally in negotiation for his book, but did not offer him enough money, so he went to Vintage. Whereupon Cassell commissioned Tatchell to write a critique of Hall’s work. Cassell, of course, denies this. And Vintage is shrugging it off; a spokeswoman said “Look at Tatchell’s title; it’s completely different. And ours is a serious work.” All very strange.
Still on military matters, on the eve of John Major’s shock announcement that he would be standing down as Tory leader, a body of British war veterans visited the Prime Minister at Downing Street to ask if they might have his backing in their pursuit of reparations from the Japanese for war crimes perpetrated in the Second World War – their court case in Tokyo begins on 27 July. In retrospect, one might have expected Major to be less than attentive. But far from it – he extended their allotted time with him from a quarter of an hour to 35 minutes. “Actually,” says a proud Japanese Labour Camp Survivors Association secretary, Arthur Titherington, “he kept both the President of the Board of Trade and John Gummer waiting outside.”
The burning question remains: who wrote Liz Hurley’s “I am alone” speech? Her publicists, Phil Symes, swear blind that she did it herself – and I am inclined to agree. When I phoned the agency last week to inquire after her welfare, I got the impression that perhaps it was not focused wholly on poor Miss Hurley’s predicament. A spokesman said: “Well, there’s nobody here at the moment. We’re incredibly busy. You see, Claudia Schiffer is in town.”
A year ago, the America’s Cup-yachtsman-turned-millionaire-entrepreneur Peter de Savary swore to me that he would never forget me since he thought, erroneously, that my name was Figgy. This, I should explain, happens also to be the name of his dog – “every morning when Figgy jumps on my bed to wake me, I shall think of you,” he had promised. Imagine my dismay when I ran into de Savary again last week at a drinks party to launch his exclusive golfing country club in the Scottish highlands, and found he had completely forgotten me. Never mind. It was a pleasure, though, to meet his beautiful, unspoilt daughter, Lisa, who clearly carries something of her father’s adventurous spirit in her genes. She had just returned from accompanying her boyfriend, Tim, on horseback around South America. Wasn’t it a bit uncomfortable, not to say dangerous? “But of course,” replied the amiable Tim. “That is why we did it.”
Yet another tale of how legislation emanating from Brussels is frustrating the best of commercial intentions comes from one Mark Vallance, owner of Wild Country, Britain’s leading provider of what is perhaps best described as “outside gear”. This weekend’s Euro-decree stated that mountaineering ropes should be left in “a controlled, humidified environment” for about 24 hours as part of a safety test and that, in order to test ice-screws (used to anchor something into ice), one should “find water of a certain purity … take it to freezing point and then drive the ice-screw in and test the force”.
“What a palaver,” says Vallance, “created by men in grey suits. Frankly, you could use a steel box to test the ice-screws; and as for the rope – what, for goodness sake, is wrong with dunking it in a bucket of warm water?”
On Saturday afternoon, only hours after the erstwhile Tory chairman Lord Tebbit publicly announced his support for John Redwood, I encountered him walking his dog – a nice-looking, healthy-sized kind of collie (not one, I imagine, that jumps all over his lordhip’s bed) – in London’s Belgrave Square. I, along with 250 others in hats, morning dress and the full wedding regalia, was on my way to a reception in Knightsbridge. Tebbit, in a green jersey, was grinning broadly at this spectacle of wealth, materialism and elitism – until a young woman in our midst suddenly yelled out at him, “Vote for John Major!” Tebbit’s mouth trembled, but the grin stayed fixed – accompanied this time by a slow, wolfish licking of the lips …
Boob time, I’m afraid. Last week I chronicled, on the strength of onlookers’ reports, how the British art dealer Anthony d’Offay had caused bad feeling at the Venice Biennale by using the British Council’s phones to make his own deals. Well … poof! My onlookers have vanished into thin air, and Mr d’Offay is feeling rather hard done by since he did not use the British Council phones once – a fact corroborated by Andrea Rose, head of the British Council. A thousand grovels to Mr d’Offay … and a memo to those now-vanished gremlins who swore they saw him using the phone: you were half-right; he did use the phone all day – but it was a mobile and, incidentally, his own.
The long and the short of it: a snippet of gossip hot from Wimbledon. Andre Agassi cuts his own hair. Or at least he is putting out the word to that effect. “Agassi, who does your hair?” a voice in the crowd yelled at him last Thursday. He shrugged: “It’s just a pair of scissors …”
Nasa’s plans for a truly historic moment on 4 July are being held up by a technical hitch. The Russian cosmonauts due to land in Florida on board the US space shuttle, which will have linked up with the Russian space station Mir for only the second time, have forgotten their visas.
Gennady Strekalov and Vladimir Dezhurov are already in space and are not really in a feasible position to nip back home to get them. The American shuttle lifted off last week and so is similarly handicapped. But the American rules are clear; foreigners without visas are deemed illegal aliens.
Alors! The duo apprised Nasa of the situation from outer space a few weeks ago. “Yes, it made things a little complicated,” a spokeswoman said. “They could not have landed. But at last we’ve got it all sorted out. The State Department has organised some papers for them.” What a relief. Would the notion of them landing without documentation have caused the Americans to laugh at the absurdity of the situation, I inquired. “No,” came the answer, “it would have been, er, interesting.”
Last week, you may recall, I described my irritation when trying to pick up my going-away outfit from a top London designer, only to find the Arab socialite Mona Bauwens and a film crew in situ, cluttering up the changing-rooms and hogging the mirrors. Well, knock me down with a feather. Ms Bauwens has written a charming fax to apologise. “I am sorry if my crew and I ruined your shopping afternoon, particularly as it was for such a special occasion. Please accept our sincere apologies. Kindest regards
The most memorable evening of my week was, without doubt, a mind-bogglingly awful performance of Aida at London’s Holland Park open-air theatre. It came as something of a shock, as my party had paid good money – pounds 35 each – for our seats, and spied in the audience a collection of well-known opera buffs, including the former Chancellor, Norman Lamont, carefree before his career took its recent exciting turn. But things looked bad from the moment the pretend Egyptians stepped on stage. “My God,” whispered my neighbour, “they are actually wearing tea towels on their heads.” Worse was to come. For Act Two they changed into sheets. A group of dancers started waving fake snakes around. At least, I thought they were snakes until my fiance whispered: “What do you think the eels are meant to symbolise?” But the biggest mistake by far was for the organisers of Holland Park Theatre to include an introduction in the programme by the Today presenter James Naughtie. It begins: “It’s tempting to use as the test of a good Aida the way the triumphal march is done …” The triumphal March comes in Act Two, before the interval. Suffice it to say that we used Mr Naughtie’s test and did not stay for Act Three. Many others followed our example. Mr Lamont, however, was obliged to remain for the second half. He had no choice. His wife was on the committee.
Given the current political situation I wonder if the Panorama team is kicking itself for not making a documentary about John Redwood instead of its dire programme on Michael Portillo, which appeared last week. Apparently the production team had terrible difficulties getting anyone to talk at all, as Portillo had called everyone he had ever known and banned them from co-operating, so Panorama had to chase off to Spain for interminable shots of wrinkled Portillo relatives. At all the literati parties I attended in the ensuing days opinion was united on how appalling it had been: “Sensational, tabloid stuff,” said one man vociferously. “No decent interviews with anyone really close to him; speculative rubbish emanating from the mouths of those not remotely close to him. I really think a piece should be written about that programme’s demise. I would do it myself, only it’s more than my job’s worth,” said another. And what is your job? I inquired. “I work,” he said, grinning, “for the BBC.”
News of bad form inside the British Council’s pavilion at the Venice Biennale comes my way, I’m afraid. The guilty party is Britain’s leading dealer, Anthony d’Offay, who upset the staff of the British Council enormously by using their telephones all day to make deals. The Biennale, for the uninitiated, is a kind of Olympics for the art world. It is not meant to be commercial at all. Taxpayers pay for the country’s chosen artists to display their work. Private deals are not desired. D’Offay, apparently, takes no notice of such restrictions. “The British Council felt,” says one who witnessed the whole scenario, “like you would if, unannounced and unwanted, I moved in and took over your desk.” Fortunately, I am fairly certain that if Anthony d’Offay saw the untidy state of my desk, he would not dream of attempting such a rash move.
One who made Herculean efforts to watch his country’s rugby side battle brilliantly to victory on Saturday was none other than Bishop Desmond Tutu, whose Christian name will doubtlessly be bandied about among the British student population getting Finals results this week, since it has become a synonym for the “two-two” degree.
Desmond himself was far away from university life this weekend – he was in San Francisco, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the signing of the charter of the United Nations, which meant that in order to watch the World Cup final he had to get up at 5.30am and find a pub with cable television. “In the end,” he told San Francisco on the radio, “I went to an Irish pub called the Blarney Stone.” He went on to defend accusations that black people are, in effect, banned from rugby in South Africa. “No, no,” he said. “I myself played in junior high school … I was reserve for the third XV.”