Ye whose spirits have lifted with this year’s unusually early spell of warm weather (alas, now over) be warned: there are evil side- effects accompanying such natural bounty, and one has already reared its ugly head … or, to be more precise, its children. I refer to that terrorist of the wardrobe: the moth. There is an epidemic of the things, the like of which has not been seen for several decades. Hardware stores all over the country report huge rises in sales of moth-killer. One customer alone in Peter Jones, London, bought as many as 60 packets of moth-killer (mothballs went out years ago, dahling) in one fell swoop. “Although she probably didn’t need that much,” explains a salesperson, “this year people are complaining about plagues and things.”
Staff at the Natural History Museum in London are suffering, too. “They’re eating away in my house,” complained the receptionist when I rang to speak to the entomologist David Carver. “It is because of the warmer weather,” he agrees, “and also because of the high humidity caused by the extremely wet winter. There are two guilty parties – the house moth and the clothes moth – but of course it is their grubs that actually do the eating of fibres … particularly those that are unclean and have sweat patches.” Ahem.
All those who have ever idly queried the intelligence of the Liberal Democrats could have a point. For the forthcoming elections, candidates from all parties must fill in a nomination form on which there is the category “Description”. This is meant to be the slot for individuals to show which party they represent, but it is causing some confusion. Nobody to date has misread it so badly as one prospective Lib Dem lady, who wrote: “Blonde, five feet eight inches, and about 12 stone.” Luckily the powers-that-be at Lib Dem HQ returned it for a rewrite just in time.
Poor old Elizabeth Hurley! No matter how she tries – and she tells her friends she tries – she just can’t get people to take her seriously. Just imagine her thought processes before Sunday night’s Bafta awards: “What to wear? It ought to be glamorous, but not overdone. I can’t risk getting known for my cleavage alone … what about borrowing that backless fuchsia John Galliano dress I wore on a shoot for Town & Country magazine in New York? OK, I can’t wear a bra with it, but it’s a lot more understated than the Versace safety-pin number … perhaps those tabloid beasts will start to realise that I’m more than just a pretty face …”
Contrast, if you will, the low-key attire of the Bafta Best Actress winner, Juliet Aubrey, whose performance as Dorothea in the BBC’s Middlemarch is still talked about among the chattering classes. Ms Aubrey was attired from head to foot in elegant if funereal black. As a consequence, her picture did not appear in the papers at all, but her reputation as a serious actress was secure, while Ms Hurley, who jiggled her way down the Bafta stage looking like a pint of strawberry jelly, is still forever a fashionable flibbertigibbet.
Still, Hurley would have been quite at home at last week’s premire of Roman Polanski’s Death and the Maiden at the West End Curzon, since the dress code there appeared to be “the more famous, the sillier”. (In my list of costume awards the playwright Steven Berkoff came third, for looking – well, like Steven Berkoff; Maurice Saatchi came second for his foppish cream cravat, but winning first prize by a long way was Jeremy Irons, who distinguished himself by wearing dark glasses inside the building.)
Among the normally dressed, however, I was pleased to note the reassuring presence of the no-nonsense Downing Street caterer Clare Latimer, who was kind enough to divulge the recipe of her fruit punch (I won’t spoil her trade by repeating it here) and, more surprisingly, that of the Chilean cultural attach. She sought me out to explain she had come to represent the ambassador, who, as I have chronicled here in previous weeks, had suddenly withdrawn his offer of wine for the occasion. The attach’s gesture touched Ariel Dorfman, the play’s Chilean author, who was formerly exiled from his native land under the Pinochet regime. “I’m glad,” he said. “My relationship with the Chilean embassy has been somewhat” (long pause) “complicated.”
Rumour-mongering about the imminent retirement of Max Hastings, editor of the Daily Telegraph (initiated, I noticed, by the London Evening Standard, edited by the fiercely ambitious Stewart Steven) is being viewed with mirth by those who profess to know the truth at The Telegraph plc. I can only assume that the Standard’s misconception stems from Mr Hastings’s current predicament – he has slipped a disc and so gives a rather good impression of being on his death bed. Around 11am most mornings he may be viewed taking the daily conference flat on his back on a sofa in his office.
This morning Nicholas Payne, director of the Royal Opera House, will announce the good news that after an absence of two years, Jos Carreras is to return next January to play John the Baptist in Massenet’s Hrodiade – a lightened version of the biblical story of Salome, in which the heroine dances before King Herod, who is so beguiled he says she can have anything she wants … and her answer is the head of John the Baptist. In Massenet’s version, however, John’s death is blamed entirely on wicked King Herod, and Salome is an innocent. Tickets will be upwards of £200, and why not? It all sounds like the sugary stuff we’ve come to associate with Carreras’s performances – until, that is, Payne comes to mention the name of the producer: Hermann Nitsch. Nitsch’s genre is described at home as “orgien- mysterientheater”. This, loosely translated, means orgies-and-mystery theatre – and its very mention causes mass giggling at the press office of the Vienna State Opera. “Hermann Nitsch?” asks a spokeswoman, “yes it was his production of Massenet’s Hrodiade that was controversial here.” Naked bodies? I query. “Yes,” comes the sighing reply, “lots of naked bodies.”
Apathy appears to be the current watchword among BBC staff, judging from the pitiful response to an internal questionnaire emanating recently from the office of managing director of network television, Will Wyatt. Only 38 per cent of the Beeb staff reciprocated the unusual gesture of internal consultation and returned it, playing, of course, right into the management’s hands. But then, perhaps I have misread the situation. Perhaps it is precisely because they have such utter confidence in their superiors that they feel they need not interfere.
Easter Sunday, for a few million in the populace at least, signalled one thing only: the final episode of Joanna Trollope’s The Choir. Now I’ll bet you all thought, like myself, that the proceeds from the Decca CD featuring the angelic choirboy Anthony Way would be monopolised by Decca and the Beeb. (The profits must be pretty hefty given that the disc is in the Top Ten already and has sold 80,000 only two weeks after being released.) But the good news is that a portion of the royalties will be going to Gloucester Cathedral Endowment fund – which partly subsidises the cathedral choir used in the filming. There, however, the story of life mirroring art ends. I asked Gloucester’s music director David Briggs (whose hands play the organ in the series) if, as in the fictional version, the cathedral charges a £300 recording facility fee. His answer, sadly: “No – it was all part of a filming deal with the BBC.”
For some reason, the atmosphere is unusually excitable at Cowley Street, the national headquarters of the Liberal Democrats. No one expressed this better last week than one Alan Leman, 36, newly promoted from head of communications at London Research Centre to party director of strategy and planning. So eager was he to get about his business that he threw a fire-door open vigorously enough for it to fall off its hinges. “Somebody had to come in and fix it,” he moaned rather soberly on the telephone, adding quickly: “People here made comments about muscle-power,” pause “but I’m not into fitness or anything.”
It would be vainglorious if he were to do this himself, so, in the spirit of camaraderie, I’m going to offer my colleague John Walsh a big public pat on the back: somehow he has cajoled the BBC into giving him a job. In addition to his arduous duties as literary editor and columnist here, in August he will present the first weekly discussion programme based on modern literature on Radio 4 since Bookshelf closed down three years ago.
“It will be be on Sundays at 11.45am, between Medium Wave and Desert Island Discs,” says Walsh, with a toss of the head, adding: “I feel I am a natural to successor to Frank Delaney (the former presenter of Bookshelf). “We’re both Irish, we look very similar – and, as we discovered one night in the Palm Court of the Ritz when we pulled out our driving certificates, our birthdays are on the same day. But of course,” adds Walsh with sheep- eyes, “he’s 11 years older than me.”
Oh to have been Easter-egg shopping in Sainsbury’s, Chelsea Wharf, London, last Tuesday evening: the tills broke down, leaving customers to evaluate off the tops of their heads the value of their purchases. Just think of all the VAT one would have been able to evade. Still, it appears they were an honest lot. “We’ve done a tally,” says a Sainsbury’s spokesman, “and though we expected people to err on the side of caution their calculations proved remarkably accurate.”
Speaking of calculations, the most boring fact about Mick Jagger – that, in his youth he attended the London School of Economics – is being focused on heavily in the US. Television programmes over there are paying tribute to what they see as a display of his mathematical genius. During the Rolling Stones’ recent Japanese tour he insisted on being paid in yen, which, given its recent rise of 30 per cent against the dollar, means he made an extra $2m. “You see, he’s got such good business acumen” sighs his PR, Bernard Dogherty, “unlike some other pop stars I could mention.”
Staff at Thomas Goode, London’s most expensive china store (Viscount and Viscountess Linley had their wedding list there), need to bone up on their spelling, methinks. A press release signalling the launch of the new shop magazine says: “The Thomas Goode magazine will be published twice a year and is of course complimentary.” A waggish colleague with nothing better to do telephoned the store to reprimand them: “I see that the magazine will be full of compliments,” he quipped to a spokeswoman. “No, it will be free,” she riposted. “Ah,” said my colleague, thinking that she would surely get the joke the next time, “but will it be free and with your compliments?” It was all too much for the woman: “No, just free.”
I knew I could not have been the only one who giggled solidly during last week’s BBC2 Modern Times programme focusing on the society PR Liz Brewer (she manages would-be celebrities such as Ivana Trump and Mona Bauwens, who, according to the programme, take themselves ridiculously seriously). But it was comforting to know that the BBC producers and directors shared my views. Why else would they have had a scene with Ms Brewer saying of Ms Trump’s erstwhile loud, vulgar attire: “She needed guidance”. Pan camera to Ms Brewer’s boudoir, where she sits half-naked on a vast four- poster bed, garbed in an off-one-shoulder leopard-skin toga. Her everyday dressing gown, presumably.
It had to happen: in a couple of isolated cases, BT itself forgot about National PhOneday: A Dutch woman in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, received a phone bill last week with the old code (0423) cited, as did John Bartle of Dean, Gloucestershire, (old code 0594). “It’s absolutely unbelievable,” says Bartle, “when they’ve spent a fortune (£16m) ramming their message down everyone else’s throats, but they don’t even use the new codes themselves.” BT (who were not answering yesterday) could have lost a customer, since he adds: “I’m speechless.”
Following in his father’s thespian footsteps is Malachi Bogdanov, 25, son of the well-known director Michael. From 25 to 29 April he will be flexing his dramatic muscles at the Komedia Theatre, Brighton, in Sawn- off Shakespeare, a provocative production of three plays, heftily abbreviated. His dad, meanwhile, co-founder of the now defunct English Shakespeare Company and Bristol Old Vic, has moved on to Goethe. “He’s working on a six-hour production of Faust,” says Malachi, who has every hope his father will make his opening night: “After all,” says junior, “he missed the first night of Hair (last year’s West End revival) to come and see me in a show, so he must be pretty dedicated.”
John Major’s everyday life may be fraught with irritations – Scottish local elections, impudent speculation about his and Norma’s sex life – but one recent experience was so enjoyable that he has vowed to repeat it. I am talking about the Prime Minister’s debut journey on Concorde en route to Washington for a spot of special relationship counselling. So happy was the Prime Minister that he has chosen Concorde for all future long-haul flights. But before carping opposition politicians point the finger at this undoubted perk – Concorde costs £5,000-£6,000 return per person – may I assure them that the taxpayer in economy class is not subsidising Mr Major’s free fluffy slippers, champagne and ear plugs. By chartering Concorde privately and charging journalists for their seats, Downing Street is believed to have made a small profit. But the press corps has been banned from the PM’s next short-haul jaunt – when he visits Paris, Berlin and Moscow for the VE Day commemorations. Downing Street says sniffily: “The Prime Minister is not obliged to take journalists wherever he goes.” But the lobby suspects it is being prevented from intruding into private grief four days after the local elections.
Not everyone is over the moon about EMI’s new £2m publishing deal with Blur, the pop group it is now fashionable – even compulsory – to rave about. Justine Frischmann, the singer girlfriend of Blur’s lead vocalist, Damon Albarn, fears for her beau’s safety. “He’s never had really big money before,” she revealed last week: “He’s already saying he wants to buy a car. But he can barely ride a scooter, let alone drive.”
To the Imperial War Museum for the launch of veteran film actor Douglas Fairbanks Jr’s literary debut, A Hell of A War. The event was not quite an unadulterated success. Some noses were severely put out of joint by Fairbanks’s choice of phrase when autographing his books. To the women he generally wrote “to my old friend …”, which, on the whole, he got away with. But to some men he wrote “to my old old friend”, which was slightly alarming to guests younger than the sprightly 85-year-old Fairbanks. And to others he wrote “to my old, old, old friend …” “Help,” said a horrified middle-aged literary type afterwards, wringing his hands. “Do I really look that bad?”
He is neither black nor female but, undaunted nevertheless, the Welsh are lobbying for the Rev RS Thomas, the 82-year-old poet, to win next year’s Nobel Prize for literature. The campaign has been launched by the New Welsh Review, a magazine that appears quarterly and has an annual subsidy of £29,950 from the Welsh Arts Council. “We’re only just beginning the proceedings,” says a spokesman from the council, “but we’re putting together the best possible combination of nominating bodies.” Those bodies need to include a learned institution, university professors of literature or languages, presidents of authors’ organisations or Nobel laureates in literature. The key objective, however, is to help form an appropriate climate of opinion.
And in Thomas’s case opinion is somewhat mixed on account of his staunch Welsh nationalism – in the Eighties he gave verbal support to an extremist group of arsonists intent on protecting the Welsh language. He is unusual in being a great champion of the Welsh language who writes poetry in English – although his prose is always Celtically Correct in Welsh. His political ardour could be held against him – although those carefully monitoring the choices of the Nobel committee in Sweden say that the articulated defence of small countries and small cultures is viewed as extremely politically correct. “His values,” says the Welsh Arts Council without qualms, “are definitely humanistic.”
A partner in a leading firm of London solicitors has discovered the ultimate tool for foxing potential burglars: a laundry bag. He was carrying a sack of clean shirts from his car to his north London flat at the weekend when a ne’er-do-well threatened him with a piece of broken glass, followed him into his flat and tied him up. The crook duly went round the flat collecting up valuables. He put them into his own sack, which at one stage he put down near the laundry bag. You may guess the poetic justice of what happened next … after all his gruesome efforts, all the burglar made off with was a bag containing nine crisply ironed shirts.
In yesterday’s Independent Nicola Foulston, 27-year-old heiress and owner of Brands Hatch motor-racing circuit, admitted that she was “a bad driver”. This is something of an understatement. Those who know Ms Foulston well say she has recently admitted that she is so disastrous behind the wheel that she is taking lessons on how to get out of a spin, because she is convinced she is shortly going to have one. (We’re talking B roads here, not the race track.) Still, if she fails to get the hang of road vehicles, all is not lost. Ms Foulston is a shrewd operator: in March last year she married her flying instructor.
Perhaps I can throw some light on the goings on at the Chilean Embassy – where the ambassador, Hernan Errazuriz, seems to be making a habit of making hugely generous offers, then withdrawing them. First, he delighted Index on Censorship, the free-speech lobby group, when he offered to provide the wine for the party after the premire of Roman Polanski’s film version of Ariel Dorfman’s play Death and the Maiden, scheduled for next Wednesday at the Curzon, Mayfair. What better way of underlining the new Chile’s distance from the bad old days of torture and repression recalled in the film, thought the folks at Index, until the offer was suddenly cancelled, leaving guests such as the film’s star, Sigourney Weaver, with the prospect of washing down Downing Street caterer Claire Latimer’s food with fizzy water. Mystified, I called the embassy for an explanation and was charmed to be invited to lunch with the ambassador and Dorfman – but my hopes of gargling excellent Chilean red were dashed when an embassy minion rang to call that off as well. Seor Errazuriz says he never promised to provide the wine for the party, saying: “It was a complete misunderstanding.” (Index finds this a little hard to swallow.) The cancelled lunch, on the other hand, is easier to explain. “A disaster has occurred,” a spokeswoman tells me. “The cook has suddenly left.” Perhaps they should call in Ms Latimer.
One thing puzzles me about the re-conversion to Labour of the seriously right-wing polemicist Paul Johnson. In an interview at the weekend, Johnson made it plain that he thought people mattered more than ideas in politics – and he is very taken with Tony Blair, hence the change of allegiance. Yet Tony is not the only person to have impressed Johnson recently. Indeed, the most outstanding personal influence in his life at the moment is distinctly Tory: Lady Carla Powell, former adviser to Mrs Thatcher on sartorial affairs, and the stylish Italian wife of Sir Charles Powell, former adviser to Mrs Thatcher on foreign affairs. Lady Carla has been telling her friends how invaluable Johnson has become. “He walks my dogs; he does my errands,” she explained in a fetching accent to a friend who was visiting her recently. At which point, right on cue, the doorbell rang. The friend went to answer it and discovered the diligent Johnson, holding Lady Carla’s dry-cleaning.
My attempts to contact Sir Peter Maxwell Davies last week during his 15-date, coast-to-coast US tour with the BBC Philharmonic proved unexpectedly problematic. I rang the Flamingo Hilton, Las Vegas, at 9am US time, by arrangement, and asked to be connected to the composer’s room. “I’m sorry,” replied the receptionist, “I just lurve your British accent, but could you just repeat the name more slowly, please.”
I repeated it. “Davis? How do you spell that, please? Oh, Day-vees.” Short pause. “I’m sorry, we have no Mr Day-vees registered.”
I suggested we try Maxwell. Then Peter. Then Sir. “I’m sorry. What’s `sir’?”
“It means he’s a knight of the realm. He’s a famous British composer, he’s giving a concert in Las Vegas tonight and he’s meant to be staying at the Flamingo Hilton.”
“I’m sorry, but if he’s a famous British composer, what’s he doing staying at the Flamingo? No one stays at the Flamingo if they can afford to stay at the Las Vegas Hilton. Shall I transfer you there?” She does. I repeat the routine. Same result.
Forty minutes of to-ing and fro-ing between the composer’s British and American press agents solved the mystery. Maxwell Davies had been in the Flamingo all along – registered as Mavis. Guess they had some problem with his accent.
One fears for Radio Four. No sooner does news of David Starkey’s temporary departure from Thursday’s The Moral Maze leak out than I am reliably informed that Libby Purves, presenter of Midweek, is to leave at the end of May. The official line being put out by producer Lucy Cacanes is that this is also only a temporary break, but other radio sources whisper that Purves is not likely to return. It all hinges, apparently, on how her first novel, due out in June, is received. If, as everyone in the know predicts, it is a roaring success, out goes Ms Purves radio persona and in comes Ms Purves novelist. Meantime, should aspiring interviewers apply for the Midweek spot? Not according to Ms Cacanes, who says somewhat acerbically: “You know it doesn’t work like that.”
I rather think Sir Nicholas Henderson, our distinguished former man in Washington, has been watching too many James Bond films. Or maybe, like myself, he was feeling somewhat exuberant after imbibing a quantity of King’s Ginger, a fairly lethal champagne cocktail served originally at the court of Edward VII, but re-invented by Berry Brothers to mark last week’s launch of the Hon George Plumptree’s book on that monarch. Either way, Sir Nicholas has captured the 007 manner well. Shaking my hand vigorously, he boomed from his giddy height: “The name’s Henderson.” Pause, accompanied by knowing look. “Nicholas Henderson.”
When four years ago my colleague Kevin Jackson was commissioned by OUP to write the Oxford Book of Money, he fondly imagined the result would stand, like all the other Oxford books, in a prominent position in the literary anthology sections of most leading bookstores. After all, his book, published in February, contains as many literary references to coinage as one could possibly want – Dickens, Shakespeare, Eliot, Pound, Austen … even Woody Allen gets a look in with “Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons.”
Not being the neurotic type of author who sneaks around bookshops checking the stock, poor Jackson was surprised to learn that his tome was not selling as expected. But far worse was his discovery as to why – nine out of 10 bookstores have hidden it in a section called Personal Finance.
Glad to report that Steven Norris, the cabinet minister who upset everyone with his reference to fellow London tube travellers as “dreadful human beings” is on top form again, this time trading insults via the unlikely columns of Commercial Motor magazine. An angry constituent of Mr Norris’s, freight forwarder Ron Smith, has for some time been attempting to get the MP for Epping Forest deselected on the grounds that his alleged affairs make him unsuitable for office. After several face-to-face run- ins, Norris responded to an inquiry from Commercial Motor about his adversary with the line: “No man who dyes his hair can be taken entirely seriously.”
“You don’t want to say that?” exclaimed his secretary in horror. “Oh yes,” said Norris, “I most certainly do.”
Tony Slattery disgraced himself at the Laurence Olivier awards on Sunday night, publicly calling all sorts of eminent critics disgraceful names, leaving the audience open-mouthed. Nicholas de Jongh was a four-letter word beginning with “c”; John Peter of the Sunday Times got off lightly with “barking mad”; Maureen Paton of the Daily Express was “boss-eyed” and poor old Milton Shulman was a “silly old fool”.
Shocking behaviour indeed, but to some of us, Tony, sadly familiar. Two years ago, Mr Slattery attacked a colleague of mine at the Edinburgh Festival. A mildly critical description of him written a couple of years previously by this colleague had, it seems, been festering inside his brain ever since.
Upon spotting the culprit in Edinburgh, Slattery pinned him against a wall, slapped him about the face and locked him in a vicious nipple grip that even now is painful to recall. The verbals that accompanied this lot can only be described here as a bestial variation on Paton topped with a thundering de Jongh.