True Gripes / Don’t scare the joggers: Al fresco love is a health hazard

I have tendonitis in my right leg. I have shin splints in my left. Who is to blame for this terrible state of affairs? That ghastly sector of the populace which lacks pride, has never heard of self-control and knows only the animalistic meaning of the word ‘breeding’: I refer to public snoggers.
I have been a jogger for 10 years without suffering so much as a bruise, when suddenly this year something strange happened. The average hormone level in Holland Park soared, making it impossible for anyone even sticking to the perimeter to make it more than a few yards without tumbling over a horizontal couple, locked in carnal embrace.

It is not just that these people are such unattractive blots on the landscape. The mounds they form, protruding from the ground are a real obstacle for pedestrians and dangerous hazards for athletes.

My physiotherapist told me my shin splints came from repetitive strain. The only repetitive strain I’ve suffered recently is jumping over these wretched creatures without disturbing them – not you understand out of politeness or from a worry that I might damage them – more to avoid having to watch the excruciating process of disengagement, followed by an unpleasant vowel sound emanating from their voice-boxes.

As a result I either end up doing hurdles – for which I am not tall enough – or jogging up the park’s only isolated bit – a particularly steep hill, which my little legs are not cut out for.

So. . .now I’m ill. The legs have given up – pushed to limits beyond normal endurance. I’m getting fat; my brain is drying up through lack of oxygen and it’s all the fault of these insolent youths – invariably long-haired and dressed in black – who think sunshine is synonymous with an open-air orgy.

Every time I stop to wonder – or rather since I am stopped, just wonder – why these couples behave in such a brazen fashion, the nightmare they evoke becomes worse.

One imagines rooms without sofas, overbearing mothers, squats without bedrooms, Roman Catholics, permanent noise, buckets of vomit, in short – no privacy. Can this be the case? Or is there some primitive instinct I have missed out on that says sex is better outdoors?

I don’t think this can be the whole answer. Now I have forsaken the park for the swimming pool, to my horror I still bump into canoodling couples – mostly foreigners – in the shallow end.

Safer to stay indoors and pick up a book. Only the last time

that I tried that, the cover looked at me accusingly.

It was Helen Zahavi’s True Romance. . .

Diary – Wednesday 20 July 1994

Quite independently of his comedian father Max, Anthony Bygraves has managed to leave a sour taste in the mouths of staff at Duxford air museum, at Bovington tank museum and others who took part in the unofficial D-Day celebrations on the south coast on 5 June.

He and his brother-in-law, Mark Fairhurst, have not paid the contributors to a ‘concert’ they organised at Bovington to celebrate the landings. Included were an air demonstration by Duxford’s Spitfires and a Messerschmitt. Total cost for Duxford alone was approximately pounds 6,000.

Staff at the Cambridgeshire air base are livid since, according to one source, the Bygraves name persuaded them of the reliability of the organisers. A spokesman however, says Bygraves is doing his best to sort it out. ‘There was a shortfall due to bad PR, the Government shambles over Hyde Park, and the weather. It is drastic,’ he admits, ‘but not as bad as everyone is making out.’

And so we come, at last, to that day which for three months, we have incessantly heard about, read about – the unlucky ones have even dreamed about. Nothing, surely, has ever been plugged like it – for few authors are as au fait with the promotional trade as historian Andrew Roberts, 31, whose book Eminent Churchillians is launched tonight.

Here is just one example of Roberts’ superlative marketing tactics. At a large Scottish wedding recently, he asked the groom to mention the book in his speech. The groom duly obliged. . .the guests got the message. Roberts, however, thought he had better make sure. Taking the microphone, he began his best man speech: ‘Those of you know me will know I did not set that up’. . .pause for laughter. ‘For those who didn’t get it, however, my book, Eminent Churchillians. . .etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

Now that her husband William Waldegrave will be testing his legendary high-powered intellect on European farmers, I asked his charming wife, Caroline, if there would be any changes to the nationality of the ingredients at Prue Leith, the up-market cookery school she runs in Kensington. As yet, she told me yesterday, she hasn’t thought about it – but whatever she decides, I’m sure standards will not be lapsing. ‘Good ingredients,’ one of the teachers there once told me, ‘are one of the two most vital parts in cooking.’ And the other? I inquired. She almost spat: ‘Very sharp knives. . .’

To the Queen’s Garden party at Buckingham Palace: an occasion I would not recommend to the vertically challenged. The only thing I caught sight of all day was the odd daisy – I thought for a moment that I heard the Prince of Wales’ voice, but was assured it was the Duke of Edinburgh’s. Ah well, it was a very colourful occasion, with the Palace’s new PC stance much in evidence as homosexual couples openly strolled together. If, however, I am so fortunate to be asked again, I will arm myself appropriately – and smuggle in a pair of stilts.

One distinctly unamused by all this sudden fuss about Lord Lucan is the Hon John Sinclair, son of Viscount Thurso. . .for reasons that might perhaps be apparent from the pictures below. Unfortunately for Sinclair, he runs Horsted Place, a hotel in Sussex, which happens to be close to the home of the Maxwell-Scotts, the last couple to see Lucan alive. As a result, locals get tremendously overexcited when they see him. ‘About ten years ago, it was quite funny,’ he said wearily yesterday. ‘Now I’m tired of it.’

Diary – Wednesday 13 July 1994

I HAVE bad news for Prince Charles: a bad odour is threatening an architectural project in east London with which he has been closely involved. The prince attended a meeting before Christmas to discuss the development of Silvertown, an urban village in the Newham district, and was said to have been enthusiastic about its progress. Now, however, that progress appears to have been blighted because of obnoxious smells wafting in from nearby factories. Local residents say that the odours – which include those from a soap factory which boils down animal bones, as well as those from a paint factory, make life unbearable.

‘It depends upon which direction the wind is blowing,’ says a spokesman for Newham council, currently assessing the situation, while the local Environment Trust is suggesting moving the development, which will house 5,000 people, to the north of Victoria Royal Dock, where the smells are not so obvious. Meanwhile Docklands Development Corporation, which owns the site, is optimistic that, with new environmental health laws, the odours will become less offensive as time goes on. And as for Prince Charles? According to a spokeswoman, he is still ignorant of the situation.

IT’S HARD work on the till at upmarket gentlemen’s outfitter T M Lewin & Sons, in Jermyn Street, these days. According to director Costa Procopi, 47, they have at least one bogus visitor a week, pretending to be an officer from the SAS and eligible, therefore for the SAS tie – a winged dagger on a blue background.

Procopi’s team is well prepared, however. ‘If they can’t pay by credit card we just won’t serve them,’ he admitted under his breath at a party on Tuesday night to celebrate the shop’s refurbishment.

ONE INSTITUTION unable to cope with Tuesday’s hot weather was Amnesty International, whose British section (Middle East and South America proved rather tougher) staged an impromptu walk-out, feebly muttering something about no air-conditioning. NB you lot. . .the denizens of City Road are made of far sterner stuff.

PUNTERS in the car business are rightly rubbing their chins over the Department of Transport’s choice of area for piloting their new car dealer self-regulation scheme. The project, widely

predicted to be successful, gives car dealers the right to issue their own tax discs and documents without referring to the DVLA. The pilot scheme, it was mooted however, should be as near to the DVLA in Swansea as possible. Cardiff, one would suppose. . .but, instead, Roads Minister Robert Key has opted for Bristol. Now call it coincidence, but close to Bristol is Weston-super-Mare. . .and in Weston-super-Mare there is a car dealership named Anthony Ince Ltd. . .and a shareholder in Anthony Ince Ltd is the company’s former owner: one Steven Norris MP, Minister for Transport. . .hmmm.

A WARNING to those in possession of a raffle ticket for today’s Bastille Day celebratory draw in Soho’s The French House. The winner will have the dubious

pleasure of dubbing eponymously, what is, I believe, termed the ‘drink cell’ in Vine Street police station. So, will future lonely soirees be spent in the the Jeffrey Bernard suite or the John Hurt Room? My bet is on Jeffrey. . .

SHOCKWAVES among Scottish lairds: Loretto School, headed by the Queen’s Chapel Master, the Rev Norman Drummond, and the nurturing ground of MPs Norman Lamont and Nicholas Fairbairn, is to go fully co-educational in September. Drummond, once tipped to replace Eric Anderson as Eton’s headmaster, insists that the decision is merely an answer to a plea from parents of former pupils at nearby girls school Oxenfoord Castle, forced to close last summer. Alterations, inevitably, are being made to the boarding facilities – but I confess I am bewildered by their logic. While 13-year-olds upwards all share the main building – the ‘nippers’ – 12 and under – are separated.

SHOWING most stamina at Tuesday night’s premiere of Sirens was Paula Yates, presenter of Channel 4’s Big Breakfast. The clock said 12.45pm and Ms Yates was still going. ‘I’ve got to be up at 4am,’ she said blithely. . .before taking another swig.

Diary – Tuesday 12 July 1994

Current subject of hot debate at Labour’s headquarters in Walworth Road is the fate of Jack Straw, Tony Blair’s campaign manager and Labour’s local government spokesman to boot. Promotion, providing Blair attains the leadership, is almost certain. The question, however, is which post the 47-year-old MP for Blackburn will get.

Most widely touted options are those of party campaign manager and shadow Home Secretary. Shorter odds are on campaign manager at present, however, mainly because Straw successfully took over the running of the Euro-election campaign when Margaret Beckett was forced to become acting leader after John Smith’s death.

‘He will have won three campaigns for Labour when Blair is elected,’ said a colleague who did not wish to be named.

‘He has proved himself a tough campaigner. I’m sure he’d like the job.’ One faction which must be hoping that Blair offers him the campaign job in October rather than home affairs is the Royal Family. Straw has made no secret of his view that the monarchy’s power should be diluted – a view echoed by Tony Blair’s other campaign manager, Mo Mowlam. . .she too is set for a big promotion.

Crime-writers, one supposes, ought to be the last people to be duped by petty criminals; not so, according to Harry Keating, inventor of the Indian detective Inspector Ghote. Keating was recently approached by a window-cleaner who offered to clean his windows or a remarkably small sum. The man mentioned one of Keating’s neighbours and explained, how, after a job there, he was mugged while pocketing his earnings. Keating listened sympathetically, and paid him in advance; the man said he would post the money through the letter-box should it rain. It did not rain; nor, of course, did Keating get his windows cleaned.

The Prime Minister’s role has not always endured as much scrutiny as today, as a letter to be exhibited later this month by the Imperial War Museum demonstrates. Lord Asquith (prime minister from 1908 to 1916) wrote in 1915 to Lady Stanley, wife of the Governor of the Australian state of Victoria, relating an incident involving Lady Maud Tree, the stylish society actress. ‘Lady Tree said to me at the end of a drive the other day with a most ingenuous smile: ‘Do you take an interest in the war?’ he scribbled. His reply? ‘Well I do, rather. . .’

Bosses at the BBC were mildly annoyed last week, when, upon telephoning Margaret Beckett at the Commons to do an interview in their Millbank studio 200 yards down the road, her office replied: ‘Only if you send a car for her.’

The Beeb, rightly, decided not to bother. Not only does Mrs Beckett possess her own chauffeur-driven machine, but, whisper the more malicious types in the Millbank studios, her hair-do has been coming closer and closer, recently, to another Margaret’s. . .

The hot weather is bringing considerable financial advantage to the V&A, where hordes of passers-by – mostly English – are paying the pounds 4.75 entrance fee to sit down and fan themselves in the pews which comprise part of the Pugin exhibition. Not that these people are particularly interested in their environs, apparently. ‘We just hope that they will take in one or two of the pieces,’ sighed a spokeswoman yesterday.

Much excitement in the Fulham offices of PR Jenny Halpern, twenty-something daughter of fashion magnate Sir Ralph. No 1 Lawrence Street, Chelsea, the literati club she is opening in September, is signing up members. First to join are ballerina Darcey Bussell and actor Richard E Grant, paving the way, she hopes, for other highbrow celebrities to flock over from the Groucho. ‘The idea,’ explains a spokeswoman, ‘is to attract those who are fed up with forcing their way into the West End every night.’ Endless names spring to mind, but Miss Halpern and her colleagues are rightly selective. ‘Should Orlando Campbell, the proprietor of Mayfair’s Green Street, be worried?’ I asked. Answer: ‘This is not going to be a club for just anyone.’

Diary – July 11, 1994

Graham Riddick and David Tredinnick are not the only MPs to be concerned over the ‘cash for questions’ controversy they have found themselves embroiled in. According to various friends of mine, recently employed as MPs’ researchers in the Commons, the practice of payment for questions is a common one – albeit on an inverted and somewhat lesser financial scale.
Sadly, my sources feel obliged to remain unnamed, but the gist of the practice goes like this: MPs who do not have the time or inclination to table questions themselves, pay their researchers to do so on their behalf, to achieve a greater parliamentary profile and promote an impression of conscientiousness. The going freelance rate, a few weeks ago, was pounds 1 per question.

Nothing illegal in this, but, none the less, it would be embarrassing for the MPs concerned to be found out since each answer costs the taxpayer pounds 97. Nor are many of the questions – of which there is, by now, a repertoire – particularly useful: ‘How many representations has the Minister received on. . .?’ and ‘Will the Minister list his official engagements on. . .? are favourites, apparently. Not exactly the stuff of Einstein. . .nor, arguably, worth pounds 97.

Though she will be smiling as she opens the Harrods sale today, Betty Boothroyd is aware that the grim facts are unalterable: she was, it transpires, merely a last-minute recruit for the job, which, until three weeks ago, belonged to Sylvester Stallone. Sly, as he is known, had to pull out at the last moment because of filming commitments and the Red Cross chose Miss Boothroyd as his replacement. The Speaker was, by all accounts, magnanimous in accepting on a second-best basis: ‘She’s only doing it to get 50,000 quid for

the Red Cross,’ was the abrupt response from her office yesterday.

Scandal in Floral Street, Covent Garden, where residents have been told by Westminster Council that they will be fined up to pounds 2,500 if they do not put their rubbish out at between 10.30pm and 11pm. Alarm clocks are being set by those who prefer to hit the pillow at 10pm and those who work there but do not live there, race back to their offices to oblige. One elderly woman is totally confused. She rang up to ask what to do and was told, regardless of her preference of TV channel: ‘Put it out after News at Ten.’

Maybe it’s because she has still not recovered from her slating on-air by Melvyn Bragg – the gentlest comment was that he did not find her jokes remotely funny – but now Australian feminist Kathy Lette has resorted to new publicity tactics: she is stripping on Wednesday in the window of Waterstones in the Charing Cross Road to launch her paperback, Foetal Attraction. A strange method, I can’t help thinking, for one who announced recently that, above all else, she abhorred post-feminist types: ‘Women who’ve kept their Wonderbras and burnt their brains. . .’

Now is the time to tell, I feel, the true reason why the Rolling Stones called their new album Vudu Lounge. Not so long ago guitarist Keith Richards found a frail white kitten outside his London studio.

Against all his macho instincts he took it in and nurtured it until it became strong enough to go into quarantine and finally cross the Atlantic to live with his family in the States. Together they named it Vudu – for some reason better kept to themselves.

In true Hans Christian Andersen fashion, wherever the Richards went, so did Vudu. Thus it was that when Jagger, Wood, Watts and Richards were looking for

a title, they caught sight of Vudu. . .doing apparently the only thing he ever does. . .lounging.

Wanted: one tall black male on roller-skates who yesterday helped push a broken-down Ford Sierra 2.3 diesel saloon all the way out of Birdcage Walk, across Parliament Square and through the gates of the Commons.

At that point the engine fired and its driver, Nicholas Budgen, Tory MP for Wolverhampton South West, drove in. He got out immediately to thank the man. . .only to find that he had disappeared, his luminous sun-specs and T-shirt bearing the word Dive vanishing into the crowds.

(Photograph omitted)

Diary – July 7, 1994

Paddy Ashdown must be smiling: after frantic negotiations in Brussels, the Lib-Dem MEPs have won their first political battle – they have prevented the French Gaullist Party from joining the Liberal Democratic and Reformist coalition in the European Parliament.
The issue is highly controversial. The existing members of the coalition (of which the Lib-Dems are a founding member) have long been divided over whether or not to admit the Gaullists. One side (which includes the British) see them as French nationalists who are far too right-wing to become political allies.

The other, which includes the French Republican Party and several Portuguese, believes that their addition would increase the coalition’s numbers and therefore influence. However the arguments of MEPs Graham Watson and Robin Teverson won the day, causing the Gaullists to announce their decision not to join on Wednesday.

Inevitably there will be repercussions: some Portuguese and the French Republicans say they will leave the coalition and join the right-wing European People’s Party (EPP). The British Liberals, however, are not alarmed. ‘The French do as the French do,’ said one yesterday.

A dramatic twist is about to be added to the otherwise tedious saga of Highgate’s Men’s Pond. Spicing up events – as his is wont – is Peter Tatchell, head of the lesbian and gay movement, Outrage; he is planning to do a protest striptease in the newly constructed changing area where, as I reported recently, the Corporation of London has insisted that bathing trunks be mandatory for the first time in 100 years. The timing of this act of rebellious hedonism must, explains Tatchell, remain a secret for it to be effective; potential spectators should know, however, that the ‘unveiling’ will take place ‘imminently’.

Merchant banker Leonard Ingrams is clearly a more sensible fellow than his naughty brother Richard (aka Private Eye’s Lord Gnome). When disaster struck last week at his Oxfordshire home, Garsington Manor, he displayed what can only be described as true Head Boy stuff. A host of people, clad in black tie (and including Lord Lawson and Norman Lamont) had settled down to watch the first act of Richard Strauss’s Capriccio in the famous open-air theatre in Garsington’s garden, when a scene more reminiscent of Noye’s Fludde occurred. The heavens opened, rain poured, thunder rumbled and lightning cut through the power cables, turning both stage and auditorium into a pitch black swimming pool.

In a flash Ingrams was on his feet. Patiently waving all those who insisted on sending for their umbrellas into a barn, he served up what one guest described as ‘the fastest dinner imaginable’. So apparently delicious was the guinea fowl that it was with considerable reluctance that the audience returned to their seats when the rain ceased.

A batch of dustbins are the puerile cause of a ludicrous argument between councillor Patricia Nicholas of Hounslow and councillor Laurence Man of Richmond. The rudiments are as follows: after the boundary changes on 1 April whereby parts of Hounslow became Twickenham & Richmond, the dustbins in Talbot Road and St Margarets Road (formerly Hounslow now Richmond) disappeared – leaving the residents with nowhere to put their rubbish.

Ms Nicholas has now owned up to swiping them. She claims that the bins are Hounslow property and she will keep them as such. Man disagrees, saying that the residents have already paid for them. The battle rages on. . .and meanwhile, Richmond Council has issued residents with the small consolation that extra street cleaning services will be provided until the matter is resolved.

It is rare to encounter a director keen to underplay his role, but so anxious is Paul Bernstein, director of Dakota’s Belly, Wyoming, currently showing at the Soho Laundry Rehearsal Studios, to avoid the label of a one-man show, that he has invented a pseudonym. Only the beadiest of eyes will have noticed the strange correlation in the biographies listed in the programme between Bernstein and leading actor Hoyt Miller: both have worked in New York for ten years, been together for 15 years – in what is rightly termed ‘collaboration’.

(Photographs omitted)

Diary – July 6, 1994

Time to allay the fears of the ENO’s front of house staff, who, I gather, have spent the past few weeks terrified that they will be asked to take their two-month summer holiday without pay. The word from the top is that they will be paid, although catering staff who are sub-contracted will no longer be required.
Frankly, the news is astonishingly good, given the circumstances. Everyone knows that ENO has been struggling financially but few are aware just how dire the current situation is. Advance bookings for the recent production of Janacek’s Jenufa numbered an appalling 60.

Meanwhile, the company has largely failed to rent out the Coliseum, as in previous years, to touring theatres during the summer months, and, while its rival, the Royal Opera House, gave a buffet lunch press conference to launch its new season, the ENO kept its hands in its pockets and sent out leaflets by post.

With luck, the opera company will pull through the crisis: as I have already recorded, it is re-doing the very popular Rigoletto next season, sure to be a success. None the less, it will need to think of other ways to raise funds. Here’s one for starters: how about gaining some publicity with a drinks party for the press?]

To the Roy Miles Gallery, Bruton Street, where I chanced upon freelance photographer George J Grimes, also known as Commissionaire Grimes, since his other job, he confided, is safeguarding Kensington Palace. No easy task recently, it seems. ‘One intruder has been really irritating,’ he grimaced.’ Each night he tucks in behind an official vehicle and speeds down Millionaires’ Row as if it were a public road. Last night we nearly got him, but the guard on the other end was new and did not know to stop him.’ No surprise when I tell you who the culprit is. . .try not to yawn. . .it’s Jamie Blandford.

Not long after two of his secretaries left to get married, Paddy Ashdown is about to lose another member of his staff. David Vigar, 37, Ashdown’s speech-writer and policy adviser for the past year, has opted for a slower pace, as publicist for BTEC – the Business and Technology Education Council. Vigar, a former producer of the Today programme, refuses to discuss the exact reasons for his departure, muttering something about still pursuing his political career and staying in touch with the party. Those who know him, however, are more illuminating. ‘He just wants to get some sleep,’ giggled one.

In true swings and roundabouts fashion, model Naomi Campbell becomes a novelist, and mother Valerie Campbell becomes an actress. She is, she says, to star in a film – produced by her close friend, the Duke of Northumberland (right). I encountered the two at a party to celebrate the fifth anniversary of Bill Wyman’s restaurant, Sticky Fingers, where they were debating the film’s subject matter. ‘I want it to be about the private life of Tarzan,’ explained the duke jovially.

‘Valerie can be Jane swinging through the trees. . .’

A footnote on the above event. Bill Wyman says he is to open a chain of Sticky Fingers, but Americans need not get over-excited. Wyman is terrified of flying: ‘If it ain’t possible to drive or take a train there, I ain’t setting up a restaurant there,’ he grinned.

Lurking in the sidelines at the launch of Mary Higgins Clark’s Remember Me at Claridges was ex-FBI agent and the man who coined the term ‘serial killer’, Colonel Robert Ressler. He, it transpires, is one of Higgins Clark’s more useful literary aides – advising on realistic detail in horror scenes. Not, he confided, that all his tips go down well. She once screamed at him: ‘But we can’t have the killer eating the shoes. . .’

Latest gimmicks to sell like hot cakes in the Commons are, surprisingly, tacky cigarette lighters. Why? Some bright spark has emblazoned them with a red heart and the logo: ‘I love Corfu’.

(Photographs omitted)

Diary – July 5, 1994

Since Malcolm Rifkind is in the mood for ordering inquiries into the exorbitant cost of MoD official residences, he might like to cast his eyes towards Chelsea where, included in pounds 25.78m refurbishment of the Duke of York’s barracks, is a new three-bedroom flat for Brigadier Peter Bowser (retd), secretary of the London Territorial Army, the cost of which is undisclosed.
Drawing my attention to the matter is Lady Wynne-Jones, head of Friends of Chelsea society – a group which is up in arms, apparently, against the building’s refurbishment, since it considers it part of a long-term plot to sell off the barracks. Since Lady W-J believes that the premises, built in 1801 as an Army school, is public land, she finds the idea horrifying.

The secret cost of Bowser’s flat , she says, adds weight to her argument – although many, including Tory MP Andrew Robathan, who spoke out yesterday against the exorbitant formerly undisclosed cost of Air Chief Marshal Sir Sandy Wilson’s official residence, say that in Bowser’s case there is no cause for complaint.

‘I’m very keen that the Government should look after its historic buildings,’ he said yesterday. ‘If it is necessary, it is money well spent.’

Army spokesman Charles Winstanley concurs: ‘His (Bowser’s) flat is very much in line with what a brigadier would receive,’ he said yesterday.

Much jollity last Thursday evening at the annual meeting of the Nanking Club – named after the treaty ceding Hong Kong to Britain. Discretion forbids me from saying which Hong Kong wallahs were present, but they were minds capable of the most puerile humour. Take the menu as an example. Courses included: Grilled Duplicitous Dumplings; Chris P Lame Duck with Westminster Pancakes; Foreign Office Chicken Doubt and Lowing Hurd Beef Steak with Red Pepper Sauce. The remaining dishes are unrepeatable but I may divulge that the evening ended most successfully with Pass-port/liqueurs.

Malicious rumours concerning the sudden disconnection of Sir Edward Heath’s mobile phone may cease. Contrary to scurrilous Fleet Street whispers, Sir Edward has abandoned his mobile phone – not because some prankster kept calling it and hanging up – but because it was too expensive. ‘He has a new, slim-line version,’ explains a secretary, adding (unnecessarily) ‘in conjunction with his modern image.’

The launch of Bill Bryson’s new novel, Made in America, on Monday night, was a roaring success with one exception: the author was absent. Bryson had been struck down by a virus the week before and was told by his wife that if he wasn’t able to totter to the door, he couldn’t attend. Reasonable conditions really – but nonetheless one attending the bash, actor Kerry Shale, was bitterly disappointed. Shale, it transpired, has abridged and read two of Bryson’s books on Radio 4.

‘I was hoping to meet him for the first time,’ he explained. ‘We’ve written to each other for years.’ Ironically the evening resulted, nonetheless, in an advance in the pair’s professional relations: in Bryson’s absence, Shale was asked to sign copies of the book.

Hostile relations between Nuclear Electric and Greenpeace reached a nadir at the weekend when the band at the Kent Institute of Art and Design’s Annual Exhibition, Diploma Day and Ball, refused to play because the event was sponsored by NE.

The group, suitably entitled Cajunologie, arrived hotfoot from the Greenpeace boat My Solo, keen to perform, until they realised who the sponsors were. For a nasty moment it looked as if the proceedings would have to be cancelled – when suddenly two award-winning students shinned up the marquee pole, removed the NE banner and replaced it with a Greenpeace flag.

The show went on but, understandably, feelings are frosty back at NE HQ. ‘I don’t think I’ll comment,’ said a spokeswoman yesterday.

Why did Chris Green, head of Scotrail, miss Monday night’s BR briefing for transport correspondents?

A: Because he took the plane; it was delayed for one and a half hours and he lost his luggage to boot. . .

(Photographs omitted)

Diary – July 4, 1994

A PELICAN crossing is to be built outside the House of Lords, causing the inevitable mixture of mirth and derision amongst the Labour camp on Westminster Council, which is funding it. Last Thursday it agreed to spend pounds 120,000 on two crossings: one across Old Palace Yard – namely the Lords’ car park – and another across Millbank.
The proposal was initiated by Tory MP Andrew Robathan, who insists that the Lords’ safety was only a secondary consideration. ‘It was more the thousands of tourists who come here,’ he explained yesterday, before conceding: ‘Undoubtedly, some of the Lords are a bit unsteady on their pins.’

What niggles Westminster’s Labour group, however, is that an extra pounds 25,800 is to be spent on ‘consultant’s fees’ – a figure which, it argues, seems rather unnecessary. ‘How much consultancy can be required for drawing a few white lines on a road?’ asked deputy leader Peter Bradley yesterday, adding: ‘If Parliament want the crossings so badly, why does Parliament not pay for them?’

Even Bradley, however, is amused by the scheme which, he says, has been the cause of a sudden flurry of Zimmer-frame jokes. Robathan, meanwhile, is delighted: ‘It all started,’ he explained yesterday, ‘when I read Murder in the Commons by Rupert Allason (his office-mate). The crossing, I hope, will reduce the risk of such a horrible fate.’

PROSPECTIVE debutantes may rejoice: they are to be rescued sartorially by Yves Saint Laurent. The French designer has hinted that, next year, he will provide a selection of the girls with designs for the Queen Charlotte’s Ball, an annual event dreaded by most girls on account of the frumpy long white ball gowns they are forced to wear. Rejoicing was evident at the Grosvenor House Hotel last week, where a number had gathered for a fund-raising do. There was just the odd glum face belonging to this year’s lot, for whom there is no escape. ‘It’s too bad,’ sighed one into her glass. ‘I so don’t want to look like a cream puff.’

MARCO PIERRE WHITE beware] Snooping round the gourmet spots in town this week is American chef Dean Fearing, the only cook to date, he confesses proudly, to produce puddings delicious enough to delay the Queen. Fearing, who famously refused an invitation to cook for the Clintons in the White House, agreed to do a banquet in Dallas for the Queen’s American tour in 1991. The royal party was running late, however, and once the main course was finished, the Queen’s bodyguards tapped knowingly on their watches. Her Majesty studiously ignored them; she had glimpsed the banana tacos with strawberry and mango sauce. ‘The security men went wild,’ Fearing explains. ‘It completely ruined their plans.’ Now the chef intends to visit some of London’s smarter bistros to pick up a few tips. Anxious restaurateurs should look out for a tall fellow, replete with slicked-back hair, earring, cowboy boots. . .and, more ominously, a notebook.

OF HORRORS] I have just encountered the impossible – a Pakenham who is too bashful to get a book published.

The literary clan of Lord Longford, which includes Antonia Fraser, Rachel Billington and Harriet Harman MP, are not known for keeping their lights under bushels; between them they have written 168 books – each carefully publicised.

So it makes a change to discover that Longford’s charming stockbroking son, Kevin Pakenham, has written a financial blockbuster but does not want it to see the light of day. ‘He’s just not keen on people knowing about it,’ explains wife Clare Harkness, busy, meanwhile fulfilling family expectations on her husband’s behalf: she has just published her third novel: Old Night.

SOPHISTICATED weather forecasting machine, recently installed near the cash dispensers in the Commons, is causing great confusion, apparently.

The Meteorological Information Self-Briefing Terminal (MIST) which provides members with fingertip access to the weather in their constituencies – or indeed holiday destinations – has been mistaken for a drinks-dispensing machine and is more popular among kitchen staff.

‘I don’t know what it does,’ says Ken Livingstone, who has yet to be tempted by its access to animated rainfall radar sequences, satellite images, North Atlantic charts and pressure maps, adding bizarrely: ‘Hopefully, the Government will take a look at it.’

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Diary – June 30, 1994

Whilst one Oxford University circle – namely those renaming Manchester College – lacks an imaginative streak (Manchester Academy and Harris College sound like a flying school), creativity is stirring in another; the Oxford poetry society, a 400-year-old institution sadly defunct in recent years, is to be revived.
The young man responsible for its renaissance is, unsurprisingly, a talented wordsmith himself. South African Adam Schwartzman, 21, is to have his first collection published next year by Carcanet, and a small sample is already available in Michael Schmidt’s New Poetries. Schwartzman has signed up poets James Fenton (Oxford Poetry professor) and Les Murray to give readings next term; Stephen Spender has also provisionally accepted and there are rumours that Seamus Heaney will slip in unobtrusively.

That Schwartzman, merely first year, should exert such influence is the fortuitous result of a summer job in a Paris bookshop. There, he got talking to Murray, visiting the town to have a portrait bust modelled. Murray read his work – then unpublished – and whilst being sculpted, spent hours discussing it. The rest, as they say, is history.

Understandably Sir George Young, Environment Minister, was not amused when told that almost 500 delegates at the Chartered Institute of Housing’s conference, where he was speaking last month, had obtained a Boring Speech Escape Kit. Paper bags (for headwear) with ‘Do not disturb until this speech is over’ emblazoned on the front were donned by several in the back rows – though inevitably individuals will now not own up; the more cowardly types made use of the less obvious accessory – cotton wool ear plugs.

To Mulligan’s wine bar, Piccadilly, for the launch of Mary Breasted’s new novel Why Should You Doubt Me Now? – an appropriate venue for the wife of the Irish Ambassador,the aptly-named Mary Small. She was in a jubilant mood, following Ireland’s nil-nil draw with Norway, she confided, but the match itself had been too much of an endurance test.

‘It was just too tense; I felt the vibes weren’t good. . .I had to leave half way through. . .to pot my plants.’

A tale comes my way from a Crown Court in outer London – I am forbidden from saying which – where a barrister recently asked to see the judge prior to the entrance of the jury. ‘Your Honour. . .I cannot wear a wig, owing to a scalp infection. May I inform the jury of this fact?’ The judge looked at him quizzically, ‘Why?’ ‘Well,’ came the reply, ‘I would not want them to think I was one of those new-fangled solicitor-advocates.’ A pause. ‘You may,’ said the judge, ‘and while you are about it, you can tell them that their judge is one of those new-fangled solicitor-judges.’

Latest in the celebrity-turned-writer club is Judith Ward, who spent 18 years in jail, wrongly convicted of the M62 coach bombing in 1974. Miss Ward, who has an autobiography under her belt, is now writing a play. Though a work of fiction, it is, unsurprisingly, based on her experiences inside Durham’s H block. ‘It’s about how much harder a prison sentence can be for the relatives outside, than for the person inside,’ she explains. Publishers and directors are keen, apparently. Enthusing actors, however, should perhaps be aware that one scene involves an in-house food fight – on a scale rather larger than minor upsets in the school canteen. . .

An unfortunate hiccup has occurred in the budding political career of Eluned Morgan (below), who at 27 is the youngest member of the European Paliament. Ms Morgan, who did well to win Mid and West Wales for Labour by 30,000 votes in the Euro-elections, has just undergone the unpleasant experience of having her widsom teeth removed.

‘I can barely mumble,’ she moaned yesterday – not exactly a good state to be in a week before the new parliamentary session begins. . .

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