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.
Paul McKenna, the hypnotist with the grating voice, has succeeded in working his magic charms on British television producers. At least so say most of Britain’s hypnotists, who are livid at what they see as McKenna’s manipulation of two programmes about hypnosis last week. First, Carlton showed a programme that purported to be a serious documentary on the art of hypnosis, but which, in effect, turned out to be what our own television critic Tom Sutcliffe describes as “a tawdry, appalling puff for McKenna and his work”.
Second, Central Television ran a chatshow about hypnosis on Friday night, which featured only people that McKenna permitted to appear with him. When Central suggested rival stage hypnotists, including sceptic hypnotist Martin Taylor – who publicly professes that he does not believe that hypnosis alters the state of the mind – McKenna refused to appear with them. “It shows unbelievable bias on the part of the programme-makers,” says Taylor. The programme-makers themselves, however, were unavailable for comment – hypnotised, doubtless, into a state of muteness.
What a relief that the Daily Mail has finally tracked down Luce Danielson, the companion of Winston Churchill MP. Not, I hasten to add, because I was on the edge of my seat waiting to find out who she was, but because I felt sorry for friends of mine who live in Tite Street, Chelsea. They were growing fed up with the Mail journalists who ensconced themselves there as long ago as Thursday. At that stage the search for Ms Danielson looked far from promising. “We’re ringing every doorbell in the vicinity,” the reporters told my friends from the doorstep, “because we don’t know her name.”
A final word on Mary Ellen Synon, the mistress who bonked in the Bank. Facts that you don’t already know: 1) “Roo” actually put down the deposit on her ivory tower in Ireland (a desperate attempt to get rid of her perhaps?), and 2) if only he’d listened to some of her previous boyfriends, he’d have realised the ploy wouldn’t work. “M E [her nickname] clings like ivy,” says a man who has known her for 20 years. “A friend of mine who’d tried endlessly to end a relationship with her many years ago, thanked his lucky stars when, by dint of the gods, he was posted to New York. Phew, he thought, I’ve escaped. But no sooner was he seated at his desk than the telephone rang. “It’s Me,” said M E. “I’m here – at JFK airport.”
The first sign of the type of pendantry which occurs when institutions get privatised appears in the letters page of this month’s issue of Local Transport Today. Simon Eden, a press officer for one of the 25 newly founded train operating groups, writes: “Your story headlined `First Eight Franchises on Offer’ refers to Network South Central. For the record, we are in fact Network SouthCentral … ”
To the Lloyds Private Banking Playwright of the Year Awards at the London Marriott Hotel, where my knees turn to jelly upon encountering my thespian hero, Jeremy Irons. In most unBridesheady fashion he embraced the prospect of a future Labour government. “It will provide much-needed funding for all those young people currently struggling,” he said. Coincidentally, their number includes the singer Emma Cooper, daughter of the chairman of Lloyds Private Banking, James Cooper. Ms Cooper, 25, is understudying Marti Webb in the title role of a touring production of Evita. “That’s why she wasn’t available to take part in the cabaret which followed the prize-giving,” said her proud father, adding hastily, “although I wouldn’t really have approved of such obvious nepotism.”
Sadomasochistic opera lovers are doubtless revving up for the ENO’s forthcoming production of Schnittke’s Life With an Idiot, an unusual opera which contains defecation, decapitation, masturbation and buggery on stage. At least the ENO has the sense to warn the audience in the programme: “The production contains strong language and scenes of sexual violence, which some members of the audience may find offensive.” In Edinburgh, however, where the production goes next, they clearly expect a more dubious audience. “Life with an Idiot,” the programme says, “contains scenes and language which may cause offence to some people and will give pleasure to others.”
Speaking of sex, a friend was driving his son, six, and a chum to school yesterday morning when the Today programme mentioned the fact that the ITC is upholding a complaint that advertisements featuring a transvestite and a teenage sex survey respectively were shown during a recent screening of Home Alone. The boys nudged each other and my friend’s son whispered: “D’you hear that? They mentioned `sex’ on the radio.”
The sporadic timing of this week’s Radio 3 series Diary of a Composition – the taped thoughts of composer Simon Bainbridge as he wrote his latest work, Ad Ora Incerta: Four Orchestral Songs from Primo Levi, to be premiered at the Festival Hall on Wednesday – is causing Italian speakers some amusement. Instead of putting out the diaries, as promised, at 9.30 every evening this week, each episode is at an entirely different time from the others. “Ah well,” sighed the producer, “it’s entirely in keeping with the title.” It means, after all, “at an uncertain hour”.
Whether it’s because they know my Alma Mater, Cambridge, is superior, or because they are bored, the Oxford boat crew has resorted to some unusual training tactics this year. A week before the big race they attended the West End musical, Ain’t Misbehavin’, where they were spotted clapping along to “Spreading the Rhythm around”. “It’s the only way I can get any rhythm into them at all,” said long-suffering cox Abbie Chapman afterwards.
Thank goodness for the Prime Minister’s brother, Terry Major-Ball, with whom I lunched on Friday. “Elizabeth Hurley,” he mused when I touched on her recent court case, “now, which one is she?”
Even the French don’t believe the official French excuse for cancelling, at the last minute, the televising of the Scotland-England rugby match on Saturday: the advertising of alcohol and tobacco at Twickenham.
How do I know this? I was there – in Picardie, northern France. At the appointed time, the France Deux channel was showing nothing but the ultra- boring Milan-San Remo cycle race. The same race was still going on an hour later, when the presenter at least apologised for departing from the schedule. Our host, accustomed to the ways of French sports coverage, explained without batting an eyelid: “Of course they aren’t showing the rugby: a Frenchman is winning the cycling.”
Talk of Bill Clinton’s controversial handshake with Gerry Adams put the American wife of my weekend host in mind of the hand-shaking technique of her old college friend, Bill Clinton’s wife, Hillary. (They are kindred spirits: Mrs Clinton christened her daughter Chelsea, while my host’s wife named hers London.)
For the socially active, Mrs Clinton’s technique is worth studying. According to my friend she sticks her right hand out firmly, looks deep into your eyes and for a fraction of a second concentrates on you 100 per cent. She then removes her hand from your grasp and transfers it to the small of your back. “Without actually doing something so unseemly as pushing you away,” says my friend, “she makes it quite obvious that your turn is up.”
I hope the receptionists at the Daily Telegraph are suitably embarrassed. An article in that paper last Friday told how European noblemen with long titles have long been treated with a certain scepticism on these shores. It went on to describe the experiences of Prince Oskar von Preussen, an international publisher who also happens to be the Kaiser’s grandson. Visiting a London firm recently, the prince gave his name to the receptionist, who frowned and eventually gave him a visitor’s sticker labelled “Oskar, Prince”. What the article omitted to mention was that the “London firm” in question was … the Daily Telegraph.
The recent heavy rain up in Yorkshire has been making life difficult for the Government’s Funding Agency for Schools, newly installed in offices on the banks of the River Ouse in York. They have already had to evacuate their premises several times in the past three weeks because water has come over their doorstep.
Their head of finance recently devised what he thought was a foolproof plan to ensure nobody got trapped. He worked out that if the life-buoy on a post on the opposite bank began to float up within its frame, it was time to leave. This timing device worked well – until last week, when agency workers looked up from their desks and found it had floated away altogether. Happily, nobody drowned.
Disappointing news. The National Portrait Gallery’s exhibition of New York photograher Richard Avedon’s work, which opens on Thursday, will not, after all, be showing a series of pictures of the late great ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev in the nude.
Peter Watson’s new book on Nureyev alleges that these photographs, which no one has seen, were taken after Avedon and Nureyev downed a vodka or three one evening shortly after Nureyev defected from Russia. There was speculation these would finally appear in one of Avedon’s exhibitions after Nureyev’s death.
But it seems Nureyev’s wishes are to be respected from beyond the grave. According to Watson, when Nureyev sobered up he regretted what he had done and got Avedon to promise that the pictures would never be displayed. But the question remains: has somebody destroyed them, or are they being hidden somewhere?
The prosthetically-challenged chap shown above is an 18th-century “ship’s cook”, a centuries-old naval ranking that has often inspired literary minds. Robert Louis Stevenson’s Long John Silver was a ship’s cook (and Treaure Island was almost called The Sea Cook after him), as was the traitor in Tom Clancy’s The Hunt for Red October.
Sadly, the ship’s cook’s days are numbered: from April the rank is to be abolished and replaced by the title “chef”. A Defence Council instruction explains that the change “is designed to reflect an increased professional knowledge in cooking and catering skills beyond that expected of a cook.”
Or, as a navy spokeswoman rather more succinctly put it: “Chef sounds posher, doesn’t it?”
The charming old Etonian historian Philip Ziegler was the star speaker at last Thursday’s opening of the Imperial War Museum’s spectacular exhibition London at War 1939-1945. Ziegler, author of a recent book on that subject, was explaining his researching methods. “I spoke to former doctors from Brixton, dentists from Hampstead, plumbers from Putney …”
Just as he reached the “plumbers” bit, a well-known historian in the audience was heard to whisper: “and marquises from Eton”.