Diary – Monday 13 March 1995

Hernan Errazuriz, the ambassador for Chile, is as mysterious as he is sociable. On 19 April, Index on Censorship, the pro-free speech organisation, is sponsoring the British film premire of Death and the Maiden, about a Chilean torture victim who meets her former torturer after the return of democracy there. So IoC was pleasantly surprised when Sr Errazuriz agreed, in his private capacity as a wine importer, to supply the hooch for the event. After all, it has been only two years since Ariel Dorfmann, the exiled author of the original play of Death and the Maiden, has been allowed back into Chile. As far as IoC is aware, the ambassador is to attend the film premire at the Curzon Mayfair, along with the stars Ben Kingsley and Sigourney Weaver, undisguised. Nevertheless, he is clearly a man who likes to keep his private dealings private. When I rang his secretary to inquire about his wine business, she replied: “What wine business? In two years he’s never mentioned it.”

You probably thought you’d heard the last of the fiasco at last Thursday’s live radio concert at Ronnie Scott’s jazz club in Soho. (It was supposed to star Stevie Wonder – but for most of it the blind singer- songwriter, who maintained that he didn’t know the show was live, refused to perform. This made the broadcaster Simon Mayo sweat: he spent much of the weekend referring to “the skills” that enabled him to cope so well with the disaster.) But there is more. Once Wonder did get going, he was accompanied by that well-known British actress, but not remotely well- known singer, Catherine Zeta-Jones. Could Ms Zeta-Jones have been seeking a recording contract? It certainly sounded like it, for she actually managed to drown the Wonderkind out.

He gave as good as he got, however. A few bars into “Lately”, in which he assumed for the first time the role of backing singer, he turned to Ms Zeta-Jones and, smiling all the while, whispered gently to her: “My turn.”

The Panorama researchers working on a programme about Michael Portillo and the Tory right’s alleged conspiracy to lose the next election (that’ll be hard) and install their hero as leader are having a tough time of it. The only dirt they’ve got on his time at Peterhouse College, Cambridge, is that he belonged to an all-male college dining society, called the Grafton.

Perhaps I can help them here. The Grafton was not the most exclusive of Cambridge male dining societies. Portillo, after all, did not go to public school. But what it lacked in exclusivity it made up for in pretension. The members would adorn themselves in morning dress for a five-course champagne breakfast and afterwards stroll around the college in their finery, the spectacle of which was somewhat at odds with the college’s professed policy of egalitarianism. Eventually, the college authorities snapped and banned it. But members still meet regularly for champagne breakfasts in London hotels, kitted out in their morning coats. Portillo,though, no longer joins them – presumably he just doesn’t have the time.

There’s talk of closing down Spitting Image, the ageing satirical puppet show, but the rubbery mannequins seem unlikely to lie down and die. Satirical puppetry has caught on in many places abroad, where the Fluck and Law creations are often leased out. In Greece, two puppets are particularly popular with TV producers – those of Jeremy Paxman and the Duke of Edinburgh. Of course, these puppets do not satirise their live originals. “Nobody in Greece has ever heard of Jeremy Paxman,” a Spitting Image spokeswoman says. “Instead, he’s used to portray the stereotypical Greek waiter.” And the Duke, who hails from the Greek Royal Family? “Nobody’s ever heard of him either; he’s used to portray the stereotypical degenerate drunk.”

The film world has never seen the like. Three weeks ago MGM invited about 50 top American exhibitors (as cinema owners are known in the US) to a dinner in London celebrating the impending release of Rob Roy – a film about the hardships of village life in 17th-century Scotland – starring Liam Neeson. The guests were invited to a dinner at the Four Seasons Hotel, Park Lane, but instead of imposing a dress code, MGM asked for their measurements. The guests assumed they were getting a free dinner jacket (this is Hollywood, after all) and acquiesced.

Upon arrival, however, they discovered, to their dismay, that a kilt had been made up for each guest. “They all started ringing each other’s hotel rooms,” says one of the British guests who was in on the joke. “They deliberately arrived at the dinner in pairs, in case anyone took the mickey, but they ended up having a whale of a time.” Clearly refreshed by the Scotch whisky on offer, some of the exhibitors went off together to Piccadilly. There a bunch of American tourists, and later a group of Japanese, mistook them for genuine Scots and took their pictures, but only after the wily Americans charged £5 a go. “They made over £100,” says a spokesman for the distributors, UIP, adding hastily, “but I’m sure they gave it all to charity.”

Memo to British Rail: May I suggest a new staff position among your ranks – something like a Countryside Consultant – perhaps a reincarnation of William Boot? That you are in need of one is evident from your latest poster, on display at Euston station, featuring an enticing view of a castle in the great British countryside and starring a pretty butterfly (see below). The thing is that the butterfly has been extinct for 15 years. When it existed, it was called, for the amateur lepidopterists among you, the Large Tortoisehell.

Disaster was neatly avoided at Saturday night’s opening of Richard Strauss’s Salome at the Royal Opera House, thanks to the strong arms of the Welsh baritone Bryn Terfel. Just as the lead soprano, Catherine Malfitano, stepped forward to receive her thunderous applause the curtain (black for this performance) descended directly on top of her. Just in time, Terfel reached up and stopped it, in a pose reminiscent of the Statue of Liberty. He stood firm as the diva basked in her bravas and bouquets, receiving hearty applause in particular from – Panorama researchers get your notebooks out – Michael Portillo.

Diary – Monday 6 March 1995

That last vestige of British Communism, the Morning Star, (daily circulation 6,500, compared to 200,000 just after the Second World War) has appointed a new editor. John Haylett, the paper’s deputy editor, is set to take the helm in April – but only, it emerges, after a brush with what couldn’t possibly have been some very old-fashioned nepotism. When the People’s Press Printing Society committee, which thought it ran the paper, convened to elect Mr Haylett, Mary Rosser, the paper’s chief executive, stalled the vote, claiming that ultimate power in fact resided with the four-member management committee – which includes Ms Rosser. Enter her son-in-law, the paper’s 33-year-old news editor, Paul Corry, as new candidate. Eventually it was all sorted out and the fuss has gradually died down. But I gather there are those who still refer to Mr Corry as “Baby Kim” – after the son of Kim Il Sung who succeeded his father as ruler of North Korea last year.

Three weeks ago I revealed how the former Save Eldorado campaigner, Gwendoline Lamb, was persecuted in her local town of Middlesbrough after a tabloid newspaper revealed that she was on a blacklist of callers banned from Radio 4’s Call Nick Ross show. The BBC has subsequently apologised but the indomitable Ms Lamb is threatening to sue unless they pay her compensation for the harassment. The Beeb is clearly alarmed. Only yesterday morning Ms Lamb received two unctuous missives – one from Dave Stanford, head of radio, and one from Nick Ross himself – both of which were written, quite obviously, under the instruction: “Grovel.” It may not do any good, for Ms Lamb is obviously no push-over. “I’m still going ahead,” she says. “There are some very clever lawyers around … and I’m extremely bright myself.”

A tip for all those busily analysing the psyche of Nick Leeson: take a close look at the baseball cap he has been sporting so freely for the paparazzi. Its logo – a gothic D – is, I can reveal, the emblem of the Detroit Tigers baseball team. But do not assume that Mr Leeson is necessarily a Tigers supporter. It is more likely that he was persuaded to buy the cap, available at most sports stores, because it is the trademark of one of his childhood television heroes, the detective Magnum, alias the actor Tom Selleck, who is seldom seen without it.

Drama in the music world: there is to be a takeover at Britain’s oldest musical journal, the Musical Times, founded in 1844. Peter Phillips, director of the Tallis Scholars, has beaten music columnist Norman Lebrecht in the contest to buy it from Orpheus publications, although he stresses the deal won’t be signed until April. Still, MT staff – all three of them – are greatly relieved because Lebrecht wanted to shake the whole thing up. Phillips, on the other hand, intends to leave the format as it is.

But Lebrecht may yet be a force to be reckoned with. “I was going to put together a much broader magazine,” he admits, “because increasingly its appeal is exclusively for a declining academic readership. Its circulation has fallen to around 3,000, which is dismal. I am now in a position where I am probably going to start my own magazine in that area.”

The MT is certainly not for the musically risqu. Last year the romantic futurist composer Keith Burstein, whose work the Independent described as “of inspired beauty”, sent a programme of his concert at Southwark Cathedral to the MT editors, to have it returned with the word “Bollocks” scrawled across it in large capital letters.

Bad as they may be, things at the Musical Times cannot be as bad as they are at the Los Angeles Opera House, which is reputed in the trade for unfortunate incidents – bits of plaster falling on top of the orchestra, and the like. Still, flaky ceilings have nothing on the opera house’s latest trouble: scabies has broken out behind stage. For those who do not know, scabies is “a contagious skin infection caused by the itch mite. The sufferer experiences intense itching and the formation of vesicles and pustules” – Chambers Dictionary. The only way to rid a place infested with the mites is to call in the pest control officers. Over the weekend I called the opera house to find out how they were coping but, worryingly, I got no reply. My doctor, though, assures me that, though very nasty, scabies is seldom fatal.

I don’t often deal in smut, but some ironies are too rich to be resisted. Last week Paula Yates appeared on a repeat of Channel 4’s music show The Tube and was shown introducing Michael Hutchence of the antipodean rock combo INXS. This, of course, is the same Michael Hutchence who was recently exposed as having disrupted Paula’s marriage to Bob Geldof. After Hutchence had done his bit on stage, Paula turned to the camera and chortled: “He’s asked me back to his place, but I told him that I have my kids to think about …” Somebody at Channel 4 evidently has a rather vicious sense of humour.

I pride myself on having discovered a possible gap in Evelyn Waugh’s education: ping-pong. Listening in the car over the weekend to the HarperCollins tape of Waugh’s satire on Fleet Street, Scoop!, I noticed, bemused, that a ping-pong match played by his hero William Boot is scored thus: love- 15, love-30, love-40, game. But, as all ping-pong players know, the game is not scored like that and never has been. “It has always been the first to 21 and you have to be two points ahead,” confirmed the British Table Tennis Association when I called them yesterday. Was the error then deliberate or not? I put it to Waugh’s son, Auberon. “I’ve absolutely no idea,” he said, “but I am sure that my father never, in his entire life, played a single game of tennis or ping-pong.”

Diary – Monday 27 February 1995

One man who knows precisely what is on his walls, however, is the Prime Minister. He has been busy installing David Hockneys and the like on the walls of 10 Downing Street, formerly the backdrop for more traditional 18th- and 19th-century art. He has not replaced the Turners and Constables favoured by Margaret Thatcher so much as discreetly hung them elsewhere. “It’s to show his support of modern art,” says a spokesman.

Presumably that does not apply to the portrait of the great cricketer, WG Grace. “As soon as he arrived here, the Prime Minister specifically asked for a portrait of Grace to be added to the Downing Street collection,” says the spokesman, before adding, “but I’m not entirely sure where it hangs.” Bedroom, perhaps?

A number of my City friends are congratulating themselves on leaving Barings before the disastrous events of the weekend. One friend, it turns out, left only days ago. But I, too, count myself lucky. Three years ago, for some unfathomable reason, I got down to the final eight for two or three graduate places and endured a whole day of interviews at the bank’s Bishopsgate premises. Who knows? Perhaps they might have been rash enough to offer me a job.

But I was saved, eventually, by the vice-chairman, Andrew Tuckey. He strode into my interview room, took one look at me and barked: “You don’t really want to be an investment banker, do you?” “No,” I replied, feelingly. If only, my friends sighed at the weekend, he’d said the same to Nicholas Leeson.

In the very hour that the country’s grandest universities withdrew their affiliation from their eponymous Pall Mall club, the Oxford & Cambridge, members of the University Women’s Club were enjoying their monthly club dinner.

Talk of sexual equality was not on the menu, however. Instead, Lady Longford, the octogenarian biographer, kept the guests entertained with a yarn about how she once nearly set Windsor Castle on fire (well before the palce actually went up in flames).

“I was writing my biography of Queen Victoria,” she explained, “and I was copying out certain documents in the castle by hand when I learnt that you were allowed to bring in tape recorders. So the next day I brought mine in and suddenly there was this terrible smell. A line of smoke started coming out of the machine. I had to unplug it immediately.”

Lady Longford went on to display an impressive knowledge of matters electrical. “You see, the electrical system at Windsor was still on direct current, but my tape machine ran on alternating current. No wonder there was some smoke,” she explained with a grin.

Speaking of Oxford and Cambridge, I ran into Norman Stone, the notoriously right-wing Oxford historian, last week, and found him complaining bitterly about the proposed removal of the Oxbridge entrance exam. “I don’t know how we’re supposed to test anyone’s calibre,” he moaned. But then, it seemed, an idea came to him. “I know,” he said, eyes glinting mischievously, “what about a new course to stretch the students a bit? How about Totalitarian Women of our Time?” Now who could he possibly have had in mind?

One unpleasant side-effect of the Irish peace process is, of course, the sacking of the various actors who used to do the voice-over for Gerry Adams for British television. One of the main ones was Aiden McCann, a 34-year-old from Belfast, who has already found himself another role – as Charles Dickens.

“The main similarity is that they both have beards, moustaches and an obsession with combing their hair,” he says of his role in Stuffed Shirts & Marionettes, a play about Ellen Ternan, Dickens’s lover, which opens shortly at Croydon’s Warehouse Theatre. Doing Gerry Adams, he admits, was somewhat easier. “Adams sounds just like my father,” he says, “so it was simple for me to copy the “nars and thars” (nows and theres, of course.)

“But there is,” he continues, “a bigger difference still between Adams and Dickens. The latter would use 800 words to say something when the former would use one.”

Jim Dowd, Labour MP for Lewisham West, will not be jumping into his black tie again in a hurry. He recently attended a black-tie reception at Grosvenor House, and on returning to the Commons, found he did not have time to change into his suit for a reception for the International Fund for Animal Welfare. Marching in, he was somewhat taken aback when his fellow Labour MP Tony Banks introduced him to the IFAW head, Brian Davies, jokingly, as a waiter. Still, he let it rest – until, that is, Davies turned round and in all seriousness asked him how long he had been working in the Strangers’ Restaurant.

Tonight sees the opening of the much-hyped new production of Hamlet, starring Ralph Fiennes and Tara Fitzgerald. The performance ought really to put its venue, the Hackney Empire, firmly on the map of London theatreland at long last, but the administrative staff there are not optimistic. They blame the AA, which has pointed the way to the venue from the city with one of those natty little yellow signposts, but have omitted the theatre’s name and written merely: Hackney Hamlet. Alas, poor Empire.

Diary – Monday 20 February 1995

The celebratory party following last week’s installation of Oscar Wilde at Poets’ Corner is likely to have long-term beneficial effects for at least one of the party goers, long after the post-prandial chit- chat has died down. Richard Ingrams, the musical editor of the Oldie magazine, is to have one of his lifetime ambitions fulfilled. His Jimmy Saville appeared in the form of Martin Neary, the Westminster Abbey organist, who, after a few minutes of obligatory small talk, promised him a spin on the Abbey’s organ in July. Ingrams, who plays the organ in his local church in Berkshire and whose dedication to the instrument is described by friends as “fanatical”, is said to be ecstatic.

That Madonna should have exerted so much effort to come over here for last night’s Brit Awards surely signals only one thing: that her career is in the doldrums. She was once so revered that the only Brit to gain access to her was the former newspaper editor Andrew Neil, who happily gave up his day job to sit crooning at her feet, Hello!-style, for a couple of weeks. But that’s all over now. Instead, we hear about how much her various bits of clothing fetch in American auctions, how she is reduced to modelling for Versace and how she now gives interviews galore to tacky magazines. There’s no new book, no film and no best-selling album. If only the same could be said for Andrew Neil …

Brian Sewell, the art critic who became an overnight celebrity last year after publication of a letter signed by 25 art bigwigs calling for his resignation, is upset again. Zwemmer, Britain’s leading group of art bookshops, is not stocking his latest book, The Reviews that Caused The Rumpus and Other Pieces. Sewell, I hear, suspects censorship. However, when I rang the Litchfield Street branch of Zwemmer, someone very charmingly told me it was merely out of stock. Strange, though, that a bookish local swears he’s never seen it on the shelves there …

Last week I met a miracle man: Paul Sherwood, a doctor specialising in “physical medicine” whom Michael Caine, Roger Moore and Biddy Cash, wife of the Tory Euro-sceptic Bill, all swear cured them of back pain after years of failure at others’ hands. So what’s so special about Dr Sherwood?

“I recommend people not to wear too many clothes,” he says, deadpan, “and in my latest book, Asthma and Beyond, I recommend that we all eat food after its sell-by date. The body needs a bit of bacteria, you see.”

Dr Sherwood proceeds to tell me what happens to people who do not take his advice – a famous example being the actor Peter Sellers. “I’d already cured him once … but then didn’t see him for a while,” he explains. “Later I took one look and told him that unless he did as I told him he would be dead within 12 months. He didn’t, and he was.” Suffice to say, it was short shirtsleeves for me at the weekend … but the mouldy chicken breast putrifying at the back of the fridge went straight into the dustbin.

I am delighted to be able to solve a mystery that has been puzzling Serena Sutcliffe, head of wine at Sotheby’s. She has been perturbed by the complete inactivity of the security beagle at JFK Airport, New York.

“I wouldn’t want to get the dog into trouble,” said the solicitous Ms Sutcliffe, “but I don’t understand it at all. Every time I pass it just walks around wagging its tail, taking no notice of anything. Frankly, I could do a better job of sniffing out drugs myself.”

In the interests of international security, I called JFK. “Ah, the beagle,” a spokeswoman giggled. “Yes, it’s a common misconception – she’s not actually used for sniffing out drugs but for sniffing out vegetables.”

Latest backstage whisper at the Royal Opera House: flu jabs are to become compulsory following the dire depletion of the cast of Der Rosenkavalier. No sooner did a spokesman come on stage last week to declare jubilantly to the audience that for the first time the opera would be sung as cast, than a day later Aage Haugland, the bass singing Baron Ochs, fell ill.

A point of contention among the ailing opera crew, however, is why the ballet lot should remain fit and healthy. Hopes were raised momentarily when the principal dancer Jonathan Cope withdrew from a performance of Romeo and Juliet, only to be dashed when they were told the damage was muscular.

There were twitching lips at the What the Papers Say awards on Friday when the Scoop of the Year was awarded to the Sunday Times Insight team for their cash-for-questions revelation. Why? Because all those who worked on that story (which, if you remember, caused a certain amount of moral outrage since some of the journalists had disguised themselves as businessmen) have been “relocated” to other parts of the paper. Maurice Chittenden, who went up to receive the award, was not given an opportunity to speak on account of television timing difficulties. Any thoughts, I asked him, as to what he would have said, given the chance? “No,” he replied. It must be that he doesn’t want to be “relocated” again.

Last week’s burglary at the Department of Transport did not cause anything like the internal stir it might have done, primarily because tongues there are wagging over a far more important matter: the proposed Americanisation of the staff canteen.

Traditionally, the DoT, like all other government departments, has had a subsidised canteen. “Mushy peas, frazzled sausages, baked beans – that kind of thing,” a mole blithely informs me. But a few weeks ago a questionnaire was circulated to staff, asking them what they would prefer to eat once they move to their new premises in Greatminster, Horseferry Road, later this year.

“We could tick boxes beside Pizza Hut, Burger King, etc,” says my mole. “We were amazed. It’s the first time this kind of innovation has ever entered Westminster.”

Sadly for lovers of the thick crust with extra cheese, Pizza Hut did not receive enough votes. But sufficient variety was requested for the powers that be to recommend a Yankee-style food mall. My mole is quite ecstatic at the thought. A brief look at his waistline, however, had a sobering effect. “I suppose,” he moaned wistfully, “that we are all going to get very fat.”

Diary – Monday 13 February 1995

I am about to do a great favour for the parliamentary staff of Don Foster MP, Lib Dem education spokesman. A few weeks ago Foster invented a joke which his office is getting very tired of. If I reproduce this joke in the national press, they say, Foster will stop telling it at every dinner, conference and event that he attends and they won’t ever have to hear it again. So, in the name of bribability, here I go:

A man walks into the Department for Education in Whitehall and asks to speak to John Patten. “John Patten is no longer Education Secretary,” explains the secretary, “it’s now Gillian Shephard.” So the man goes away, only to reappear the next day – and the next, and the next. “Look, says the receptionist on the fourth visit, “how many times do I have to tell you that John Patten is no longer Education Secretary?”

“Oh … I know that,” says the man. “I just like hearing you say it.”

Last year I voiced a suggestion so terrible I cannot believe I am having to do so again: the rush for Glyndebourne tickets is dwindling. Even dentists in the nearby Sussex town of Lewes say they think there is no need to book in advance – and indeed the box office itself confirms that so far, in the priority booking season, they have not yet sold everything out. The reason? The list of operas for the forthcoming season not only fails to contain any obvious draws, but it kicks off with Rossini’s Ermione. Ermione, I discovered, does not feature in the definitive Kobb’s opera guide. And it is described in the Penguin guide to opera on compact discs as “the one Rossini opera never revived after its first production”. At Glyndebourne, however, they are not remotely worried. “Oh that,” said a spokeswoman. “That was just to do with politics in Naples in 1819. There won’t be any such problems here.”

There was a minor mishap at last week’s special National Trust tour of

2 Willow Road, the Hampstead house built in 1937 by the Hungarian architect Erno Goldfinger as his home. (Yes, yes, he was a friend of James Bond’s creator, Ian Fleming – the latter thought it would be “funny” to name his chief baddie after him.) The tour of Goldfinger’s house was something of a controversial event, since British conservation groups believe that the National Trust should not be investing its money in such modern houses. But on this occasion the crowd was lapping it up. “Goldfinger left many original artefacts here,” said the guide, and the punters gasped. “Look,” said the guide, opening a cupboard to reveal some bits of material, “he even left some of his clothes.” More astonishment from the gawping visitors. Just then, however, a door flew open and a NT employee rushed in. To the dismay of the onlookers she hastily gathered up the clothes – with precious little respect, it seemed, for their value. Turning to the assembly, she explained, blushing: “Ahh … they’re mine.”

A slight dampener occurred at the start of last week’s launch of Jon Sopel’s biography Tony Blair: The Moderniser – the Commons division bell rang. So, despite the television cameras and the Westminster venue of Convocation Hall, scarcely any MPs turned up. Still, among those who could make it was Mark Ellen, a university friend of Blair’s and member of his student band, Ugly Rumours. I asked him if Blair had shown the hallmarks of a future MP in those days. Answer: “None of us were remotely political then. In fact, when we were occasionally asked to do charitable gigs for student squatters, Tony thought the concept a load of rubbish.”

Valentine’s Day, I have decided, should be renamed Dalai Lama Day on account of the Holy Tibetan’s great success as a dating agency. Richard Gere met his wife, Cindy Crawford, through the Dalai Lama. The same gentleman also introduced Gere to the English model Laura Bailey, and as a consequence he separated from Crawford. Now we learn that he has forsaken Bailey for Vanessa Angel, whom he met, surprise, surprise, through the Dalai Lama. If I were Vanessa Angel, I should avoid trips to Tibet.

Doorstep Entertainment

Diary – Monday 6 February 1995

It is milk round season again: the time of year when hundreds ofuniversity students sit shivering in hotel corridors waiting to be summoned to interview by various captains of industry, investment bankers, solicitors or whoever they hope will employ them. Every year, there are the inevitable gags. In my day, there was a bank which started every interview off with “let’s pretend we are on Mars …” (the idea being to get the candidates to show off their sparky, rounded characters). This year, my grown-up friends are actually doing the hiring, and I gather that the candidates are a truly sad bunch.

A number of friends asked candidates how the Millennium fund should be spent, expecting a spiel on old buildings, new buildings, sports stadiums, etc. To my friends’ astonishment, the answer invariably came back: “UK equities.”

Another candidate was asked what he would do with all the money and time in the world. Answer (robotically): “More than anything in the world, I want to work in corporate finance.” Not, I feel, a good sign for the future of British banking.

Diary – Monday 6 February 1995

I’m sure there are still plenty more surprises in store for Lord Nolan, as he struggles to reintroduce morality into the tainted halls of Parliament. Perhaps I can give him a tip. The Commons secretaries are thinking of putting before him the issue of their unpaid work on MPs’ private interests, which range from dog-walking to correspondence to lobby firms.

Officially, the secretaries will deny this, as they did last week, when the Independent reported that they had raised the issue in their own club, the Secretaries and Research Assistants Council.

But a few days after that article was published, I had a telephone call from a young secretary, whispering that there were many who wanted to raise the issue with Nolan and that steps were being taken in that direction. Forewarned, as they say, is forearmed.

Diary – Monday 6 February 1995

The Royal Opera House in Covent Garden is not having the best of luck with its stars. At the weekend, the leading Swedish soprano, Sophie Von Otter, had to drop out of Der Rosenkavalier because of a cold. Causing more bewilderment to many ROH fans, however, is the absence of America’s top diva, Aprile Millo, who, according to my 1994/1995 catalogue, was due to sing opposite Luciano Pavarotti in the Opera House’s biggest event this year – Verdi’s Ballo in Maschera (the better seats are a trifling£267 each). Ballo starts on 13 April, but Ms Millo has been replaced by an up-and-coming fellow American, Deborah Voigt – not necessarily a disappointment, my cultural friends assure me.
But still, many among the older generation of opera lovers are not pleased. Ms Voigt is young enough to sing here again, but Ms Millo is coming to the end of her career and has still, peculiarly, never sung at the Opera House. Why? The Opera House, admitting her loss is a pity, can only cite “scheduling problems”.

Diary – Monday 6 February 1995

A Sheffield University survey has released evidence of sexual harassment and racism at the Bar. That it should have taken m’learned friends 10 years longer than everyone else to realise this has, I feel, something to do with the unworldliness of their profession. Only the other evening, I was sitting in a restaurant next to a table of four barristers – two men and two women. The conversation was all about how they wanted to improve race relations at the Bar. “The thing is,” said one man in his forties, “that whenI see a black barrister, I want to be able to think of him (clearly, they weren’t discussing sexism) as a barrister first and black second.” Hearty applause.

Seconds later, he summoned the waitress. “Excuse me, but where do I find transport to take me home?” The waitress looked somewhat startled, the time being 11.30pm and the venue central London. “You could get a taxi,” she ventured timidly. “And how,” riposted the man, “do I do that?” His friends, looking faintly astonished, gestured towards the street.