Life after Osbert, Edith and Sachie

Sir Reresby Sitwell, 67, and his younger brother Francis, 59, are distinctly uneasy in each other’s company. To publicise ‘The Sitwells’ – an exhibition looking at the remarkable lives of their artistic ancestors, which opened last week at the National Portrait Gallery in London – they request that they be interviewed separately. At the private view, I overhear a guest talking about a family feud; meanwhile, one of Francis’s sons, William, mentions he has only ever visited Renishaw, Reresby’s home, once. ‘We aren’t particularly close,’ Sir Reresby later acknowledges, ‘but we are eight years apart in age.’
If the friction is really tremendously bad, however, the pair are not letting on. They agreed to pose together for a photograph, and they do, in fact, end up talking to me together for a brief while.

Reresby and Francis are the only sons of Sacheverell (more commonly known as Sachie) Sitwell who, together with his siblings Edith and Osbert, took the artistic establishment of the 1920s and 1930s by storm. Poets, writers and musicians, they fought vigorously against all that was uncultured – what they called ‘the Philistine’ – and had a love-hate relationship with the new-fangled ideas of the Bloomsbury group.

The Sitwells quickly became the celebrities of the literary establishment; the exotically dressed Edith was photographed endlessly in controversial poses – the most famous is of her stretched out in a coffin – by Cecil Beaton, while Osbert concentrated on novel- writing and Sachie wrote about archaeology and art. Their fame reached its zenith with Facade, the performance of Edith’s poems set to music by Sachie’s young protege, William Walton. The work was ridiculed at first, but later acclaimed as highly innovative.

After 1925, when Sachie, oppressed by living with Osbert (a homosexual), married the beautiful Canadian Georgia Doble, the trio went their separate ways, to Osbert’s initial fury and Edith’s consternation. But Edith, in particular, went on to win sufficient acclaim as a poet to earn her a damehood, and Osbert’s five-volume autobiography, Left Hand, Right Hand], became a staple on many school reading lists.

Their friends, who included Gertrude Stein, Diaghihev, Rex Whistler, T S Eliot, Virginia Woolf and Wyndham Lewis, all looked upon them as different and eccentric, in D H Lawrence’s words, ‘as if they had been brought up on a desert island’ – and in many ways they had.

Their childhood at Renishaw, a gloomy, ghost-ridden Jacobean mansion among the coal mines of Derbyshire (the setting for Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover) was unhappy. Their father, Sir George Sitwell, was an eccentric who locked himself away in his library studying bizarre topics and insisted on eating alone. He saw sex as purely functional. Before committing the act he would go on a strict diet and read some scholastic work before announcing to his wife, ‘Ida, I am ready.’

Their mother, Lady Ida, was a society beauty who had no interest in her husband’s intellectual pursuits. She spent all day reading in bed or playing bridge – and eventually brought disgrace upon the family in 1915, when her gambling debts led indirectly to a jail sentence for fraud.

It is hard to reconcile the two rather short, tubby jovial gentleman in front of me, every inch the English country squires, with their exotic, unusually tall – Sachie was 6ft 5in – anarchic, eccentric, artistic forebears. On the other hand, of the three siblings, Sachie was considered the most ‘normal’: he was the only one who even married.

I ask Sachie’s sons for corroboration. To my surprise they shake their heads. ‘Perhaps he was more normal but I’m not sure about happier. He was a far more complex man than that,’ they both say. ‘There was a dark side to his nature,’ adds Reresby, ‘I was terrified of him.

‘I remember that my school report would arrive on the same day as Country Life and that he would read the report in one hand and bash me over the head with the magazine in the other,’ says Reresby. Francis’s face lights up.

‘You too?’ he asks, ‘I used to intercept mine before it got to him.’

Reresby, the talker of the two, goes on to narrate how he once filled a questionnaire at his prep school, Sandroyd. ‘ ‘Why did your parents send you here?’ it said. I answered,’ he chuckles. ‘ ‘Presumably because they recognised a fellow sadist in the headmaster.’ ‘

I ask them about their parents’ famous life-long infidelities. ‘It was very distressing,’ says Francis, and Reresby nods in agreement. ‘And it became more distressing the older we got. Our illusions were shattered.’

The conversation turns to Eton, and for the first time I think I detect a chip off the old block: ‘We certainly did not enjoy it – because it was very sporty,’ says Reresby, ‘and we loathed games.’ At this point, in characteristically jovial fashion, Reresby trundles over to the door to show me how his housemaster – a sports fanatic apparently – had been able to raise his legs up to the ceiling.

Despite his professed dislike of the school, however, it turns out that Reresby actually did rather well academically (more than could be said for his father, uncle or indeed brother). ‘You won the school essay prize,’ Francis reminds him ‘and got a scholarship to Cambridge.’

Neither event seem to hold much value for Reresby, however. I ask him if, in view of his ancestry, he had ever tried to write. ‘Oh no,’ is the abrupt answer. ‘You see I’m rather shy of writing.’

A Sitwell? Shy of writing? ‘You have to understand,’ says Reresby quickly, ‘that our father wrote so many books – 137 in total.’ Have you read them all? I ask. ‘Good Lord, no,’ they reply together.

At this point Francis suggests he leave me with Reresby for half an hour – I have sensed throughout that he feels uncomfortable, perhaps stifled by Reresby’s presence. Reresby on the other hand is confident and chatty. He talks easily about his upbringing at Weston Hall, Northamptonshire, (Sachie’s marital home, where Francis and his family now live); his various careers, which ranged from salesman at Fortnum & Mason to wine merchant. He sweeps over his marriage to an aristocrat, Penelope Forbes, which caused huge friction with Sachie and Georgia. ‘They were an arrogant and nasty,’ says Penelope later, when I visit their home, Renishaw. ‘She was jealous of me because I was better born.’

What is clearly Reresby’s pride and joy, however, is Renishaw, bequeathed directly to him by Osbert (Sachie had opted out on account of death duties).

‘Osbert left me the house in 1965 when he went to live at the family’s Italian home, the Castello di Montegufoni,’ he says, ‘but he did not leave any money.’ Slowly, he and Penelope, whose talents as a gardener, musician and gilder he eulogises throughout the interview, sought to exorcise the place and create a genial family home for their daughter, Alexandra. He is especially proud of the beautiful gardens, which are now open to the public.

Judging by the way he talks, smiles and jokes, Reresby is a happy individual, untainted by memories of the past and living wholly for the present. ‘I think Peneople and I have led rather happier lives than my ancestors,’ he smiles. Later he shows me a private letter from the historian Philip Zeigler: ‘Gloomy and sinister seem to be the adjectives most often applied to the house under the last generation; but whatever there was to give it that reputation seems to have been completely exorcised.’

Francis reappears and I notice now that he hangs his head in his brother’s company and lifts it when he is gone. He speaks more slowly than his brother, as if he is thinking very carefully – but then he has worked in PR for most of his life, and perhaps is more wary of journalists. It is clear that Francis feels more oppressed by the family history than Reresby. ‘I was too young to be given a choice so I was sent away to Canada during the war,’ he says ‘which was a mistake because I was behind academically when I returned and only scraped into Eton where I was teased because of my Canadian accent.

‘I did, however,’ he says, almost with defiance, ‘pursue the things I enjoyed. I became secretary of the Natural History Society and got involved with music which was just getting going there.’

And, of the two, it seems that it is Francis who has continued to fly something of the family’s cultural flag. He is a founding member then chairman of the music charity, the Park Lane Group – which organised Edith’s 75th birthday concert at the Festival Hall in 1962 – an occasion which moved her to tears; he was on the councils of the London Philharmonic Orchestra and the Byam Shaw School of Art and this week attends his first meeting of the board of Sadler’s Wells.

Significantly, Francis did not choose a career directly in the arts. ‘My business career (at first with Shell Petroleum and, since 1966, in financial PR) gave me independence,’ he says, adding softly. ‘It gave me the means to get away from the family.’

I ask him if he thinks his father would have minded that he had not pursued an artistic career. ‘No, I don’t think so,’ he says. ‘I think both Reresby and I have a far better life; my father was not a happy man; he was very disillusioned; he was always in his brother’s shadow and he had no religion to fall back on. He was haunted by the fear of getting old.’

At the same time, Francis seems fiercely proud of his family. ‘Perhaps my forebears have suffered exclusion but if they, or anyone else, had any doubts about their achievements then the proof of the pudding lies in this exhibition, which has taken the gallery three years to put together.’

Francis made many devoted trips to Edith’s house during her bedridden last years – to the end she dressed as bizarrely and entertained as vigorously as ever. ‘If they had been alive to see last night’s private view,’ he flashes, ‘they would have been the proudest people in the room.’

(Photographs omitted)

The fastest track to success: If you can’t make it writing, why not turn yourself into the story?

WHAT was Anna Pasternak up to when she decided to write her extraordinary tale of the Princess of Wales’s alleged affair with Captain James Hewitt? The obvious answer is that she was making a fortune: close friends say the deal amounted to pounds 1m. But there is another answer which is to do with the nature of modern journalism. At 27, Anna Pasternak was anxious to make an impact in her chosen career – to become one of those ‘star’ columnists, perhaps get invited on to a few television shows – and, in the 1990s, getting involved in a story of this sort is rapidly becoming almost the only route to success.
The past five years have seen a transformation in the definition of success in newspapers, especially among young reporters. Until about 40 years ago, journalists were usually anonymous. Only a handful of the most distinguished – Sefton Delmer and James Cameron, both war correspondents, or Godfrey Winn, a royal correspondent of the old ‘God-bless-you- ma’am’ school – enjoyed bylines. Most journalists appeared simply as ‘our own correspondent’ or ‘staff reporter’. The most famous columns – such as Cassandra, and Crossbencher – were written under pseudonyms.

If you were under 30 the way to make your name on Fleet Street was to produce a front-page scoop. Even then fame was limited and transient. Nobody had heard of Colin Mackenzie, the journalist who, 20 years ago, discovered the Great Train Robber Ronnie Biggs hiding in Brazil; after he had found Biggs, nobody heard of him again.

Now, ‘star’ columnists are often not journalists at all, but people who have become famous in another field and for other reasons: Mariella Frostrup, David Mellor, Gary Lineker, Alan Clark. Newspaper editors increasingly believe that readers would prefer, for example, to read articles about sport by a famous sportsman rather than by A Nobody – even if A Nobody could actually write better. An added attraction is that, though celebrity columnists command high fees, they are probably not as expensive as sending a reporter to the ends of the earth in pursuit of a story.

The answer, for the ambitious young journalist, is to become a celebrity. Miss Pasternak’s peer group has achieved this with remarkable speed and ease. By dint of his eccentricity William Cash, son of the Tory Euro-sceptic MP Bill Cash (which helped), actually changed the events he was covering. He danced with Madonna at the Cannes Film Festival, got slung into jail at Elizabeth Taylor’s 60th birthday party and puked all over the walls of Jay McInerney’s spare bedroom after an interview. All this gained coverage by other newspapers and provided the 27- year-old Cash with enough material for a book.

Imogen Edwards-Jones, 26, acquired notoriety when she flew to Hollywood to have her lips enlarged for an article in London’s Evening Standard. She subsequently wrote endless pieces about her sexual relationships, and the ‘I’m game for anything’ label, unsurprisingly, stuck. She became known among her circle as the Sunday Times’s ‘rave correspondent’ – not something I believe she was particularly proud of, but at least she was known as something.

Toby Young, editor of the Modern Review, now in his early thirties, first earned his space in the gossip columns when his founding editorial team crept into the offices of a national newspaper at night to use their printing facilities. He continues to pop up: a ferocious argument with the actress Elizabeth Hurley, plastered all over the tabloids, did nothing to stop his fame spreading. Sometimes, in an incestuous merry-go- round, the journalists who have become celebrities have their fame spread by the celebrities who have become journalists. Ginny Dougary made the headlines (relatively late in life) when she wrote a piece containing some disparaging remarks by Norman Lamont about John Major. David Mellor, in his Guardian column, described her as ‘an antipodean secretary and mother of two who has gone down in the world as well as across it’. Was she upset? Not likely. ‘This is brilliant,’ said Dougary at the time – and promptly encompassed the former National Heritage minister’s wrath in her next book, The Executive Tart and Other Myths.

How far can this go? A former executive of a national broadsheet suggested at lunch recently that he had been considering employing Elizabeth Hurley as a lifestyle columnist. No disrespect to Ms Hurley, but I choked on my rocket. He failed to understand why.

Even Anna Pasternak must quail at the thought of competing with the likes of Elizabeth Hurley. After all, at 27 Miss Pasternak is a granny compared with 23-year-old Victoria Coren, daughter of Alan Coren, former editor of Punch (which again has not exactly been a hindrance).

For the moment, however, since the publication of Princess in Love, Miss Pasternak is one of the most talked-about journalists in London. She is a living example of what ought to be every young writer’s motto: if you can’t make it writing a story, then it’s worth having a go at becoming the story yourself. It’s a modest start but,

at 25, I think it’s time I had a photo-byline.

(Photograph omitted)

But darling, how did you manage?: The secret of the great dinner party may be that the hostess has had nothing to do with it

THE SMART dinner party was progressing nicely – the champagne was flowing and everyone was munching the starter – when one of the guests turned to the hostess: ‘This roulade is absolutely exquisite.’ The hostess smiled graciously. A pause. ‘What did you put in it?’
The silence seemed ominous. And had the questioner glanced at the scarlet face of Edwina Rickards, a fellow guest, he might have guessed something was up. He did not, and Ms Rickards, a professional cook and the true architect of the meal, was left to rescue the conversation. ‘Didn’t you use cheese and basil?’ She looked meaningfully at the hostess, who nodded quickly. ‘Then, of course, the chicken and asparagus.’ The dinner party continued smoothly and the hostess’s secret remained safe.

‘This kind of thing happens all the time,’ says Ms Rickards, who cooks lunches in the City as well as making small dinners for the 40-60 age group. ‘You just have to laugh.’

The number of women hiring private cooks for dinner parties has risen over the past 15 years, she says. And so has the number of hostesses who try to give the impression that they have cooked for their dinners parties themselves.

‘Women in their thirties, who cannot cook, do not wish to be shown up in front of their female friends,’ she says. ‘They feel the need to give the impression of industry in the home, especially if they are not working. Those who do work, on the other hand, tend not to care.’

It is precisely because of such foibles that caterers these days have to be far more than just good cooks. They need to have humour and patience – in huge quantities. For, just as every hostess has a tale to tell about ‘those simply disastrous caterers I hired’, so all caterers have their own about an impossible hostess.

‘Every day is filled with drama,’ says Jane Lloyd-Owen, who runs By Word of Mouth, a company based in Wandsworth, London. ‘Last week a client rang up two hours before a lunch for 270 people, and said that suddenly she had 40 more people coming. We had to find 40 more portions of everything in no time at all – but that’s just par for the course.’

Temperamental clients are an accepted obstacle. In the middle of one grand dinner, an elderly man refused to eat Ms Lloyd-Owen’s food and insisted that someone fetch him a McDonald’s. ‘We did it.’ She actually laughs. ‘It’s all part of the theatre of the day.’

If the client is not the problem, the venue probably will be. The marketing director of one of England’s more famous old London caterers, who asked not to be named, explained how his company once had to cook the soup and vegetables for a dinner on the back of a lorry.

‘We took the only parking space available,’ he said, ‘until, that is, the owner of the building turned up and needed it. Someone then had to drive the lorry, with the soup and vegetables boiling away in it, round and round the block, while I leapt out from the pavement and flagged it down whenever I needed more food.’

In view of all the sagas about catering for large events – Roger de Pilkyngton of Payne & Gunter recounts that just before a dinner for 200, his secretary put down the phone and said, ‘They’ve just told me its 200 couples’ – it is perhaps surprising that most caterers find cooking for small private dinners to be the biggest problem.

Hostesses at home tend to be far more fussy about the food. ‘It is quite normal for someone to change her mind over the menu at the last minute,’ says Ms Rickards. ‘Then, when you get to the house with the food, there is nothing suitable to serve it on.’

This is not the least of the problems she has encountered. After one dinner, she was chased round the kitchen by the hostess’s husband, flapping his arms and clucking: ‘Where’s my pretty little partridge then?’

One woman refused to let any of the caterers she employed into her larder. ‘She steadfastly locked it and hid the keys, only allowing you to go in if you told her the precise amount of any ingredient you needed,’ said a cook who had worked for her.

But caterers have learnt to deal with such setbacks with equanimity. Ms Lloyd-Jones recalls the day her entire fridge-lorry, packed with champagne, was stolen – the day before the party. ‘We had to go out and buy everything all over again,’ she says, without a hint of irritation.

‘The fascinating part is working around the problem,’ says Mr De Pilkyngton. Michelle Julian, of Babette’s Feast, concurs. ‘We will do whatever we’re asked – nothing is too difficult.’

But just as caterers are about to become confused with saints, Ms Rickards showed that she was capable of some endearing stroppiness.

The friend who had pretended to have made that cheese roulade herself had rung to ask her for the recipe. ‘It turned out that the guest, who had asked about it at the party, wanted it,’ she says. ‘I didn’t give it to her.’

Edwina Rickards (081-299 3150): price negotiable.

Jane Lloyd-Owen, By Word of Mouth, 22 Glenville Mews, Kimber Road, London SW18 4NJ (081-871 9566): will deliver three courses to your home, from pounds 25 a head.

Payne & Gunter, Mayfair House, Belvue Road, Northolt, Middlesex UB5 5OJ (081-842 2224): prices dependent on venue.

Babette’s Feast, 8 Disraeli Gardens, Fawe Park Road, London SW15 2QB (081-871 1265): prices from pounds 25 a head for a three-course meal.

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)