The Questing Vole
At the weekend, one of the more lurid Sabbath newspapers published claims, duly denied, that David Beckham indulged in (to use the technical jargon) torrid sex-romps with his sultry 26-year-old personal assistant, public-school-educated Rebecca Loos. Most riveting were the sexually explicit mobilephone text messages the couple are reported to have exchanged, and which the newspaper mysteriously obtained. Since the organ in question — I refer to the newspaper — prides itself on its suitability for the whole family, they were forced to : blank out most of the rude words, leaving the messages as mysterious, indecipherable and poetic as any papyrus fragment dug up by Ezra Pound. It has given rise to a new national frenzy of filling-in-the-blanks, known to cognoscenti as Beckham Bonking Bingo. A bottle of champagne for the reader who can make the most entertaining sense of the following: 'Love the sound of that
cotton just *** getting more *** and your ':** all nice *** ***.' Gongula.
nother week, another extract from Please Stay To The Adjournment (Brewin Books, 130pp. £13.95), the memoirs of Solihull's veteran Tory MP John Taylor. Last time, you'll remember, we learnt of his first brush with the unfairness of life, when pipped to the post for a junior-school prize by an inferior candidate. Feeling time nipping at our heels, we must pass over the 'Interlude on Ancient Monuments', even as we look wistfully forward to the 'Interlude on Golf and Post Script on the Origins of the Solihull Duty Solicitor Scheme'. No, this week, we settle on 1966: on a young man just qualified as a solicitor; and on a tender sexual awakening. . . . 'During this time, a very beautiful female member of the staff of the firm, slightly older than me, taught me, outside office hours [the Vole interjects: even then, scrupulously honest about billable hours!], the fun and ecstasy of grown-up sex beyond the fumbling and groping which was all that I had known before. I will be grateful to her forever. I send her my love wherever she is.. I doubt not but this lady is a Spectator reader. We urge her: please, in confidence, get in touch. A naive Vole has some asterisks you may be able to help with.
rr ruly, this is bizarre. A colleague points I. out that the right-wing American journal the National Review divides its list of bestselling politics books into two separate categories: not 'hardback' and 'paperback',
mind, but 'Liberal' and 'Conservative' (look at www.nationalreviewcom if you don't believe me). So, instead of comparing Al Franken and Michael Moore to Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly direct, readers can assess them against frothing diatribes of the same stripe. Any chance that there might be some books that don't slot neatly into one or the other? Apparently not. We all know talk radio is massively dominated by the American Right. Is the dual bestseller list a way of trying to conceal that, on the whole, the liberals have the edge when it comes to people who read? One can but wonder. . . .
Qn a related topic, Trevor Phillips, the chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality, has not, I confess, hitherto been a friend of this column. But it cannot fail to grieve us to see a headline about him reading., 'Equality chief branded as "rightwing": (Mr Phillips is in trouble — as far as I can tell — for deciding that we don't want multiculturalism any more after all, and that we'll all be happier if cultural politics stresses warm beer, cricket and so forth.) But Mr Phillips, and all those who wear 'right-wing' as a badge of pride, will be alike horrified. (Imagine saying, 'Right-winger branded as "equality chief".') The kindest headline for all concerned would surely be, 'Equality chief branded "a bit fick",' Aphotograph of a resplendent pair of white whiskers, riffled by a sea breeze on the Eastbourne front, is pretty much all the coverage, as far as I am able to make out, that the weekend-long Annual General Meeting of the Handlebar Club (the equivalent of a party conference for silly moustaches) has garnered. Even the Liberal Democrats were more fully reported. As a lifetime whisker-wearer myself, this seems an injustice. What, the reading public would surely like to know, do the members of the Handlebar Club actually discuss at their meetings? Do they have seminars? Fringe meetings? Debates over women-only shortlists or whether the rules should be relaxed to allow men with beards to join? 'We have a very serious agenda,' the club's secretary, Rod Littlewood, informs me. 'We run through the minutes of the last one, I do a report, and we let new officers discuss the next AGM. Then we go to the pub. We're holding the World Beard And Moustache Championships in Brighton in 2007, and are expecting up to two or three hundred competitors from all over the world. We're hoping for sponsorship. It's all very relaxed, though some of our continental cousins take it a little bit too seriously. The Germans come out to win.'
Abemusing exchange at the party for my admired colleague 'the Brilliant' Harry Mount. The BHM's book about his life as a pupil barrister (My Brief Career— plugged in these pages passim, and still available at all good bookshops, he asks me to remind you) was launched in his mum's front room last week. And there, face to face, came Tony Adams and Janet Daley: one an Arsenal legend, the other a Canary Wharf legend, and both as charming as they are modest. Their conversation ran roughly thusly. T.A.: 'Pleased to meet you. How do you know Harry?' ID.: 'I work with him on the Daily Telegraph newspaper. What line of work are you in?' T.A.: 'Urn, I used to play a bit of football.'
And now, what I believe is known as a .`blind item'. Which Cabinet minister, at a recent meeting with the Home Office gay and lesbian support group, Spectrum, caused jaws to head south when he insouciantly announced that though he sort of 'got' homosexuals, lesbians and even transsexuals, he wondered if somebody would be able to explain for him what bisexuality was all about? We can only suppose he was teasing,
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