11 JUNE 1994, Page 24

AND ANOTHER THING

Cavaliers, Morlocks and Marquereaux at the siege of Saltwood Castle

PAUL JOHNSON

With every flick of Max Clifford's wrist,' wailed David Mellor in the Guardian, mankind was 'doomed' to be `sent spinning further into an abyss of semi- fictionalised voyeurism masquerading as news.' Mr Mellor, himself a victim of Max Clifford's black art, was of course com- menting on the publicist's latest creation: the sexual gavotte said to have taken place between the former defence minister, Alan Clark, and three female members of the Harkess family. But most other columnists — who have not themselves suffered at Clifford's hands — just lay back and enjoyed it. 'We should be grateful to these clowns,' wrote Woodrow Wyatt in the News of the World, 'for the vast entertainment they've given us.' All things considered, Alan Clark got a marvellous press. Pere- grine Worsthome was so entranced that he gave Clark two rave notices. In the Daily Telegraph he described him as 'a writer of genius'. 'Whereas David Mellor,' he added in the Sunday Telegraph, 'came across as sleazy and rather ridiculous, Alan Clark has succeeded in presenting himself . . . as an authentic Cavalier.'

It is true some of the down-market gossip columnists felt they had to be censorious. Allison Pearson in the Evening Standard denounced Clark as an '18th-century, Loutish Leftover', a 'Bionic Bounder', 'a Forty-Million-Pound Phallus' and 'a Cave- man'. Sounds as if the lady would like to meet him, doesn't it? There were more sour grapes from Henry Porter in the Daily Mail: 'In the life of every Romeo,' he wrote, 'there is a moment when he can move — perhaps lurch is a better word from ageing roué to dirty old man.' He added: 'Clark is curiously without style'. I'm not sure Porter would be my first choice as an arbiter of morals, or style for that matter.

Another self-appointed moral heavy- weight holding forth was Edward Pearce in the Standard. But he decided to go for Clif- ford as an easier target: 'He is a subter- ranean creature reminiscent of H.G. Wells's Morlocks, who were four feet tall, bloodshot-eyed, browless and crept about in a hunched, arm-drooping simian pos- ture. They lived in caves underground-and were cannibals. That is a little kind to Mr Clifford, but gives a good idea of his moral standing.' The trouble with such journalists as Pearce is that they lack the imagination to see themselves as others see them. Many years ago, feeling sorry for Pearce, whom I scarcely knew, I invited him to a lunch party at my house. Afterwards, my wife said, 'Please don't ask that man again.' `Why?' I don't really know, but I could see the other guests edging away.' Yet another of the gossips, Peter Hillmore in the Observer, actually had the nerve to dismiss Clark's writings as of 'tabloid quality' and to define him as 'a fellow of low vulgar manners and behaviour'. Most people, I imagine, would consider this an apt sum- mation of columnists like Porter, Pearce and Hillmore.

There were some surprises. The Times, in a leader, dismissed the whole business under the headline: 'Sex romp comedy: Clark and his coven are earning public cheers not pity'. The story, was 'adding to the harmless gaiety of nations'. This seemed odd from a paper which once insisted, apropos the Profumo affair, 'It is a moral issue', and its editor, Peter Stoddart, confessed to me he was not so sure of the line he had taken. He may be right to have second thoughts. On the other hand, censo- riousness towards Clark did not ring true. His luxurious lifestyle, complained Suzanne Moore in the Guardian, was particularly hard on 'those among us who have to hud- dle in doorways with tattered sleeping-bags and beg for a living'. My God — I knew the Guardian was mean, but is it that mean? Here was I imagining Ms Moore, the paper's star woman moaner, comfortably settled in Swiss Cottage with a glass of Bul- `I was famous once. But I only got ten minutes.' garian chablis in hand, and all the time she was underneath the Arches!

Jane Clark was awarded the crown of `Heroine of the Week' by most columnists, led by the Mail's Linda Lee-Potter, that faithful litmus-test of middle-class subur- ban opinion. By contrast, no one had a good word to say for the Harkesses. The Sun's Richard Littlejohn summed up the general opinion: 'They will be remembered — if at all — as a couple of silly bitches and a pathetic cuckold. They've had their fif- teen minutes. They can go home now.' Dr Raj Persaud, a Maudsley Hospital psychia- trist hired by the Mail to give an expert's view, dismissed the Harkess women as suf- fering from low self-esteem'. However, I was not impressed by this shrink's home- work. He wrote that it was 'Clark's impervi- ousness to what others think which made him a difficult Cabinet colleague'. But the whole point about Clark, as I thought everyone knew, is that he never got into the Cabinet — not even Mrs Thatcher, who had a soft spot for him, would put him there — and it was this failure which led him to resign his seat and publish his Diaries.

Indeed, in general I was disappointed by Fleet Street's inability to investigate the background to this story properly. Why did no one point out that the Mr Hyde side of Clark's character comes from his dreadful mum, another Jane? She quite literally used to crash into a room and is the only woman I think, at any rate in the present reign, who toppled over while curtsying to the Queen, did a spectacular cartwheel, and landed on her bottom, drawing from the monarch the laconic comment: 'That was quite a bump.' Again, I think the reporters ought to have done a better job on the legalities of Clifford's business. He is, by any definition, a public nuisance who should be brought to book if possible. And, since he makes a habit of taking a percent- age from women who cash in on their adul- terous activities, is he not in danger of a hand on his collar? Why has no one sug- gested to Ms Barbara Mills, that unimagi- native and far from hyperactive director of Public Prosecutions, that there may be a case for doing Clifford for living on immoral earnings? The _prosecution and conviction of this egregious manufacturer of half-truths and lubricious fictions would be a fitting end to the Siege of Saltwood Castle.