Looking back
Jeffrey Bernard
ri" he week started off badly with the death of Michael Dempsey. When a really good bloke dies and at the early age of 37 it makes you wonder what on earth it's all about. He was a thoroughly charming nutter, doomed, I suppose, from the start with his love of excess. When I first met him he was in publishing. Legend had it that he'd called round to see Geoffrey Wheatcroft one day at Cassell and had thrown a chair at him. It missed and went through the window I was told, but I thought at the time that it seemed to be a fairly civilised action to take against almost anybody in publishing. Of course, Geoffrey Wheatcroft was and is a friend, but it was nice to know that there was someone around who had definite feelings. More recently, Dempsey and I had some entertaining screaming matches over the Irish Republican Army and so obscenely did we mouth at each other on the pavement outside the French House that we had to be restrained. But it always ended in a drink and a chuckle with Dempsey and his contempt for the contemptible was as amusing as it was admirable. Shades of Maurice Richardson. Dempsey was also extremely brave and must have been the only man who could open a buff-coloured envelope and then roar with laughter at the contents. So that's another one gone. I sometimes wonder if Frank Norman, Bryce McNab, Muriel Belcher, Maurice Richardson, John Minton et al are looking down—or up—at us with a sort of amused tolerance. 1 fear we shall know soon enough.
The rest of the week consisted of the usual trivialities. A visit to the appalling Talk of the Town-45p for a tonic water! —and a poker session with a female journalist, a harpsichordist, an Italian maitre d'hotel and an American exile who has the dirtiest mind of any woman I've ever met. A strange assortment and once again I was reminded of just how far away I am from getting my A-level in stud poker. In spite of having a miserable face it seems that I can be read like a book. Luckily, maybe sensibly, I've lost the compulsion to gamble. I would have been in a terrible tizz five years ago if racing had been abandoned because of the weather. Now, all I care about is the fact that a lot of nice people in the jumping game are earning less than they need. Years ago we had cat racing during a snowy spell but now it would be easier to race those disgusting creatures—cockroaches. I met two on the banquette in the Colony Room Club last week, one in an Indian restaurant in Gerrard Street and yet another in a supermarket. Maurice Richardson tried racing these ghastly animals once but gave it up and confided that they were 'difficult to train'. Not so unpleasant was an interesting six-race card I saw one afternoon in a Lambourn pub when gerbils were the medium of the gambles. Unfortunately, when bets are struck and fivers and tenners litter the bar room floor these animals have a tendency to stop in their tracks and eat the money. And, talking of eating money, a few days ago, Michael Dempsey hinted with his extraordinary optimism and enthusiasm that everything was going to be all right this week as he was getting hold of £5,000. He could always see the light at the end of the tunnel and he never believed it was an approaching train. He once even threatened to commission me to write a book. it would have been a delight to work with him. It certainly was to play.
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