ANOTHER VOICE

Joking along with the Sunday Times: Mr Freeman's plaint — 2

AUBERON WAUGH

All Fleet Street has been laughing for a fortnight over the excellently successful practical joke played by journalists from the Mail on Sunday on that bastion of NewBrit pomposity, the Sunday Times. Its butt was in fact the one section in that general encyclopaedia of ignorance, bore- dom and conceit which is quite readable the People page written by my friend Henry Porter, himself a bit of a wag.

Porter was summoned to the Ritz to interview a woman posing as Meryl Streep, the actress, and duly published an inter- view in the course of which he accused Streep of lying to the press in order to promote a false image of herself to the public. It would be hard to imagine a more damaging libel on an actress of Miss Streep's reputation. Had Mr Porter a tit, jottle or scintilla of evidence for this disgraceful allegation?

No, Porter had been the victim of a practical joke. As soon as he discovered his mistake, he apologised prettily: `I did not, I am ashamed to admit, carry out an instant fingerprint test nor even ask for her dental records, as is customary on these occasions.' I have not heard that Miss Streep proposes to pursue the matter in the High Court, which may indicate that she has a sense of humour.

I wish I could say the same about the equally successful and amazingly similar practical joke played by an employee of the Sunday Times on me. In October 1983, as regular readers may remember, I re- ceived a letter on Sunday Times paper which purported to come from Mrs Claire Tomalin, the newspaper's literary editor. It enclosed a disgusting paperback of 'Les- bian and Gay fiction' edited by Mr Adam Mars-Jones, a homosexualist and friend of Mrs Tomalin. The letter asked for a 600-word review, ending with the sent- ences: 'Before starting please phone me to let me know what sort of review you are going to write. I understand you are sympathetic to the gay movement and I would expect a generous piece.'

It was a curious letter, and I decided that the most likely explanation for it was that Mrs Tomalin, in uncharacteristically skit- tish mood, was trying to make a joke. I did not, I must admit, carry out an instant handwriting test, as may be customary on these occasions. Instead I wrote a humor- ous entry in my Private Eye Diary rebuking her for trying to influence a reviewer's judgment and ending with the waggish sentence: 'It makes me wonder about all those crazy Somerset majors who say there is a left-wing homosexual conspiracy in the media.'

No sooner had the Eye appeared than all hell broke loose. Mrs Tomalin, who knew nothing of the forged letter, might reason- ably have been puzzled by this rebuke from out of the blue. She went and put her affairs in the hands of the Sunday Times's legal department, whose manager is called Antony Whitaker.

Whitaker may be familiar to Spectator readers from a lively correspondence be- tween him and the Spectator's charming, witty and bold former editor, Mr A.S.Chancellor (Mr Freeman's plaint — 1: Another voice, 6 March 1982) when Whi- taker was trying to extract money `to reflect the seriousness and gravity of this totally outrageous suggestion' — on behalf of another Sunday Times employee, called Simon Freeman, whom he claimed I had libelled. On that occasion, after a fairly robust letter from Chancellor telling the Legal Manager of the Sunday Times what he could do with Mr Freeman's complaint, the correspondence ended on a distressing- ly acrimonious note:

Dear Mr Chancellor, I have your letter of yesterday. Your patronising off-hand and sneering response to Mr Freeman's com- plaint is as degrading as it is disillusioning. Do you wish to nominate solicitors, or should the proceedings served [sic] at the Spectator's offices? Yours sincerely, Antony Whitaker.

However, no writ arrived and the Sun- day Times reporter later assured me ver- bally that he had only been joking.

On this occasion the Sunday Times's legal department wasted no time writing to the Eye's editor. A writ arrived on the Tuesday after publication with a letter from the Sunday Times solicitors, Messrs Theodore Goddard, demanding a retrac- tion, apology and damages for what was 'as gross, baseless and hurtful libel as it is possible to imagine'.

As soon as I realised what had happened I published — in the next issue of Private Eye — a total retraction and apology. Oddly enough, although people often suppose that working for the Eye involves endless argy-bargy with lawyers, it is the only apology which has ever appeared as a result of my Diary. In nearly 14 years of its life, the Diary has attracted only three writs — all from journalists staked by their employers, two of them paid for by Rupert Murdoch. Perhaps he enjoys paying for his journalists to sue other journalists in this way. Certainly the legal department of the Sunday Times seems to spend a fair amount of its time using his enormous resources to threaten small magazines like the Literary Review, the Spectator and Private Eye. The Eye's file of writs from Messrs Theodore Goddard — mostly on behalf of the sensitive Harold Evans — will make an amusing coffee table book one day.

My own judgment of Tomalin vs Waugh, Ingrams, Pressdram and Others was that once again the legal department of the Sunday Times was going to fall flat on its face. Having read very carefully through all the papers, I could not believe — and still cannot — that any British court would award Tomalin more than 5p in damages once it had the facts of the case before it.

Most unfortunately Ingrams, having started the case full of robust enthusiasm charming, witty and bold — had in the meantime taken on an idiotic, doomed case against a Welsh solicitor. Damages of £20,000 were aggravated by costs of £180,000. Ingrams put on a mooncalf face, said he had lost faith in British justice, and announced he was going to try to settle Tomalin, agreeing to pay £2,500 to a charity of Tomalin's choosing and Theo- dore Goddard's costs of over £8,000. Or so I read in the Standard, although the 'char- ity' aspect is a fairly recent development.

The case is still not settled, 24 months after it began. At present the parties are squabbling over the details of a Statement in Court, but for my own part (if I had the resources of Mr Murdoch behind me) I would be happy to let a British jury decide whether my own or the Sunday Times's judgment of the case is the sounder. Perhaps I am guilty of libel 'as gross and baseless as it is possible to imagine'. I do not know. It seems to me that if one loses one's faith in the ultimate common-sense of the courts one might as well become a crook or a politician. Poor Ingrams, I feel he may be dying or going mad. I am worried also that Meryl Streep, as an American, is not showing more interest in the opportunities open to her. But others will be delighted to learn they can buy ten years of these miraculous diaries in a book just published: A Turbulent Decade. The Diaries of Auberon Waugh 1976-1985 (Deutsch, £4.95). It is so cheap, the best thing might be to buy a couple of dozen and give them to all your friends for Christmas.