DIARY JOHN MORTIMER
hose tabloid journalists who gossip so gleefully about `Squidgy' and 'love nests' should take a look at the deep legal water in which they are paddling. Perhaps I might refer the learned editor of the Sun newspa- per to the Treason Act of 1351. It is still the law that 'to violate the King's companion or his eldest daughter unmarried, or the wife of his eldest son and heir' amounts to High Treason. Since the Murder (Abolition of the Death Penalty) Act 1965 the only two offences for which a death sentence can be passed are High Treason and Piracy with Violence. This is not to suggest that, how- ever many doubtful tapes may have been recorded by however many retired bank managers, there is any evidence of any trea- sonable acts having taken place. Indeed both the Palace and the police have denied the suggestion that the Princess dismissed her security officers or went to secret assig- nations. But to accuse anyone of what is Still a capital crime must be a criminal libel. Even if no editor ends up in the nick for losing such a case, the damages would make Lord Archer's haul look like a pound out of the poor-box. They might be even higher if the Princess of Wales decided to sue. There's no legal reason why she Shouldn't do so, and the time for any royal restraint in these matters must be over. I don't see why this family shouldn't be as free as the rest of the population to pay income tax, issue writs and sunbathe top- less. There is ample precedent for a mem- ber of the Wales family giving evidence in a libel action, as Edward VII did when he was Prince. A royal writ might be as good a Way as any of ending a story which surely, by now, has outstayed its welcome.
The incomplete abolition of the death Penalty is a matter of some confusion to lawyers. 'Arson in a Royal Dockyard' was a hanging matter until 1971. Recently, after one .successful prosecution for starting a fire in the docks, an eccentric judge asked the .prosecuting counsel if this were not a Fapital offence. He was hastily assured that it was not, and afterwards confessed that he had only asked in order to have a 'bit of fun', and said, 'The fellow did go a bit green about the gills, didn't he?' Life at the Old Bailey is, of course, full of jokes.
AGerman writer on the media this Week suggested that all those who want changes at the BBC should visit Germany Where the television is appalling and news Of the riots in Rostock was delayed because a programme of mimed Sixties pop num- bers overran by 20 minutes. They should also be locked in an American motel bed- room for a week, where they might discover
that consumer choice means 45 channels of identical rubbish. It is also quite misleading to speak of television being 'entirely changed in the Nineties'. It may come out of different mechanical devices, down from the stars or up from the bottom of the sea, but it will have to rely on the same talent, or lack of it. Standards of excellence will still have to be set, as by and large they have been, by the BBC. It's been a feature of government over the last decade that the true ills in our society — unemployment, poverty, foul prisons and run down schools — are left uncured and those institutions which are working well, such as the world's best television service, are threatened with extensive and fatal surgery. There is encouraging evidence that David Mellor, who may become a very good Arts Minis- ter, understands this. What the BBC moguls must never do is to approach the government, like the Burghers of Calais, with ropes around their necks.
Mr John Patten has been telling pupils that their GCSE results were almost worthless, that their spelling has not been properly tested and that they are quite unqualified to get the jobs his government's economic policies won't provide for them anyway. This seems a good way of provid- ing young people with a taste of that hell he's told us he finds so therapeutic. I'm always, as a shaky speller myself, surprised at the importance education ministers 'My private life is my own business . . . er. . . . unless that's Hello! magazine.'
attach to spelling. I don't think good writ- ing has much to do with this ability; writers hear words in their heads and don't visu- alise them in print. I'm encouraged by the facts that Evelyn Waugh had to look up simple words in the dictionary; at the great- est period of our literature there were no hard rules about spelling and Shakespeare seemed quite doubtful about how to spell his own name.
Ialways thought the question of women members of the Garrick Club was, like the married lives of minor royals, given far too much space in the papers and was a topic of no particular interest to the world. I was away when the famous meeting was held in the Royalty Theatre, and took no part in the proceedings. Now I believe that once the question had been raised it was a great mistake to bar the doors to women, and the Club has been left looking somewhat ridiculous. One enlightened member said that, in the past, the Garrick excluded lunatics, gays and women; now the first two classes have been let in there's no conceiv- able reason to ban the third.
Trollope was a devoted and distin- guished member of the Garrick — it's very strange that Englishmen who have had a particularly horrible time at all-male public schools seek refuge in all-male clubs — and he understood women and wrote about them far more truthfully than Dickens, for whom they were either angels or harridans. Undoubtedly the party to celebrate the publication of Victoria Glendinning's admirable life of the great novelist should have taken place at the Garrick, even though it was written by a woman. Howev- er, the club was unavailable and the cham- pagne was poured in a tent near St Botolph's Church in the City. The garden wall was decorated with plaques to brave Londoners who had died tragically early in the century. One gentleman was run over by a train whilst saving a mad woman from suicide. I don't suppose he was a member of the Garrick.
Ever on the search for legal jokes not necessarily connected with the death penal- ty, I consulted a friend who is still practis- ing. She said a member of her chambers was in court one Monday morning when the judge said, 'I'm afraid we'll have to adjourn this case. I have written my judg- ment out, but I left it in my cottage in Devon and I can't get it sent here until tomorrow.' Fax it up, my Lord,' the helpful barrister suggested, to which his Lordship replied, 'Yes, it does rather.'
Previous page
