ANOTHER VOICE
Vikki de Lambray's part in the re-arrangement of boiled sweets
AUBERON WAUGH
In my years as political correspondent first for Spectator then for Private Eye the only useful thing I discovered was that practically nobody in Britain is much in- terested in politics or politicians.
This is not the first time I have revealed the one important discovery I made in five years of hanging around Westminster, but I never cease to be amazed by the promin- ence which newspapers continue to give to political 'news'. Of all the events in the political calendar, the one that arouses least interest is the Government reshuffle. When it occurs, we see small mugshots of people with unknown names, their faces almost bursting with the effort to contain their naked ambition, self-importance and greed for power; the photographs are accompanied by the announcement that this is the new Minister for Sport, or Agriculture, or North Sea Oil. At this point, we generally exercise our right as free citizens to turn to another page. But for weeks, even months, in advance, the political journalists have been speculating about which nonentity with a face like a boiled sweet will find himself in which unimportant and fatuous job. I think I understand why they write this stuff, and it is a point I shall return to later, but a more immediate mystery is why editors give them the space.
News is short, of course, in the 'silly' season, when Parliament and the courts are in recess, although I generally find newspapers more interesting in August than at any other time of the year. People seem to do more interesting things on holiday than at other times of the year whether it is setting fire to the Cote d'Azur or being mugged in Spain, or simply finding that their holiday hotels have not yet been built. A particularly fascinating story this August concerned the death of Mr Vikki de Lambray, the homosexual prostitute who was also rumoured to be a professional blackmailer.
I never met Lambray, whose real name was apparently David Gibbon, although in common with many newspaper columnists, I imagine, I often used to receive printed invitations to parties he was giving. They were usually decorated by a photograph of himself, which would he enough to per- suade any prudent man to throw them in the wastepaper basket unacknowledged. Some people were obviously less prudent, as was shown by a most amusing photo- graph in the Daily Mail on the day after his body was found. It showed Lambray/ Gibbon 'in a joking mood with the Editor of the Sunday Times, Mr Andrew Neil' at a nightclub party given in 1985. There was no suggestion that he had any deeper or more meaningful association with Mr Neil who is, of course, a happily unmarried man, but the story mentioned that among those who admitted paying for Lambray's sexual services was Sir James Dunnett, the former Permanent Under-Secretary at the Ministry of Defence. Sir James explained in 1983 that when he met Lambray he thought he was a woman, and denied that there had been any security risk.
Lambray/Gibbon was found dead in his South London flat after he had telephoned the Press Association in some distress complaining that he had just been injected with a lethal quantity of heroin. He claimed that he had been murdered in order to silence him about a heroin exposé involving a member of the aristocracy, but the story had various unsatisfactory ele- ments. If one had just been injected in that way, I would have thought there were more useful people to telephone than the Press Association, although that might have been the first reaction of an obsessive self-publicist. But he does not seem to have telephoned for an ambulance and was found dead by a neighbour some hours later. However, I do not see how someone who claimed to have had homosexual affairs with both the well-known Soviet spy Anatoli Zotov and a much-loved former head of the British Secret Intelligence Service could ever be sure on whose behalf he was being killed. In any case, it seems a rum way to murder someone, leaving him alone with a telephone after his injection. Quite possibly it was just an exhibitionist's way of committing suicide, using the opportunity to telephone around to make disgraceful allegations about a member of the aristocracy.
But it was easily the most interesting story of the summer, and I returned to England expecting London to be full of it. Instead of which, I find the newspapers full of nothing but pictures of variegated boiled sweets: is Channon to go to Fisheries, Patten to Commonwealth Relations? What does the future hold for Kenneth 'Ken' Clarke with an 'e' or Mr Norman Fowler? Is there any hope for Young Winston or Mr Archibald Hamilton? Young Mark Lennox-Boyd surely shows some promise.
I do not suppose for a moment that there is any conscious conspiracy among Fleet Street editors, or that if a 'D' notice had been issued, they would pay any attention to it. But what on earth has happened to the Vikki de Lambray story? Has the inquest been resumed? Did he die of heroin poisoning or some other indisposi- tion? What was the joke he was sharing with Mr Andrew Neil at a nightclub party in 1985? The questions are endless, and they are far more interesting than the question of who or what is Mr 'Tony' Newton, tipped by the Sunday Telegraph's political correspondent 'as a DHSS minis- ter. . . showing wisdom and humour as well as erudite know-how'.
The reason political writers regale us with speculation about political reshuffles, despite the fact that nobody is remotely interested in them, is that they live their lives among these wretched politicians, who are interested in nothing else. Real- life politics is about appointments not about priorities, let alone about 'people' in any wider sense than the rows of boiled sweets on the Government benches, all awaiting their call to office.
My only complaint is that politics might be made more interesting than this boiled sweet parade can ever be. So far as ordinary, non-political people are con- cerned, politics is about what the Govern- ment is going to do next to dispossess and annoy them — or, alternatively, what the Government is going to do next to benefit them with undeserved pay-rises, further accretions of power or welfare handouts. In August, an SDP working party pro- posed to hammer anyone earning over £10,000 a year (in order, no doubt, to benefit the civil servants massively and the very poor a little bit). Mr Steel attacked the idea, saying it would lose the Alliance votes, while Mr Owen defended it, saying that what they really meant was to hammer those earning more than £17,500 a year.
That was the only political news of the summer, and that is what the political reporters should be discussing, at any rate until there is some fresh political news. Even then, nothing the SDP proposes can ever be quite as interesting as what hap- pened to Vikki de Lambray. But perhaps Conservative and Labour proposals would be even more interesting, if only we were allowed to discuss them.
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