CHRISTMAS
BARRY HUMPHRIES The trouble with living in London is that apoplexy is always just around the corner. A few weeks ago my telephone developed a funny sub-aqueous rustling noise sufficient to drown all conversations, so after a few stiff cups of tea, and setting aside several hours for the task, I phoned BT to have it fixed. The next day a nice man appeared with a name a bit like a Sudanese teddy bear, and within a mere hour had found and fixed the problem — a corroded wire outside the house. He departed smiling into the sunset, having refused a £10 tip. The next day we realised that in fixing the problem he had cut off all extensions within the house: the bedroom, the kitchen, the office, all except the sitting room.
The next day I was back on hold with BT, he half an hour (they hope you'll hang up) to speak to a 'Customer Service Executive'. This time, an arrangement was made to send a BT engineer out a couple of days later. However, he announced, to my surprise, that the charge for this callout would be £116.33 just to step across the threshold, followed by 99 quid per hour, but if the problem was external, it would be free. In vain I tried to explain that there was no internal problem before their engineer's visit. Ah,' the Customer Services Executive replied triumphantly, 'he cut off the internal lines because they were causing the rustling, he's put that in his notes.' It appears he had failed to note the corroded outside wire. 'But wouldn't he have told me if the problem was internal? Why would he lie?' I expostulated. But this was beyond the comprehension of the Customer Services Executive.
Afiter 15 minutes of violent argument, 't was grudgingly agreed that the problem could possibly be external and that a BT engineer would come and, without charge, reinstate the cut lines all over the house. This happened. Imagine then my surprise over this morning's boiled egg to get a BT bill for £346 + VAT. Attempts to get through to BT on my restored phone have been unsuccessful due to 40-minute wait times, sudden gear changes to 'number unavailable' tones and, occasionally, after a very long wait, a bewildered person in India unable to help. Alas, the automated menu does not offer an option for 'thoroughly pissed off customer'. What are those of us who choose to suffer life in England meant to do with our rage? I can cope, I am young and angry. But what about poor old ladies on the pension who get a fanciful bill and are too intimidated to complain? BT just hopes the flummoxed old dears will shut up, put up, and pay the fictitious account.
Australia's new Prime Minister, the euphoniously named Kevin Rudd, whom the actress Dame Edna has, in an uncalled-for way, likened to a dentist, was photographed in his moment of triumph smiling and pointing at the camera. The pointing thing is also a habit of bad standup comedians, politicians and minor rock stars, who point arbitrarily at someone in the audience and pull a face which is meant to say, 'fancy seeing you here!'
Australians are a paradoxical race in a paradoxical land so it is not too much of a surprise that we have decided at the time of our greatest prosperity and success, with full employment and a strong dollar, to snatch failure from the jaws of success. It's an Irish thing. Mr Rudd is supported by a woman who may well become his nemesis, called Julia Gillard. My mother employed several variations on the epithet 'common'. Not seldom, and sotto voce, she spelt out the world COMMON and sometimes — an exquisitely subtle variant — she might describe a person of our acquaintance as 'a bit ordinary'. Ms Gillard could have inspired my mother to new expressions of genteel opprobrium. Mr Rudd, probably to the Queen's relief, will drag out the old Republican warhorse, but it is to be hoped he restores the correct spelling to the name of his own party. At some point in the last 40 years, the Australian Labor party decided to be 'with it', and adopt the eccentric American spelling, but if we are not going to support America in Iraq, we don't have to emulate their spelling mistakes. Bring back the Labour party, please, Mr Rudd.
Afriend of mine works in an openplan office for an agency handling alternative stand-up comedians of the fokkenfokkoffyoufokker variety. Last Tuesday one of the pretty girls in the office announced she was going out with Jeff, the runner. My friend said, 'You mean that fat little guy from downstairs?' This caused huge offence to his sensitive, politically correct co-workers. My friend was forced to apologise to the whole office for, well, stating the obvious. Good thing Jeff was Caucasian.
Inotice that the Spectator has started to advertise wrist-watches. There seem to be more and more advertisements for these trinkets everywhere you look and I often see handsome old George Clooney flashing his timepiece in the glossies when he isn't coyly sipping Nespresso. How much money does George need? Another good-looking man facing poverty is David Beckham, who advertises everything you can think of, including his own aftershave called 'Intimately Beckham', which sounds about as anachronistic as 'Sensuously Wolverhampton'. To drop a couple of names, I met him on Thursday at the taping of the last Parkinson show and decided he was very nice indeed. So nice, in fact, that even my client Dame Edna couldn't bring herself to ask him, with one of those moues of hers, why his wife is called 'Posh'. I suppose she is posh anyway — by Australian standards.
Name-dropping is the only voluptuous pleasure that should be indulged sparingly, if at all. Butwhen is name-dropping name-dropping, or just talking about people you know? It is only de trop if the dropper deliberately manipulates the conversation in order to show off. I am hitched to a family with close ties to the artistic establishment. My mother-in-law, without a trace of selfconsciousness or snobbery, constantly drops illustrious names as if they were uncles and aunties. Thus, Tom is Eliot, Isaiah is Berlin, Henry is Moore and Iris is Murdoch. Last night that old Paul Newman picture The Hustler was on television. I had never seen it and asked my wife if she had.
'I saw it back in the Sixties at the Curzon,' she replied. 'We were hoping it might cheer up Igor after the death of Pope John.'
'Igor?'
'Stravinsky.'
Merry Christmas.
Bany Humphries 2007
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