DIARY KEITH WATERHOUSE
Ihave yet to read Marje Proops's biogra- phy but it came to mind last week when I chose to write a Daily Mail column about John Smith's difficulties in the form of a letter from Worried Labour Party to an agony auntie. Years ago during the Heath administration, when I was writing for the Mirror, I did something similar — letters to Auntie Annabel or some such from various members of the Cabinet: 'Dear Auntie Annabel, I am a Foreign Secretary but my trouble is I am allergic to foreigners' that sort of thing. Marje, completely miss- ing the point that this was a send-up not of agony aunts but of politicians, was deeply hurt. She wrote a more-in-sorrow-than-in- anger 'open love letter' to me in the Mirror, saying that while she had a sense of humour (a claim more often than not made by those who haven't) the job of advising readers was deeply serious, etc, etc. To me she said sweetly, 'Don't shit on your own doorstep, darling.' That was in about 1971. A few months ago I was amazed to get a call from Marje's biographer, asking me if this trifling episode was true. It has evident- ly rankled all these years. As for Marje's now famous affair with the office lawyer Philip Levy, Frank Johnson in his Daily Telegraph elegraph column quotes our mischievous mutual friend Peter McKay on why no one at the Mirror ever leaked it to Private Eye: Innate decency.' Innate balderdash. The unremarkable truth is that no one was all that interested, being far more exercised with their own affairs than with anyone else's (during my long stint with the Mirror there were never fewer than a good dozen illicit office liaisons raging). It is a great myth that every office is a stew of sexual gossip. People talk about these things far less than nervous, guilt-ridden secret lovers imagine. After all, unless they have been found doing it in the lift or are known to practise some colourful deviation, what is there to say except 'Well, well, well'? Going back to Marje: as printed, that Daily Mail column began 'Dear Agony Auntie'. In the original draft, it began 'Dear Marje'. Then I thought better of it.
Bank managers have long replaced gazumping estate agents as dinner party fodder. My own bank horror story has an unexpectedly upbeat ending. Some while ago I found that a very large cheque I had Paid in had gone astray. It proved to have gone into someone else's account by mis- take. Unravelling this monumental blunder took a number of lengthy and, since my bank happens to be in another town, expensive phone calls. Thanks to British Telecom's new itemised bill I was subse- quently able to establish that they totalled £4.87, representing 116 units. Since my
bank, like everybody else's these days, charges for every piddling little service, I thought I would try giving them a taste of their own medicine and so I wrote a sarcas- tic letter to my bank manager demanding that he credit my account with £4.87. To my surprise, I received an abject reply by return of post, agreeing to do so. Sauce for the goose, eh? Now that I have set the precedent I hope other aggrieved clients of the Big Four will follow suit. But I can't help wondering if my bank manager has charged me for that grovelling letter.
Several acquaintances have commiserat- ed with me upon the death of Ted Willis Lord Willis of Dock Green — in the belief that we were collaborators. They are think- ing of Willis Hall: the misapprehension has dogged both Willises down the years. But the prolific Ted was an old friend. During last year he was working on an updated ver- sion of his long-running Dixon of Dock Green. I hope he got it off the ground although getting anything off the ground with the BBC these days is like lifting a two-ton bar-bell. When we last had lunch a few months ago Ted told me about another idea that Dixon himself — Jack Warner had put up to him when Ted had visited him in hospital — the day before he died, as it happened. For all that he had had a leg amputated, Jack was his usual chirpy self and raring to get back to work. 'I've got a marvellous idea for a great new series when I get out of here, Ted,' he enthused. `It's about this one-legged copper . . . '
At the risk of trespassing on Auberon Waugh's territory, I observe that the annu- al analysis of the Christmas drink-driving statistics has taken a bizarre new twist. Transport ministers and chief constables have been expressing qualified satisfaction that the proportion of motorists stopped who turned out to be over the limit has fall- en (qualified because they would like the figure to be even lower). They have hardly bothered to comment at all on the fact that the accident rate has risen. In other words
the original and laudable aim of keeping death off the roads has become subservient to that of reducing the number of breath- alysed motorists who yield a positive result — a goal easily achieved by stopping thou- sands more innocent drivers, since such a tiny fraction of motorists drive when over the limit that the chances are 97:3 that a driver stopped at random will not have been drinking. It is quite on the cards that the year will come when the number of pos- itive breath tests is near zero. Who then will be held responsible for what the press likes to call the 'Christmas carnage'?
Acartoon in the current Private Eye has a beggar sporting a placard with the words 'Massive January Reduction. Was asking 10p — now 5p.' Art imitates life. In New York there is a panhandler who works Central Park South with the cry, 'Twenty dollars minimum, folks!' He does a brisk trade, too. On a brief visit over Christmas I found that he had changed his spiel to `Holiday sale, folks. Ten dollars only.' And he was still getting customers. But the best New York beggars are a witty breed who put our own whingeing, cardboard-clutch- ing tube platform squatters to shame. There is said to be a beggar on the Upper East Side who shakes not one cup but two. When asked why the duplication, he explains, 'Business was so good I opened another branch.' My own favourite mendi- cant has always been the chap who stopped me on Fifth Avenue with the request, 'Sir, will you give me a dollar if I undertake to put it to no good use whatsoever?' He got five. But he was upstaged on this trip by the cheerful black who buttonholed me with, `Could you spare a little change to help me through college? I have to take a refresher course on how to hold a fork.' He got five too. This was outside the Algonquin, an establishment which I am happy to see is being patronised by the Brits again (and with a cat back in residence) after a period of ostracism in favour of the Royalton opposite in protest at the new owners turn- ing the old Blue Bar into an office. For myself, I regretfully no longer stay at the Algonquin, having found of late that the rooms are getting smaller as I get older. But they did show you to your broom closet with panache. The last time 1 stayed there I arranged a room for my son, who was join- ing me. The desk clerk apologised for its smallness even by Algonquin standards. When I retorted that the boy was a student and lucky not to be sleeping on a bench in Central Park, he beamed. 'That's the spirit, Mr Waterhouse. In future years your son will be able to say, "I may be rich and famous now, but I can remember the day when I had to rough it at the Algonquin."'
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