DIARY JOHN OSBORNE
Those of you hoping for a diary stuffed with Christmas cheer (or 'Holiday greet- ings' as the Americans have it) had best skip this page. I don't usually feel like Scrooge, but this year I have just received my bus pass and, simultaneously, been struck by yet another mystery ailment. To be 65 is indeed a misfortune, an apprehen- sion in itself, demanding attention and con- centration. I am haunted by thoughts of the things I may never do again, and I had hoped that some generous spirit would allow a moratorium on the Angry Old Men quips. But it was not to be. The English have an obsession with age. Every newspa- per reports the age of victim or culprit, lusty young interviewee or fading star, and of the Lottery winner's grandmother. Even Americans are amazed by this preoccupa- tion and scrutiny. So am I. I don't know anyone's age. Ah, but is it 'relevant'? Age and relevance dog one's days. The briefest brush with the illusion of elusive fame insists that one's curriculum vitae must be updated in the light of changing standards of 'relevance'. Am I relevant any longer? Is anything I have ever written? It is some- what humiliating that this should be the first line of questioning favoured by the young. Soon we shall all be as irrelevant as street-corner spoon-tappers.
With this on my mind, I was slightly comforted to remember a story Richard Burton once told me about himself. A director in the theatre was being quizzed by a Welsh civic dignitary about whether or not Burton's credentials merited an invita- tion to perform in Swansea. Well, the director replied, he had starred in London and New York, played an acclaimed Ham- let and was married to Elizabeth Taylor. Burton, he continued, was an idol of his profession and a risen comet of the age. The Welshman paused as he absorbed this record of glory, glamour and distinction. `Ah, yes,' he said, 'but what has he done in Wales?'
There are, as Victoria Glendinning pointed out on this page last week, advan- tages to being self-employed and working from home. Skiving comes especially to mind. You can also have a long lunch with- out, as my mother, the sainted Nellie Beat- rice, would have said, anyone passing a comment. Nor do you feel constrained to find something to occupy your secretary, especially if she is your wife and just as like- ly to have shared that long lunch. But the 'down side', as political pundits keep saying these days, is that no one believes you might be genuinely ill. There is no note from the doctor to convince the boss, and no sick pay to foot the bills. As you make your apologies for some task undone, you can hear them thinking, 'I'll bet he's curled up with a jolly good thriller.' There's the same lack of credibility with the telephone. `You've been away, have you?' I rang and you were out!' they bark, particularly at my wife, who now and again has to get provi- sions in, take the dogs for a walk or have her hair cut. The solution, of course, is an answering machine, but if an Englishman's home is no longer his castle (and the mort- gage has seen to that), at least this house remains a bastion against technology. We will continue to be 'out'. We have enough trouble talking to an answering machine, let alone contemplating recording an inge- nious or cute message onto it. My neigh- bour, a somewhat merry farmer's widow, has recently devised a new one: 'Sorry, I'm out feeding the chickens again.' Pull the other one.
It may be my imagination or not, but male homosexual spokespersons (or spokesmen as they might determine to be 'Now this short one is your line of redundancy.' called) seem to be regressing into a striden- cy not heard since the whole shooting match was legalised in the Sixties. There was Sir Ian McKellan giving his one-mall show on behalf of 'Stonewall' in Edinburgh and ripping out an offending passage in Leviticus, as he has been surely doing to hapless Gideon Bibles all over the world. Sir Ian insists that sex is far from the be-all and end-all of the gay life, and I'm sure we all believe him. But I doubt if Peter, Tatchell of the more militant 'Outrage would agree. I caught him last week on Radio 4's prigs' programme, The Moral Maze, as, apoplectically hysterical, he tried to justify his threat of 'outing' closet-bound bishops, vicars and politicians. Impervious to pleas for decent human privacy, unheed- ing of the pain he will surely cause, he sees conspiracy in every niche of the Anglican Church and the Palace of Westminster, downwards and upwards. What sort of world would he have us inhabit? He gave a clue in the Guardian's 'My media' column recently. He reads, among other things, Boyz, Capital Gay, Gay Times, Smash Hits ('for the cute boy bands') and the gay Porn mags, Euroboy and Zipper. don't have a regular partner at the moment. It's too cold to go to Hampstead Heath. Gay porn IS 3, fun alternative and it's totally safe sex. Most of us could think of other fun alterna- tives. Tatchell is as dangerously obsessive as any other fanatic, intent on imposing his bleak and blinkered vision on the rest of us, including other homosexuals trying to live peaceable, private lives, Homophobia may be offensive, but the other side of the con! is just as noisome, whatever they may tell you in Euroboy and Zipper.
The damage done by poor Sir Ian to the Bible is as nothing compared to the riew superpolitically correct version published irl America by OUP. God has become 'Father/Mother'; Jesus is demoted — II° longer the Son of God, but the 'Human One'; the Father/Mother's Right Hand, is the less disadvantaged 'Mighty Hand'; the Jews are good guys, and sin is out. The are no immediate plans to publish it here' but it probably won't be long and this coo' be your last chance to attend a recognisable service of nin ; lessons and carols. Make the most of it, and when you get home you can play a fireside game rewriting YIIIIIA favourites. Try, for starters, the seco.ou verse of '0 Come, All Ye Faithful', beat'olgt in mind that Mary is no longer a virgin but an unmarried mother . . . 'Hark! The Her- aid Angels Sing' is tricky too: God and sin; ners reconciled; Jesus, our Emmanuel. is.n
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the last verse of '0 Little Town Of Be tale hem' is a real stinker! Happy Christmas!
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