17 JUNE 1955, Page 6

A NEWS ITEM as casual as any comic's throwaway line

informed us that Lady Violet Bonham Carter is numbered among those distinguished women who are introducing Miss Marlene Dietrich during her season at the Café de Paris. Of course Liberals have little enough to do in the political field these days and there cannot be much harm in even their most esteemed members turning instead to such liberal arts as those practised in cabaret by Miss Dietrich. I remember Lady Violet saying not long ago that she for one was not going to jump on to any bandwagon. Now she has weakened, but I am sure she will be an admirable commere and prove herself a more effective entertainer in cabaret than was Lady Megan Lloyd George On TV after her leap on to the bandwagon. The fact that Miss Dietrich is also a good-looking grandmother possibly helped Lady Violet to take this new step in her career; but although night-clubs and cabarets are now perfectly respectable. a trace of doubt still lingers as to whether they are entirely suitable settings for the nonconformist conscience. I was discussing Lady Violet's latest venture yesterday with an old admirer of hers who took a poor view of his heroine appearing in a spot- light. He suggested dourly, from the depths of his disenchant- ment, that she might warm up the audience for the star by leading the singing of 'Lloyd George knew my father.'