18 JUNE 1954, Page 7

The Best People

Ascot is over. I wonder if there are any people who still say, " I shall be in London till Goodwood " ? I remember that after-Goodwood joke in Punch. It was a drawing I think by Phil May showing an upper-class lady slum-visiting and saying to an East-End mother in a crowded Whitechapel street, "Town's very empty, isn't it ? " It reminds me of the story of a fashionable lady canvassing for the last election in Battersea. She knocked on the door of a house in a very poor street and after repeated knocking, received no answer. So she turned to the person she was with and said, " Perhaps they're changing for dinner."