DIARY
DOMINIC LAWSON Iam sorry if some readers were shocked by the abrupt nature of the message in place of the Low Life column last week. But its absent author wanted the explana- tion 'Jeffrey Bernard has had his leg off. He had become irritated by the now leg- endary apology 'Jeffrey Bernard is unwell'. A couple of weeks earlier, Jeff had rung me up to complain, 'I'm not unwell. I'm fuck- ing dying.' I am delighted to report that Jeff, while not a picture of health, has sur- vived an operation for the removal of the lower half of his right leg. When I went with Michael Heath to the Middlesex Hos- pital to visit the slightly edited columnist last Wednesday, the day after the opera- tion, Jeff's condition could best be described as uncritical. 'Look,' he said, as I was hanging up my coat. I turned round, and it took me a little while to realise that Jeff was pushing his stump as near to my face as it would reach. 'The doctor says it's beautiful.' Michael suddenly began to look rather unwell. 'The things I'll do to get a subject for the column,' the patient contin- ued, pointing to the remains of his right leg. Jeff is brave. He had been rushed into the hospital to have the amputation in the morning, but because of some more press- ing emergency was forced to wait a whole day for the gangrenous leg to be removed. As he was explaining this to us, a glam- orous woman , who can have been no more than half Jeff's age, walked into the room. 'I suppose,' she addressed the Low Life columnist, 'you'll be wanting to show me the leg.' Michael and I looked at each other, made our excuses, and left.
Britain's most decreasingly read diary column, which appears every day by way of an afterthought in the Independent, took great offence at Jeff's excuse for not filing Low Life last week. 'It's only his foot actu- ally,' wrote the unknown author of the Independent 'Diary', with fearless igno- rance. I should be amazed to see that writer manage to write a decent column, as Jef- frey has done, a few days after losing half a leg. Or even after having 'only a foot' removed. Or even, come to think of it, under any circumstances at all. Compare the Independent diarist's callow callousness with the pithy way in which the Daily Mirror wrapped up the entire episode (`Legendary boozer Jeffrey Bernard, 61, is recovering after having his right leg ampu- tated below the knee in a London hospital') and you begin to see how much the Inde- pendent would benefit from being run by Mr David Montgomery. Like Jeffrey Bernard he, at least, is a professional journalist. Iam just old enough to remember Beyond the Fringe. Or rather, my parents had a record of the satirical show, which as a child I used to play over and over again until the grooves crackled. I particularly loved Alan Bennett's parody of an Angli- can sermon. Thirty years on, and that spoof is still right on the button. The Dean of Sal- isbury, writing in the Financial Times's `God slot' last Saturday, was straight out of Beyond the Fringe in his attempts to explain why disenchanted Anglicans should not defect to the Catholic Church. The Dean concluded with the peroration: 'For any converts looking for a refuge from life's uncertainties [the Catholic Church] offers a haven of peace. But until the leopard changes its spots those of a different metal will not allow it to eat them up.' That is a piece of writing that passeth all under- standing. It is beyond satire, and tempts me to suggest that such woolly thinking has driven some of the keenest minds in the Church of England towards the less man- gled metaphors of Rome. But I rather sus- pect that those defections have been increased by the fact that the Cardinal of Westminster is an Englishman with a very English disposition; Basil Hume is not easi- ly pictured as a metal-chewing leopard. And it is hard to imagine that there would be so many Anglican defections to Rome, even in the wake of the Church of Eng- 'I'd like a get well soon card for Jeffrey
Bernard.' land's endorsement of women priests, if, as so often in the past, the Catholic Primate of England had happened to be an Irishman.
In October we bought a house. The builders are still there. There is nothing much more I want to say about the matter, except to note that whomever I tell about the incompetence of our builders is imme- diately able to respond with a horror story about his own experiences with such com- panies. Charles Glass, who seems to have a particular history of affliction at the hands of these people, suggested to me that I should murder my builder. No jury in the land would convict you, he said. Perhaps Charlie will soon discover whether this is true. A friend of mine is on gossiping terms with his GP. The GP told him that the other day he had had a call from one of his patients. 'Doctor,' she said, 'come quickly, my husband has got so angry with our builder that I think he will have a heart attack.' The doctor told her to do her best to calm her husband down. A few minutes later the woman was on the phone again, but this time she sounded less agitated. `Don't bother to come now, doctor,' she said, 'my husband has killed the builder.' I think a course in anger management fol- lowed by a cruise down the Nile would be the appropriate punishment.
Ihave never seen Mr Conrad Black, the proprietor of The Spectator, lose his tem- per. But I thought I would last Thursday.
He was locked out of the quarterly board meeting of The Spectator, held, as usual, at the offices of Mr J.G. `Algy' Cluff, the Spectator's chairman. For some time Mr Black, aided by his driver, hammered at the door of Cluff Resources, and tried by cellu- lar telephone to attract the attention of the Cluff Resources security guard. All to no avail. The point is, Mr Black was similarly excluded — accidentally — from the Spec- tator board meeting not once, not twice, but three times before. It was only when Con- rad emerged, almost in the manner of Ban- quo's ghost, at the post-board- meeting din- ner at Brooks's that we realised the trick had been played on him a fourth time. Black slowly advanced across the room towards Cluff, and, smiling wolfishly, asked how many shares there were outstanding in Cluff Resources, and at what price they could be bought en masse. A takeover of a successful gold-mining company would be an expensive way for Mr Black to guaran- tee access to Spectator board meetings, but hostile bids have been mounted for less sensible reasons.
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