The QUESting VOU I t is not often you hear those
few, magical little words: 'I had that Lord Irvine of Lairg in the back of me cab, once.' But such was the experience the other day of a friend of the Vole, as he eased himself into the back seat of one of Harold's Taxis outside Didcot Station. The words 'East Hendred' crackled over the radio, prompting the driver to reminisce happily about what a decent fellow that Roy Jenkins had been, and how pleasant a companion when you ran him back home from the late train. Only once had there been disharmony — when the driver was asked to pick up a certain rosaceous Scottish peer from the station and run him to the Jenkins homestead for a bite to eat. Presented, on arrival, with a fare on the meter of a little more than a tenner, Lord Irvine of Lairg (for it was he) declared loudly — it's possible I paraphrase, but I do so in the spirit of the original — 'That's outrageous! You are trying to rob me! How dare you! I shall refuse to pay!' When the taxi-driver stood fast, Lord Irvine commandeered the microphone and demanded to speak to the proprietor. Your man is trying to rob me!' Harold (for it was he, happening to be manning his own switchboard at the time) tried to calm his angry customer, but was forced to insist that he pay the fare on the meter. Finally, he had another word with the driver. 'Well,' he said, 'you'll just have to explain the company policy to his Lordship.' 'Fair enough,' says driver. 'What company policy?' says Lord Irvine. 'The company policy insists,' says driver, 'that if you don't pay your fare I have to hit you. On the nose.' Oh,' says Derry. And, muttering the very nastiest things imaginable, pays up. The next time Lord Jenkins found himself in the same cab, he made a point of apologising for his guest's behaviour. 'You mustn't wovoAcy about Dewwy. He's a bit up himself,' was the way this great Liberal statesman is said to have expressed it.
panic at Penguin's offices when Bill Wyman was summoned to be interviewed on film the other day in connection with his book Rolling With The Stones. The room designated for the interview was near the offices of Pearson's chief executive Marjorie Scardino, a fanatical anti-smoker and not a woman to tangle with. Mr Wyman wasn't prepared to do the interview without a ciggie. The solution the team hit on was to gaffer tape the room airtight, sealing all round the
doors so that not a whiff of second-hand smoke would contaminate the Scardino carpet. The interview proceeded, Wyman smoking ferociously. Finally, when visibility was down to nil, they opened the doors to let the poor old cameraman out — and seconds later were gratified by the entire building's fire alarm going off.
Pace the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund, the most fatuous legal case of the year is surely that threatened by Sally Farm iloe, the former Howards' Way actress and mistress of Jeffrey Archer. She has announced that she will be suing EasyJet for using the phrase 'Weapons of Mass Distraction' in an advertisement. Referring to breasts. She claims that she coined this witticism with reference to her own hooters in a television interview in May, and is asserting her intellectual-property (ha!) rights. This very column called for the expression 'weapons of mass distraction' to be put permanently out of use (on the grounds that it was tired, derivative, unfunny and ubiquitous) in April — a good month before Miss Farmiloe claims to have invented it. My suspicion — that Sally and Stelios are a pair of attention-seeking dopes who cooked up their 'looming court battle' between them as a stunt — were best not voiced. For fear of legal action.
T n this week's `No, It Isn't' Department is 1 the Observer's Caspar Llewellyn Smith on Big Brother. 'Big Brother is like a soap opera, or a piece of drama, but has pulled off the trick of dispensing with a script: this is how people really speak, how they really act. The walls have been torn down. It's where the entire realist movement in 20thcentury art was leading.' All together, now: 'NO. IT ISN'T!' Until we see the first 'dirty protest' in the Big Brother house, it remains outside the Western canon. As Harry Potter's whiskery headmaster Albus Dumbledore in the first two films, the late Richard Harris was shrewd enough to negotiate a seven-figure contract that has guaranteed his estate a near-endless flow of 'residuals'. But by a curious quirk of fate, I'm told, he died before this fabulously baroque final document was actually, physically, signed. The boundless good nature of Warner Brothers — or, if you're more cynical about it, the fear of fighting and losing a public battle with a well-loved actor's estate — has prevented them even thinking of trying to capitalise on the fact.
Iwonder whether Monty Don, the pompadoured pinhead who presents the BBC's Gardener's World, isn't getting a shade too big for his wellington boots. According to friends in the book world, Mr Don obliged Dorling Kindersley, the publishers of his new book The Complete Gardener, to reshoot the brooding, squinty-eyed likeness of him on the front cover because he 'didn't like the way his hair looked'.
T have passed lain Duncan Smith's recent "barnstorming speech in Prague, and outline of his historic vision of a new Europe, to my statistical department for wordfrequency analysis. He is, according to their high-powered computers, well on top of his game. For the record, he used the words 'free', 'freedom' or 'freedom-loving' (18 times), 'challenge' (10 times), 'vision' (8), 'democracy' or 'democratic' (35), 'sovereign' (12), 'historic' (4) and 'nation' or its cognates 49 times. 'Supranational' creeps higher in his lexicon with six mentions, thought to be a personal best.
T am indebted to my fast-food
'correspondent Hogg for the discovery of what appears to be a full list of phrases and trademarks over which McDonald's asserts copyright. The full list is too long to reproduce here, but anyone wishing to keep their Big Mac down had best look away from the selected highlights. If you don't want to attract the attention of the noisome ginger clown's lawyers, you must vow never again to use in conversation the following phrases: 'Good jobs for good people', 'Changing the Face of the World', 'Lifting Kids to A Better Tomorrow', The House That Love Built', 'We Love to See You Smile', 'Hey, It Could Happen!' or — and this really makes me want to cry — 'When the US Wins, You Win.'
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