SKINFLINT'S CITY DIARY ITV

ki If you are small, red headed and eager it may be a mask for a calm and acutely perceptive intellect. It may conceal a dull ji mind that, try as it can, finds the ci marshalling of facts and reaching of gl judgement singularly difficult. In the case e of Christopher Chataway, the Minister of ePosts and Telecommunications, the evi d dence is in favour of the second. The main qualification for his post besides a compling el desire for office is his experience as a television announcer on ITV.

o The fourth television channel is causing d him agonies of indecision and one can generalize with confidence that he will b( react in a deeply ground way. Let there be no hasty action. Not so much as the o freeing of present broadcasting hours e which make us, like the Japanese, go to bed early (so we put in a good days work tomorrow). Chataway will turn down the perceptive e thinking of Brian 'Young, the Chairman of the Independent Television Authority. He e will have no alternative proposal except o thepostponement of decision. Over Christmas Chataway had staying with him that modern Gilbert Harding, old 0 confidante and fellow television announcer 1/ Robin Day. It is unlikely that he has e anything to offer Chataway except loyal service in any new post being created now that Day is finished with Panorama. Should we expect more than the 6 unspecific wisdom which makes hard ;■ questions susceptible to sound solutions? 4 We have built up extravagant images from ii the screen of the wisdom of the Chataways and Days. They share the 6 bafflement of their followers. Unfortunate ly for us deep disillusion has now followed great expectations.

Daily Mail

Vere Harrnsworth's Daily Mail is turning into a trifle better paper than I had feared. There is a naughty story that Pat Harmsworth, the Chairman's wife, telephoned from the South of France to t report, delightedly, to her husband that the paper was sold out in the Hotel de Paris in 4 Monte Carlo. There is another mischievous report that since Paul Callan arrived the ,1 paper has doubled its sales in Belgravia II though they have halved in the Midlands ,lAssociated leisure I Mr Cyril Shack and his co-directors of Associated Leisure, the pin table and juke t box firm, lost their libel action against the Daily Mail Group for suggesting that they had Mafia affiliations. They are going to appeal. Whatever happens I hope Shack does not forget in a substantial way his recently elected chairman Lord Jessel, who has stood gamely beside them through the fuss.

Assam Dooars

A tea firm called Assam Dooars Holdings based on the East Pakistan border didn't do too well last year because of flooding, but the Chairman Mr S. H. Davies expresses hope for 1972: "depending on a peaceful solution to the political situation in that part of the world." He hasn't seen Maurice Woodruff's prediction in his 1972 horoscope: "There will be nationalisation of the raw cotton industry and of the tea plantations in India."

Winston Churchill Junior

Last week I thought there was a chance that PHS of The Times might pick up my note that the new world had come to redress the balance of the old in Mr Averell Harriman's gift to his new stepson Winston Churchill Junior of a £35,000 plane.

Richard Berens, the editor of the William Hickey column of the Daily Express (sadly missing Nigel Dempster, now with the Daily Mail) scooped PHS and the Fleet Street dailies by reprinting this story in high Fleet Street tradition — i.e. without attribution or the customary cheque.

Best books 1971

Here are some books that, in the tradition of the column, I note:— Welcome to our Conglomerate — You're Fired! Isadore Barmash (Weidendfeld & Nicolson £2.50).

This book, like those about the Great Crash, should be read when the Stock Market is, as it is at the moment, in the ascendent, if only as a warning to take profits. There are the oft-told tales of Litton, Ling-Temco-Vought, Leasco and Loew's. The story of the Tisch brothers and Loew's Theatres Inc., is a special favourite. In 1968 ttiey acquired the tobacco makers, Lorillard Corporation, for $450 million in debenture and warrants. Lorillard, like most tobacco companies, was a high earner but they had suffered from tobaccocancer publicity and they decided that it would be wise to submerge their identity to the financial community by being absorbed by a small company so that, in the words of Lorillard's chairman, "Our business would continue to grow." There is an idea in the book about spin-offs or Deconglomeration. The object is to find new access to cash and better earnings in the face of the stony attitude of the banks. A better reason is to produce new names for the shares being sold, as institutions and the unit trusts become full and fed-up with large tranches of the gogo leaders.

The Infiltrators: the European Business Invasion of America. Nicholas Faith (Hamish Hamilton £3.15).

If you work for Shell, Unilever or ICI there may be something here for you. Also a warning of what happened to John Clark of Plessey in buying for $188 million Alloys Unlimited, and to British Petroleum in their difficulties in getting Sohio Oil.

Is It Genuine? W. Crawley (Eyre & Spottiswoode £4.50). Mr Crawley shows how supposed eighteenth century furniture has been fraudulently made from bits and pieces of Victorian or later work. Like Senator McCarthy with Communists in the State Department, he quotes the figures. He claims to have a record of 53,714 pieces of furniture sold between March 1946 and February 1964, which are either altered or complete fakes. There obviously is a better future for a carpenter now than in those days in the twenties when Evelyn Waugh was for a time an apprentice to a cabinet maker.

The Chairman as God. Gudrun Tempel (Anthony Blond £1.50). Touchingly titled without much in it but with aphorisms and epigrams at the chapter headings, e.g. "Freedom. N. State of Being free."