SKINFLINT'S CITY DIARY Hot cross bun
I came across Douglas Bunn once. He's a farmer who made some money with one of those caravan sites on the south coast then got in with the pony club set by starting the Hickstead Horse Show. He'd better give Harvey Smith his money since if ever a contract looked sealed it was when I saw Smith being presented with the winner's rosette on television. Mrs Edward Kidd, one of the other judges, was, I'm sure, able to stand Smith's two-fingered victory gesture to Bunn.She was once the earthy Duke of Argyll's Duchess and is the daughter of that master of strong language Lord Beaverbrook. She's the country's oldest female helicopter pilot and her noisy Hughes machine is the terror of her friends. "I love my helicopter," she once told me. "I called on three friends last Sunday afternoon, landing right on their lawns, but no one was in." They certairily couldn't have been asleep. So I don't know why not.
New exhibition centre
The decision on the site of Britain's new trade exhibition centre is to be made by Mr Peter Walker, Minister for the Environment, which is just as well since the property-conscious Conservative-con trolled GLC have decided to plump for the Northolt scheme proposed by colourful property man Ronald Lyon. It will take up yet more acres of the shrinking Green Belt but it is argued that trade visitors to Britain want to be near London's night life. Birmingham has an alternative scheme which I sincerely hope Mr Walker will think the better choice — anything to get tourists away from the West End. I went to Japan for a trade fair some years ago and reluctantly travelled from Tokyo to Osaka for a dreary trade show, but the trip made me visit Kyoto and let me see a little more of Japan than I should have done in Tokyo nightclubs.
That twenty-first
,Alost of us like girls who look like Princess Anne. The Observer and the Sunday Times had almost, but not quite, the same picture of her, pretty as paint, on their cover this week. The Observer, which I still take, was as usual second to the Sunday Times in the picture they chose, according to the poll of three I took at breakfast on Sunday. Of course, I haven't met any of the Royal Family or anything like that (except for being once addressed by the then Tony Armstrong-Jones in a pub back in 1952 — who didn't look much and whom I rather carelessly ignored). In the gloom of a dance somewhere in the country last year a friend spoke to me but didn't introduce the pretty girl beside him who favoured me with a smile. I was quickly brought down when I recognized Princess Anne and knew the smile wasn't just for me but one for one of the people.
Beef for battle
Cavenham look as if they have succeeded in getting Bovril by buying in the market and so defeating the bid from Rowntrees. Cavenham's erratic record and the damaging articles in the financial press have done them a service. Their high bid but doubtful paper has shaken out those Bovril shareholders interested in selling for cash. Buying Bovril has put some beef into Cavenham but I think I'd sell their shares now whilst they are still supported. Jimmy Goldsmith has paid a lot; though with his shares fully valued he's paying less effectively than Rowntree offered. Best of luck to him — once he has paid back the sums borrowed and somehow placed the new Cavenham paper it looks as if he may be ready for bigger battles. It seems no time since I was told one of Sir Isaac Wolfson's companies lent him £600,000 and were not ready to renew though Keyser Ullmann his present merchant bankers helped out in time. It might be as well to change the name of Cavenham to Bovril whilst he's about it.
Stoppered
"Gaunter and gaunter grew the soldiers of the Queen . . " You will have to remember the rest of the reference since I notice that the good Dr J. Collis Browne's Compound made by J. T. Davenport & Co. of London, S.E, have abandoned that sheet of references, supplied with every bottle, which were grim reminders of the Crimea, Matabele and Mafeking. There is a rumour around that one of the constituents Liquid extract of Opium (10 per cent morphine) has been cut back as the small bottle at 13p was of interest to some of those who inhabit Mr Tony Palmer's Underground. Might the withdrawal of the leaflet be the result of those responsible for the Trade Description Act trying to save some of them their money.
Buying Burra
The brainwashing has begun and I sense that some dealers are looking forward to the profits they will be taking on their reserves of Edward Burra's watercolours. A few months ago there was an adulatory note or two, followed by some illustrations in one of the give-away Sunday advertising magazines. Now young Barry Penrose has discovered some long forgotten (and rather inferior) woodcuts in Burra's studio. Sir John Rothenstein has written a short piece on Burra's macabre humour — certainly not up to Penrose, though, who writes as if he has rediscovered a sonnet in Shakespeare's hand. "Alex Postam of the Hamet Galley, who has a special knowledge of prints, supervised the printing of the Burrs woodcuts. Norman Singer, with his assistant Norman Bushell, hand-fed the Glockner with sheets of chalkcoloured Japanese paper. As each woodcut came off the press it was covered with a sheet of tissue to absorb any loose ink." Personally I've had two Edward Burra watercolours for a few years that didn't cost much — too frightening for small children — one of a Glasgow market and the other without title but of a goggleeyed man. At the bottom in red ink is "With the best of luck from Raphael Tuck." Written by Burra, I fancy, and not the Labour MP for Watford. I shall be ready to cash in as soon as the dealers have fixed a new high on their rediscovery.
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