DIARY
DOMINIC LAWSON This issue of The Spectator contains no more than the usual quota of articles about British domestic politics. Please write in if you are longing for more, but my suspicion is that the British people had had almost enough of the election campaign before it had officially begun. The headline in the Sunday Times last weekend, 'Election Fever Grips Britain', seems to me an accurate reflection of the mental state of journalists and politicians, but of few others. The jour- nalists share the politicians' fever because they have caught the same germ: powerlust. For once editors and correspondents feel that they are really influencing the future of the country and its governance. This thought drives them almost mad with excitement. Verbal incontinence is the result. But the public, I suspect, has not been infected with this 'fever', not even the majority who will bestir themselves to vote.
If election fever were ever to grip an entire people, it should be the Albanians, who this Sunday will for the first time be casting their votes in a free and fair elec- tion. If it is not free and fair, you will, as they say, read it here first. Our foreign edi- tor, Noel Malcolm, is advising the Central Electoral Commission in Tirana on the propriety or otherwise, of Albanian elec- toral practices. Noel, I should explain, is fluent in Albanian, so will recognise a bribe when he hears one. Before he left, Noel asked me if I knew any jokes which an Albanian would find amusing. 'Why?' I asked. Noel went on to explain that he had heard that mugging of foreigners was some- thing of an Albanian pastime, and that he had a theory that if you made someone laugh, he wouldn't harm you. 'There in in fact a very good joke in Teach Yourself Albanian,' Noel said to me, 'but unfortu- nately it takes a whole page to explain.' I think Noel will he all right: he is joined by Sir John Stokes, the British Parliamentary observer at the election. If the Albanian criminal classes do not find that spectacle amusing, then they have no sense of humour whatever.
Some of our readers appear to think that the 'Dear Mary' etiquette column is a concoction. They are wrong. Mary is Mary Killen, and the letters are genuine cries for social help. Last weekend I found myself sitting at lunch next to an elegant woman who told me, eyes brimming with gratitude, that she had taken Mary's advice, and it had worked. She had had a call for jury ser- vice. So, following Mary's suggestion, she wrote to the Central Criminal Court rough- ly as follows: 'Dear Sir, Thank you very much for your letter. You can be sure I will
do my duty to rid our streets of vermin. I shall certainly obey the judge's instructions when he asks us to send down vile crimi- nals, so brilliantly apprehended by our wonderful police force. Yours sincerely. . By return of post she received a letter say- ing that the court would not after all be requiring her services as a juror.
The following, wrapped in a box, appears in this month's Tatler: 'CORREC- TION: We apologise for misspelling the name of Countess Csaky in the article About Face in the December issue of Tatler. We would like to state that Countess Csaky did not train Eve Lom, and that Madame Lubbatti is not Countess Csaky's arch-rival.' Reading this caused me to do the nose-trick with a glass of champagne, and despite the agony, I still couldn't stop laughing. But why is it so funny? And who did train Eve Lom? And who is Countess Csaky's arch-rival?
We are at the time of year when the amount of champagne going down throats, or even up noses, declines. But I do tire somewhat of people telling me that they have given up alcohol for Lent. The admis- sion of virtue seems to me more pleasure than penance. And even those who don't draw attention to their abstinence give the impression of quiet satisfaction that they are reducing their calorie intake and their
'It's a middle-of-the-road movie.' waistline. Lent appears to have become the socially acceptable way of going on the sort of alcohol-free diet recommended by all the colour magazines. Still, as Mary Killen would say, it does reduce the cost of enter- taining.
The trial of John Gotti, leader of the Gambino crime syndicate, might give the impression that the American legal system has finally caught up with organised crime. That impression would be mistaken. In New York for example, the mafia still has a stranglehold on a number of industries, notably construction. A friend of mine is building a house in New York. He received a visit to his office from a man whose name ended in a vowel. The man offered to pro- vide and install all the windows for my friend's house. For $350,000. It will be a very big house, but not that big. My friend said he could find someone to install the windows for much less money. The man tilted his head to one side: 'Dose sorta win- dows break' he said. My friend got the mes- sage. And despite turning over the entire project to laconic men whose names end with a vowel, the house is coming along beautifully. As my friend said to me, 'The thing about organised crime is that it is organised'.
Igather the inhabitants of the French riv- iera have become rather fed up with the behaviour of certain African dictators, who, encouraged by the Mitterrand Govern- ment, have taken up residence in the area. But such things are not exclusively a French problem. A friend of mine has seen a Spe- cial Branch report on a visit by a certain Francophone leader of a small African state. In humourless Mr Plod English the report states that President X: broke up all the furniture in his hotel suite; used it to stoke a fire in the middle of the room; pro-
duced a chest of frogs' legs from his lug- gage; spit-roasted the frogs' legs over the fire; ordered a manservant to strip naked and lie on the floor; then laid out the frogs' legs on the manservant's bare back, and ate them one by one with a fork. I suppose the frogs' legs show the benefit of a French education.
Around lunchtime this Friday Jeffrey Bernard will sink into unconsciousness. It will be the result of a general anaesthetic. Jeff has gone to the Middlesex Hospital in Soho to have two giant cysts — what he and his doctor call lipomas — removed. Steady with your knife, surgeon! The eyes of over a hundred thousand Spectator readers are on you.
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