DIARY
couple of weeks ago the Wash-Out- Wife was let loose on this page and com- mitted a foul calumny at my expense, which seems to have won her a large number of admirers. Anyway, I was glad that she had discovered how difficult such a modest task can be. Subsequently, a lady journalist rang WOW with a barrage of dumb questions about her provincial girls' luncheon club. 'How would you describe yourself?' she began. Naturally, she had no idea that WOW once edited the arts pages of the Observer, why it was still a decent newspa- per. This power-suit scribe then demanded, 'What are these lunches for?' Laughter, conviviality, gossip — what are they for? Then, inevitably, 'How old are you?' The British hack's obsession with age is an eter- nal bafflement to the rest of the world. Some critic called Conrad, a tortoise fanat- ic, I am told, described me as an 'ageing playwright' the other day. When I was 27, I was said to be 'nudging 30' and I've been an 'ageing playwright' ever since. Who does this tortoise fellow think he is? He certainly can't himself turn a youthful sentence. Another paltry pellet-thrower, one Clive Fonting, is waving his floppy finger at Win- ston Churchill for his hearty intake of champagne, brandy and cigars. Chastity may be noble, adventurous even, but I find it very hard to trust anyone who protects himself like a venomous virgin against the sublime pleasures of wine and tobacco. Hitler, who ate no meat, nor smoked, nor drank, had, as we used to sing, 'only got one ball'. Ponting, like Goebbels, has Patently, `no balls at all'. They lead a funny Old life, these cab-rank joumos. Perhaps it is the strain of behaving like a whore while accepting the constraint of writing like a dizzy governess.
One day last week, the Daily Mail cov- ered its front page with a story headlined: 'Fergie friend in police quiz'. It turned out to be an item of numbing uninterest about an ex-royal's dim American boyfriend get- ting a parking ticket. Does anyone from Ayr to Hove give a damn? As long as I can remember, such papers have been frivolous, even criminally vicious, but what kind of suburban world do their pampered correspondents inhabit? Inside, there was a Page devoted to the 7th Marquess of Bute, some 'flame-haired' nobody from Rada appearing in another 'Royal' series, and Fergie, again, talking to the pupils of Upton House School about 'What it means to be a duchess'. It is possibly true that you can never underestimate public taste, but this kind of contempt suggests another Groucho lunch too far. Recently, the 'qual- ItY papers have followed suit, the Indepen-
JOHN OSBORNE
dent and the Guardian outdoing the rest in rodent ill-nature. At least the Mail has a consistency. For almost 40 years it has selected me for its feeble venom — 'target- ed' as they would lazily have it. Fine. An observer once told me that he overheard a pack of conspirators plan how they were going to 'fry' me. Throughout my profes- sional lifetime I've played the lean fox to these dozy newshounds, and I'm still around. Where are they?
Nothing, not even race or language, divides the world into faction more than comedy. What penetrates the human spirit with more enlightenment and wisdom than humour? I always found Chaplin arch, and I see that others are beginning to own up. Buster Keaton was often cited as his superi- or, which he was, but his gifts owed more to Shakespearean melancholy than mirth. As a schoolboy, I despised anyone who found certain comics funny: Abbott and Costello, the Three Stooges and the Crazy Gang, who in pairs could amuse, but teamed together were no more than capering old men. 'Alternative comedy' seems to be aimed at those who can't tell sheep-dip from butter, let alone margarine. There used to be a category of comic whose awe- some badness gave mediocrity a certain tri- umphant magnificence. George Formby, King George VI's favourite, was pure mar- garine. Every music hall could produce a performer far more dismal — Murray and 'Damien's a big Monty Python fan.' Mooney, Sandy Powell, Clapham and Dwyer — yet these fourth-raters had their place of welcome, like eccentric uncles. I can't believe that Jo Brand, for instance, with her peevish menstrual confidences, would have received the same tolerance.
Take the wife . . please.' Tri- umphantly, Max Wall inserted this old line into The Entertainer. Take Ben Elton . . . please. For about two years I have been asking people of all backgrounds, 'Do you think Ben Elton is funny?' Almost every- one, it seems, finds this television-joke salesman execrable, although the middle- aged are inclined to hedge: 'No. I don't. But the children think he's wonderful.' 'Never break faith with chaos,' the play- wright N. F. Simpson once instructed. Pup- pet gag-men like Elton are rabid supporters of the Labour Party, something utterly inimical to the anarchic function of come- dy. Endorsing politicians is comparable to the acceptance of mothers-in-law, tax inspectors and all the institutional figures who blight our freedom and joy. Elton flails and rants like a demented rep trying to clear his last batch of junk on a late Satur- day afternoon. His coarse stridency stamps upon the endearment aroused by the courage of failed humour. I have never before seen a comedian, however hopeless, who did not possess some innate delicacy, a nimble grace that even their ineptitude could not conceal.
There was once a proud regiment of Scots comedians who never bothered to cross the border into England, and Lan- cashire comics like Frank Randal never ventured south of Salford. I wonder how Elton would brave it out in the English- man's graveyard, the Glasgow Empire. He and his like have no innocence, no gravitas and, above all, no technique. He sprays jokes from the hip like a marauding soldier in a black rabble army. There is no sense of awe, particularly of language — 'Inadver- tently. . . May I say that again?' (Sid Field) — or bafflement in the face of life. Elton and his gang are irredeemably pleased with themselves, foot-in-the-door comics who believe that the mere utterance of 'Mrs Thatcher' will raise a laugh as easily as a schoolboy saying 'knickers'. Our national humour, already tamed by the jargon of pussyfooting and maidenly radicals, will soon be replaced by European Standards of Comedy. Our jokes, like sprouts, will come from Brussels. French comedy is dismal enough, but think of Belgian quips and jibes. Alors.
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