DIARY
ROBERT HARRIS Four weeks ago it was police frogmen in the canal at the foot of our garden. Now I have another example of the rising crime rate here in leafy Berkshire. Police in Tadley are on the trail of a secret society of schoolchildren who call themselves the Poo Club and who are daubing graffiti on local buildings. According to the latest issue of the Newbury Weekly News, the Poo Club's initiation rite involves 'defecating into a plastic bag and throwing it at fellow mem- bers'. Should we panic? I think not. This is obviously just a childish attempt, prompted by recent publicity, to establish a junior ver- sion of the Garrick Club, the chief differ- ence being that in the Garrick it is the exist- ing members who defecate into plastic bags before throwing them at whoever is trying to join.
Ai, the Newbury Weekly News — the highlight of my week, may God preserve it. It was here that I learned recently of the Publication of a new book, The Road Names of .1 Thatcham — possibly the most boring title in the history of English litera- ture. Before moving to the country, the cult reading in our household was Hello! maga- zine, but this has suffered a sad decline. Is there anything more dull in the world than dull 'celebrities'? The cover story last week was devoted to Kim Basinger's father, fuzzily shot through a telephoto lens, mak- ing 'an emotional journey . . . to the beach- es of Normandy where he fought 50 years ago'. Kim Basinger's father? Inside, the lead colour feature — all seven pages of it concerned someone named Steve Joynes and his wife, Janet, whose 'rags-to-riches story' has apparently taken them 'from a mobile fish and chip shop to a stately home where even their dog has his own house'. But a closer inspection of the text revealed that Mr and Mrs Joynes merely run a hotel and health spa and happen to live on the premises. Three-quarters of Hello!'s celebrities' are similarly devoid of interest ---- minor Scandinavian royalty (Princess Martha Louise of Norway), obscure actors (Shannen Doherty, Ashley Hamilton), unknown singers (Debbie Gibson) and Nadja Auermann, a `supermoder (why, incidentally, isn't anyone these days ever Just an ordinary model?). There was even a feature on Colin Moynihan, surely the last refuge of the desperate. Perhaps Hello! should start serialising The Road Names of Thatcham. It can't be much more tedious than Britt Ekland's memoirs.
Some ome of the plans drawn up by Sir Tim Bell's company to celebrate the 50th anniversary of D-Day have met with an aPPropriate amount of derision. Nine thou- sand Allied troops were killed or wounded on 6 June 1944, and what does the PR industry plan as a commemoration? Sand- castle-building competitions, a spam fritter- frying contest and fancy-dress parties in 1940s costumes. The pity is that while the Government is willing to spend £62,000 on this ridiculous He//oification of the war, a serious project continues to languish in the face of bureaucratic indifference. Accord- ing to the Times this week, the Bletchley Park Trust, which aims to turn the former code-breaking centre in Buckinghamshire into a museum, has had its planning appli- cation refused by Property Holdings, a gov- ernment agency. I have spent some time in Bletchley Park over the past couple of years. It is an extraordinary site, redolent of history, and still largely intact. But the buildings are decaying and the people who worked in them gradually dying off. If a museum is to be established, time is of the essence. So why doesn't our National Her- itage Department do something about it? It is hardly as if Bletchley is unimportant. It is the birthplace of the computer, and, as George Steiner observed, Bletchley is pos- sibly 'the single greatest achievement of Britain during 1939-45, perhaps during this century as a whole'. The intelligence it pro- vided about D-Day alone probably saved tens of thousands of lives. But it moulders in the rain, unseen, while the nation's schoolchildren fry spam fritters and build sand-castles. Surely, somehow, the Her- itage and Environment Departments could get together to save this unique piece of world history? Perhaps it could be opened to mark the 50th anniversary of VE-Day.
Monday afternoon, when I should have been working, was passed in an agony of apprehension waiting to see if Brian Lara would beat the world record for a test innings. I love watching cricket, but I'd freely concede that if Lara is now the world's best player I remain the worst. I've played cricket only once since leaving school — last summer, for Jeremy Pax- man's XI, against Turville Heath. Suffice it to say that of the media men in Jeremy's team I made even Peter McKay look like Alec Stewart. I put up such a Jacques Tati- like performance in the outfield — falling over, flailing at catches, throwing back handfuls of dead grass along with the ball, etc. — I thought I would die of shame. Actually, I very nearly did die when we were suddenly caught in a thunderstorm and a bolt of lightning fizzed above my head and exploded about 20 yards away, leaving a trail of sulphurous smoke hanging in the air. Not many people can have had such a direct sign from God that they should never under any circumstances go near a bat and ball.
Isuppose, finally, I must stir myself to reply to William Shawcross's accusation in last week's Spectator that I am a hypocrite. Quoting from a poor review I gave his biog- raphy of Rupert Murdoch back in 1992 (how we authors store up our resentments), he charges that I wrote a well paid' (000hhh!) column in the Sunday Times, then waited until I was safely off Murdoch's payroll before publicly abusing him. Actu- ally, this is not true. I was publicly abusing Mr Murdoch long before I joined the Sun- day Times, beginning in 1986 with my book about the Hitler diaries fiasco, Selling Hitler. Indeed, it was while I was still on the paper that Selling Hitler was televised, with Barry Humphries doing a wickedly funny impersonation of our beloved proprietor. To his credit, I never heard a whisper of reproach about this or anything else from Mr Murdoch, who in any case seemed to spend most of his life in a 40,000-foot orbit above the planet and probably hasn't the faintest idea who I am. True, in the course of criticising Shawcross's biography for being rather too gushing, I pointed out some of Murdoch's darker qualities, notably his almost sadistic ruthlessness. But I also paid tribute to his virtues, not least his utter indifference to what people say about him — a robustness his biographer might do well to emulate. I'm sure Mur- doch couldn't care less, for example, that the dying playwright Dennis Potter has named his pancreatic cancer 'Rupert' in his honour. Now I come to think of it, perhaps Mr Murdoch should name a part of his anatomy after William Shawcross. I cer- tainly know which part would be the most appropriate.
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