DIARY KEITH WATERHOUSE
Iam very nervous of being approached in the street by strangers. Asked if I am who I am, my instinct is to hedge cautiously, 'Not necessarily.' Two recent encounters left me !lo less wary. A young man came up to me la Shaftesbury Avenue and said, 'You're that Keith Waterhouse, aren't you? You Wrote Billy Liar, didn't you? My favourite book of all time.' As I pumped his hand Warmly, he added, 'Mind you, you haven't P;Imle much since, have you?' A few days ter a well-dressed lady stopped me in the zmilgs Road. 'I don't make a practice of a, ceosting people, Mr Waterhouse, but I Just wanted to say how much I enjoyed your novel Our Song. It made me laugh and cry.' Thanking her kindly, I said, 'Now go and seC the play — it will make you laugh and etY even more.' Her demeanour changed at ,t)11ce. 'See the play? See the play? Do you m ow the price of a theatre ticket these 'aYs? Look at my coat — I can't even afford to have it dry-cleaned!' And before I could burble, 'But madam, we are thinking c giving a Sketchley's L1-off voucher with et pair of tickets!' she was off. I did not are much better at my club, where an ejtlerlY party I found myself standing next to. at the bar barked, `Goin' to see that t.111,11g with O'Toole. Know anythin' about r 'Yes, I wrote it.' The rheumy old eyes md not flicker. 'Any good?'
I , f there is no spectacle so ridiculous as Inc British public in one of its periodical of morality, early last week there was so smug as that sizable section of the ontish public in possession of a Camilla- fate transcript. Before the Daily Sport and, some reason, an evening paper in Kent Tined the thing, enough copies had ern"urned through the photocopiers and fax ,"`„achines of the chattering classes to match `ue circulation of a moderately sized daily itl,sPaper. Until two Sunday tabloids came t; the rescue, how socially embarrassing to ./...rhe Man Who Hadn't Read That Tape. Cm's samizdat aspect of the publication of rusive material seems never to have hn,urred to Sir David Calcutt. It scuppers ,is report. The fact is that where there is a Passed''''audal it will always be published — w on by those in the know to those 01? would be in the know, and, in these ' -tech days, at the speed of light or any- wr,"7 , the speed of sound. So why, some a 'Mid ask, should intelligence available to 11,,nktMe too close circle be denied to Joe 0,74tc? Pleading for publication last week, pe"e Journalist — not on a tabloid newspa- str: -- fulminated, 'How elitist to keep the fri-rY from our readers when anyone with a wheill,t1 in Australia can read it in full!' To ha his editor's reply was, 'Since when s It been elitist to have a friend in Aus- tralia?' This two-tier system of news dis- semination — read all about it if you have access to insider gossip, remain in baffled ignorance if you don't — rather points up the fact that the demand for the Calcutt muzzle to be applied has less to do with intrusion and publication than with a desire on the part of the great, the good and the godly to cut the press down to size. The Home Secretary, Kenneth Clarke, has said, 'I do not know anybody who is not in favour of a free press or who is not in favour of a disrespectful press.' You could have fooled me.
We keep reading about butchers being driven out of business by the environmental health police too zealously interpreting directives from Brussels. Doing some light research into Leeds covered market I came across, in a history of the place by Steven Burt and Kevin Grady, an extraordinary Heath Robinsonish diagram of how Leeds Council proposed to make the butchers' stalls more hygienic. First they were to be completely glassed in with a downward- sloping jutting window, which would be fit- ted with a gauze-filled speaking panel through which the shopper would give her order. Having weighed her sausages, the butcher would work a pedal with his foot, the pedal would activate a pulley, and the pulley would operate a sliding sash, through which he would pass her uncon- taminated meat. The date of the 'Clean Food Window', as it was known, was 1951.
Isee from Alexander Chancellor's first column in the Times that his experience of New York beggars has been less happy than mine. My beggar was entertaining — his demanded money with menaces. Since his assailant did not actually produce the knife he was threatening to use, Alexander does not regard it as a mugging. He ought to, since it is the destiny of all who spend any length of time in the United States to be mugged once, and he should count this alarming encounter as his discharge from any further mugging obligation. My own obligation was fulfilled in down-town Dal- las eight years ago, in broad daylight out- side Nieman-Marcus. Three black youths, converging from nowhere, surrounded me and began shoving me one to the other, at the same time making lunges into my inside pocket which bulged with travellers' cheques. To my own utter astonishment I grabbed one of them by the arm and threw him over my shoulder, pushed another one in the chest, then tore off down the street at the speed of light, charging into the nearest bar and knocking back a medicinal vodka martini. Musing over my totally uncharacteristic behaviour, I realised what had enabled me to call up reserves of physi- cal strength I never knew I had. I wouldn't have much minded losing the travellers' cheques and in a stupid way I didn't even mind being lightly mugged — it would be something to write about. But hanging around my neck were the credentials for a Republican Convention for which I had just queued for two and a half hours, and if they had made off with those I was done for: I wouldn't have dared confess to my editor that I had flown 4,000 miles only to be turned away at the door. Conscience makes cowards of us all, but cowardice can turn us into ever so temporary Davids — provided Goliath isn't brandishing a knife, when it would have been a different story.
To pose an indelicate question: don't hotel designers ever go to the lavatory? Staying in four hotels in as many weeks I found that what they had in common was that the loo-paper-holder was extraordinar- ily badly placed, resulting in a cricked neck and a condition equivalent to tennis elbow. This is the rule rather than the exception in hotels worldwide. There is also a presump- tion towards left-handedness. While this may be good for the Arab trade (it is the right hand they eat with, isn't it?), I do not see why I have to be ambidextrous in order to spend a night in a hotel.
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