Job satisfaction
Jeffrey Bernard
It occurred to me, when reading my colleague, Benny Green's, column, that there is a sort of illness I don't have but wish I did suffer from. I suppose it might be called acute lexicographitis. It takes the form of a compulsion to cover blank sheets of paper with words. Now, of course it's a wonderful thing to enjoy one's work, but lexicographitis in its chronic form can lead to wealth, fame and success. Keith Waterhouse is yet another sufferer. I can understand publicans enjoying their work and yet they are sidetracked by trivialities and spend far too much time discussing such subjects as motorway systems and the weather and doctors adore just everything about their work except for their patients. Then there are those like George Best who love everything about their work except the money and success which they just can't take. I remember two episodes which upset me some time ago and they were two separate days on the booze, once with Mick Jagger and on another occasion with Tony Hancock. Jagger was alright to begin with — we spent all afternoon after the pubs had closed in a grotty little club called the Kismet — but he cracked at about 5 p.m. and he tearfully told me that the money and fame was driving him mad. Yes, I did suggest he unload some of it on to me but he didn't seem attracted by the idea. You just can't help some people.
Then I met Hancock in the Yorkminster one morning at opening time. We got talking, possibly because we were the only two in the bar, and we spent the rest of the day together. A lovely fellow but a casualty. (Pubs are casualty wards aren't they?) By the early evening Hancock was legless. I folded him into a taxi and he sat on the floor of it. From that position he solemnly gave me his telephone number. Lying down he said, 'Phone me sometime when you're in trouble.' I'm quite alright', I said. `No, I think you may have a drink problem', he said and then passed out.
Racehorse trainers are one bunch of people I know who love their work and some of them get what almost seems like a kick out of their disappointments. In that game too, bookmakers like their work much as foxes must like eating someone's chickens. But it's this writing nonsense that puzzles me. What's more, there's a whole new breed of graduates coming along into the Fleet Street arena who simply adore the idea of assaulting blank sheets of paper. I seem to remember that the Sunday Times or someone once did a survey asking undergraduates what they most wanted to do when they left university and most of them said they wanted to be journalists because it's terribly exciting and you get to meet famous people. I ask you. What these people don't seem to realise is that all work cuts into one's spare, idling, drinking and kibbitzing time. One needs at least ten hours a day to look out of the window. The idea that there's virtue in work for its own sake needs knocking on the head once and for all.
Being a boss, pure and simple, is the guvnor job. Delegation is something you can do standing on your head. Ideally one should start at the top and the sort of man who tells you that life is tough or lonely at the top needs shooting. The alternatives are quite hideous. Benny's typewriter is probably a water cooled contraption and his brain must be permanently firing on all cylinders. Isn't it enough to sit about in pubs conjecturing? I mean, there's no need to actually write about all that stuff. All that really needs writing is cheques and betting slips.
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