DIARY
ANNE McELVOY The Blairs' year of delivery may be 2000; we got ours in by the 20th-century deadline. At four months, the child's Origi- nal Sin remained uncleansed. He was beginning to look cross-dressed, not to say cross, when inserted into his christening robe. I can't help noticing that the choices of godparents are like investments in the stock market of reputation. Perhaps prospective moral sponsors should come with one of those warnings: 'The value of your shares can go down as well as up.' We opt for a merry spread of friends who, besides being godly folk, as Ella Fitzgerald put it, 'in their fashion', fit the ideal of being more fun and glamorous than we are, and thus more likely to be heeded by the cross-dresser when he becomes a stroppy teenager. In the process, we discover that under church law — Anglican and Roman Catholic — you cannot de-select a godpar- ent; not even if, like Diane Abbott, you bought into Jonathan Aitken (he was her parliamentary pair) before the crash. No, it is as solemn and binding a commitment as the general secretary's post at the NUM — a job for life.
Mary Killen has not yet delivered the last word on the matter, but I notice that the social form on admitting to past sub- stance abuse is changing. A crisp 'no com- ment' now sounds like an admission of guilt. The more honest — or just burdened with indiscreet university friends — are adopting the Just Say Mo doctrine instead. This entails admitting that you did take drugs but, as Mo said, 'didn't particularly like them'. The Lib Dem Matthew Taylor confessed to having found the heady exper- ience 'absolutely disgusting'. Others announce that it 'made them sick' as if the emetic effect cancelled out the illegality. An intriguing variant is offered by an ambi- tious and congenial Conservative person- age who tells me that he snorted cocaine once at Oxford 'but it didn't have any effect on me'. This is wussy to the max. How come all these prominent people are so pharmacologically challenged? It seems odd that not one of them admits to having taken a drug and liked the effect, which is why drugs have not died out from lack of interest before now. The reason young peo- ple are so immune to messages about the dangers of drugs is that we have lied to them for so long. Now we are finding new weasel words to avoid talking straight.
Invited to the 30th birthday party of two ur-Blairites — Tim Allan, Mr Blair's spin doctor (retd) and James Purnell, No. 10 telecommunications guru — we were enjoined to dress up as pop stars. Off I trot to a dungeon off the Old Street round- about, brimming with glistening Abba suits, Glam Rock shoes and chain-encrusted punk plastic trousers. Favouring under- statement, I opt for a hippie chick number with psychedelic flowers and five-inch plat- forms. The place was heaving with nuns and Nazis, all heading to the Singalong Sound of Music. The New Yorker's film crit- ic, Anthony Lane, was perplexed to find one man in the audience in a yellow catsuit. 'Who are you?' said Mr Lane, mentally running through the infuriating von Trapps. 'I'm Ray,' said the man sweetly. 'A drop of golden sun.'
Athe Soho House door, Ed Miliband, one of Gordon Brown's coterie, is behind me. He is in black cashmere jacket and dark trousers. He looks very dapper. What he does not look like is a pop star. `Oh,' he says, airily scanning the invitation. 'I didn't think they meant it.' Peter Mandelson floats by looking as well groomed as a mat- in4e idol but not a pop star. He looks at me oddly. A flood of panic hits. I am the 'It will never happen.' Malvolio of New Labour social life. It is all a hideous, cruel joke. Then Tim and James heave into view. They are, unmistakably, gloriously Bros, the naffest di tutti naff boy band of the early 1990s, complete with turquoise neckerchiefs and leather jackets. I could sob with relief. A few Sergeant Pep- pers, anonymous punks and a pouting Chrissie Hynde emerge. Behind them is John Lennon, who turns out to house John Birt. For the rest of the party, people sidle up and whisper, 'That's John Birt. Amazing isn't it? What a good sport to dress up.' I begin to wonder if it is Mr Brown's Protes- tant work ethic that makes changing garb for a fancy-dress party seem wildly unusual. Crossman used to say that tending to the 'amplitude of life' was part of Labour's business. No more — or maybe just not yet.
Being John Malkovich is the film to see for out-of-body experiences. It is about a man who discovers the way to get inside Mr ,Malkovich's handsome head, and who can- not be dislodged. I share a small insight into this trauma, having a doppelgi-inger in the shape of the writer Anne Applebaum, with whom I am routinely confused. We share a past as journalists in Eastern Europe and as deputy editors of this magazine, but then there have been a lot of those. She is dark and American, I am a pale Celt. She lives mainly in Poland with her Polish husband, I live in Islington with the North London variety. She is right-wing, I am a centre-left- ie. Not different enough, evidently. In the middle of torturing David Blunkett on Sky's Answer the Question last week, he pings back, 'You ought to know better because you wrote about that when you were a columnist at the Evening Standard.' I never was. Afterwards Mr Blunkett is apologetic. He need not worry that his blindness is to blame for the confusion. The shadow social security minister, David Wil- letts, once told me how pleased he was about my pregnancy when I was not thus encumbered. Someone has just congratu- lated me on my excellent piece on . . . no, I can't go on. It's too painful.
Charles Moore wrote recently in this column that the Queen Mother has done Britain a lot more good in her 100 years than the Labour party. I am not sure that Herself, who has been a mixed blessing to the royal family, would agree with this ele- vation. Even she has acknowledged some benefit in 'the good old Labour party'. This requires resolution. I call on Mr Moore to defend his proposition with loaded rhetoric in a debate at dawn. As my old headmaster once bellowed when revolution threatened, 'A gauntlet has been thrown up.'
Previous page
