Low life
Unholy writ
Jeffrey Bernard
Last Monday the bailiffs called again as I knew they would. They served me with a bankruptcy order for the sum of £564.50 down to a company called Robson Books. Two things annoy me. Firstly that the solicitors acting for Robson Books should charge £64.50 for issuing a summons and secondly that better men than I, like Maurice Richardson and John Davenport, spent most of their lives living off pub- lishers' advances without having to write the wretched books. But most of the sting was taken out of the vindictive action by the policeman who served me with the warrant. He was utterly charming and smelled so sweet. He was obviously wear- ing some rather expensive Italian after- shave lotion and I suppose could well afford to. What else would a solicitor have the imagination to spend £64.50 on? Yes, the self-employed have been and are being persecuted by successive governments. Of course, Robson Books are entitled to their lousy book, but I should have thought, apart from the fact that £500 is a drop in a big ocean, that I was doing the public a great favour in not writing the book since far too many books are pub- lished as it is. Have you ever seen a publisher's catalogue? The crap and drivel that's turned out is mind-boggling. Some- thing like 5,000 books are published every year. How many of them are worth read- ing, including the ones that misguided goons on the Arts Council recommend? You can all well do without my book of Lester Piggott anecdotes which, as the Standard Londoner's Diary reported, was what Robson Books wanted. The irony of the business is that one Lester Piggott -anecdote — if you could call it an anecdote — I could have sold to a certain Sunday newspaper for something in the region of £25,000. I didn't sell it because I like the man and wanted to spare his blushes. So far he hasn't even said thank you. Such is stardom. Luckily someone who has bailed me out of the shit more than once talked me out of selling that particular story. That and my own innate sense of decency, ha, ha. What I could do with £25,000! As it was, one newspaper gave me £300 for killing the story, which is £24,700 short of what I could have got. But a thank you or a large vodka would have sufficed.
At the other end of the rainbow the Inland Revenue are behaving like Crom- well in Ireland. They have garnered 60 pet cent of my income. Richard West informs me that the person in charge of dealing with tax owed by journalists is a Marxist feminist in Scotland avowed to bringing us to our knees. Socialist governments are just as unsympathetic to the self-employed as Mrs Thatcher's band of twits. It is quite obvious to me that Members of Parliament should not be paid. After all, their hearts are supposed to be in the right places. Why I should not be able to claim anything in the way of allowances for a £265 telephone bill — trying to get work from America — baffles me. Taki must be saving a fortune.
Meanwhile, I have awoken to find £27 in my pocket, which is about £26 more than I would have found in it 20 years ago. I shall go out and drink to the. fall of the system and most likely get pissed. Otherwise life trundles on. My indoor plants are thriving, I'm taking the vitamins and have put on 4lbs and my girlfriend is still speaking to me albeit between halves of draught Guin- ness. She is, incidentally, one of the few birds I know who gets her shout. I have not noticed much increase on the part of women to buy a round since the beginning of the feminist movement. What on earth did they want to get into the bar at El Vino for in the first place? Surely not to stand a round of drinks. Byron got it wrong. Women aren't 'nicer' than men. Come to that, men aren't 'nicer' than women although the tax inspector in Scotland is a woman who, I'm told, goes by the name of Ritchie. And now the Australians have bought us which I suppose makes me a Pommy poove. Doubtless they will be giving us all a rise in their efforts to show goodwill. Until then, I shall proceed to the poach and Horses to knock out that £27 that Robson Books could have had if they'd asked nicely. My friend Clive tells e that you can get anything, even femin- ists, if you ask nicely. I don't think that's quite true, but you can certainly get a writ.
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