I can't help noticing that a number of medical authorities among
them the sacked-but-not-even-ashade-bitter Lib Dem MP Jenny Tonge have been offering Charles Kennedy public advice on his health. By way of corrective, I telephoned the excellent NHS Direct (0845 46 47) to seek a professional diagnosis. I enumerated the symptoms presented by 'my friend Charlie', a man in his midforties, I said, who doesn't go out much in public but seems to have lost weight, to be pale and sweaty, to suffer trembling hands and look a shade unsteady on his feet. 'It's not normal, is it?' said the very kind nurse who phoned me back. 'But, really, we can't diagnose him unless he speaks to us himself. It could be a number of things, but we'd really advise you to have a chat with him and try to get him to speak to us. It's confidential. But it sounds like he should see a doctor.'
Nevertheless ... in the midst of death, we are in life. Love, it turns out, has blossomed among the gravestones, survived-bys and disputed death dates of the worldwide fraternity of obituarists. In June last year, the Dallas-based obituarist Joanne West met her Australian opposite number Patrick Cornish. of Perth, at the Obituary Writers' International Conference in Las Vegas. In April, they will be married.
With lain Duncan Smith in the clear over the 'Betsygate' accusations of impropriety in his private office administration, how should his successor react? Mr Howard's public backing of Mr Duncan Smith has been vindicated. Yet Vanessa Gearson — the so-called 'assassin in high heels' whose emails precipitated the crisis — is a Tory PPC for plum Cheltenham. Moreover, Mark MacGregor, the former Tory chief executive seen as one of Mr Duncan Smith's prime tormentors, is PPC for Thanet. With IDS in the clear. might Mr Howard not incline to investigate the behaviour of Gearson and MacGregor in the matter? Or will he find it more convenient to let sleeping dogs lie?
SSo, when will Bill Clinton's memoirs be coming out? If Osama bin Laden remains George Bush's 'elephant in the room', Clinton, for different reasons, may be John Kerry's. According to the New York Observer the Clinton book, for which Knopf has reportedly paid up to $12 million, is due to be published in the
middle of this year. In other words, a thunderous Clinton book tour and a festival of impeachment nostalgia will be competing with Kerry's election campaign for the attention of the American political class. As one Democratic insider put it. 'It's going to be tough enough for Kerry, with a limited budget, to command attention around key issues ... Clinton's memoir is just going to suck all the oxygen out of the air.' Knopf refuses to confirm a publication date but, as the Observer points out, waiting until after the election to sell the book would be like trying to flog a Christmas tree on 26 December.
Which said, the American electorate seems to be at least as excited about its virtual politics, in the form of the series The West Wing. (We'll pass over, for the moment, the question of what percentage of Americans actually believe Martin Sheen is the president of the USA.) In what may be the first ever pop-cultural euthanasia campaign, fans of the programme have set up an online campaign to kill it off, on the grounds that this onceproud institution has become an embarrassment. They have, apparently, been incensed beyond endurance by a scene in which the First Lady cavorts with Elmo from Sesame Street. 'The show,' write the hardnuts on www.dontsaveourshow.org, `careens ever closer to being completely unvvatchable, and we'd rather see it end now with some measure of dignity than limp on for two more seasons.'
Ipromised last week to return at more length to the memoirs of Solihull's Conservative member, John Taylor. In Please Stay To The Adjournment (Brewin Books, 13.95), Mr Taylor relates the first time that he became fully aware of the world's injustice. He was only 13. 'The
prizegiving at the end of my final term at Eversfield,' he recalls, 'was to give me a poignant jolt.' At issue was the Proficiency Cup, awarded to the 'best all-round boy', for which young Taylor was one of two lads shortlisted. `You'll have gathered,' he writes, 'that I didn't get it. I would not have minded very much or even at all if I had felt that it was obviously a close thing between me and my rival. But it wasn't. It was. I thought, unfair. It is true that I had already received three prizes. By contrast, he had received none. But he was an early example of an overseas student from a wealthy background and was on his way to Westminster School, which was a prestigious graduation from Eversfield. Maybe fairness was sharing things around?' Happily, Mr Taylor resisted the siren call of socialism. In our next extract, we'll learn a little more of how.
Remaining for a moment in the world of letters, this Vole applauds its young colleague Harry Mount's memoir of life as a pupil barrister, My Brief Career, an amusing account of a world whose pomp and fatuity, to hear him tell it, constitutes a willingly endured insult to the intelligence of all who inhabit it. He eventually escaped the Inns of Court and ran away to become a gossip columnist. His first scoop was to interview Martin Amis at the launch party for his father's letters. Asked about the effect of Philip Larkin's death on Kingsley. Martin pronounced: 'My father depended on a holy triumvirate of crutches: the drinks cabinet, the television and Philip. When one of the crutches went. I think he was destabilised.' Incidentally, the publicity for Mr Mount's book has already earned him an admirer of the sort that might have made Kingsley Amis proud. Mr Mount was this week phoned out of the blue by a lady who, in a breathy voice, told him he 'oozed sex appeal'. She went on. to his only faint disappointment, to reveal that she is a divorcee with a grown-up son,
urther jollity from the memoirs of Lady Annabel Goldsmith, heir to the Mitfords when it comes to acuity of social observation: 'Our friend, the historian Andrew Roberts, was a regular guest at Ormeley lunches,' she recalls. 'During one he was so taken aback to see Princess Diana that he dropped her a low curtsy. She, hugely amused, insisted that he do another, for which she awarded him just eight out of ten marks.'
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