DIARY
PETRONELLA WYATT What is it that you're selling?' asked the man from the trade magazine. 'Choco- late,' I answered. 'What kind?"Urn, erotic chocolate.' Chaotic chocolate?' No,' I per- sisted uncomfortably, 'not chaotic, erotic.' A blush suffused my cheeks like a Caribbean sunrise. 'Erotic chocolate,' I repeated. 'I want to sell erotic chocolate.' It all started when they wouldn't let me appear on Who Wants To Be a Millionaire? Although I had telephoned the hotline three times a week and answered all the questions correctly, the computer never selected me at random. (My guess is that it was programmed to discern middle-class accents and then discriminate against them.) I would have to find another way of raking in the chips. All at once the entrepreneurial urge called and the spirit of the souk reared its head. My thoughts mean- dered to the genesis of England's great com- mercial empires. On what had they been based? Why, on giving the people something they didn't possess. Thus it had been with tea, railways, cheap cars, espresso bars and fast food. The problem was, though, that the people had become spoilt for choice. One thing they didn't have, however, was erotic chocolate. And I would give it to them. A year ago I had discovered that an Italian manufacturer in Venice made tablets of chocolate depicting Indian temple designs. When I brought some over to England before Christmas, my friends snapped them up. The chocolates were my 'big idea'. When I was old, people would watch me go by and whisper, 'That's Petronella Wyatt. She made her fortune in erotic chocolates, you know.' The first thing to do was to start a company. 'The Erotic Chocolate Company' sounded socially mal vu. Then the muse struck — or rather struck a friend. An early chocophile was Casanova, who believed in its aphrodisi- ac properties. Appropriately he was a native of Venice. Thus the company would be called La Casa di Casanova.
The next step was to take out advertis- ing. Where better to advertise erotic choco- late than in the Erotic Review magazine? I dialled the number of its advertising depart- ment. A smoky and disquieting male voice said, 'Hello.' I panicked and put down the telephone. The enormity of what I was doing had hit me. The Erotic Review custom- arily ran notices along the lines of 'Beautiful Oriental ladies', 'Overcome penile dysfunc- tion' and 'We will perform erotically for you'. Oh God. What would my friends think; more to the point, my mother? Still it had to be done. Better to withhold my name. I rang again. 'I want to place an advertisement for erotic chocolates.' The male voice was suave. 'Fine, absolutely. In a little box at the back, or would you like a quarter-page?' Oh, a quarter-page,' I said airily. We went through the cost, the layout and the issue date. Then he asked me, 'What's your name?' Cripes. I tried running the syllables together, `Ptrll Wot.' For some reason it didn't work. 'Petronella: Wyatt? Why on earth didn't you say it was you?'
When I was a child my father bought a house in Wiltshire. The grounds included some empty fields. One April, when the hedges flanking the deep, steep lanes were beginning to sprout their first green shoots, my father had an idea. He decided to adver- tise for an ornamental hermit. Apparently ornamental hermits had been all the rage in the 18th century when it was felt that Doth- mg could give such delight to the eye as an aged person with a long grey beard and a filthy robe doddering about one's estate. He spent hours cogitating over an advertisement that he proposed to put in the local paper. The final version read thus: 'Wanted. Male between 50 and 75 years of age. To live on the grounds of Conock Old Manor near Devizes. He will be provided with a wooden shelter in case of bad weather, a Bible, a comfortable chair, a pair of spectacles and food and water from the house. He must wear a beige or grey robe, keep his hair and nails long, and on no account address any- one without permission.'
Not altogether surprisingly my father received no replies to this advertisement, save from a malodorous tramp who refused the vow of silence. So he decided instead to buy a flock of Jacob sheep. Every year half 'The condemned man ate a low-fat breakfast . . . ' of the sheep died, were eaten by foxes or had to be slaughtered. No one wanted to buy the carcasses, so we had to eat them ourselves. For a month we had nothing but sheep every day. Sometimes it was boiled, sometimes roasted, sometimes stewed, sometimes it was just lumpy and cold. It seemed to last for ever. If no one wants to buy my confec- tionery, I shall have to eat 5,000 pieces of chocolate. At the rate of five a day, this will take me two years, eight months and 16 days.
Icannot work myself into the brimstone indignation that seems to have afflicted most sections of Westminster and the media at the presence here of Mike Tyson. He may be a convicted rapist but his misdemeanours pale in comparison with the crimes of others whom this country harbours. In recent years the Foreign Office and the Home Office have fallen over themselves to give asylum to a series of murderous former dictators — and I don't mean General Pinochet. Over Christmas I wrote about Tharcisse Muvunyi, an ex-soldier from Rwanda accused of mas- sacring 100,000 people. He is wanted by the Rwandan government. Yet he and his family live on social security in London. Then there is Captain Valentine Strasser, the unscrupu- lous former president of Sierra Leone. Strasser was put on a complimentary law course at Warwick University. But feminists — and by extension their male acolytes — don't mind murder quite as much as rape, particularly if the victims are men. If Tyson had been a Third World dictator, we would have given him an honorary degree.
Afew days ago I received an odd tele- phone call. A man's voice asked to speak to me. There was what sounded like laughter in the background. Something prompted me to give my name as Tarrian (a colleague who shares my office). I was glad I did for the voice said, 'I'm calling on behalf of Thomas Pink. I'm anxious to get hold of Miss Wyatt to appear in our advertising campaign.' The voice claimed to have sent me a fax before Christmas to which I had failed to reply. He said they would send another one inviting me to come to a studio and be photographed by a team from Vogue. Oh yes? I wondered which of my friends had thought of that one. But to my astonishment it turned out to be bona fide. The next morning a long fax arrived asking me to be a face of Thomas Pink for their spring campaign. Apparently they had been looking for 'real people'. Real people? I have never quite understood what that meant. Real people as opposed to what — foam people? Actually, it is probably a euphemism for 'not very good-looking'. But hey — who's complaining? At least I hadn't been asked to be the face of Imoclium.
Previous page
