High life
In praise of Petronella
Taki
Last Sunday evening in the Big Olive I went out looking for poets and sonneteers to sing the praises of a 20-year-old girl, Petronella Wyatt. Although I have never met her and have no idea what she looks like, she became my Beatrice quicker than Jeff can order a vodka and Lime. I simply read what she had to say about pop music and, presto, it was love at first read.
What Robin Givens has recently done for romantic love, or better yet, Ms Givens's husband, Mike Tyson, did to Michael Spinks last summer, Miss Wyatt has now done to pop music. It was no contest from the start. Every swipe was a KO punch, and a couple of them are worth repeating: 'Youth is not the only offender. Middle age, caught up in a slavish obses- sion with teenage fads, threw in the sponge long ago. You might well think these benign-looking creatures would prefer a quiet evening singing along to Cosi fan tutte... . Not a bit of it.' Or, 'I have seen what happens to an ageing Mick Jagger let loose in a night club. His eyes light up with insanity, he makes incomprehensible noises and he jumps up and down. There are many sad spectacles in this sad world, but none sadder than a middle-aged man waving his arms about and crying "Do you want my body?" and "Yeah, yeah" at regular intervals.' I particularly liked the way she described pop's formula for success: loud, crashing noises and stupid lyrics. Machines doing most of the work. Where brass and strings used to be, there are things called synth- esisers, and intelligible verses have been replaced by discordant roars and yells. Petronella wants to bum down all the horrid recording studios — which would probably reduce the drug consumption of this country by 75 per cent — and dance a Cole Porter tune on the ashes. Or perhaps a Gershwin one, or Rodgers and Hart. I can only say, Amen. But I am left wondering what it is that makes one so young get it so right. Is it flair, wisdom, taste, or is it simply elbow room? I say elbow room because she doesn't seem to be constricted by dogma, something most people who'd rather think than fight seem to be nowadays. Take for example Mr Neal Ascherson, at least twice Miss Wyatt's age and supposedly very experienced. Mr Ascherson I don't know at all, but I hear he's a nice man and a gentleman. In his Observer column last Sunday, while Petronella was exposing the barbarism of pop in the Sunday Telegraph, he was taking The Spectator to task for our recent subscription drive for the Poles. What emerged immediately was how wrong he got the whole thing. Asking to send the New York Review of Books instead of The Spectator to the long- suffering and wonderful Polish people is like sending Roy Hattersley to share the dinner of Ethiopian famine victims. The last thing the Poles need is to read how some rich leftie noodle-brain finds life intolerable at Harvard. Or Pinter com- plaining about how ghastly life is in W8 during Thatcher's reign. What my favourite people need is more freedom and less ideas of a socialist nature. And they also need light relief. Jeff could do far more for them than most 'enlightened' writers because the Poles know only too well what enlightenment brings.
So, what is it that makes Miss Wyatt get it so right and Mr Ascherson so wrong? Is it lack of dogma, taste or a sense of humour? The last two, incidentally, were totally absent in the Big Olive last week. Veteran tennis players competing for glory are not supposed to act like brats, nor are they supposed to cheat, let out primal grunts and act like louts on court. The Greeks did all that and more, but did not get their way. Nico won the 35-and-over without losing a set, I struggled to win the 45-and-over, and together we won the doubles without losing a single game. I'm sorry to brag, but as our opponents never gave us any credit, we have to sound a bit like Mick Jagger. I just hope Petronella will forgive me this once.
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