Low life
ke bye blackbird
Jeffrey Bernard
IjItb's been another rather silly week in the back garden of Soho. On Monday I met a black bird with thrush and, as I predicted ast week's column, the drama student pZ.11t last long. Lingering over a pot of se,,; test at the end of an afternoon sit-" seminar — included in the service charge oct,asuallY dismissed King Lear as being 'Ilan with woman troubles. I was so brusherstat asked her to remove her tooth- rr uri my bathroom beer mug and 11.',e other arrangements for her future ,..71.aPPiness. Such people come here in s but they leave in buses and it serves ate.111, light. Well, later that evening — back her'sne drawing board so to speak — in Kett- pre siPping Cointreau, the poor man s cameo al lobotomy, these tired old eyes `bille to rest on this delightful looking black thewho omitted to tell me that she into thrush until I had actually signed her Into Put Great Portland Street Academy. I ve F1'it her on a crash course of natural yoghurt
which rather messily has to be applied to the parts as well as swallowed and I've sworn her to celibacy until the start of the flat racing season which opens at Doncaster on 22 March, exactly one day after J. S. Bach's birthday. You could now call her a bird in the bush and I fear I have none in the hand. The next morning I perked up a bit when the telephone rang and I heard the soft voice of my Dublin bookmaker. He told me that Capture Him, held in the highest esteem by his trainer Vincent O'Brien, must be backed when he comes to England in the spring and possibly for the 2,000 Guineas. but that's by the by and I only mention it since the information comes from the same source that gave us Bajan Sunshine for last year's Cesarewitch.
At lunchtime, Charlie took me to a rather superior fish and chip shop where they gave us some tepid white wine in teacups after hours. They meant well but it was quite disgusting. Wheelers have got it right. If you make it cold enough you can drink Chateau filth without noticing it. Anyway, the plonk went to my head and I ordered a suit I can't pay for on my way home. Which reminds me. The Inland Revenue finally got me to court last Friday and they're going to tap my income at source for the next 13 months. I think I slipped up badly. I made the wretched collector an offer which he ac- cepted with such alacrity that I knew im- mediately I'd gone over the top. Can you imagine writing something like 60 columns for practically nothing? So, if I sound a lit- tle churlish here until next year's Grand Na- tional you'll know it has nothing to do with thrush or drama students. 1 managed to needle the collector though. What these people don't like or understand after you've been pleading poverty in the dock is one's hailing a taxi outside the court instead of jumping on a bus. That's why they're tax collectors who'll never know the in- vigorating joys of treading water in the deep end without a life belt.
But something will turn up and a bit did on Thursday. An extremely shrewd tele- vision producer called round in the morning and asked me if I'd like to go on the box and talk about the low life, how I got into it and why I like it. Now, for three minutes that would be something of a doddle but this man says it's for 28 minutes straight in- to a camera. Twenty-eight bloody minutes! If the film doesn't end up in the cutting room dustbin I want you to watch it — I'll tell you the date when I know it — to see how a person can destroy themselves with their own vanity. It's something I've always wanted to do and it will probably turn out to be as farcical as my courtroom appear- ances. Every time I go to court I expect to see the famous titter go around the court. I think I'm going to be as witty as Oscar Wilde and have everyone in stitches with the judge spluttering 'Not guilty' at the end of the proceedings. What happens is a bit of grovelling and an inane and insincere apology followed by serveral stiff drinks in the nearest pub. Not the happy hour, but the remorse hour. Just before I went into hospital — and this is a sordid story that warrants no detail — I collected a criminal record for kicking someone's car parked annoyingly on the pavement. A CID plain-clothes man ar- rested me in the Coach on a charge of criminal damage and took me to Vine Street where I was fingerprinted and photograph- ed. But this is extraordinary. As we walked past the Swiss pub on our way to the nick the arresting detective said, 'You screwed the landlord's daughter here in 1976, didn't • you?' Well, I was amazed. How anyone could have known what went on that Christmas Day after lunch on the saloon bar floor after the guvnor went upstairs for a nap I'll never know. But I liked the magistrate at Bow Street when I went up for the car kicking. He looked at my record and saw I'd been nicked last October for going over the top in the Raj of India restaurant and said, 'The last time it was rubber plants, Mr Bernard. Now it's cars. What next?' Well, you tell me, I thought. Pro bably a collector of taxes, possibly a drama student, maybe a black bird with the treble up of thrush, herpes and AIDS. All I know is that when I leave this flat it gets bloody dangerous. No wonder vultures are nesting on the roof of the Coach and Horses.
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