DIARY ALAN WATKINS
For politicians today the phrase 'good on television' is equivalent to 'good in bed' as used a generation or so ago. Indeed, as the now unfashionable linguistic philo- sophers would say, the grammar of the two phrases is similar. Thus: He/she may not be much to look at/have much upstairs but, my word, he/she is good on television. Or: I know, he/she is very nice looking but is he/she any good on television? Mr Neil Kinnock is sure he is good on television. He and his advisers think Labour can pick up several points during the campaign on this account alone. Whether this is correct or not Mr Kinnock's policy for some time has been to disregard the press, from which he is convinced (with some justification) he will never get a square deal, and to concentrate on the television cameras instead — or, rather, to hope they will concentrate on him. This is the only plausible explanation for his second trip to the United States. Alas, over television coverage the White House was less obliging to him than the Kremlin to Mrs Thatcher. I had a laugh out of the !resident's greeting Mr Denis Healey as Mr Ambassador'. Not only that: he had got the wrong ambassador, mistaking Mr Healey not for the present emissary, Sir Antony Acland, but for his more hirsute predecessor, Sir Oliver Wright. Mr Healey is, however, often mistaken for somebody else. Canvassing in Chapel Market, Islington, during the last election, he was observed by a lady who said: 'I know that face,' to which her companion replied: 'It's George Brown.' Mr Frank Johnson, in attendance for his newspaper, interposed: No, madam, it is the well-known Irish tenor, Mr Josef Locke.'
r Kinnock, however, still talks to lobby journalists — but in the Leader of the Opposition's room rather than in the lobby room. As I explained a few weeks ago, this arrangement came about because of the row between the Labour Party and Mr Rupert Murdoch. It is one of those shoddy, shabby compromises to which the late George Woodcock once referred. But since I wrote, the official dispute has ended. Yet the new-fangled arrangement still persists. Why? A Labour person said to me that Mr Kinnock found it convenient to be 'on the record', that is, quoted directly. But he was frequently so reported from lobby meetings. According to a lobby resolution any politician can put himself or herself on record if the journalists present consent — and I have never known them refuse. The lobby changed their rules in this respect in the 1970s, after Mr Edward Heath had tried to bypass them with Gaullist press conferences at Lancas- ter House. It is Mr Bernard Ingham and Mr John Biffen who refuse to be quoted.
Most obituarists have agreed that David Watt, who died in a tragic accident last week, did his best work as political columnist of the Financial Times in 1968- 77. Though he had acquired a good deal of journalistic gravitas by this time, I never- theless remember his column best for his quotation from Mr James Callaghan: 'You know; David, what I've found in this life, if you do what's right, it normally turns out to your advantage in the end.' David added with typical astringency that he had not discovered this comforting maxim wholly borne out by his own experience. He could appear forbidding at times, but was in fact humorous, generous and kind. He it was who was chiefly responsible for my joining the Spectator as his successor as political correspondent. He told me in the Com- mons press cafeteria that he was off to Washington as the FT's correspondent there, a post he held for four years before returning to Westminster. I inquired whether a replacement on the Spectator had been nominated. He said no, promis- ing to use his best endeavours with the editor, lain Macleod, on my behalf; which he did. Like Macleod, he did not allow his disability, from polio, to interfere with his enjoyment of sport. He played golf and was a member of Surrey CCC. A few years ago he discovered that I would be in London throughout August, while he would be away. He simply sent me his membership card so that I could go to the Oval in his place. This was against club rules, but much appreciated. I shall miss him.
The television critics who have been writing about the Lord Peter Wimsey serial seem to have taken a tremendous dislike not only to the characters but, more tremendously, to Dorothy L. Sayers. They have even castigated her for insisting on the middle initial. Yet millions of Amer- icans so call themselves. In Harry S. Truman the S did not even stand for anything but was shoved in because it sounded better. Mr Eric S. Heifer, S for Samuel, is not reprobated for calling him- self thus. Certainly Miss Sayers was snob- bish. But to deduce her snobbery from her attempts to render working-class speech phonetically ("ee sez to 'er,' and so forth) is fallacious and shows no knowledge of English writing before 1939. The all-night scene in George Orwell's A Clergyman's Daughter is virtually incomprehensible on this account. The sub-Orwellian I Took Off My Tie, by my predecessor as political columnist of the Observer, Hugh Massing- ham, is written under the same convention. As usual, however, the critics unite to praise the BBC for its 'period authenticity'. Wrong again! Wimsey's smart chum Arbuthnot is actually made to ask: `G-and- T, Duchess?' in 1929 when, phrasing apart, the drink was not consumed generally if at all. And surely Miss Sayers would never have allowed her hero to refer to 'the Reverend Boyes'?
Many journalists in middle age have the urge to do something else, partly from boredom, partly from a desire to show themselves capable of 'running things'. David Watt spent a not altogether happy period at Chatham House. Mr Ferdinand Mount had, I think, a slightly more satis- factory time as head of the Policy Unit at No 10, though I was glad to see him back among us. The latest journalist to go to Downing Street is Mr John O'Sullivan, associate editor of the Times. His case differs from Mr Mount's because, whatev- er he is called, his real job — the reason he is going to No 10 at all — is to write speeches for Mrs Thatcher. Yet Mr O'Sul- livan is being paid as a civil servant for what seems to me a clear party job. Now Mrs Thatcher is manifestly entitled to have the speech writers she wants. Equally Mr O'Sullivan, whom I know and like, is free to write speeches on her behalf if he fancies himself at this kind of thing — even though I have reservations about journalists, however openly committed to a party they may be, lending themselves to this activity. But I do not see why I should be expected to pay for the arrangement.
The 'Media Correspondent' of the Times writes in relation to the Tate Gallery extension: 'Turner, the diminutive roman- tic artist born in London in 1775, has always been capable of generating con- troversy.' This is almost though not quite as good as what a Mirror soccer correspon- dent once wrote about a new young Israeli player: 'Israel, the country that gave us the fabulous Jesus Christ, has produced yet another boy wonder.'
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