Skinflint's City Diary

My view, which is worth as much as anyone else's, is that the news and phone-in London commercial radio channel is not as bad as its critics and enemies would like. My one-time colleague, George Gale, is a great hit from 11 am until lunchtime. Kind, cuddly and with an earthy wisdom. Janet StreetPorter is, I should guess, for 'the chop.' Not only is her dreadful contrived accent nothing whatsoever to do with the East End or with the lower classes with which she is striving to identify but, worse, on my receiver she manages to produce a strange but ugly crackle.

Michael Levete, from Charterhouse, the managing director, is an amateur actor given to wearing white hunter suits with that between-the-wars face to be seen usually coming through the french windows with a tennis racket in the local amateur drama group. I think they can just make it commercially if they move up market a little, become alitile less giggly and engage a retired BBC newscaster or two to give familiar authority and a little sententiousness to the news.

Incidentally, that LBC staff member who wrote to the New Statesman last week, boasting that they had plenty of talent but are short of people, needn't cringe under a pseudonym any longer. I overheard Levete, as he left Mario and Franco's Chancery Lane restaurant on., Friday, after a good lunch no doubt, open the NS and point out the letter to his companion, saying, "I know who that is."

London and County

London and County Securities shares collapsed on a wave of selling and then were suspended to the considerable advantage of those in the know who had been shortselling. Once a share goes into a spiral the quotation should not be suspended, useful as this is to jobbers and dealers. The story around is that shares given to Christopher SeImes and Co when Drakes were taken over last year in a e10 million deal have been on offer, coupled with London and County's warehousing of Inveresk shares on a falling market for the bid that did not make it. If you are liquid it is still not the time to fish in troubled waters. Get out of the dodgier conglomerates if you still can.

Diary time

The diary competition is hotting up. Hitherto the best and most practical business present for a businessman husband, lover or friend was a copy of the Financial Times diary, or that produced by the Economist. Each was lavish, burdened with useful information,

and accompanied by all sorts of quiddities and Wilie-beguilies. Now, after our first year in Europe, the Irish Institute of Public Administration has produced a combined European directory and diary, on the model of the businessman's diary they have hitherto regularly produced in their own country. It is an especially handsome piece of work, bound in black, and provided with the week-at-a-glance system. But the first umpteen pages have a pretty well complete breakdown on the European' Community — personalities, rules, regulations, laws, addresses, telephone numbers.

Sympathy for Jeremy

As most of the press — or at least the cartoonists — found, it was hard to be sympathetic to poor Jeremy Thorpe when the roof of

London and County Securities began to leak. The Liberals have been holier than thou for so long now — what with, at one stage, their sending back of a 0,000 contribution to party funds from what they took to be a tainted business source — that a little bit of 'mud seemed not to come amiss. Nonetheless, Jeremy has my sympathy. He beCame a director of LCS after they took over a firm of which he was already a director. And he has shown every determination to stand honourably at his post during the present crisis. The real meanie in the whole business was the powerful Liberal election expert, Trevor Jones, who chose this moment to warn Liberals not to become involved in dicey business deals. It has been rumoured for some time that there is no love lost between Jones's Trotskyites and Jeremy's constitutionalists.

Can this be the beginning of Liberal division?

The trickster

If I have ever seen a phoney and a fraud, admittedly a smart one with a new angle, it was the Israeli, Uri Geller, on the Dimbleby Talk-in after the Miss World contest. Geller is a master of his art but a fraud because he has convinced himself possibly — and stupider idiots certainly — that he is controlled by extra terrestrial power. How he has developed his tricks is just another subject for a meeting of the Magic Circle but when he carries away Brian Inglis in the New Statesman it is time to shake one's head in disbelief, until it is remembered that Brian comes from the land of the leprechaun. Here is Inglis in trance: "He has the ability, which shamans were

believed to have, to control forces, rather than be controlled by them whatever they are. And it is surely important that we should try and find out what they are. The implications are terrifying; if a watch can be stopped, why not an aeroplane engine?" Pooh, Brian. Denis Wheatley will tell you.

London and United Wonderful news for my old friends Richard King and Colin Forsythe of the controversial industrial hcrlding company London and United Investments. They have been able to get rid of their Pan Australian Unit Trust management company to Barclay Unicorn for £1.4 million. London and United shares are priced at 88p, capitalising the business at £4.24 million on a price earnings ratio of 35.5. With cash-stuffed Slater Walker selling at 9.7, London and United look a little high and it may be as well to let them come back a bit — around 40p, say, and pick up a few.

Dressing gowns

From time to time a friend will say that he would like to start a little business on his own. Laundrettes, antique shops, and interior decorating may be discussed. It may lack cash, zest or a particle of experience but seldom does the excited talk come to anything.

A day or two ago I needed to buy a dressing gown and it seemed to me that a shop dealing exclusively in them might work. There cannot be more than three or four possible sizes. The material used can be literally anything from patchwork pieces made from old silk ties to cut up blankets. They are a useful present appreciated even by those irritating people that have everything. I am told that Tony Palmer's wife, Angela Huth, the novelist, has a business on the side called Night Owls somewhere in Fulham Road selling pyjamas and things but not just dressing gowns. I shall have a look in and see what it is like.

Be generous to Willie As Willie Whitelaw returned from his triumphal period in Ulster I regretted, not for the first time, the passing of that splendid olden practice of making awards to politicians and others who have done well, frequently financial rewards. Willie, surely, deserves some honour that would not immure him in the Upper House, and I daresay £100,000 or so would not come amiss. Some of the great glories of England were procured that way, notably Blenheim Palace. And, while the nation grossly ignored Nelson's injunction to look after Emma Hamilton, they did at least provide a pension for the Nelson family; which was criminally terminated by a British government in the twentieth century. It is true that, in the eighteenth century, Johnson had to put on a charity performance to raise a few bob for Milton's granddaughter, and he composed a noble poem for the occasion. But previous ages were more generous to those who gave of health and vigour in the pursuit of the national interest, than we are today. It is, I suppose, another mark of decline.