DIARY
Having a programme suppressed — the PR word is 'postponed' — by the BBC is rather like having a book banned by the Clogthorpe Public Libraries Committee. It is a bureaucratic process. Spokesmen make statements but no one comes forward to say, 'I did it, for this and that reason.' My film adaptation of Anthony Delano's richly comic book Slip-Up — 'How Fleet Street caught Ronnie Biggs and Scotland Yard lost him' — cost the not unastronomical sum of £600,000 to make, so should it turn out to be money down the drain the BBC Will have to face some embarrassing ques- tions about why it embarked on it in the first place if it thought the story might be defamatory. The fact is that the material has been around for nearly ten years and no one has ever sued. Slipper of the Yard Objected to some passages in Delano's book but did not resort to litigation. He was shown my television script and took objection to some passages in that also. Some amendments were made, not entire- ly to his satisfaction but certainly to the satisfaction of the BBC's legal department, since the thumbs-up was then given for the Production to go ahead. Why, then, the attack of cold feet when the programme Was in the can and the billing in the Radio Times? Our distinguished, and rightly fu- lliclos, director James Cellan Jones is quoted in the Times as believing that the BBC has lost its nerve in the wake of the Panorama libel case, which ended in a £250,000 settlement. For myself, I believe the BBC has gone generally chicken in the wake of Norman Tebbit's assault, and is simply keeping its head below the parapet. A lot of creative people's time will have been wasted if the programme doesn't go out. We could all equally well have been doing something else with those months of cur lives, such as making a programme for Thames or decorating our front rooms. The desire not to make waves is a particu- larly depressing and insipid form of self- censorship. I have come across it on the American networks, where all script con- ferences are attended by a legal-looking Chap whose only contribution is to say 'We do not want to offend any groups' from dme to time. By 'groups' he means not °illy ethnic persons but anyone who might Cause trouble. If that's how it is to be here he BBC might as well change its motto to 'Anything for a quiet life'.
If and when the Post Office is privatised, Will our postage stamps continue to bear a Portrait of the monarch? If so, it will be the Only Privately owned business, outside the Cheap souvenir trade, to make use of the Queen's likeness on its products. While engravings of Queen Victoria were widely
KEITH WATERHOUSE
used to advertise Bovril, soap etc, most manufacturers drew the line at depicting the royal personage on their actual packag- ing. It has subsequently been a convention that the royal family may not be used to puff commercial products, even (indeed, especially) by royal warrant-holders. So where does that leave a privatised Post Office, particularly with its range of fancy commemorative stamps aimed at the phi- latelic market, each with its tiny silhouette of the Queen in the corner? If British Telecom's catchpenny peripheral services — dial-a-sex-kitten and so on — are any yardstick, we may expect special issue stamps to become even more gimmicky and tacky than they are already, come privatisation. Does Her Majesty wish to be involved in this tawdry merchandising? I think Mr Michael Shea should tell us.
My modest prediction for 1987 is that the moral debate on Aids will spread from the pulpit and the banqueting suite to the courts. London's chatterbox circles are a-buzz these days with the names of famous personalities who are supposed to have Aids. Inevitably, one of these names is going to get into the public prints and he will sue for libel. While, on the face of it, his case might rest on its being detrimental to his career to suggest that he is at death's door, it seems likely that much of the evidence, especially for the defence, will be called to no other purpose than to establish whether, to put it more euphe- mistically than it will be put ii. court, he has been putting himself about. Thus we shall be plunged into a show trial of the public morality every bit as much a barometer of our times as the Lady Chatterley case back in the Sixties. If I were a publisher, I should give John Mortimer a fat retainer to stand by ready to cover the Aids cause célèbre from day one. 0 ne vanity I am rarely guilty of is name-dropping, simply because I can nev- er remember a name long enough to drop it. It is a condition that has so worsened over the years that I no longer dare perform introductions — I simply mumble 'You two must know each other' and leave them to sort it out. The more famous or familiar the name, the worse I am. Recent- ly, during a radio interview about my play Mr and Mrs Nobody, I realised to my horror that the names of its two stars, Judi Dench and Michael Williams, had totally left my head. My panic reduced the inter- view to waffle. On another occasion, hav- ing been introduced to a pop personality at a cocktail party, his name — it was then not as celebrated outside his own world as it is now — had left me within five seconds. Convinced for some reason that he must be called Paul, I addressed him as such. 'Bob,' corrected Mr Geldof, for it was he. I recall, in my confusion, being inanely impressed by a pop star with enough upstairs to remember his own name.
Iwas peeved to see Robert Kilroy-Silk credited with inventing the egg trick in a recent colour supp. profile. Not that he made the claim himself — Mr Kilroy-Silk would readily acknowledge that he learned the egg trick from Mike Molloy, now editor of the Sunday Mirror, at a house party. Molloy learned it from me at the Imperial Hotel, Blackpool, during one of the duller party conferences. I in turn appropriated it from Charles Lyte, the Mirror's education correspondent, who used to perform it at NUT gatherings. To do the egg trick you need a pint glass, a square biscuit tin lid, a matchbox, a stout shoe, an egg, and a large Scotch. Fill the glass with water, then place the biscuit tin lid over it, lip uppermost. Shape the matchbox sleeve into a funnel and position it in the exact centre of the lid with the egg perched upon it. Next, drink the large Scotch to steady the nerves. Then, grasp- ing the shoe and using its heel as a club, smite the biscuit tin lid with such force that it flies across the room and the egg plops into the glass, unbroken. Impressive though the egg trick is when successfully completed, it is even more spectacular when botched — it is amazing how much floor and wall surface can be covered by one small cylinder of albumen and yolk.
The secret is utter confidence — a micro- second of self-doubt and you face a very large cleaning bill. Mr Kilroy-Silk, a high flier on the egg circuit, tells me he can do the trick with three eggs simultaneously.
As some of his political enemies in Knows- ley North might say, he would, wouldn't he? 'They're go-fast lines.'
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