Roundabout
Revolving
GODDESS Brigitte Bardot has now got a shrine she can call her own -a life-size statue of herself in the foyer of the Cameo Royal, the leg-art cinema by London's Leicester Square. At the unveiling ceremony film execu- • fives were as thick on the ground as leaves at Vallombrosa, each seem- ingly reluctant to let one man do a job two could do. Instructions were re- peated unceasingly, photographers marshalled remorselessly. Until at last S. Tony Tenser, a publicity man with wavy hair and straight teeth, called for attention. This was slow in coming as he had stiff competition from the dizzy lures of 11 a.m. champagne. Eventually, everyone was paraded in a half-circle at the en- trance to the cinema and Mr. Tenser began his oration. He spoke briefly of Brigitte Bardot's career and her connections with this cinema, somehow managing to invest the whole thing with as ,much grace and elegance as if he were awarding her an honorary D.Litt. on behalf of Oxford University. He finished by saying that it would be appro- priate if the ceremony Were performed by an average patron. An average patron, planted strategically at the front, bounded forward, smoothing down an average-looking forty- guinea suit. He pulled the cord—and there she was. Not quite 'starkers,' as had been predicted, but a good twelve square inches of flimsy beyond this side of a Breach of the Peace. She is mounted on a revolving stand, to which she is chained by the ankle to prevent abduction by inflamed fans. She has her arms folded across her upper statistics and a twist of cloth around her loins. There is a brooding expression on her face, half St. Joan of Arc, half St. Trinian's. A short, bearded art critic in a British warm, looking like a Field-Marshal of the Elves, flinched at the sight and withdrew to the refreshment table. The sculptor, Gilbert Watts, a thirty-nine- year-old Scot, was asked leeringly if Miss Bardot had posed for him. He confessed that she was known to him only through photographs. A Plastic material. has been used on the figure, the same colour as tailors' dummies. Someone sug- gested it was uncannily like a candid camera shot of waxworks in Harrods' window.
Mr. Tenser explained that the idea of having the statue revolve was to make sure people stayed long enough to get the message. Outside on the pavement several passers-by stopped long enough to enjoy this cad's-eye view of Miss Bardot and then walked reluctantly off. Brigitte orbits seductively all day. But she is given the night off—at the moment a week off. But she will be back from holiday shortly.
Rotating
°ARK, busy figures, hunched in the gloom over shovel and broom, swept up the Hoxton market refuse, cleansing a path for the mayor to end Shoreditch Carnival Week. A barbecue, lit by a white necklace of bulbs, had been rigged on a bomb site, and a heap of East Enders heaved and peered vainly for the carcase, rotating over char- coal. 'C'mawn, son, you've seen the pig once,' implored a wan blonde, all grey curlers and fork teeth, jerking her child through an undergrowth of raincoats. A brawny grey gabardine wrenched himself from the crowd's heart. 'Just seen a fair slice a meat, an' I don't mean pork,' he an- nounced, jerking his head towards the place where, above the hum and the protective ring of Metro- politan helmets, rose a statuesque redhead, pink breasts swelling from restrictive silver lame] when- ever a press camera was ignited.
A frieze of alley kids danced on top of a ten- foot wall, shrieking as the mayor shouldered him- self through the throng. The Mayor carved the first slice of pork, unseen except by the chef: trapped within the police cordon in double chains of office. Beside him were the carnival queen and the starlet's proudly exposed poop. 'We got pretty well toasted, that young lady and I.' It was really the charcoal, he explained, sotto voce. 'She was feeling hot, and I said, "My bottom's getting roasted"; so we changed places.'
Encouraged by this official fillip, barbecue pork sold at a shilling the slice. The civic party snaked across Hoxton Street for pints and gins and port- and-lemon in the Unicorn, startling a sailor and his girl in their saloon bar solitude. 'There's dancing in the street and all the fun of the fair,' growled an alderman. His voice rose as he lowered the best-bitter level in his glass. 'And think—in the boroughs next door they're just sitting at home in front of the telly.' This carnival's really brightened up the place,' said the Mayor, lobster- complexioned, laughing. The men nodded, but their eyes were elsewhere. The starlet, Miss Yvonne Buckingham, bent lower to reorganise her blue net fish tail; and the men blinked, full of silent, uncivic thoughts.
Spinning
SCARBOROUGH is an immense smooth scimitar of sand locked in a grey and green case of rocky headlands. The beach was empty during the con- ference, but the well-drilled waves went on thundering out their continual rounds of. applause at the occasional mad dog and English- man who footprinted their path in the autumn sun. Thirty feet above, the immense smooth sabre of the Spa bar was crowded as the delegates and reporters slipped in and out of the smoky search- -lit conference hall for a noisy pint. Inside, the famous cartoon faces were ranged along the plat- form — revolutionary by reactionary, trade unionist by intellectual, agent by counter-agent. With the press cameras clicking and flashing under their noses, the television cameras scanning from their gun-mountings in the balcony, and the commentators standing on tip-toe in the gallery, each twitch of the eyebrow might lose a vote. So the executive sat as self-consciously as in a shop- window.
After the business of making policy was over for the day, in the evening began the business of making friends. Between the two conference hotels, the Royal and the Grand, the leaders, and would-be leaders, and once-were-leaders, and the plain follow-my-leaders, commuted like ants. In and out of the swing doors, up and down the wide staircases, along the soft-carpeted corridors, they went—always spinning around on some urgent errand but always ready to stop for a quick quote or a potted lecture. In the lounge, as the morning loomed under the horizon, the foot-weary politi- cians began to drop out of the square dance. The schools of placid armchair drinkers would grow like thirsty amoeba, enveloping and incorporating smaller schools in their maw, until only the top by-line journalists could afford a round. Then, gradually, the schools decayed like empires until only an occasional slack-mouthed guest snored in a forgotten corner.
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