DIARY
SARAH SANDS Sullen critics have attributed the success of Sir Cliff Richard's 'The Millennium Prayer' to the abysmal taste of an unguided British public. Much more threatening has been the popular success of the new Alan Bennett play, The Lady in the Van, which sold out before the critics had been given a chance to deliver their (favourable) verdict. Are the public to be allowed to make up their own minds? The impudence of audi- ences was the subject of amusement at a party given by the play's director, Nicholas Hytner, at the weekend. Guests slyly inquired whether Tuesday's press night was extraneous. Critics may argue that good work is different from popular work, but as far as London theatre is concerned it appears to be the same thing. Mainstream plays and television actors do not guaran- tee success. Exciting productions take off through word of mouth. At the same party, the fashion designer Nicole Farhi men- tioned that she had challenged a fashion editor who had written unsympathetically and, she felt, ignorantly about her designs. The fashion editor's grievance seemed to be that Farhi's clothes appealed to real women. Confronted by the blazing French- woman, the fashion editor burst into tears. As the other guests cheered, I tiptoed away to reflect on this general mutiny against members of my trade. The Lady in the Van turns on two Alan Bennett impersonators. Richard Eyre told me that he has a vision of an Alan Bennett version of the Magritte painting 'Golconda', in which bowler-hat- ted gents rain down from the sky. Wouldn't a world populated entirely by Bennetts be grand? We agreed that the Bennett look was distinctive although hard to define. Somewhere between a prep-school master and a BBC drama producer. The corduroys are too thick for the first and too thin for the second. The shirts are a constant sky- blue. The ties, incomparably, are orange, and of a woollen texture. The glasses are neither Saatchi thick nor curate thin. Defi- nitely one for the spring shows.
The etiquette of parking in London. The other day I deftly squeezed our Fiat Punto into a parking space outside my house, between a Volvo and a Mercedes-Benz. As I got out I noticed a note on the windscreen of the Mercedes-Benz. It read: 'Next time you decide to box somebody in, why don't you leave a f*****g tin-opener to at least give them a chance? You IDIOT.' Should I write underneath 'PS. This is not from the yellow Punto!!!'? Or let the Mercedes owner sweat on the thought that even little Puntos can kick ass. But then, what about the neighbours who might read the note, identify my car and grow pale at the vio- lence of my language? I tore up the note. Sir Bernard Ingham has re-invented himself as a media consultant. Asked by Sandra Barwick in the Daily Telegraph to clarify his title, he likened his services to those of a 'company doctor', 'ready to diag- nose the ills in an organisation and pre- scribe the cure'. Consultants used to describe themselves as 'enablers' but now they have to raise their clients from their sick beds. The American management con- sultant Michael J. Wolf, author of the rev- erently received The Entertainment Econo- my: How Mega-Media Forces are Transform- ing Our Lives, was recently interviewed in the New Yorker. 'If you ask my six-year-old what does his dad do, he says, "He's a doc- tor for companies." ' Wolf is qualified to diagnose and to prescribe but first he has to convince at least some of his clients that they are indeed sick. 'People won't take their medicine unless they believe their tummy aches.' If consultants are going to start setting up as doctors, there should be greater freedom of patient choice. Do liver- ish companies like Marks & Spencer or
Castro has again iron the Cartoonist of the Year Award from the Linotype and Lithographers Cooperative. Congratulations. British Airways want conventional medicine or homeopathic? London Trans- port might opt for a faith healer.
How to crack the class code. In a con- versation with the old Etonian (as it hap- pens) writer Alexander Chancellor my hus- band paid him the compliment of calling him urbane. Chancellor was so offended that my puzzled husband mentioned the matter to the old Etonian (as it turns out) Ferdinand Mount. Mount confirmed that 'urbane' was a monstrous slight. Mystified, I tried it out on Frank Johnson who agreed with me that urbane was a fine thing to be. However, Charles Moore, my wise editor (OE), pronounced that, on balance, it was a caddish word — although he took Christo- pher Howse's point that its antonym 'pagan' is equally unflattering. A highly regarded society woman claims — on instinct rather than circumstantial evidence — that Tony Blair secretly wishes that he had been to Eton. I hope one day to prove this by trying my urbane test on him.
Robert Harris wrote last week of millen- nium-night ennui. I have certainly noticed that invitations to the opening night of the Dome lack Willy Wonka's golden ticket appeal. I have met quite a few people who say that they have accepted only until a bet- ter offer comes up. This strikes me as exces- sively urbane. Our household is as keen as mustard on the whole enterprise. We have had our photographs taken for security pur- poses and I regard our wan, quarrelsome Sunday-morning faces as a little piece of social history. Although I have read the Sun- day Telegraph's extracts from Adam Nicol- son's fascinating biography of the Dome, I still cannot get to grips with what it is actual- ly like. Similarly, when the persuasive ENO music director Paul Daniel assures me that the opening-night concert will be an inclu- sive and spirited affair, with a samba Nation- al Anthem and every musical attraction imaginable except for Andrew Lloyd Web- ber, I gasp and rub my eyes but still cannot tell how it all fits. I want to know things like where do I sit? And where are the drinks?
Perhaps it is the unfathomable nature of the Dome that makes people generally fonder of the Ferris Wheel. The Wheel is what you see. It is without politics and blithely without education. However, the most popular millennium sight of all has turned out to be Canary Wharf tube station on the Jubilee Line extension, The neo-Ital- ian fascist design has really caught the public imagination. And everybody can afford the tickets. This is the true people's building.
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