Notebook
First of all, an apology to Lieutenant- Colonel G. E. Beard and to any other readers who may feel as he does. Colonel Beard wrote to me as follows from his home in Wiltshire: 'Having read two entirely dif- ferent accounts in two papers about the change of editorship but nothing in the nlagazine itself, I feel rather aggrieved. I !Mow that I neither own nor edit the paper, but having supported it for over 40 years, I am presumptuous enough to feel that readers of similar standing should have sorne say in the matter or at least have been kept informed.' Well, while we were pro- ducing last week's issue, there was very little to be said. I could have revealed that I was going at some point to give up the editor- ship, but no successor had been chosen and therefore no date for my departure could be fixed. Now, I am happy to say, all is clear. My successor is Mr Charles Moore, who You will find this week writing as usual on the oPposite page. I will continue as editor, and Mr Simon Courtauld as deputy editor, notil 22 March, when Mr Moore will take rer. I hope Colonel Beard now feels a little ess aggrieved, even though it is regrettably rather too late to give him much 'say in the Matter'. If all subscribers of more than 40 Years standing would like to write in with their telephone numbers, we might try to „_4.1rTange for them to be consulted next time the question of a change of editorship arises But while I wish them all longevity, it Is my hope that they will no longer be around when their advice is required. Mr Moore is only 27 years old and with luck should still be occupying the editorial chair Many decades from now. But back to Col- onel Beard's reference to the 'two entirely different accounts' which he read in the ,_neWsPapers. Mr Moore and I, who con- LehtedlY share the same office, have been discovering in the past few days what Col- (Me! Beard, with his greater years and ex- Penence, could doubtless have told us: never trust these press chaps, they'll do anYthing for a story, just make it up as they go along. Anyone would think from the newspapers of the past few days that this was the Lebanon, not the offices of the Spectator The efforts which Mr Moore and I' have made to persuade fellow journalists that we hold each other in the highest esteem have been totally ignored. My own expressions of appreciation for our pro- prietor Mr Algy Cluff s efforts to keep the Veciator going and for his kindness to rYself on many occasions have also aroused .35 than no interest. I can quite understand Why but at least in this paper no-one can !toP use reporting these boring things. I do Indeed have a high regard for Mr Moore, __,an51 I believe he will make an excellent cuitor. I also do appreciate what Mr Cluff has done for the Spectator, including his choice of my successor, even if I have been less than happy about the manner of my departure. One of the innumerable things which Mr Moore and I have in common is a shared irritation about the way we have been portrayed in the press. With the kindest of intentions, journalists have made us both sound perfectly ghastly. I have been applauded for my 'amateurism' and have even been described as 'the last of the gentleman journalists', which makes me feel like a dinosaur. Mr Moore has suffered worse. The paper on which he worked before coming to Doughty Street — the Daily Telegraph — did him a particularly cruel disservice. Having made much of the fact that he is only 27, it quoted him as say- ing that up till now he had 'just helped around the office' and that he was 'over- whelmed' by getting the editorship — like a Boots shop assistant who has just won the 'Miss United Kingdom' contest. The Times, under the headline 'Shy thinker in the Spec- tator's chair', described him as 'unashamedly an intellectual', which is about the most serious insult a journalist could receive. He is certainly very clever, but he is also a very good journalist. I say all this only to reassure readers of the Times who could be forgiven for fearing that the Spectator is about to embark on a par- ticularly boring phase. This will not be so. I feel that Colonel Beard should by now be well content, so I will not go on. I would only like to thank all those people who have written to me and say that I will reply to them all in due course. IT have complained in the past, both here elsewhere, about the Independent Broadcasting Authority's absurd 'Code of advertising standards and practices'. I first started thinking about it about a year ago when the IBA's advertising controller, Mr Harry Theobald, said in a television inter- view that the Spectator was an example of a paper which would not be allowed to adver- tise on television under Article Nine of the code. This says: `No advertisement may be inserted by or on behalf of any body, the objects whereof are wholly or mainly of a political nature, and no advertisment may be directed towards any political end.' I thought at the time that it was wrong for the Spectator to be banned under this provi- sion, when practically no other papers are, but I did not then realise how illogical the IBA was in its enforcement of the code. I have since been told by an old Spectator hand that when Mr lain Macleod was editor, in the early 1960s, he appeared himself in a television commercial to adver- tise the Spectator. It is very odd of the IBA to have found the Spectator less 'political' under Mr Macleod's editorship than it is to- day. Now a new magazine called Romany has been prevented from advertising on commercial radio under Article 17 which objects to 'fortune tellers and the like'. Romany contains several pages of horoscopes, but many papers contain horoscopes, and the Mail-on-Sunday recently devoted an entire television com- mercial to promotion of Mr Patric Walker's attempts to see into the future. Refusal to accept radio or television advertising can be immensely damaging to some businesses, and to newspapers and magazines in par- ticular. It is surely intolerable that bans should be imposed on such vague and il- logical grounds.
It was a great coup by whatever Labour Member of Parliament it was who found the list of questions planted by the Govern- ment on Conservative members to ask the Prime Minister during Question Time. It is right that the public should know what toadies many MPs are. But 'planting' does not go on only in Parliament. Newspapers get people to write them letters for publica- tion or even invent them. And this week a person from Channel Four rang me up and persuaded me to go along to speak into something called a Videobox, which is sup- posed to be a device available to members of the public who want to air their views on television. It is like one of those cubicles for passport photographs in which you can sit down and jabber away at an automatic camera for up to a minute with a reasonable prospect of getting on the air. But the Videobox is hidden away inside Channel Four's offices in Charlotte Street, and it seems unlikely that many people would go there uninvited. Perhaps it is only by 'plan- ting' that anything ever gets said or done.
Alexander Chancellor
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