DIARY
DOMINIC LAWSON From the Ayatollah Khomeini to Lord Rees-Mogg, the puritans are closing in on us. But while these venerable gentlemen probably imagine themselves to be re- establishing old neglected moral and spir- itual values, the Sunday Times Magazine is at the forefront of i new form of censor- iousness — a weird mixture of puritanism and materialism. Two weeks ago it was drink. 'The trouble with alcohol is people exactly like you', it began its tirade. Now it is food's turn, and in an issue packed with supposedly desirably scrawny women, the heroine is a proprietor cook called Sally Clarke, at whose restaurant, we are told, 'You get what you're given and like it.' Miss Clarke's eulogist notes that one of the tables — possibly the same group of 'disgraceful' men who didn't eat their 'beautiful al dente vegetables' — wants to have potatoes. 'There is no potato on the menu. One large potato is summoned with a faint sigh, washed, sliced, and turned into something memorable.' Miss Clarke, you will not be surprised to learn, 'was in at the birth of nouvelle cuisine'. And I'll bet it was a natural birth, without anaesthetic, squatting in a tub full of luke-warm water.
There is trouble with alcohol. But it's not you. It's the people who sell it to you. There is an increasing tendency on the part of restaurant wine waiters to bring the wrong bottle of wine. They are not stupid. It is the chateau you ordered, but of a different, and invariably less good vintage, than the one on the wine list that caught your eye. The inevitable complaint is usually met with a crass remark such as, 'It's just as good as the one you wanted,' or even, 'This one has been in the bottle a long time too, sir.' Last week I took my wife to — allegedly — the chicest res- taurant in almost fashionable Primrose Hill. I ordered an '82 Croze Hermitage, and the wine waiter coolly presented us with an unready '86. It wasn't on the list, but had we taken it you can bet that we would have been charged the price of the '82. The amazed reaction on the part of wine waiters when one spots their sleight of hand suggests that they are accustomed to getting away with this practice, which is at best short-changing, and at worst, fraud. It doesn't say much for the customers' dis- cernment either.
T. he new puritanical materialism usual- ly manages to discover that what was once the privilege of the affluent, is actually a curse. Meat's bad, far too much protein. In China prisoners used to get brown rice, their guards white rice. Stupid Chinese didn't know how healthy the husks are. A few years ago the supermarkets introduced 'cook-chilled' products. Not cheap, but the middle classes had turned against preserva- tives. Now those middle class are doubling up with cook-chill listeria, while the work- ers are thriving on Lecithin, E471 and E102.
What will be the next fad, to demol- ish the received wisdom of a generation? I forecast the return of the outside loo. For years Britain measured its prosperity by the decline in the number of dwellings with outside loos. As the figure shrank", faithful- ly recorded by Social Trends, we decided we were becoming a civilised nation. It's time for a change. In a few years the Sunday Times Magazine will be eulogising an architect who builds houses with outside loos only. We will be told that the indoor loo spreads germs about the home, that defaecating indoors is all very well for the Third World, but that in the West the stuff should go the way of the hated potato (right back into the soil). A conversation with . Lord Cranborne provokes this prophecy. He told me that on tour of his estate in Dorset, he came across a tenant couple with an outside loo. When he re- marked on this, the husband cut him short: 'Yezzur. Reckon as 'ow we're the only hy- gienic people left in these parts: From now on it is no longer necessary to read the Sunday Times Magazine to learn how to 'change your life'. It has issued to all its readers a booklet contain- ing over 300 telephone lines — let us call them tat lines — on which the recorded voices of Sunday Times 'experts' spew out messages (cost: about £1 each) on every issue which could conceivably matter to their readers, 'Rabies; how to recognise
'This coffee's stone cold.'
those telltale early symptoms', that sort of thing. In the spirit of genuine enquiry I tried several of these lines, only to get repeated engaged tones on: 'Masturbation: a cautionary note', 'Getting rid of bad breath', 'Premature ejaculation', 'Piles: prevention and cure', and 'How to avoid dandruff'. 'How to be a success with women' was the only line not jammed with enquiries. From which some might deduce, using the unit method of calculation, that the average Sunday Times Magazine read- er is a smelly, dandruff-infested machine- gun masturbator, who thinks he needs no advice on how to be attractive to Women- rs Thatcher (or 'Mrs Thatcher, Bri- tain's Prime Minister', as the Financial Times informed ui this week) says that the water industry privatisation has been' badly presented. She's right. So I offer a way out of the mess. Give the companies away to the families which use them. A similar plan for another natural resource — North Sea oil — was advocated a decade 'ago by Mr Samuel Brittan, and it is time the concept was aired again. Every household would get several hundred Pounds worth of water stock to do with as they please. The main argument of the opposition would be si- lenced, as it would no longer be able to claim 'that water users are paying big bills now to provide profits for the City later. This plan would solve another, bigger, problem. The Government is piling up an enormous surplus, some of which it ought to give back directly to the people. Unfor- tunately the new puritanism has made income tax cuts unfashionable. So after the age of back-door tax increases, it is time for back-door tax reductions. Let them have water.
Many years ago, many more than he would' care to remember, Michael Heath drew a wonderful cartoon showing an up escalator full of suits staring fixedly at the advertisements to their left, which con- sisted entirely of pictures of men and women in underwear. Going down the adjoining escalator, completely unnoticed, is a real naked woman. But, now, I notice, there are no longer any underwear adver- tisements on the underground. Is this more of the new puritanism? Heath says'they were removed because graffiti artists took to defacing these pictures. If true, this is the fault of London Underground, for forgetting that escalators are staircases which are meant to move, and giving the graffitists all the time and encouragement they need.
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