Low life
Private messages
Jeffrey Bernard
My sex drive has been on the wane and, foolishly, instead of regarding it as a blessing in disguise, I found myself moan- ing about it in hospital the other day to a typically down-to-earth female Australian doctor. She immediately advised me to come off Prozac, saying that it could be stopping messages from my pituitary gland getting through to my testes.
It never occurred to me that Prozac was responsible for faulty communication'; I thought it must be that the women that I beheld were simply sending the wrong mes- sages themselves, like the one my dear most recent wife began sending me at the end: 'You make me sick.' As yet, I have had no hard evidence that I am about to reach boiling point, but at least I have stopped itching to an extent that was driv- ing me mad and making Trudy, the district nurse, scrub my back every clay and then anoint it with various lotions.
Still, with my mind on matters medical, my GP told me yesterday that Mr Cobb was on the verge of taking my left leg off just after he took off the right one. There but for the grace of God. The Australian doctor told me of some dreadful drastic measures that some men took to improve their performances. But what these people never mention is the fact that quite simply the right person is the cure. And the right person, I fear, is not provided by the National Health Service, although there was a time when I thought that Virginia Bottomley could have done the decent thing and offered herself to the needy.
If ever I do become impotent, I shall move back to the country where nobody at all is tempting — in my experience, anyway — except perhaps the girl who used to manage the petrol pump at the garage in Lambourn, Berkshire. The last few days of flu, caught when I was in hospital, of course, has reminded me again of living in the country, and I am really glad that living there, something that is almost obligatory once or twice in a lifetime, is over and done with, and that now I can be made comatose and stultified in the West End which buzzes fractionally more than the bees in the clover.
And yesterday something unpleasant happened and I am suffering the hangover from it quite badly this morning. It is pretty rarely that I say much or anything in print that I am satisfied with, but yesterday I had to write something for a newspaper that made me squirm. It was yet another piece about Lester Piggott, who celebrated his 60th birthday rather aptly on Guy Fawkes day. He is, after all, a sparkler and a banger at the same time. But what is there new to say about him? I'm damned if I know, and this morning I couldn't even bring myself to ask Vera to get me the paper to see whether it had been spiked or printed for my embarrassment. It is a bad thing to accept a commission because one feels flat- tered to be asked when, at the same time, one knows that one shouldn't attempt it.
On a higher level, I wonder if an actor might feel the same way when offered the part of King Lear or Cleopatra? As a stage hand 25 years ago, I saw a couple of diabol- ical Cleopatras, but diabolical is maybe too harsh a word. They were simply unsuitable — not convincing in such a demanding role. Anyway, if I and anyone else hear yet another Lester anecdote we will all scream.
Perhaps it is best to keep quiet about having met such people. Years ago, after I took Raquel Welch to tea at the Dorch- ester and found myself in a position where I could see up her skirt, it became a sort of cottage industry for me to write about the incident. That was repeated in the same hotel when I had morning coffee with Lee Marvin. Not that I could see up his skirt, but just that I wrote that he was one of the most dreadful shits I have ever met.
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