Notebook
while The Times has long aspired to speak for the nation, it has this week scaled a new peak of respectability by becoming the mouthpiece of the sovereign herself. Its leading article on Wednesday was commenting on the efforts of Buckingham Palace, at a special briefing for newspaper editors, to persuade the press not to hound the Princess of Wales. The relentless attentions of press photographers had placed her under great strain, the Palace said. One incident had caused her particular distress. She had popped out one weekend in Gloucestershire to buy some wine gums in the village shop, only to be besieged by photographers. 'The idea that the Princess might send a servant for the wine gums is pompous if not preposterous,' said The Times. But who had such a silly idea in the first place? It was, in fact, the clown of the briefing session, Mr Barry Askew, editor of the News of the World. Mr Askew appeared to see his visit to the Palace not so much as an opportunity to discuss ways of making the Princess's life a little easier but as a chance to unearth a good news story. What was the matter? he kept asking. Was she having a nervous breakdown? Were there fears of a miscarriage? When the briefing was over, Mr Askew was ushered with other editors into the presence of the Queen, where the great wine gum debate continued. Mr Askew thought the Princess should not have gone to the shop herself if she didn't want to be photographed. 'She should have sent a servant,' he suggested. On hearing this, the Queen turned on him. 'What a very pompous remark, if I may say so,' she said. Much mirth. Editor crushed. And The Times, by coincidence, finds the idea pompous too.
There can hardly be a commercial organ' isation in the country that does not seek to extract some advantage from the generosity of the populace at Christmas time. But I was still surprised to find Her Majesty's Stationery Office trying to get in on the act. It has sent out a catalogue of Christmas books which, it says, 'contains something for everyone, from the railway buff to the balletomane'. As HMSO is best known as the publisher of Government White Papers and other boring official documents, I opened the brochure with interest to see what was on offer. There is a section entitled 'The Arts and Living', in which the first two books are called 'Getting Dressed' and 'Going to Bed'. There is also a section headed 'Driving', which includes 'Driving: The Department of Transport Manual' and 'The Highway Code', of which the brochure says: 'Among the best sellers of all time . . . Updated features include Green Cross Code, fog drill and schemes for the disabled'. The Highway Code, which costs only 35p, would certainly make an economic Christmas present for somebody one wished to wound or humiliate. But HMSO is optimistic if it expects a massive response.
The trade unions are clearly becoming completely desperate. A letter arrives from Mr Ken Gill, General Secretary of the Engineering Workers. It begins 'Trade Union Cracks Joke Shock' and encloses a copy of the Christmas issue of the Union's magazine TASS, suggesting that a fourpage humorous insert may 'provide you with an item for your diary column'. The letter concludes: 'People often think that trade unions have no sense of humour. This is the first move in a campaign to prove that nothing could be further from the truth!' I will spare you the details of Mr Gill's ideas of humour, which include a spoof story about Great Britain being put up for auction in Zurich and an elaborate parody of Common Market regulations as applied to Christmas puddings. I will only urge that this poignant campaign to persuade us that the trade unions are bubbling with fun and good humour be brought to an end at once before I burst into tears.
T n New York there is a very famous man who bears my surname. He is John Chancellor, presenter of the nightly NBC television news. He has been doing this job for years and is almost, if not quite, as famous as the legendary Walter Cronkite. Recently, however, he decided to change the pronunciation of his name. He let it be known that he would like in future to be called not Chancellor but Chancellor, with the emphasis on the last syllable. As this pronunciation is both absurd and extraordinarily ugly, I wondered why on earth he had chosen to adopt it. I thought perhaps that he hai met my brother John in New York and decided that drastic measures were necessary to avoid any possible confusion between the two of them. But no. NBC told me that he had been investigating his family history and had discovered that Chancellaw was the original, authentic pronunciation of his name. This is hardly believable. I have certainly never heard anybody pronounce it like that in Lanarkshire, where the Chancellors come from. But even if I receive incontrovertible evidence that Mr Chancellaw is right, I think I will continue to pronounce myself as others do.
An often ignored section of the hotel business market is that of the female business executive,' writes Mr Umberto Marconi, director of the Cunard Hotel Bristol in Mayfair. 'Even today, the manner in which a woman travelling alone is received and treated in any of our big cities can vary tremendously.' The Bristol's solution to this alleged problem will be, from next month, to set aside a complete floor with between 15 and 20 bedrooms `to meet the needs of the female executive'. It is not explained in Mr Marconi's letter how the businesswoman's needs are supposed to differ from those of the businessman. But a spokeswoman for the Hotel says that the aim is to provide female guests with more 'security and privacy'. Apart from having their segregated bedrooms, stocked with perfumery, hair driers and other female things, they will also have their own separate bar on the first floor. It is sad if this is the only way by which women can be made to feel secure in a posh hotel like the Bristol.
Returing from a ten-day visit to America, I find that the world has been turned upside down in my absence. Mrs Shirley Williams's election in Crosby is only one symptom of the new atmosphere in Great Britain, an atmosphere of escalating cosiness and consensus. Mr Richard Ingrams, the editor of Private Eye (and, of course, the Spectator's television critic), has added his name to that of the Archbishop of Canterbury at the bottom of a letter to The Times. Not only that. He has started to see things in bright, cheerful colours. The Christmas issue of his magazine has, for the first time, a glossy, full-colour cover — a 'satirical' photograph of a model of Michael Foot in the guise of scarecrow. It is just like the covers that the Economist used to have not so long ago. Furthermore, I read in Mr Ingrams's column in the Spectator itself that Charles Ryder in Brideshead Revisited has been smoking a yellow pipe. But how does he know it was yellow? He has, as he often informs his readers, a black-and-white television set. June is busting out all over, everything's coming up roses, and even the hoariest old winter tree is beginning to blossom under the Social Democratic sun.
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