DIARY
CRAIG BROWN
efore the beginning of the party conference season, journalists were told to deliver passport photographs of themselves to all the different party organisations. These are then sealed in plastic on to identity tags with the party name in large letters above your face and, wherever you wander, strangers identify you as an enthu- siast. Walking down the street, I feel a bit like the waiters I was served by in the Great Wall Hotel in Peking a year or two ago. Among the brightest graduates of their generation, they were required to wear name tags saying 'Michael' or 'Jane' or some other straightforward English Christian name. 'Are these the Anglicised versions of their real Chinese names?' I asked the oily imported American hotel manager. 'Not at all, not at all,' he replied, as if such leniency would be madness, 'we told them to choose English names for themselves because their real names wouldn't mean anything to anyone. But they kept choosing names like "Happy" or "Sunbeam", so finally we had to allot them proper names ourselves.' Wearing the SDP tag in Portsmouth last week — the names I would have picked so as to fit in with my new peers would have been 'Smarmy' or `Scowl', but these were denied me — I was walking through a shopping precinct when I heard a distant shout of 'Freak!' I turned, quite sure that I was being addressed. These name tags induce paranoia.
Extraordinary Freak of Nature of a Man Being Discovered in the Family Way' is one of many diversions from the Trades Union Congress provided by Louis Tus- saud's Waxworks, just a few minutes' walk away. Past Geoffrey Howe, looking pecu- liarly like John Christie after a busy day at Rillington Place, past a hirsute Kinnock, young Keith Joseph and Shirley Williams still in positions of power, past Princess Margaret looking like a Liver Bird and a Herman Munsterish Prince Philip, lies the The Anatomy Exhibition (strictly adults only). Here one can enjoy a baby being circumcised, a foot suffering from diabetic gangrene, a life-size hermaphrodite and a nose in a late stage of syphilis. Down in the Chamber of Horrors, four people lie blood-splattered in a car that has driven into a lamppost. 'This is the actual car involved in this crash — Clunk-Click- Every-Trip' trills the brochure. Those up- set by all this should speed to 'Peter Jay's Super Circus' underneath Blackpool Tow- er. How nice it is to know that the world's brightest man is still a crowd-puller.
As TUC delegates bore on about Nye Bevan and the Tolpuddle Martyrs, journal- ists attempt to remain sane by exchanging fond memories of their own mythological figures, the newspaper proprietors. Max- well has taken over from Beaverbrook as the most anthologised ogre, but for some reason there are precious few stories about Murdoch. He may well be bad but he is obviously not bonkers, and both attributes are necessary for real popularity among journalists. Anecdotes about Murdoch's wit are few and far between, but the following one might help boost his reputa- tion. It also involves Rees-Mogg, a similar- ly under-anecdotalised figure. Rees-Mogg has a favourite dinner-party gambit. 'In my time', he likes to say, 'I have met two Kings, three Queens and three Popes,' (I forget the exact proportions) 'and I have found none of them remarkable.' Every- one is then expected to titter politely in admiration. A few years ago, Rupert Mur- doch was at a dinner party listening to Rees-Mogg reciting this familiar litany: 'In my time I have met two Kings, three Queens and three Popes, and I have found none of them remarkable.' Maybe they thought you were a bit of a prat too, William,' said Murdoch.
The speed with which one can whizz into the position of expert is disconcerting. On the day after the general election I was asked to take part in a phone-in as a political expert from the Times. Yet I had only been writing the political sketch in the Times for a month or two, and I had been taken on for my jokes rather than for any political knowledge. A while before, the Sunday Telegraph magazine had awarded me a cookery column even though I had made it quite clear to them that I could not cook. But I took to the phone-in like a duck to water. By the end of my allotted hour, I had spoken firmly and authorita- tively on a great variety of political topics of which I had no knowledge. But the process works in reverse too. Bored stiff during speeches at the conferences, I wan- der into the corridors in search of a television. There on the screen is the same speaker making the same speech that I have just been fidgeting to, and suddenly he seems punchy and charismatic, making points worth making. In future, conference delegates and observers would be well
advised to stay in their hotel bedrooms watching the television. If they wished to speak, they could ring for a camera crew. This would save on assembly hall fees, permit the smoking of cigarettes and give everyone the impression that something worthwhile was taking place.
The goings-on at Hungerford have given every conference the opportunity to enjoy an 'emergency debate'. Of course they are not debates at all, since only the most tactically inept politician would bank on a pro-Ryan lobby, but they inspire party unity and they allow everyone to feel up-to-the-minute. Traditionally, Home Secretaries are the only ministers not awarded standing ovations at the Tory Conference: delegates cannot forgive them their softly-softly approach on the issue of capital punishment. But this year, Mr Hurd can look forward to a standing ovation as he cracks down on guns and television violence and men with beards and any other aspect of the Hungerford incident that card-carrying Conservatives deplore. Yet there is another aspect of the incident that has been completely ignored. Had Ryan gone mad in Birmingham or Liverpool, a stream of discussions about inner cities would surely follow. So it seems curious that no one has blamed his actions on the insurmountable pressures of inner-village life, The impenetrable wall of `And how's your mum?', the unbearable inevitability of bring-and-buy sales, the incessant tremolo whistling of the village bobby, and so on. Perhaps the Govern- ment might keep Mr Heseltine occupied by sending him on a whistle-stop tour of inner villages, drawing up plans for greater alienation, building soulless tower blocks on village greens and calling for tighter controls on whistling.
I.) ress photographers in Blackpool spend much of the day persuading disting- uished officials to stand beneath approp- riately loopy or abusive shop-signs. For years, they positioned themselves day and night in front of a Blackpool sweet shop called On the Rocks in the vain hope that Mr Michael Foot would pass by. But Mr Norman Willis, who is fast becoming a comic figure in the bumbling vaudeville tradition, has not got off so lightly. Like most stupid people, he likes to boast of his canniness. 'They were trying to get me to pose under a sign saying "Fudge",' he told a friendly reporter, 'but I wasn't going to be fooled by that, was I?' The reporter then told him that he had just appeared on news programmes on both channels stand- ing underneath the sign saying 'Fudge'. `But they told me they weren't filming!' blurted Mr Willis.
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