Roun.dabout
Publicity
Mr. and Mrs. Cradock—the well-known culinary comedians who play respectively Bon and Viveur—did not reappear on the stage to witness the postscript to their dramatic hotpot Something's Burning at the Arts Theatre. They had spent the previous two hours, with many an over-rehearsed ad lib., disguising chicken, rice, potatoes and fillets of sole beneath two and a half pounds of unsalted Dutch butter, one and a half quarts of double cream, forty-five eggs and 'one truffle the size of a ping-pong ball.' The stage looked like the window of a Gas Board showroom. The eye-level grills on two large gleaming cookers flamed blue. Copper saucepans and curved skillets grew hot on every burner. The cupboard doors swung backwards and forwards as the endless stream of bowls and jugs and plates was conjured into view. Over the central mixing table hung a slanted mirror which gave the sparse audience a fly's-eye view of the restless lobster- scurrying hands of the two cooks.
During the second act the scene shifted from the Cradocks' London kitchen to the kitchen of a Brittany restaurant. This allowed the two star performers to fold in a little bawdry and malapropism with the egg white—Mrs. Cradock in Cordon Bleu French and Mr. Cradock in realistic Cockney. To provide a sketchy plot among the recipes, the Cradocks introduced a posh honeymooning couple who consumed the smaller titbits on the side of the stage. At one point the wife inquired the position of the lavatory in mime and returned to hiss to her husband, 'II n'y a pas de seat.'
Mr. Cradock's role consists of screwing ' and unscrewing a monocle into a beef-pink face and chuckling. Mrs. Cradock, in lemon-silk lounging pyjamas, remains as immaculate and unflustered as Walter Mitty in the operating theatre. while she juggles bubbling pans at arm's length and flips away the bread crumbs with a tiny brush. At the end of half an hour she has prepared a five- course midnight supper. As the audience left, some with pommes purée still sticking to their ears, an old Arts Theatre intellectual was blocking the foyer and staring incredulously at the poster for the evening. 'Something's Burning?' he said to his lank-haired, bead-strangled girl friend. `Must be the critics.'
Privacy
THE CLOUDS HUNG solid and grey and bulbous as ectoplasm over the Constable village of Dedham in Suffolk. Slowly they spread across the marshy valley to the Churchill village of East Bergholt. Thunder rolled and rumbled. Fat drops of rain began to• spatter the plantain-starred lawn. And Mr. Randolph Churchill hurried into the house carrying a muddy entrenching tool. He pressed the button for his secretary. 'Miss George,' he said. 'Take a poster.'
Three days later the walls and trees of the neighbourhood were plastered with red and blue posters printed by the East Anglian Times. 'Country Bumpkins Ltd. announce Grand Plan- tain Sweepstake' read the headline in large capitals. All local children from eight to sixteen were invited to take part at sixpence a head. 'Tools available. Tea for children and adults.' The first prize was £5 for the longest root. The second was 40 per cent. of the stake money. Copies of the poster were also sent to the tellyboys, the news- reels and the press—both posh and gutter.
When the sweepstake afternoon arrived, gusty and gleaming, the newspapermen outnumbered the contestants. Each photogenic child was followed by as many photographers as Prince Charles. Occasional squabbles broke out over the division of the meagre supply of direct quotes. In the event, the only newspapers to publish a report and a picture were the Sunday Pictorial and the Sunday Dispatch. And undeveloped in some news- paper dark room remains the most characteristic tableau of the afternoon—Mr. Randolph Churchill as the Pied Piper of East Bergholt striding wheezily across the turf, claret cup slosh- ing in one hand and a cigarette holder smoking in the other, while behind him cartwheel and cavort and dervish fifteen weed-draped youngsters.
The plantain-picking competition began at 2.30. By 3.30 the children were clamouring for their tea like an Algerian mob. Then while they stuffed brandy rolls and cream, blew bubbles in their lemonade bottles, and hurled paper cartons into the rhododendron bushes, the reporters took part in a second sweepstake at half a crown a time.. This was won by Mr. Newton Branch, a burly, rubicund out-door type who turned out to be an examiner for the British Board of Film Censors. His root was 224- inches long. Now it was the turn of the grown-ups to tuck in to the cream cakes.
After Lady Astor had presented the prize money the reporters began to drift back to their cars. They were urban creatures who felt mildly, uneasy under the domed grey sky and among the chaotic muddle of nature. 'Why is it so dark in here?' grumbled a television man as he came blinking out of the front door. 'Oh, I see. We're in the open air.'
No one could make out Mr. Churchill's motive for inviting them to invade his privacy. 'I asked him how many plantains there were and he told me that I was the reporter and that I ought to count them,' grumbled one. 'What is a plantain, anyway?' asked a woman journalist. 'I thought it was going to be something the size of a cabbage.'
The best explanation was given by a greying- haired El Vino campaigner. 'I think he hoped one of us would call him a hack gardener.'
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