Postscript • . • But the greatest reward for taking
part in an identity parade isn't the money. A friend of mine, now pretty senior in the Foreign Office, was taking his South Kensington constitutional one Saturday afternoon a dozen or so years ago, dressed in a tweed coat and grey flannel trousers, and was asked by a courteous bobby to come and line up with a number of other personable young men, similarly turned out, for a taxi-driver to cast his eye over them.
Later in life, his rise in the service and his gift for languages were such that he was in the official entourage that accompanied Mr. Khrushchev and Marshal Bulganin when they came to visit us a few years ago. As a result of that experience and the identity parade he was able to boast recently, to a visiting relative who had asked to be taken to Madame Tussaud's: 'Well, I don't think they've quite got Khrushchev, but they've hit off the arrogance of Neville Heath to a V. Adding that he knew what he was talking about: he'd rubbed shoulders with both of them. Literally.
A far-flung political-correspondent colleague newly returned, bronzed and eupeptic, from Blackpool tells me that in the approaches there to the Winter Garden ballroom, during the Labour Party Conference, the news-vendors vied with each other in the eye-catching wording of their placards. After the defence debate, for instance, there were Guardian, Express and Telegraph placards carrying such phrases as: `Mr. Gaitskell Out of the Shadows'; `Cheers and Boos for Gaitskell'; `Gaitskell Triumphs Over Cousins.'
All pretty catchpenny compared with the Yorkshire Post's placard (supported by the front- page news lead), which read: `Argentine Blood Plasma Shock.'
*
There I was, frittering my time away in Cognac and Bordeaux, when I might have attended the press conference held in London last week at which Mr. Herbert Showering, the chairman of the firm that makes `Babycham,' marked the launching of Magna Golden Cream and Magna Old Tawny, and hailed his own product as, 'a tremendous break-through in wine-making ... for the first time we have captured in a sherry made in this country not only the subtle taste of the world's finest sherries but also their most distinc- tive characteristic, the unique bouquet.'
Many a firm in Xeres itself would be glad to learn how this is done, but all I could glean from the public-relations handout is that 'We have perfected a unique method for the fermentation of the fruit juices.' I'd be rather excited myself if I were a public-relations man, for this must be the first unique method of fermentation since God's. But beyond that, no further fascinating details—only the cautious statement that 'The process by which these wines are produced is a closely-guarded secret.' Which doesn't surprise me in the least.
*
Having heard so much of the shortage of the very old cognacs that the great firms blend into their finest brands, I was sulky to see how vigorously Martell's were launching the new `Medallion' that is replacing their VSOP, fear- ing that it would mean that fewer old brandies would be available for their rarer and older Cordon Bleu. My visit to Cognac reassured me. For one thing, I found myself actually preferring the Medallion (55s. a bottle in England) to the Cordon Bleu (67s. 6d.). No doubt Cordon Bleu is the greater brandy, but Medallion is lighter and drier.
In this respect I seem to be in the fashion. Denis-Mouni6, one of the most distinguished of Cognac's smaller firms, is also blending its VSOP lighter and drier for the English market—a very delicate brandy indeed at 55s., 6d. a bottle. And as for the stocks of the oldest brandies to keep UP the finest marks, I was told there is no danger of Cordon Bleu, for instance, disappearing, and I found myself sipping my way through French history between the reserve casks of the two firms: 1848, 1870, 1914, 1918. CYRIL RAY
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