DIARY
BARRY HUMPHRIES Please hold the line while we try to connect you. The number you are calling knows you are waiting.' This bright lady's voice often assails me through the tele- phone. Who is she? She sounds very like the girl who used to present Blue Peter, yet is she quite trustworthy? Does the person I am calling really know I am waiting? Tem- porarily unavailable persons have never subsequently told me they knew I was hanging on. I think this is a recorded mes- sage, since the lady's voice always seems to have the same inflection, though this morn- ing I detected the very slightest hint of sup- pressed laughter, even mockery. Is she trying hard enough to connect me? How hard is she trying? For many years there was a man on Australian Telecom who, when you tried to dial England, said in a deep 'butch' voice and a slightly put-on Australian accent, suggest- ing unashamed national pride, 'Your call has failed overseas. Please try later.' Overseas' in Ozspeak means anywhere beyond Aus- tralia — even New Zealand — but to me this announcement always implied that my failed connection was due to some typically incom- petent 'overseas' operator or faulty foreign equipment. 'Don't start blaming Australia's superlative communications technology just because those overseas bastards have bug- gered up your call,' the voice seemed to say. I rather miss that cryptically chauvinistic message.
Iam a very good landscape painter with a style midway between that of Hitler and Churchill, only better. There is some evi- dence to suggest that Lavery put the finish- ing touches to Winston's better works, and Hitler's few successes are probably forg- eries. I suppose my style is a kind of modi- fied Fauvism. I am the Marquet of Mel- bourne. A couple of years ago, some Hampstead friends of whom I was, and am, deeply fond, admired one of my effortless efforts. It was a north Italian landscape in oils, and, flattered, I presented it to them. The gift was greeted rapturously, and I was pleased that a picture which would other- wise be stashed in a cupboard was now exhibited in the home of persons of taste and fashion. Months later, they held a party and I naturally scoured the walls for my masterpiece, so generously bestowed. Not a sign. Easing my way past the revelling guests — the Holroyds, Spurlings, Mur- dochs, Brendels, Warners and Drabbles — I peered up the stairwell. There were many more pictures hanging there, but not mine. With the air of a man seeking the lavatory, though not as a matter of urgency, I explored other less populated floors. A peep in the master bedroom, a casual glance into the nursery, a more feverish scrutiny of the maid's and children's quar- ters. Again I drew a blank. Finally, after a 15-minute search of the house from base- ment to attic, I discovered my little land- scape in an ill-lit box-room, face against the wall and trailing a tendril of cobweb. I said no word to my hosts of this poignant dis- covery. Instead, a few weeks later, I brightly informed them that I had been offered, in Australia, a retrospective exhibition of my work — a rare honour for an amateur. Alas, it would mean, I explained, that I might have to borrow 'Umbrian Hillsides' for a month or two. The painting would perfectly represent the technical bravura of my middle period. 'Oh, we'll so miss it,' lamented my quondam hostess over the phone. All this happened two years ago, and I've never returned the picture. My intention was, and still is, to make a faithful copy of it and restore it to its place of hon- our in their box-room, but I just haven't got round to it. Now, this morning, I have a Christmas card from my friends, begging for the return of their treasure. What shall I do? What can I say? That my retrospec- tive is now on tour — in Tokyo perhaps, or Peru? Who'd believe that? Or are all these questions better addressed to Mary Killen on your back pages? Are you reading this, Mary? Can you help me?
My friend Dame Edna has just made a Christmas radio show for the BBC. Radio is so much nicer and friendlier than televi- sion since it doesn't involve three years of lunches with Alan Yentob, after which nothing happens anyway. Just a few phone calls, and you're on the air. Unlike her Doc Martened sisters in the acting profession, Edna likes to dress up and wear make-up, even for the wireless. You could say she was a 'lipstick Thespian'. One of her guests on this seminal and pivotal show is Brian Sewell, the art critic and polemicist. He 'Going anywhere this Christmas?' plays Edna's butler, a distinguished post previously occupied by Caesar Romero and Burgess Meredith. What good news Mr Sewell is, what a star! Because his waspish writings in an evening paper are amusing as well as informed, he is, of course, dismissed by the modish and the p0-faced art estab- lishment, as if art critics were not permitted a sense of humour. They are certainly tradi- tionally destitute of this article, and the wit of Clive Bell, Roger Fry and John Berger would make a thin volume indeed. Even old Vasari seems to have been a solemn cove. Mr Sewell gave the Australian megas- tar as good as he got, which is about time, say I. I wonder if he has seen or approved of the popular play, Art. Somehow I doubt it. This is a wonderfully acted piece of hokum which elicits from its audience a ceaseless gurgle of self-congratulation. I have a fine ear for the noises audiences make, though my personal experience is only of the paroxysm and the ovation. Of course there is nothing wrong with chuckles and titters, but it is the gurgle that disturbs me. It says, 'Ha, ha, don't think this stuff is outside my cultural frame of reference!'
The other night, I went to an evening at the Purcell Room given by Index on Cen- sorship at which several banned authors read from their works. As Salman Rushdie recited a long passage from his Satanic Verses, I felt sure that the rest of the audi- ence, like me, were prevented from devot- ing their full attention to the comprehen- sion of this recondite work by galloping fatwaphobia. Up there on the stage, old Salman looked a bit of an Aunt Sally. I sup- pose I enjoyed that evening so much because, in a small way, I too was once a banned author. The Barry MacKenzie comic strip which I used to write with Nicholas Garland was banned for a while in both Australia and New Zealand; not for obsceni- ty, but because the jokes and slang were deemed damaging to Australian tourism. While I was still on the proscribed list (in the late Sixties), I moved my possessions from London to Melbourne, and a man from the customs and excise came to the house every day for a week to examine my books as they were unpacked, in case they contained any conspicuously obscene material. I felt rather sorry for this apologetic and no doubt underpaid functionary as he riffled through the pages of 18th-century romances and Georgian poetry. In a way, I was almost on his side, hoping he'd find something — a girlie postcard perhaps — pressed between the pages of Drinkwater's verse. Now, sadly, I'm officially approved, and even my paint- ings have been accorded the public recogni- tion of a retrospective exhibition. Or am I imagining this?
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