F ar from the most popular of the BBC's governors, just
at the moment, is Lord Ryder, the former Tory chief whip who — not, apparently, content with seeing both chairman and director-general toppled and the systematically mendacious Alastair Campbell 'crowing', in the memorable phrase of one commentator, 'from his dunghill' — took it on himself to announce on behalf of the BBC': `I have no hesitation in apologising unreservedly for our errors.' Enemies point out that though Lord Ryder was ennobled as long ago as 1997, it took him until 4 February this year to make his maiden speech. I prefer to take the view that this great democrat was simply keeping his talcum powder dry.
The bookseller Blackwell's is promoting poetry this year with a special Valentine's Day reading in its Charing Cross Road branch from poet-in-residence `Adisa the Verbalise'', who offers a 'contemporary twist' by recasting old verse in what Blackwell's describes as 21stcentury 'speak du jour'. It offers an example by way of teaser. 'Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?' wrote Shakespeare. 'Thou art more lovely and more temperate: ; Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, / And summer's lease bath all too short a date.' Speak du jour alternative? 'You're the World Cup after a 3-nil win over Brazil ; You're buff like a 3-series bimmer, on a hot day / Bass lines vibrate inside your club / As I reach to touch your bumper, you speed away.' 'If the second version of this Shakespearean sonnet appeals to you more than the first — you are not alone!' chirps a press release from Blackwell's, which describes itself as 'the UK's leading academic bookseller'. JC blubbed.
rancis Wheen — the mischief-making biographer of Karl Marx and Tom Driberg — has written a new book describing how the woolly jumper of Enlightenment rationalism unravelled on the hooks and hangnails of crypto-religious blether, Carole Caplin, the Daily Mail and the healing crystals of the Atkins diet horoscope phrenology system of Nostradamus. His book — originally to be titled A Brief History of Bollocks — ended up being called, at his publisher's insistence, How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the Work/. Mr Wheen got his own back at his launch party. After being fulsomely introduced by his editor Michael Fishwick, Mr Wheen pointed out, first, that Mr Fishwick had joined the project as a replacement editor at the 11th hour. Then, with poor old Fishwick visibly — no, not visibly, audibly — blushing, Mr Wheen described how flattered he'd initially been when Mr Fishwick likened him to Alexander Pope. Initially flattered, that is, because he discovered shortly afterwards that Mr Fishwick's own novel Smashing People contains a fictional publisher giving an author the exact same compliment. 'He says it to everybody,' was Mr Wheen's conclusion.
Asterling piece of reporting from EpiGram, the eccentrically capitalised independent student newspaper for Bristol University. Bristol is among the latest of our towns to suffer from the Big Conversation proposed by the government in the hopes of. like, reconnecting with the electorate. Peter Hain, leader of the House of Commons, dropped into Bristol's Fusion Bar the other day for cheese-andpineapple on sticks and a brief rap with the kids. Reported high point of the evening was 16-year-old Lee Smith complaining about a nightclub in his area frequented by drug-dealers. Mr Hain: 'Lee told me where I can buy drugs in Bristol. That's a piece of information I'll take back to Tony Blair.'
The Vole's trip to Jamaica late last year was a rare and enjoyable outing for an essentially home-loving fen-dweller. I might not have travelled at all, however, had I been aware of that island nation's terrifying Catch-22 quarantine restrictions. I count myself lucky, looking back, to have escaped with my life. The writer Decca Aikenhead, living on the island with her husband, adopted a stray dog, Charlotte. She started to wonder how to bring Charlotte back to England with her. To her delight, she discovered Jamaica has signed up to a pet passport scheme which would allow Charlotte to travel on condition that she is vaccinated against rabies. The hitch? It is strictly against Jamaican law to vaccinate against rabies. There has never been a recorded instance of the disease on the island, runs the logic, so why risk anyone catching it from the vaccine. .
Athought for the producers of ITV's Tonight with Trevor McDonald. Why not have Sir Trevor wearing differentshaped glasses when fronting an item whose backdrop is a full-face portrait of Robert Mugabe? In tandem with the distinguished veteran newsreader's oblong head, his glasses give him an unsettling lookie-likey resemblance to the murderous Zimbabwean despot.
As a brief service, meanwhile, to the war-sceptical, time-rich and Internetenabled, I offer two profoundly juvenile websites: http://homepage.mac.corn/ webmasterkaiikaicurry/gwbush/dishonest dubya.html and http://wwwspankbush.com.
This magazine is proud to hear that the British fighting man in Iraq is a Spectator reader. The other day, the editor received a letter from Capt. Tom Jefford of the Queen's Royal Hussars Battlegroup in Basra, southern Iraq. They've been in Basra since November last year, first patrolling the northern part of the city, peacekeeping and winning hearts and minds: more recently they have been helping to train and monitor local police and justice services in the area. Anyway, the nub of the issue is that Capt. Jefford's men are missing their Speccie, and wondering whether we could sponsor them to the tune of a copy or two, or a mention in the magazine. He encloses some handsome photographs of the men lunching with a local sheikh and instructing the local judiciary in the use of handguns. The first batch of five weekly copies of The Politics Magazine That Supports Our Boys has already been dispatched to the Gulf.
C ign of the times, passed in London Bridge underground station the other day. 'Reduced escalator service. Owing to a defect, we are trying to rectify this.' Would that we could really believe that was mispunctuated.
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