Spectator peregrinations

As an unbiased freeloader I went to the post-referendum parties of both the pros and the antis last Friday. I wanted a last glimpse of that Prentice-type inter-party fraternising before they are all back at each other's throats. Reg Prentice was doing a grand job, talking at length and most convivially with the former 'Fory minister Nick Scott. And after the big guns, Heath and Jenkins, had gone I saw Willie Whitelaw and Jo Grimond eating ham sandwiches and watching Mrs Thatcher on the telly. Chief Whips Humphrey Atkins and David Steel were there and so was George Thomson with some of his Brussels eggheads. (As Commissioner for the Regions he should have given more hand-outs to the Orkneys, Shetlands and Outer Hebrides). The pros had been celebrating in the Waldorf since lunchtime and were looking a little tired at 7 pm. The only person who would not have been welcome at either party was Edward du Cann. I understand from a reliable source that his 1922 Committee days are very severely numbered.

The antis, despite their despondency, were a lot more lively when they gathered at their HQ next to the Dorchester. Alan Sapper, architect of ITV's recent strike, promised Michael Foot further battles as soon as they had all recovered from their referendum benevolence. Foot was worried that the Market debate's realignment of loyalties by party workers, far from uniting the Labour movement, has instead got them in a hopeless muddle, particularly in South Wales.

Foot had a lively chat with Enoch Powell, and Powell's politeness to Alan Sapper was almost obsequious I thought. He was less polite when pestered by James Hughes-Onslow, a tedious Grub Street hack who wanted to know whether Enoch would continue the struggle or co-operate with the Marketeers like Neil Marten. "Be specific" he said. "Are you a Hughes or an Onslow you must be one or the other". With that he made off to speak to a friend — an Indian immigrant called Nirmal Roy who is vice-chairman of Camden Labour Party. I also spotted Neil Marten's daughter and campaign manager Marie-Louise, Sir lain MeTaggart, Gordon Tether, George Gale, Clive Jenkins, Jaguar's Geoffrey Robinson, and Oliver Smedley of the Anti-Dear Food campaign enjoying a curry: Gerry Fitt said I was quite right in thinking that, for an Irish Republican, the Common Market should be good news. But his daughter was working for the antis. That's how Ulster politics works.

Mysterious Iberia

Notice from a Spanish Tourist brochure: "We sale hotels, housebuildingand immediately delivery."

Duel in the dark

I have for a long time suffered from the bureaucracy of St James's Park. In the days when I had a collapsible bicycle I was stopped to see if it conformed to the regulation that wheels should not exceed 271/2 inches in diameter. Lasz week when the Eldon League put on a cha,rpagne cork duel in the Park a police Land Rover appeared. They did not object to the idea of fighting a duel, or drinking in public, or blocking the footbridge, or newspaper cameramen. But when a television crew turned up they had to put their

foot down. Electronic equipment is not allowed in the Park.

Technical feat

It could be another BBC cut-back or lust a short Promenade but Broadcasting House is advertising the fact that for the first time, "The first and last night of the Proms' will be simultaneously broadcast on Radio 3 and Television."

Friendly aggression

Gambling jet-setting animal-lover John Aspinall flew from bis private zoo in Kent last week to launch 'Operation Snow Leopard' at Marwell Zoological Park near Winchester. When he arrived I noticed that he had a large piece missing from the tail of his expensive pin-stripe suit. He thanked me for pointing it out and said that one of his gorillas had given him a rather over-friendly farewell. One of his favourite tricks is to crawl among a pack of wolves and lead a chorus of howling. And he seems to use the same mixture of friendly aggression on hu,nans. Money spent on children and sociai services was wasted, he told some rather aston;shed Hampshire folk who were drinking chanipagne to preserve the Snow Leopard, when it could be used to save animals from extinction. Marwell, for instance, has twenty -five Przewalski wild horses breeding and there are only fifty left in their native Mongolia. I thought rd better not tell anyone about the two Snow Leopard skins at home — shot by my grandfather in the Himalayas before the firs: war,

The Fourth

What with one first cousin in the Eleven and another in the Procession of Boats I went along to the Fourth of June at Eton. I've never really been able to cope with this kind of thing, much preferring the Drawing Schools and the ,School of Mechanics, and after lunch on Agars Plough did two rounds on their new golf course. One new departure did appeal to me — the hobbies exhibition in School Hall.

Particularly an 'A' level project by R. Meredith-Hardy. A Heath-Robinson device described as a motorised bicycle and capable of 30mph, it was a pedal cycle fitted with a 70cc Briggs and Stratton agricultural engine. Hardy writes, The idea of this was to see whether it was possible to motorise a bicycle or not. Clearly the object was successful though it is now a little the worse for wear." An even more plaintive note comes from a lepidopterist: "These butterflies are irreplac.able as they were caught in , Uganda and I don't live there any more so please don't handle them in any way.

B. W. Reed." I found Re.. d standing guard but he said that the only damage they had suffered was when he threw them into a chest along with his football shore Please Sir General Amin.

Heads they win

Cockles, mussels, winkles, jellied eels. caviar, champagne, carnations, roses, barrel organs, a busker, a pearly Queen and a pearly King were laid on for the opening of Figurehead, the hairdressers, in Pont Street, last week. It was the work of a computer and a committee — since Drones, the restaurant, and Jeeves, the valeting service, were in on it too, The initiators of Figurehead, Dominic Elwes, Dan Meinertzhagen and I ord (Spenny) Compton consulted a computer for advice on what kind of business they should start. I think they may have asked the computer for a guest list and a menu as well. I noticed Tessa Kennedy, Kenneth Tynan with a gas-filled balloon tied to his ear, Richard Kershaw, David Niven Jnr, a lot of gossip columnists and other caviareaters who would not touch the plate of jellied eels I had mistakingly acquired. But the portly Meinertzhagen finished off some of the cockles.

German ways

Michael Frayn's film on Berlin confused some of the audience at the German Embassy last week. They could not quite work out how serious he was being. This was perhaps because they had just seen a German film about a health hydro at Bad Pyrmont in Hanover. The commentator actually used the phrase, "We have ways of making you happy" and described people paying E100 a week to paddle

in cold water (circulation therapy), th-ink salt water taken from Oft below the surface off Heligoland, be tic . up in hot peat and do exercises with an eighty-two-year-old first world war U-boat commander. The English members of the audience could not readily believe that the lermans were sending themselves up be fie Germans, who were bored by the film, went amused by the British stiff upper lips. Wi ha, e ways of making them laugh.

Voyeurs

As n uit of ,Wan :all's menlim of their exhibition in his `Atticus' diary column in the Sunday Times, the unfortunate Patrick Seale Gallery in iVlotcomb Street has had an unprecedented number of undesirable visitors. Hall described the pictures, etchings by the Swiss artist Marco Richterich, as frankly sexual. They have now been visited by so many impecunious voyeurs that several pages of their visitors' book have been filled and the few remaining catalogues have been wrapped in polythene to protect them from grubby fingermarks.

Without tent

Latest sign of the economic times: the White's tent at Ascot may soon get the chop. Members have been told in a letter — on nasty yellow paper — that unless they can fori: out more money there will be no tent next year. If White's members are feeling the pinch we're in trouble.

Twosome

John Robins, a Wiltshire gentleman farmer, offers me this contribution: "Foot and Benn, the four-letter men.

Royal diet

'Town Talk,' the abysmal diary of the St-47.1day Express, sank to new depths of shallowness with a show business/royalty lead story this week: "PrIffee Michael of Kent has been dining with the American actress Gayle Hunnicutt, divorced wife of actor David Hemmings. They chose a restaurant in King's Road, where they ate Northern Italian food and drank dry sherry with ice in it.

Last time I dined with Prince Michael — we were in the same house at school — we ate corned beef floating in water, turnips, and mashed potato with lumps in it.

Peregrine