Personal column

Geoffrey Bocca

Arriving in London from New York, I looked in with an engaging smile on my tailor, Doug Hayward in Mount Street, and invited myself to his weekly party to watch Chelsea play football. To my surprise, he said, "I'm not going this week. Can't be bothered," This was an unheard-of break with ritual. For years, every Saturday, the Hayward gang gathered for lunch at Alvaro's in the King's Road, then took off in a convoy of cars, always miraculously finding parking space, to Stamford Bridge, and on alternate Saturdays to Craven Cottage, to watch Fulham.

Furthermore, I was somewhat relieved. I didn't really feel like going either. Is this a heresy? Soccer crowds are declining everywhere. Has the God failed? Will British football stadiums ultimately echo on Saturdays like the churches of England on Sundays? With revivalist frenzy reserved for a few ambitious enclaves in the Second Division? Has the game changed, or, frankly, was it always lousy?

L'Equipe, the French sporting daily, recently described football as "le jeu d'hommes le plus beau qu'il soit." But if you have ever watched French football you will agree that the French are not the people to pass judgement. I like the turn-of-the-century poem of Sir Owen Seaman, which he called 'The People's Sport':

Yet I know that weekly half a million men,

(Who never actually played the game),

Herded like cattle in a pen Look on and shout, While two and twenty hirelings hack a ball about.

Italy, the most professional football country in Europe, has eliminated goals altogether. A 1-0 result is a massacre. German football is bent. Dutch players wear hair longer and dirtier than British players. The only players worth watching in Spain are either Dutchmen or Argentines with forged Spanish passports.

In that dreadful winter of 1945, the Moscow Dynamos came to Britain (remember 'Tiger' Fomitch, the goalkeeper?), and showed us how the game should be played. In the process, the Russians forgot their own lesson, and have not won a single trophy in international soccer. The Russian Federation has now declared that the Soviet Union will in future be represented exclusively by its champion team, Kiev Dynamos. The announcement sent soccer scholars to their history books. They discovered that the last time a country was represented by a single team was in 1872. Queen's Park represented Scotland in the very first international match between England and Scotland. The result? A 0-0 draw. Which is where we came in.

Editors

Mailing off a funny article about Ibiza, assigned to me by the editrix of one of the few remaining American magazines, I thought wistfully of the giant editors of the not-so-distant past; Stuart Beach of the Saturday Evening Post, magnificent Dan Mich of McCall's and then Look, Sumner Blossom of the American. and the great Hearstling roustabouts, Irish Jack O'Connell, Ernie Heyn and Charlie Robbins.

It occurred to me that perhaps the last of the great autocratic magazine editors is John Anstey of the Daily Telegraph Magazine. Lest this sound sycophantic, coming from one of his regular writers, I must add that he is the slowest payer I have ever known.

Anstey, like the bravos I have named above, is a writer's editor. He is not a conference editor, or a consensus editor. Unlike many editors, he is not a writer-hater. Unlike many

editors, he knows what he wants. Unlike many editors, he is not a frustrated writer. He drives his editors spare, and they quit with disconcerting frequency, sometimes taking manuscripts with them, just to screw Anstey. But while his editors may swear at him, his writers never. He knows that a writer is, almost by definition, lonely, so letters are answered by return, always with wit and courtesy, and judgement on manuscripts is rapid, almost as rapid as with the old Saturday Evening Post. One of the more charming Ansteyisms is that he never says "No" to an idea. One never gets a letter saying, "I don't think this is for us." He says, "What a fascinating idea. Let's talk more about it." Which means, forget it.

If this still sounds sycophantic, I add further that in eight years of association, he has never taken me to lunch.

Nixon on film

I read that Richard Nixon is discussing a movie of his life with his agent, who is, naturally, Irving Lazar, who else? Who will play Nixon? Ronald Reagan is presumably unavailable, but one can see Rod Steiger and George C. Scott in front of their mirrors, practising the snarling smile, and forcing sweat to start on their upper lips. I have no doubt that the film will be made. Nixon long ago dedicated his life to staying in our hair and sticking in our teeth. When the books, movies, lectures, speeches run out, he may finish up on the circus circuit, eaten by a lion, like the Vicar of Stiffkey, still with Irving Lazar as agent.

Just for fun

Readers of this guest-column will already have been struck by its complete lack of profundity-1 suppose it is a matter of growing older. Most of the articles I seem to write these days are humorous or light-hearted. This isn't alwaYs funny. A humorist arouses the same suspicion in society as a gossip columnist. Celebrities clam up when they see a gossip columnist, and politicians put their martini glasses on a table behind them. People who write funny articles arouse the same inhibitions. A burst of laughter at a party always makes heads turn suspiciously in the direction of the humorist. It seems to me that every time I laugh politely at some bon mot, the person who has delivered it, invariably female, points an accusing finger and says, "Don't you dare write that." Or, "That's my line." It goes without saying that' take not the slightest notice, and write it anyway.