SIMON HEFFER
a chance with such cars as display it. There must be an entrepreneur out there who is equal to this task.
Even before dear old Princess Margaret died my mind had turned to royal expiration. I had read, with great compulsion, the various facsimile newspapers put out last week to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the death of King George VI. 1 noted the accounts of shops dressing their windows in black and mauve when the news came through. I remembered my wife's grandfather, who died a few years ago just short of his 100th birthday, recalling how he had come home from school one day and found the shops putting up black shutters because Queen Victoria had died. Do we have the apparatus of formal mourning now? I think not. I went to a funeral the other day where I was almost the only man wearing a black tie. I still cannot abandon the mindset that dictates it is a mark of profound disrespect not to wear one. I hope my relicts will kick out of my funeral anyone who turns up dressed as if about to visit his bookmaker. When the time comes, one will be bloody unhappy to be dead, and one would like one's friends at least to go through the motions of appearing bloody unhappy too. In a ghastly display of the most appalling taste, some of the lower newspapers did not hesitate to speculate after Princess Margaret's death about the effect this might have had on the health of her dear mother. All I can say is that when the time eventually comes for Queen Elizabeth to meet what we cricketers call the Last Great Scorer — and may it be some time yet — I trust that the nation will take time to reflect in an appropriately sober fashion, and that what the Victorians understood as the necessary process and decorum of mourning will once more be evident.
As we all know, the spate of carjackings is due to two things. First, the government tolerates the use of illegal substances, which means that the drugs business flourishes. In its furtherance — and more particularly in the course of raising capital to further it — expensive 'performance' cars are stolen. Second, the punishments for such criminals are insufficient to deter them from preying on motorists, especially women, in this way. I think, however, that I have lighted upon the answer. All unaccompanied drivers should have in their passenger seat a blowup rubber black man, well tasty, his hands bedecked with chunky jewellery, and talking on a mobile telephone. Mr Mike Tyson would be the ideal model. It could, indeed, at moments of crisis inflate rather like an airbag. It would almost certainly dissuade those cowardly ruffians who engage in this revolting crime from taking My five-year-old son came home the other day with the latest edition of the Thunderbirds comic. I was amused, because at his age — more than 35 years ago — I, too, was gripped by the antics of the Tracy brothers. To an extent, I still am. My amusement evaporated when, on inspecting the back cover of this comic, I saw that readers could acquire Thunderbirds trading cards, autographed by the creator, Gerry Anderson, at £40 a set. I don't object to Mr Anderson making money out of his magnificent invention, but this is preposterous. Johnnie Heifer is not, I am sure, unique among children of five in not having £40 in his back pocket to blow on such a wasteful, pointless enterprise (or on anything else for that matter). What cardsinc.com — the vultures who bring you this act of larceny — really mean is that you go and screw your parents for it. Happily, young Johnnie couldn't give a stuff about trading cards and hasn't started to blackmail me for the £40. Nonetheless, I am minded to tell Carlton Television (whose name appears prominently on the Thunderbirds mag) that I wish them an early bankruptcy, and I hope that cardsinc.com will speedily go the way of much other dotcom flesh. Perhaps our government's shameful failure to bring the tyrant Mugabe to heel is down to a genteel reluctance to mock the afflicted. A couple of years ago I had dinner with a prominent Zimbabwean (whose name had better remain secret lest he get the five o'clock knock from Butcher Bob's thugs) who told me about Mugabe's tertiary syphilis. As well as affecting his judgment — and I put that in for those of you who cherish understatement as an art form — the disease had, apparently, caused the tyrant's private parts to rot away completely. The song of our parents' generation about the genitalia of Hitler, Himmler, Goring and Goebbels could hardly be adapted to do Butcher Bob justice. Apparently, a rota of fit and keen young men is in place to keep Mrs Mugabe happy. When one knows all this, one does not remotely condone the barbarous behaviour of this savage, but one does, perhaps, begin to understand why.
Before I say anything nice about the film Gosford Park I had better declare an interest: the man who wrote the screenplay, the Oscar-nominated Julian Fellow-es, is a chum of mine. He and I have the rather sickening habit of comparing notes after any 'period' drama has been shown on television, and condemning it for its historical or social solecisms. You know the sort of thing: somebody is addressed as 'Lady Diana' when she is not the daughter of an earl, marquess or duke, or someone turns up at a ball in 1924 wearing black rather than white tie. Needless to say, Gosford Park achieves perfection in this regard, with everyone talking, looking and sounding exactly as one imagines they would have in 1932. In a spirit of political incorrectness, I especially enjoyed the ladies' furs, not least the moment when the astonishingly clenched Kristin Scott Thomas slung what appeared to be a whole elk round her shoulders. I am sorry that Julian has not been drafted in to adapt Galsworthy's The Fors:yte Saga for its new incarnation on ITV later this year, for I have deep fears about that given the network's recent track record. The BBC dramatisation 35 years ago was immaculate in every respect, faithful not only to the period but to the much-underrated novels. One dreads to imagine what concessions will be made in the name of 'accessibility' in the 21st century. The little I know about the new production is that one of the most talented and pukka gent actors I know didn't make it through last year's auditions. I suppose it is elitist of me to fear the worst as a result, but I do.
Simon Heifer writes for the Daily Mail.
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