Jay in the box
AFTERTHOUGHT JOHN WELLS
On the dust-jacket of To England with Love by David Frost and Antony Jay, published this month at 25s by Hodder and Stoughton and Heinemann, there is a picture of a black and white box set against a pale blue back- ground. The side panels of the box, of which we can see two, are made of identical portraits of David Frost, caught with his mouth open in a slightly uneasy smile, and the box itself is tied with a bow of red, white and blue ribbon, a plain white ticket with the title of the book and the names of the authors. On the back of the dust-jacket, however, the ribbon has been un- tied, the lid of the box has popped open, and above the two cardboard flats of D. Frost a little Disney-style lion's head is trembling on the end of a black spring. The twin portraits of Frost continue to stare out with their half mystified smile, unaware apparently of the joke that has been perpetrated behind them, The image captures exactly the character of the book, and in particular the relationship between its two authors. Intrigued by David Frost's very valuable name and the lingering memory of his equally valuable face, the reader discovers with delight that the outer wrappings, particularly the first and last chapters, are lav- ishly decorated with some of the brightest sequins from the Frost Collection. 'A Royal Mint with A HOLE IN THE MIDDLE' (the typo- graphy is my own), Varnaby Street, where boy meets girl and DOESN'T KNOW rr, the rich man in Chelsea who is so snobbish that he will not even drive in the SAME CAR AS HIS CHAUFFEUR, country lanes with young couples on the VERGE, English farmers who have one field down to wheat, one to potatoes, and one to a HOUSING ESTATE, new drugs that are so strong you have to be in PERFECT HEALTH TO TAKE THEM, and the plane the RAF now has that can get half-way to Russia before IT BECOMES OBSOLETE.'
The reader is still gleefully engaged in un- ravelling the genealogy of these ancient lines when the cardboard lid flies off, and up pops the little lion. The shock is at first rather agreeable. Having expected a box of sugary popcorn, a bumper family-size boffo pack, we are con- fronted instead with a little mechanical system, bright with ideas about politics and advertising and the law, a new British Lion to take the place of the old one that has slunk off, toothless and with its tail twisted into a plait, stuck like a porcupine with the barbs of the critics and satirists, to die in peace. Admittedly it is only a lion's head, supported on a mechanical spiral, but it is a cosy, lovable, woolly liberal little head, and as such preferable, at first sight at least, to the grizzled old snarler of the Raj. There is something of Malcolm Muggeridge in the bright blue eyes, a touch of the Beatles about the mane, a hint of George Brown in the red felt nose, a reminder of Harold Wilson in the cloth ears and soft, harmless mouth. It is Mr Jay almost to the life.
But this apparent charm should not blind us to the fact that Mr Jay packs a very dangerous punch, and that is even more dangerous for springing up suddenly out of such an innocu- ous-looking package. Mr Jay, it will be remem- bered, got a First at Cambridge, won the co's prize for the best officer cadet in 1953, was editor of Tonight in 1962, and then became head of Talks Features at the BBC. Finding man- agement unpalatable, he then resigned from the BBC in 1964, and worked for some time in a free-lance capacity, promoting the image' and interests of tc-r, the computer firm. There he was joined by the other BBC defectors, Bayer- stock and Milne, and formed with them the independent company of Jay Baverstock Milne, or IBM, before moving into his present situation as the author of Management and Machiavelli and the eminence blette behind David Frost.
Many aspects of this impressive career reflect themselves in the positive political beliefs that emerge from the wilderness of devastation caused by his more sweeping criticisms. First, and most disturbing, there is the bluff philis- tinism of the old-fashioned Officers' Mess. 'The life of today's successful man is lived at a tempo which ensures that if he has to spend fifteen minutes in a peaceful meadow he is twitching for something to do, and after three paragraphs. of Gibbon he has to send the book to an assis- tant for a summary on one page of foolscap.' He disapproves of those who suggest 'high- minded' plans for the use of our increasing leisure. 'While the experts contemplate their schemes for perpetual self-improvement, masses of Englishmen spend their spare time painting ceilings, papering walls . . . or underneath their cars, greasing and oiling them, improving per-
formance and reducing consumption and generally tickling them up.'
Mr Jay is, for all that, a very intelligent man, and his attacks on the law and on parliamentary democracy are suitably ruthless. The politi- cians are revealed as the bungling public rela- tions men employed by the management, in this case the civil service: unfortunately, though, the influence of Donald Baverstock appears to have been strong at this point, and we are offered as an alternative to the two-party sys- tem 'some people who will be trusted and re- spected by ambassadors and dustmen and generals and bishops and criminals and High Commissioners and Permanent Secretaries and old men and housewives and party leaders. Well, not people. Because a group of people could never achieve this miracle. But one per- son could.' What makes Mr Jay's particular brand of decent bluff Conservative theory so dangerous is that it is being put over by one of the most harmless-looking and therefore in- sidious propaganda machines in the country, D. Frost. It is time the charming and agreeable David Frost was told that he is being used, and for what.
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