SHARED OPINION

Posh and Becks have graced the ballet.

All we need now is hooliganism

FRANK JOHNSON

Miss Posh Spice and Mr David Beckham dominated a Covent Garden ballet evening which I was at this week. At their presence, even a Covent Garden audience became abuzz. Admittedly, their legendary partnership is not yet quite the equal of Fonteyn and Nureyev. For one thing, Mr Beckham and Miss Spice were not on the stage.

This was remiss of the Royal Ballet's casting authorities. Casting them as members of the audience was not quite the same. They sat —just the two of them — in a box in the Grand Tier, a few boxes away from the royal box, but with a much better view of the stage. But we balletgoers welcomed the involvement of a great footballer in our sport. Among other things, it might win us some much-needed hooliganism.

We always want more publicity for ballet, an art despised by many people until they actually go to a good performance. After that, they often become addicted to it, and brave any derision. The difficulty is to persuade people to try it; especially men worried that, compared with their other interests, it is not brutal enough.

Hooliganism is one of the few things which today attracts lots of publicity to any activity. Perhaps Mr Lee Bowyer, the alleged racist whose transfer from Leeds United to West Ham last week provoked a demonstration by West Ham fans against racism, could be persuaded to come to the ballet. He has the knack of attracting publicity to the institutions with which he is associated.

At the ballet, we cannot offer much racism of the kind to which Mr Bovvyer, though acquitted of any crime, was linked. He seems to have been obnoxious to, and about, some Asians at a Leeds dance club. But at least that relates him to some form of dancing, which is more than can be said for some of the more modern choreographers at the Royal Ballet recently. Some balletgoers are racist on the subject of the British. They like only Russians. That is the best we can offer Mr Bowyer. But he would still be welcome.

Ballet has not provoked any decent hooliganism since the first night of The Rite of Spring, which Diaghilev's Ballets Russes created in Paris in 1913. Some in the audi ence thought Stravinsky's score cacophonous. Fights broke out. There is now some suggestion that Diaghilev, who like all great impresarios understood the importance of publicity, might somehow have encouraged it all.

Diaghilev also understood the importance, to publicity, of what we would now call the 'celebrity culture'. On the first night of his first ballet season in the West — at the Chatelet in 1909 — he ensured that as many as possible of the most famously beautiful young women in Paris were in the front row of the circle. The next day's popular press was more interested in reporting on the girls than on the ballets, but in order to do so they had to mention the latter, which was what Diaghilev intended. Were he to return to life to give a London season, he would undoubtedly invite Miss Spice and Mr Beckham to his dazzling first night.

But he would have understood that not any old celebrity would mean good publicity for his shows. He would not want the wrong sort of celebrity, those whom the rest of us see as `naff — a category which is huge, and includes even members, and former members, of the royal family. For the 'celebrity culture' does not mean that we can easily be persuaded as to who is the kind of celebrity in whose company, at the ballet or any other public performance, we would delight. It is not easy for people from popular culture to impress, amuse or interest people gathered for purposes of high culture. They must make us pleased that they share our pleasures or are taking the trouble to try them. Celebrity is not the same as fame. Posh and Becks are celebrities. So is — to choose just another example from popular culture — Sir Elton John. Miss Hurley, say, is just famous. Her presence at Covent Garden would interest, but not fascinate or delight. us.

Celebrity must be associated with accomplishment. Mr Beckham is a great footballer. Miss Hurley, so far as we know, is not a great actress. Mr Beckham's hair and clothes would not have been enough to arouse the interest of that ballet audience. Ballet audiences are used to people who look like him, and not just on the stage. It is that hair, and those clothes, on a great footballer — rather than on a great balletomane — which aroused the interest.

Though having no appreciation of her genre, I am told by those who do that Miss Spice is not as great a singer as her husband is a footballer. Her continued celebrity is thus derived from her being married to him. But that is all right. One genius in a couple is enough to confer celebrity on both. For the word did not buzz around Covent Garden in the first interval, 'Becks is here.' People told one another: 'Posh and Becks are here.' But would-be celebrities, and people who think they are celebrities, especially those who come in couples, should beware. The rest of us are not easily impressed and pleased. At least one of you has to he a bit of a genius.

Dcep in Tuesday's Times and Independent obituaries of Geoffrey Tucker, a Tory PR man from the Macmillan-to-Heath years, was extraordinary information. As I write, no paper has followed it up. It was that, in the 1970 election, Tucker — without the knowledge of Edward Heath or the party chairman — arranged payment for a Labour official to tell the Tories Labour's election tactics. The Independent said that the mole was still alive.

We have long been brought up to expect Tories thus to be venal. A Labour source long ago made it known that a Tory backbencher, the late Henry Kerby, leaked to Labour in the same election. He had a grudge against Sir Edward, and wanted an honour with which. incidentally, Labour did not reward him. But we expect Labour to be more high-minded. At least the Labour of 1970; today it is more likely that both parties are full of moles.

The Times obituary implied that Tucker may have feared His Maker's disapproval for 1970. 'Near the end of his life, and in frail health, he confided to a friend that he had employed some underhand methods.' His deed and his repentance may have been unnecessary. A Labour acquaintance, close to the 1970 leadership, told me this week: `Kerby's information was no use at all. We still lost, not because we didn't have more of that sort of thing but because we were complacent. Tucker's mole would have been just as useless.'