ANOTHER VOICE

Let us raise our glasses, please, to a very happy memory

AUBERON WAUGH

About 890 people die on average every day in the United Kingdom. Nearly all these deaths are sad for someone; a few may cause relief, happiness, laughter. Nev- ertheless, there is a general feeling that you don't laugh when people die. Death is too grim a subject for laughter, and in any case friends and relations must be considered.

There are three further reasons why we should not laugh at the manner of Stephen Milligan's death, according to John Sweeney in the Observer. In the first place he had a terrible squint; in the second place

his mother, Ruth, died of a haemorrhage when he was just 15; in the third place he was not homosexual. These considerations make it much harder to poke fun at the manner of his death, Sweeney opines.

Well, that is his point of view. Another suggestion made in the course of a tremen- dous flea in the ear from my dear wife after she caught me allegedly laughing about Milligan's fate is that we should all concen- trate on how desperately unhappy he must have been to have put on women's stock- ings and climbed alone on the kitchen table to seek some heightened pleasure there. I don't see why this should be seen as evi- dence of great unhappiness. It is just anoth- er way of spending a Saturday afternoon. If he had wanted company, he had plenty of friends, or he could have telephoned the `exclusive' £700-a-year Drawing Down the Moon dating agency of which, we learn, he was a member. Perhaps he was simply con- cerned to save money.

So much has been written on this new subject of auto-erotic asphyxiation (AEA) that many feel they have read enough, but it is unlikely that anything more interesting will happen — least of all in the world of

politics — for a very long time. The only

possible restraint on our endless and joyous discussion must be consideration for the sorrow of Milligan's family and friends.

One such is Mr Andrew Neil, editor of the Sunday Times and a fellow-bachelor. I do not know whether Neil is also a fellow

member of the prestigious £700-a-year Drawing Down the Moon dating agency, but he took the manner of Milligan's going very hard: 'We are forced to conclude that there was a private, dark side to Stephen of which even his closest friends were unaware.'

This strikes me as odd. If I were to learn that any male friend of mine was in the habit of climbing naked on the kitchen table of a Saturday afternoon, with women's stockings, electric flex and any other paraphernalia of AEA, I might be surprised and amused, but I would not be shocked or upset. 'There is no reason to believe that he would not have ended up happily married,' wrote this fellow-bachelor in the course of his tribute to a 'trusted col- league and dear friend':

That he should even know of the techniques that apparently brought about his death, much less practise them, has startled us all.

Neil has a point there. How do those intending to try AEA ever learn about it? Few of us would imagine that there was much fun to be had on a kitchen table alone with some electric flex, a dustbin liner and a satsuma fruit unless someone had told us. I have been around longer than Milligan and nobody ever told me about it. Nobody discussed these things at Oxford in my day. Was it in the House of Commons tea-room that Milligan learned such tricks, or in the alcohol-free canteens of the Sun- day Times? Perhaps there are secret net- works of AEA practitioners who hold con- ferences in provincial hotels and read each other papers.

In a way I hope not, because it would subtract from Milligan's contribution. If we ask ourselves whether, by his death, Milli- gan has contributed more to the gaiety of the nation or to its sorrows, the answer is unmistakable. Sorry as we are for the friends and relations, Stephen Milligan has made a massive contribution to the gaiety and happiness of us all at a rather gloomy time in the country's history. Nor do I believe that he made a socialist victory any more certain than it already was with Major as leader. But having commiserated with his various friends and relations, I must also admit that well-intentioned attempts to be solemn about his death succeed only in making it funnier. Thus Mr Neil, in ele- giac mode:

His tragic death is all the more of a tragedy because he had just reached the first rung of a political career that would undoubtedly have taken him to the highest offices, where he would have served with great distinction. He is a great loss to family and friends, but also to the Tory party and country.

Oh phooey! The Tory party will never be short of young men trying to climb its rungs, and the country will manage without him. In fact, to the extent that he impinged on my awareness before his magnificent exit, Milligan always struck me as exactly the sort of Conservative the country could do without. On the first occasion he came to my notice he was photographed with a pet fox in one of his constituency newspa- pers, swearing to vote for an end to the ancient British sport of fox-hunting.

`Stephen was modern, progressive, often ahead of his time,' intones Neil, reporting an undergraduate speech, 'arguing there should be more tax on wealth and inheri- tance, less on income and earnings. That's my kind of Tory, I thought.' Will these chippy little smartiboots never realise that the interests of high earners and wealth- owners are indissolubly linked? No, the fewer of Neil's kind of Tory in the House of Commons (or anywhere else) the better. I never met Stephen Milligan and don't sup- pose I should have liked him if I had. The fact that he was able to hold the affections of two exceptionally attractive women is no recommendation.

But any doubt I might have entertained about his politics would have been largely dispelled if I had known of his secret habits. He must have known there was a risk of being discovered as he was, and he must have laughed at the consequences. Even if nothing became him in his life like the leaving of it, we owe him an enormous debt of gratitude for cheering us up at this dismal time. He will occupy a much warmer place in our memories than he could ever have done as another vulgar, slippery, bungling Tory Chancellor.