Low life
The Grouch() Papers
Jeffrey Bernard
The start of the new series of Martin Chuzzlewit didn't irritate me at all, but the spin-off from both amateur and profession- al litgrati was mostly a load of old balls. It is now fashionable and nearly de rigueur. Everyone who has ever picked up a pen is now saying that were Dickens alive today he would be working for the BBC. Again, I repeat that this is a load of balls.
If Dickens were still alive he would be writing novels and struggling to meet the deadlines for them as he did just over 100 Years ago. You might as well say that Shakespeare would have been a member of the Groucho Club and that Mozart would have been writing either pop music or jin- gles for the most appalling television com- mercials. As I say, Dickens would seriously be into the sort of journalism that is epito- mised by The Pickwick Papers, padding out another 1000 words by saying things like `let's have Joe Gargery in Great Expecta- tions repeating "what larks, Pip, old boy, what games" over and over again.' Even the worst of columns is a sweat to make the Printers on time. But although I have a copy of Martin Chuzzlewit I have never read it from cover to cover and I don't know now it is described as a comedy, consider- ing it is populated by the most revolting People such as Mr Pecksniff and his two awful daughters. Although I have read nearly all of Dick- ens's work, I have to admit that some of it is. padded out too much. I suppose The Pickwick Papers was hard graft what with even more deadlines, although most people would tell you that David Copperfield is the best of his books. But it is a fruitless exer- cise trying to work out what the dead would be doing were they alive today. For all one knows, Mrs Beaton might be work- ing in a fast-food establishment and Nelson offering 50p rides on the Skylark. Not a lot changes for the better except for the invention of anaesthetics. The sort of people who think the life of Marie Stapes or Emily Pankhurst would make good television are red-brick university types such as Malcolm Bradbury, and Claire Tomalin who once told Anthony Howard on the New Statesman that I should be sacked because I never went to a university.
Talking of Shakespeare being a stalwart member of the Groucho Club reminds me of yesterday when I went there for tea and coffee, and no less than eight businessmen wearing incredibly boring suits came down from upstairs after having had what must have been a business lunch. Originally the club was founded for publishers and their colleagues whether they were writers, printers or designers. Now anyone can get in provided they have almost double the original membership fee. It is a crying shame that so many people in there look like John Major and the rest of them look like Young Pretenders or Old Pretenders rabbiting on about television commercial scripts — not even pretentious film scripts.
There are even more girls coming to the club who mostly brush their hair with their fingers and wear their sunglasses on top of their heads. The staff are the saving grace of the place. They carry me up the two steps to the bar and are never irritated or seem unwilling to do so. It is just as well because it is the only club I have access to. Perhaps I get on well with the girls who work there because I don't put on a self- important star act like the likes of Lenny Henry. The paintings on the walls are quite appalling and at the best a bad joke. The advertising jargon is also pretty sickening, so bring back the hacks and get rid of the appalling paintings and bring in good pho- tographs and ditch the smudges.
If only the management had bought me a drink the last time I paid a bill for £750 it would be damn nigh perfect, if it wasn't for the hotchpotch of paintings and the suits of the advertising people.
`Oh yeah? Well don't talk to me about care in the community!'
Previous page
