Personal column

Larry Adler

Oscar Levant said that he would like to have been present at the moment when Leopold Stokowski discovered his hands. I can't match that but I will be able to tell my great-grandchildren (my grandchildren are already past the point where I can tell them anything) that I actually heard a Watergate alumnus say, "At this moment in time." Jeb Stuart Magruder, of course, and he went on to say that he had processed his guilt, which made him feel better, and he thought that if Mr Nixon could process his guilt, he'd feel better too.

This is written on George Washington's birthday. I can see the young Nixon saying to his father, "I cannot misspeak myself. I did it with my little hatchet."

Or: Beauty is the hangout road; the hangout road, beauty.

Viability or non-viability, that is the question.

Though this be madness, yet there is a game plan in't.

Deep-six thyself, brave Crillon. We fought at Arques and you were not there.

Thou shalt not make inoperative statements against they neighbour.

In Nottingham

I am writing from Nottingham, the centre of which looks like a motorway searching for a city. The worst piece of motorised strip is called Maid Marian Way. My fiancée, a direct descendant of Robin Hood (honest!) looked thoughtfully at the Beeston Boiler Factory sign advertising Robin Hood Boilers. I grumbled that, with any sense of tradition they'd be making not boilers, but friars.

The Nottingham Playhouse is presenting Comedians by Trevor Griffiths, which is as theatrically exciting as anything going on in London. Jimmy Jewel more or less plays himself as a veteran comic teaching aspiring funny men how to do it. The second act shows the young hopefuls trying to make out in a working men's club, the members reluctantly interrupting their bingo to watch them, and this act is a work of art. The third act has the big-time agent from London analysing their acts and the climax, which misses, is the confrontation between Jewel and his star pupil who has refused to follow the others and sell out to the London agent. Comedians says a hell, of a lot more than The Entertainer ever did and offers a powerful talent in Jonathan Pryce, whose act shows the technique of Grock and the philosophy of Lenny Bruce. If this play doesn't come to London, you'd better get up to Nottingham. It's worth it.

Just for laughs

The play appealed strongly to me, always a sucker for comedy. As a kid in Baltimore, while other kids read Henty, Haggard and Burroughs, (Edgar Rice, not William, dummy) I was hooked on Stephen Leacock, S. J. Perelman, Ring Lardner and P. G. Wodehouse, and I still am. After reading Leave it to Psrnith I addressed my schoolmates as Comrade Threepwood, said pip-pip and would have worn a monocle if I had known how. I pronounced the master's name "Woad-house," not realising that the British, given half a chance, would have made Wodehouse "Woose". Living in London I'm a keen follower of Alan Coren, Clive James, Nancy Banks-Smith, and this

week was knocked flat on my keester by SeanDay-Lewis in the Telegraph. He reported the debut of Margaret Thatcher on the radio show of Jimmy Young, who makes disc-jockeying seem like the world's oldest profession. Mr Day-Lewis used the language, if that's the right word, of Young himself and the result ought to go into the anthologies.

At the pictures

You may think the following statement is inoperative but it isn't. My fiancée and I asked for and got seats in the non-smoking section at the Odeori, Marble Arch. A couple sat next to us and lit cigarettes, disregarding both my admonishment to them and an announcement from the screen that the right side of the cinema was for non-smokers. All this encouraged a couple sitting behind us to light up as well. I haven't seen Death Wish but I remember High Noon and dang it, the time comes when a man's gotta do what he's gotta do. I went out, found the assistant manager who made both couples move out. Walter Mitty rides again. Did you know that in New York there is a law against smoking in places of amusement and on public transport.

It wasn't smoking that caused the tsoris at the movie house near Victoria Station. We wondered why, as we bought our tickets, the cashier eyed my fiancée very oddly and we noticed a sign in the ticket booth: "Patrons are forbidden to change seats during the performance." Weird! When inside we found that patrons were doing nothing but changing seats; in fact the screen dialogue couldn't be heard for the slamming of seats and the shuffling of bodies. We still didn't get it. My fiancée said loudly that some people had come to see the film. Yup, some had, precisely two, and we were them. When we saw attendants in white coats — nice touch, that — going through the aisles shining torches and occasionally ejecting some luckless fellow who seemed to emerge from the floor, plus the fact that my fiancée was the only female in the place, then and only then did we two little babes twig that we were in a fag pickup joint and we were the odd men out. Maybe I should rewrite that last. Reminds me that Michael Billington, in a review of Gay Plays, began his piece with "I am not a homosexual." Why the disclaimer? I remember a letter in the NY Post, during the Un-American Activities Committee hearings, which read: "I am not now, nor have I ever been a Communist but I think that for the duration of the water shortage, New Yorkers should use paper plates."

Sound of Muzak

Is there such a thing as a pocket jammer? My electric razor makes interference noises on my radio and that's the sort of thing I'm looking for, to make a noise as annoying to the transistorised jerk sitting next to me in the park as his noise is to the. (I once wrote a piece called 'What Kind of Noise Annoys an Oistrakh?' but the editor changed the title.) I dislike background music in general, especially the stuff you hear in hotel lobbies, on planes, even in lifts, gutless crap with all talent carefully extracted. If I'm ever captured by the enemy he has only to turn up the sound and I'll 'spill my guts to the Sound of Muzak.

To contradict myself, I recently went to Lasky's in Oxford Street to get a demonstration of quadrophonic sound, to install in my car. They had room quad, but not car quad. I phoned Lasky's PR man. No, he said regretfully, way. "But you know, don't you," he said, "that quad sound is a standard feature in the new Silver Shadow Rolls. Our director has a new Rolls."

I drove out to Colindale, met Mr Edward Lasky who escorted me to the executive parking lot, we got into his Rolls and he turned on the quadrophonic sound. It's terrific. (I didn't want to ask but I think you can get the quad separate.)