DIARY KEITH WATERHOUSE
Now that South Africa has been given a cleanish bill of health, I wonder if letting bygones be bygones is a two-way arrange- ment and they will let me back in? I have visited the country only once, years ago when my writing partner Willis Hall and I went out to Johannesburg with the late Stanley Baker to make a film with a black supporting cast. Apart from refusing to start work until he had met our two leading players socially, which put the producer in something of a tizz, I think the only subver- sive thing Willis and I did was to form a provisional government of Indian waiters one bored, rainy evening in our hotel. The only white member of our cabinet was the asssistant night manager, whom we made transport minister. He it was who probably shopped us — maybe out of pique because he wanted to be foreign secretary. At any rate, when we got back home it was for us each to find a letter which I still have framed in my lavatory : 'Sir, I have to in- form you that the Honourable the Minister of the Interior has under the powers vested in him by section 7 blah blah blah, with- drawn in your case, the exemption from the provisions of section blah blah blah granted to citizens of the United Kingdom in terms of which they are permitted to enter and sojourn in the Republic of South Africa blah blah blah.' The burden was that should I arrive at a South African port of entry without a visa, which most certainly would not be granted, I would not be permitted to enter. Forgive and forget or not, I am not sure I want to revisit a country so devoid of a sense of humour. As for our social ulti- matum: the producer got round his difficul- ties by throwing a party for us. It turned out to be all-white. When we protested that we had still not met our two black actors the reply was, 'Oh, but you have. One of them is the car-park attendant and the other is looking after the cloakroom.'
Isay nothing, as Sir John Junor would put it, about the libel action over John Pil- ger's documentary, 'Cambodia: The Betray- al', which reached the High Court before abruptly culminating in apologies and dam- ages to the aggrieved parties. Pilger said to the Evening Standard: 'The case did not produce a verdict against us. It was an out- of-court settlement reached after the Gov- ernment intervened and denied us five vital witnesses.' So be it — or not, as the case may be. At any rate, it has set off another bout of Pilger-bashing. I do wonder why Pilger generates so much spite and spleen among his fellow hacks. I can understand Auberon Waugh, who has put the verb to pilger into the language — that's pure black mischief, motivated by the political equiva- lent of one armadillo squaring up to anoth-
er in a territorial dispute. I rather question the motives of some other members of the anti-Pilger lobby. Envy comes into it some- where — as one foreign correspondent put it to me a long time ago, the bugger is too handsome for his own good. Speak as you- find. Many years ago, on the Daily Mirror, I shared an office with John Pilger. I did not get to speak to him much, or anyone else for that matter, because he hogged the tele- phone from morning till night, but it was apparent that he was not undiligent in his researches, and I never heard him try to bend the facts. When we did exchange a word it was, on his part, with blazing con- viction for the cause of the moment. I nod- ded a lot but we did share many jokes. The worst story told about Pilger on the Mirror was that when he went in pursuit of, say, an exposure of homelessness in some godfor- saken acre of the inner cities, he set up the story first through one of the caring agen- cies. But of course he did. Any competent journalist would. You do not roam the streets calling out, 'Anyone here been raped and speak English?' Another story, which I do not believe, was that he is sup- posed to have telexed the office from some- where in the Far East for fresh supplies of ballpoint pens and paper-clips. Actually my 'It's the New World Order.' favourite Pilger story does not reflect on John at all. We shared a daft secretary who made Sharon and Tracy look like a pair of bluestockings. One day when Pilger was in Vietnam and there was a certain amount of shooting going on, he had an urgent tele- phone call from London. A colleague craw- led across an open square under fire to de- liver the message. Pilger, equally under fire, crawled back to receive it. It was our Sharon. 'Hello, John, I'm sorry to bother you only Keith's out of the office at the moment and I'm wondering if you'd mind if I had tomorrow afternoon off, only I've got to go to the dentist's . .
It has become something of a platitude to say that Mr Patel is one of the main props of our economy, but it is true. Mr Patel is Somerset Maugham's verger, opportunist, industrious and thrifty. How sadly ironic that his savings should have gone down with the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, which must have seemed as safe as its fair-weather friend the Bank of England. There are many Mr Patels round my way and there are some glum faces among them. We do, however, have a kind of rogue Asian shopkeeper. Adapting somewhat over-enthusiastically to our English ways, he is never open before 9.30, sometimes 10 a.m., and he takes a good two hours for lunch. In a newsagent, this cannot be called dedication to one's calling. But when I saw him the other day he looked content enough. This was in Barclay's Bank where he was paying in the day's takings.
Ihave just written a lament for Fleet Street for the British Journalism Review, in which I regret that the only time I ever see my old colleagues now is at memorial ser- vices. I should have added 'and at the Spec- tator party.' Not only is this annual fixture jollier than St Bride's (which is jolly en- ough), but it is never rained upon. This year was no exception and I met scores of friends I haven't seen for a year (including the entire set of the Bernard brothers — a rare collector's item that does not often turn up on the market) and made new ones I look forward to seeing again next year. I have noticed from the pasteboard on the mantelpiece that the Spectator party always clashes with at least two publishers' book launches, or rather, they clash with it. They must be pretty sparsely attended, and doubtless there are some red faces among the PR Fionas. Someone ought to keep a central register of parties, rather like the list of biographies in progress that warns off writers contemplating a new life of Dickens or GBS. It would be a boon to gatecrashers.
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