Sins of omission and commission
Compton Miller
THE INTERNATIONAL WHO'S WHO edited by Richard Fitzwilliams Europa, £195, pp. 1743 Editing a snobs' bible is both good for the ego and fraught with difficulty. You are accused of leaving out vital people, having too many or too few young achievers and not balancing the various professions. Richard Fitzwilliams, editor of The Interna- tional Who's Who, has an even tougher job than his anonymous rival(s) on Who's Who because of its 'international' title. How many Belarussian politicians or Belgian poets need he include among the Jack Nicholsons, Naomi Campbells and Jacques Chiracs?
Fitzwilliams allows himself discretion to eject some 500 no-longer-significant people each year and to edit any entry that he con- siders too long or inaccurate. The result is an impressively comprehensive directory of the world's movers and shakers, or, as he puts it, 'the world's most influential, talent- ed, gifted and powerful men and women'. It shows a huge bias towards Brits and Americans and the male sex, with only 10 per cent of entries female.
The book is specially revealing when it comes to human vanity. By far the longest entries belong to Sir Peter Maxwell Davies (102 lines) and Sir Peter Hall (85), com- pared to Lady Thatcher's modest 29. The Independent on Sunday's new editor, Janet Street-Porter, resists giving her prosaic maiden name, Janet Bull, Delia Smith omits her birthday, 18 June 1941, and Sir Trevor MacDonald his real Christian name, George. With reverse snobbery Lord Sainsbury of Turville lists two universities but not his old school, Eton.
Personal angst also plays its part in com- piling these biographies. Michael Grade mentions his father Leslie but not his mother who deserted his father when he was less than six months old, while Lord Hailsham cannot bring himself to mention the name of his first wife Natalie who ran off with a Free French officer during the second world war. Shirley Conran's entry fails to acknowledge her reviled second and third husbands, while former Tory chair- man Sir Norman Fowler snubs his first wife, journalist Linda Christmas.
Less surprisingly given their recent behaviour, the disgraced cabinet minister Ron Davies 'forgets' his first marriage, to former nurse Anne Williams, as does the embattled schools inspector Chris Wood- head the name of his ex-wife.
Fitzwilliams' selection of 'our most gifted contemporaries' is often quixotic. You will find paparazzo Richard Young, long- distance runner Haile Gebrselassie, actor Rufus Sewell, superchef Marco Pierre White, pop singer Bjork, Tory politician Liam Fox and Islamic terrorist leader Osama Bin Laden. Yet Michael Owen, David Beckham, Michael Ashcroft, Henry Cecil, Harry Enfield, Henry Cooper and Tim Henman are ignored.
Why, apart from their dazzling looks, are Sophie Dahl, Kirsty Young, Rachel Weisz and Patsy Kensit included? Might not Cilia Black, Selina Scott, Caroline Aherne and Anthea Turner have been more valid? And why no Spice Girls, except for ex-member Geri Halliwell? Even the boorish Oasis brothers, Liam and Noel Gallagher, rate separate entries. British light entertain- ment is particularly badly served: no Bob Monkhouse, Ken Dodd, Jeremy Beadle, Noel Edmonds, Michael Barrymore or even Angus Deayton. Unlike Who's Who this book bravely mentions embarrassing details about its entrants' personal lives. It minutely details the time spent in prison by former champi- on jockey Lester Piggott and disgraced City tycoons Ernest Saunders and Gerald Ron- son. It covers 0. J. Simpson's double mur- der trial, German athlete Katrin Krabbe's athletics ban after failing a drug test and boxer Mike Tyson's disqualification for bit- ing a bit off Evander Holyfield's ear. But Fitzwilliams' keen eye for detail sometimes lets him down. Why does he give 'Egyptian business executive' Mohamed al-Fayed's birthdate as 1933, not 1929; allow Robert Sangster to list six children but leave out two former wives; and Clive James to appear a bachelor? And how can UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan get away with ignoring both his first marriage and present wife Nane?
Perhaps mindful of so-called celebrity burglars, few biographees now supply their home address or telephone number. I could not resist checking the number listed for Field-Marshal Idi Amin in his Saudi Arabian exile. Alas, it did not connect.
Despite the overwhelming number of world nonentities among its 20,000 biogra- phies The International Who's Who makes a livelier read than Who's Who and Debrett's Peerage. But its publishers could surely halve its outrageous cover price by follow- ing their example and accepting advertise- ments.
Compton Miller is the author of Who's Really! Who (Harden's Books).
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