Sanity and inanity
MICHAEL HENDERSON
Aremarkable man passed away last week. I knew Guy Willatt for 20 years, bumping into him three or four times every summer, but it is what he did in the first 65 years of his life that was really interesting. A double Blue at Cambridge, he captained Derbyshire at cricket as an amateur while still a schoolmaster at Repton, and later he became a much-admired headmaster of Pocklington.
As if to honour his memory, Derbyshire beat Surrey the day after his death. Derbyshire are fed up with being patronised by more 'fashionable' counties, and Surrey have won the championship three times in the past four seasons, so there was great rejoicing among the Peakites. Willatt would have enjoyed the result, though he grew up playing a more traditional form of cricket, the three-day game, that has gone the way of the dodo. He was a traditional man, too, saying of Dominic Cork, Derbyshire's talented, headstrong captain, 'What Dominic really needed was a good housemaster.' He may have been 85 but Willatt retained a sharp mind. The last time we met he was rereading Heart of Darkness, and he never lost that schoolmaster's concern for the impressionable. In a way he represented those qualities we have done our best to ignore, or even to outlaw. He thought that order was preferable to chaos, that young people needed the stimulation that comes from tackling hard disciplines, that the long haul was invariably more rewarding than the fleeting pleasure of instant gratification, and that cricket brought out the best in people.
These qualities are not valued so highly in such fiercely non-judgmental times, as teachers up and down the land can confirm, and the consequences of such indulgence are evident on our streets every day. Even cricket, the game that Willatt played well enough to be invited to represent the 'Gentlemen' (amateurs) twice against the 'Players' (professionals), now feels that a 20-over slog, complete with garish noncricketing 'attractions', is the best way to engage with modern teenagers. That may be right but, if it is, what does it reveal about our society? Nothing that we don't know, I suppose.
Talking to a friend recently I said that
the BBC had sunk so low in almost every way that it was only a matter of time before a clot like Janet Street-Porter (is there any 'personality' quite so shameless, or so untainted by talent?) was invited on Question Time, and asked to comment upon the imminent departure from Manchester United of David Beckham. It was a joke — sort of. Lo and behold, up popped this preposterous woman on QT last week, talking — if that's what you call it — about Beckham and other weighty affairs. Of the United Kingdom's relationship with the EC, she said, 'It's like being in a nightclub and complaining that you're not in the VIP lounge.' Yes, she really did say that, and yes, that really is the kind of expert analysis we shall have to put up with so long as her pal, King Rat, runs the show at White City. 0 tempora, o mores!
A selfless man like Willatt, dedicated to the craft of instruction, is, I reckon, worth about a thousand of those superannuated floozies who drop their drawers (to great applause) in the bars in Soho, and laugh as the offers roll in. So I salute his memory, and curse the cult of celebrity that is corrupting the young minds he spent his life trying to develop.
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