Low life
Stage fright
Jeffrey Bernard
onday was hectic. First, I went to Broadcasting House for Melvyn Bragg's Start the Week. Then I went to the Groucho Club to be interviewed by a woman from the Sunday Times Magazine for 'A Life In The Day OF, and after that I climbed two floors for a book launch party for More Low Life. After that, Keith Waterhouse took us downstairs again for lunch. After that, your guess is as good as mine. These are stirring times. There was even a tin of pea and ham soup on my desk this morning. Unopened, thank God. I have enough trouble already with toast crumbs and dog-ends.
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I enjoyed Start the Week. Melvyn's easy professionalism calmed the ragged nerves, as did a large shot of vodka concealed in my companion's handbag. The other guests were Sir Hardy Amies, Denis Healey and Carl Davis. I took an immedi- ate shine to Mr Healey. He was very, very friendly and not at all pretentious, as I thought an ex-minister might be. Neither is he daft as a politician might be. Before we went on the air I asked Sir Hardy did he appreciate the fact that his showroom in Savile Row is the house in which that great man Sheridan died. He did. Those premises with the ghosts of bailiffs thronging the hall would be wasted on the likes of Zandra Rhodes. He wouldn't tell us anything about the Queen and said he wasn't allowed to. I asked him whether or not she ever gave him a tip for a horse. He nodded me a no. In deference to his dislike of smoking I refrained from lighting up for 50 minutes, which is the longest I have been without a cigarette since I was last in a coma.
Denis — Yes, I am allowed to call him Denis now — and I had a word about George Brown after the show and he confirmed my suspicion that Brown didn't drink too much, he just couldn't take it. Some years ago I got chatting to Brown in a buffet car of a train going to Manchester. He was going there for a book-signing and I was going there to examine the ladies' knickers that are stuck on the ceiling of a pub called Tommy Ducks. After only two gins and tonics he was almost legless. Nice man but a trifle irascible. Anyway, Denis surprised me when he told me that he reads this column from time to time. I gave him a copy of More Low Life and now wonder what he'll do with it.
Then to the Groucho and the Sunday Times woman. I think she had a hard time. How on earth do you write a Life in the Day of somebody who doesn't do any- thing? When I told her I spend four hours every morning in bed chain-smoking, drinking and staring at the framed photo- graphs on the wall she was kind enough at least to ask me whether I was thinking all that time. Oh yes indeed. We mouth silent cries for help here from 4 a.m. until 8 a.m. Occasionally the thought process is inter- rupted by a scream from the genito-urinary hospital behind me, but otherwise the photographs trigger off a relentless spe- culation ending in remorse. (There are three ex-wives staring at me at this very moment.)
And now for Wednesday and the open- ing night of the play. I suppose it is the day of my life. I have cold feet and I haven't even been able to feel them for five years. My heart is in my mouth, my hands are shaking and other parts of my anatomy defy description. But it isn't just me. I desperately want it to go well for Keith Waterhouse and Ned Sherrin. They work- ed so well and hard while I have just been staring at the photographs on the wall.
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