DIARY
BARRY HUMPHRIES s if I didn't have enough on my
A
plate, I manage the professional affairs of a famous Australian actress, diseuse, swami and monstre sacra. At present she is recording a series of chat shows for Lon- don Weekend Television in which she `interviews' courageous celebrities. It falls to me to procure Dame Edna's guests and to this end I invited Rudolf Nureyev to dinner. It seemed a good idea that two People who had for so long worshipped each other should meet: an encounter between a Russian defector and the repre sentative of a country which wisely expel- led its intelligentsia years ago. Nureyev came straight from another triumphant battle with that sworn enemy of all dan- cers, gravity. Having dodged stage-door fans, and presumably flown by autogiro to the roof of the Ritz, he arrived at Le Caprice ahead of his traffic-locked audi- ence. The ballet was Coppelia with very pretty sets like the paintings in Bavarian museums of 19th-century Alpine villages which one usually passes at a slow run between masterpieces. I had not been to the Festival Hall for ages, it is like a secular Coventry Cathedral, as if Coventry isn't secular enough. It must be the only reli- gious building in the world where you don't feel compelled to remove your hat. Behind us, between two women, ballet mother and ballet aunties, slumped a small boy with a pink bow tie who sniffed and hawked throughout the performance. Delibes's music was in serious competition with the rattle of recycled phlegm on its perpetual inter-sinal journey. When the curtain fell the catarrhal brat bounded from his seat and was first at the footlights hurling damp nosegays at the principals.
Rudi, it turned out, could not eat our Capricious meal because he was due at Francis Bacon's for a midnight dinner Party. What, one wonders, would the famous artist rustle up? A lung on a hook? Barbecued placenta on a billiard table?
At the Bombay Brasserie with Larry Hagman, family and friends. The star of Dallas is a fervent anti-smoker. An ex- nicotine slave, like me, he distributed Pocket battery-operated fans for aiming at putrid puffers in restaurants. I told him my wife and I were going to Ischia and he recommended the garlic baths. Needless to say, no one on Capri's neighbouring isle has heard of garlic baths, though with hot water, a few cloves and 100,000 lire they seem willing to have a go. Mud is the thing there, but I had to submit to a compulsory and expensive medical before they wrap- ped me in a calico sheet with a poultice of hot volcanic mud oozing under my armpits. After that you get hosed down with ther- mal water and immersed in a steel tube for more high-pressure-hose massage from a leathery old redundant fisherman. The very comfortable hotel, the Regina Isabella, is a little too expensive for the English and mostly caters to the fat and flash from Stuttgart and Turin. Beside the pool, creatures from the canvases of Otto Dix and Botero preen and waddle, and in the adjacent Clinic, whose speciality is lymphatic drainage, they take the waters for obesity, but they take the pasta as well. My fellow guests love gold, and I suppose if you are only wearing a swimsuit no one would really know how rich. you were unless you were manacled by Cartier, garrotted by Garrard and ballasted by Van Cleef and Arpels.
For holiday reading I had taken along Shena MacKay's new book of stories, with its irrestible title, Dreams of Dead Women's Handbags, Bruce Chatwin's Songlines, Charles Dickens's Italian Note- book, Poetry by the Spectator's own Wen- dy Cope, and Homewards by the wonder- ful Dorothy Nimmo. Chatwin is a pro- digiously gifted writer, part poet, part 'I got this job because I'm a gay, black Old Etonian.' anthropologist. His book, which will be- come a classic, is about the Australia that Australians rarely see and its inhabitants. Among other things he is a great master of the genii loci in a class with Marmaduke Pickthall, Cunninghame Graham, Robert Byron and James Stern. I am sure the Aussie critics must have given this book rave reviews, especially once they found out that it hadn't been written by an Australian.
We climbed Mount Epameo, the vol- cano which dominates — which I suppose really is — Ischia. To 'climb' it with two children means a 40-minute taxi trip and then donkey rides to the summit. The volcano's topmost vent is now stopped by a `cork' of pumice fashioned rather like a fanciful Gaudi turret. The caves and tun- nels which perforate this strange eyrie once accommodated monks and hermits but now house a small hotel with a terrace, affording sublime views of the whole is- land. We set out on this 'climb' a bit too late in the day, however; I wanted to see the famous 'green moment' just after sunset, when everything, presumably, turns green. We were also keenly anticipat- ing the 'hunter's rabbit', an Ischian special- ity which we were assured by our hotel concierge would be abundantly available at the summit restaurant. However, dusk was gathering fast as we mounted our donkeys and tackled the last precipitous path to the top. It was very beautiful up there, even if what I supposed to be white orchids nestling in the boscage turned out to be broken polystyrene cups. 'It isn't green every night,' the waiter said to me (in German) when we finally arrived at the restaurant and gazed out at the grubby horizon. There were signs saying: 'Deuts- che Bier' and `Probien Sie Unsere Schink- en' and the management furnished us with blankets against the nippy updraught. The rabbit was 'off that night as well, but we had a fortifying 'red moment' eating spaghettia pomodoro on the terrace in the dark on top of a volcano. 'Is that all there is?' said my jaded son Oscar.
Atelephone call from a friend in London informs me that the sign outside the Strand Theatre — where tickets are on sale for my November offering — is unreadable from buses. It's easier, he says, to read Ivor Novello's blue plaque. Also, he said, Hess had died. No doubt some of our poolside companions will be augmenting their gold bangles with discreet crêpe armbands. And Dame Edna has lost another potential talk-show guest.
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