Low life
Identity crisis
Jeffrey Bernard
Idon't know what the world's coming to. I do actually, but don't let's talk about it today. Are people quite mad? Last week, one of those arrogant young men from the Sloane Square region of London who drink halves of bitter in places like the Grenadier walked up to me in my Soho club and punched me in the face. It didn't land correctly and anyway if it had it wouldn't have hurt because he was so sloshed. Nevertheless I felt entitled to ask him his cause and reason. He said, 'You're Michael Foot, aren't you?' It's the bloody end when you can just walk up to people and whack them and it is also pretty disgusting to want to hit Michael Foot. In some ways I felt fairly flattered at being mistaken for the great essayist but I don't look like him and I'm afraid the only thing we have in common is the same colour hair and spectacles. Also I'm 20 years younger so God knows what I must have been doing the night before. I really hope that some other lunatic Mr Foot might bump into in Soho on his way to the Gay Hussar doesn't mistake him for me.
But I get quite a lot of abuse too as well as whacks. Last year, a wild-looking old man walked up to me outside Kettners and screamed, 'Why don't you stop writing filth and rubbish?' I said, 'Why don't you stop reading it?' I can't imagine how on earth he recognised me but I don't think that that was a case of mistaken identity. I get letters from readers of the Sporting Life too asking me to stop writing filth and rubbish but they never have the bottle to sign them or to give their addresses. But the answer to their enquiries is quite simple. I simply can't think of anything else to do between 6 a.m. and the hour when the door bolts slide back all over England. They ought to ring church bells at 11 a.m.
It's a strange business this one of mis- taken identity though. I sometimes mistake my own especially when I am feeling a bit down. The last time my daughter came to see me I was sitting at this loathsome typewriter and she was sitting opposite and I suddenly realised that I was Silas Marner at his loom. I have mistaken myself for several other bizarre characters in my time. I quite seriously believed, when I was a rather sweet six-year-old, that the Chris- topher Robin stories were a sort of bio- graphy of me. From Christopher Robin to Silas Marner is a story of a downhill struggle indeed, in spite of the fact that C. Robin probably needed his arse kicked.
Our man who plies the Woolwich train to Charing Cross most days is fond of making other people mistake his identity. He used to do it quite frequently with bookmakers when they knocked on his door to demand overdue accounts. 'Are you John Smith?' they would ask and he would say, 'Don't talk to me about that shit. I've been looking for him for weeks.' That can't possibly work any more and probably never did. It certainly failed when I tried it on in the country on the police when they came to take me away for non-payment of rates. In fact it was rather embarrassing and I languished in Newbury nick for quite some time awaiting an escort to Reading Gaol before the local squire bailed me out.
Which reminds me, the man on the Woolwich train — not called John Smith, of course — told me the other day that he had a great-uncle whose only claim to fame was that when he worked for the gas board he was the man who emptied Doctor Crippen's gas meter. It must be nice to have a claim to fame. The nearest I've been was once to cook an omelette for Matthew Smith when I was a short-order cook at a South Kensington cafe and Marlene Dietrich once bought me a couple of drinks and if you think that was a case of mistaken identity I can assure you It wasn't. Oh yes, I once saw Joanna LumleY disappearing round a corner in the Punch offices like the white rabbit.
Well, I think that's just about enough filth and rubbish for one week, but I Most warn several people who are middle-aged to say the least and friends of mine that this business of trying to get students' subserq tion rates for this journal is rock bottom. and a pretty good example of why this country is on its knees. Incidentally, was that really Matthew Smith eating Illy omelette, or Michael Foot?
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