Low life
No sooner said than done up
Jeffrey Bernard
There is an area of low pressure in my flat and I can feel a depression creeping up on me. The leaves in Regent's Park are turning yellow and the St Leger is only three weeks away. I can't bear the idea of another winter and I've lost the name and address of a racing man who once offered to lend me his house in Antigua. Just as awful — disastrous really — is the fact that they can't make hollandaise sauce any more in Wheeler's. I was taken there last week and the hollandaise was as runny as water. You see, they can't leave things alone in this country. There is a compul- sion to have everything 'done up'. What they should be doing is preserving things. But Wheeler's have had their Old Com- pton Street branch 'done up'. I suppose the chefs have all left piles of clothes and suicide notes on some beach and the new ones are mostly Chinamen who wouldn't know mayonnaise from gravy. All those nice waiters like Tim, Henry and Arthur have left and I suppose they'll be putting in fruit machines next. And it was over the awful hollandaise that Francis Bacon told me that they have now installed fruit machines in the casino in Monaco. It's all appalling. I met a man in Suffolk once who wanted to start a business which thatched cottages with artificial thatch made out of plastic. The end of the world might be closer than you or I think. And stand up the man who invented plastic tomatoes for putting ketchup in.
The only thing I would like to see done up is me. It isn't very pleasant walking around in this body, and BBC television dealt it a staggering blow last Monday. Arena are making a film for the new series half of which is about a day in my life, would you believe. They began shooting it in April and they came back to get a little more footage. For reasons of continuity they sat me at my desk in front of the dreaded typewriter and made me drink vodak from 6 a.m. Yes, 6 a.m. They then shot me in the kitchen boiling an egg and making some toast and I hope some of you will find that both moving and touching. Then we had bacon sandwiches. I have never seen a bacon sandwich in Great Portland Street. It is a mystery to me how film crews manage to sniff them out. If you were filming at the North Pole sooner or later — sooner, in fact — an electrician would come crunching across the ice with a tray bearing bacon sandwiches and sausage rolls. Then there was a bit more vodka and off we all went to the Coach and Horses where Norman gave an electrifying per- formance playing himself. I thought he'd freeze, but then, when you've served Dan- ny La Rue a thousand times, I suppose some of it has to rub off.
Again, for reasons of continuity, I had to keep sipping away at the vodka. I could hear the brain cells dropping dead by the million but then Arena is a sort of arts programme and we'll do anything for art, won't we? The next day some bright spark said I could have drunk water which looks the same, but I am of the method school of performing. But it seemed a rather disso- lute day especially with a scene in a betting shop. I hardly use the beastly things any more, especially since so many of them have been 'done up'. Anyway, I suppose any television critics who may happen on it will savage it.
But whatever they do the makers of Arena know their onions and are very good film-makers. I saw a rough cut which looked really good. What was fascinating was to see some library film shot in the Colony Room Club in 1952 from a film called Members Only. How odd to see Francis Bacon and Muriel 34 years ago. The club had been going for just four years then and I was having a holiday from it in a coal mine. At least it has never really been done up which is something. But Norman is going mad. He's had the cornices of the pub painted gold and he had the carpet shampooed in the middle of the night. It turns out to be red. But before Arena is shown my book will be out and already I am getting paranoid about critics. The next book I review will get a rave notice however bad it is.
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