Map of Spain

BY ROBERT HANCOCK ' M1SS NANCY SPAIN has just written a 264-page . book explaining Wiry I'm Not a Millionaire. One of the causes of this misfortune, overlooked in the book, is, perhaps, that Miss Spain eats like a millionaire. After all, the Nizam of Hyderabad, the world's richest man. makes do with two bowls of rice a day.

Not Miss Nancy. She invited me to lunch with• her at Wheeler's in Old Compton Street, Soho. This is a restaurant patronised by the • Duke of Edinburgh. £10,000-a-year pop singers. tycoons, model girls, and those young gentlemen'. whose vented jackets enable theth to copewith both horse and scooter.

She made. her entrance five minutes late and dressed in the by now well-known faded blue jeans, a man's. open-necked

• shirt, and an apple-green sloppy-Joe sweater. Her dark hair had apparently been cut by a badly set lawn mower.

'I don't mind what you say about me as long, as that little man Vicky doesn't illustrate the piece.' Assured that this was unlikely, Miss Spain cried : 'I must have a drink, bring a bottle of champagne and open .it now. I don't care if it's

boiling.' . ,

A bottle of Krug was produced, opened, two glasses poured and the bottle put on ice. Miss Spain cheered up.

'You know people make so many jokes about my name. There was a good bit by .a Gerard Fay who said, "The pain from Spain comes mainly when she's vain."'

Miss Spain has reason to be vain. Dragging herself up by her own blue jeans, she has over the last thirty-nine years moved from Rose Villa, Newcastle-on-Tyne. to Clareville Grove, South Kensington. She has transformed herself from reporting sports events for nine different north-country news- papers into the Book Critic of the Daily Express and the gossip and book girl for She, a monthly magazine for undecided girls and wistful wives. She has also appeared on the electric television and starred in steam radio., She swallowed an oyster. 'I'm not really vain. A man „wanted me to paint.a map of Spain on my car, but I refused too too much like self-advertisement.' If Spain is not vain she is a worthy. great-granddaughter of Samuel 'Self Help' Smiles. A real chip off the self-service counter. In She for. August there was a review of Why I'm Not a Millionaire in the book column. 'This rich, warm, delightful book has a sturdy ring of truth.' Over the page in Nancy's gossip column under the heading 'Noel Coward Gets Spain's Books' it says 'Noel Coward telephoned from Paris to tell me that he had taken up cooking. "I'd like you to send me that book you wrote about your Great Aunt Isabella Beeton." Please note : it is just coming back into print again under the title. The Becton Story, Ward Lock, 17s. 6d.'

Further down she says, 'The Master was referring to an extraordinary half-hour that we once spent together talking with a medium who alleged that she had a message for the Master from the late Gertrude Lawrence. Anyone who is interested can read all about it. in my new book Why I'm Not a Millionaire.'

Grandpa Sam would probably have been upset with Nancy about one little mistake. Nancy said the price of Why l'in Not a Millionaire was 15s. It is published at 16s. The price was right, however, when Nancy reviewed the book herself in the Daily Express.

Miss Spain tucked into a helping of the most expensive sole and said : 'Why do I say, such nice things about Lord Beaverbrook'? 1 love that man. He gave me £50 on his birth- day.' Such generosity should at least have merited getting her patron's birthplace right in her memoirs. The Lord was born at Maple. Ontario, not Newcastle, New Brunswick. as Miss Spain claims.

Miss Spain perhaps compensates for this gaffe by admitting in her memoirs that she is a presbyterian like the Lord. On the third glass of champagne she admitted, to me: was confirmed at Roedean and I really do believe in the Church of England.'

She gives this picture of her Expressmen friends: 'Harold Keeble . . . looked a little like a bull. Chris, the Edit& looks like a bull. So does John Gordon, the Editor-in-Chief of the Sunday Express. So does the greatest of .them all, Lord Beaverbrook.' Feminine intuition shows Nancy that there is a lot of bull in the ExpressGroup.

Though she was trained as a reporter, Miss Spain's memoirs contain many errors of fact and name. 'I know, I can't think how all those proof-readers missed them. Why, I've called Hebburn "Hepburn." I've called Gilbert Harding "Albert Harding" and, oh dear, there are others.' Foreign languages baffle Nancy too. She dresses, she relates in her latest book, `pour la sport.'

Nancy was once reported to be marrying Mr. Harding. 'He did propose to me, but I got the vapours. Actually I think he prefers Miss Joan Werner Laurie to me, but I'm not jealous; she and I are such good friends.'

In the lacrosse language in which Miss Spain sometimes writes, Gilbert is a chum. Miss Laurie, with whom Miss Spain shares house, is her very best, top-hole chum. Miss Laurie, called 'Jonnie' by Nancy, is also editor of She. Nancy and `Jennie' pool their earnings in a private company called `Spain and Laurie Enterprises, Ltd.' Business is good, for the first 10,000 copies of the 16s. Spain memoirs are,sold out.

Miss Spain had more champagne and listed her likes and dislikes. `I love the Omo jingle on Commercial TV.' She began to sing, very nicely, `Omo adds brightness.'

At the next table a woman in a pink flowerpot hat and a black tailor-made looked as if she needed some of Gilbert's indigestion remedy.

`I hate men in brown suits, blue shirts and stiff white collars.' A party of businessmen near by stopped making each other an offer. 'And I hate literary women who keep asking me, "What do you think of Dostoievsky?" I have read Crime and Punishment and it's not a bad book.'

Emboldened by this display, I asked Miss Spain the sixty- four-rouble question, 'Why do you wear those ridiculous jeans?'

`Well, they're comfortable and I like to wash my clothes every day.' (Despite the Omo commercial, she uses Tide, a Newcastle product.) I explained that you could wash frocks too. `Ah but some women wear frocks three days in a row.' Baffled by this detergent dialectic I finished the champagne.

Miss Spain skipped the sweet and cheese and joined me in a large black coffee, declining the double brandy. 'Must keep steady, dear. I've got to sign copies of my book at Selfridge's.'

The restaurant was almost empty. A waiter presented her with the bill to sign. 'It's been lovely, Bob,' and she gave me a whopping Spain kiss on the cheek. Despite this, I regret to report that Nancy failed to tickle my fancy.