Low life
Lesser evils
Jeffrey Bernard How odd it is that one of the few bits of Latin that I can remember from my schooldays, 'lam veniat tacito curva senecta pede' =Then came bent old age with crooked foot' — should have at last become so applicable. I am also reminded, when I see my face in the shaving mirror, that `Seges est ubi Troia erat'.
But the crooked foot annoys me. I sup- pose I shall never be able to wear a left shoe again. My piffling accidents turn out to be mini-disasters. I am going away for the day next week and that means I have to find an escort to take me from this flat and put me on the train itself at Paddington. God knows how I shall get back. That is just one complaint of the week. The other is the implication behind my being asked to review a book about vice. I am glad of the work, of course, but why me? It is true I like a drink, enjoy a day at the races and get great pleasure from the company of women, but I don't think that is deserving of being typecast as some sort of monster, which is what I am told I am.
But whether or not something or other is a vice depends very largely on just who you are. The royal family's days at the races, Sir Winston Churchill's brandy-swigging and Errol Flynn's womanising are and were regarded with great affection by most peo- ple, even envy and admiration. At what point do these things become vices and not games that people play? Well, when they are too good for the servants, for a start. It was all right for Edward VII to be an adul- terer. One of the Queen's trainers, long since gone, was once overheard to remark that racing was far too good for the work- ing classes and that only he, his ilk and the royal family should be allowed to watch it. But I suppose the working classes would be allowed to go to Southwell on a wet Mon- day afternoon to watch a few selling platers getting bogged down in the old days. And it was always all right for the man wearing a top hat and carrying a cane, so beloved by the music hall, to be so drunk he had to hold on to a lamp post for sup- port, but never come back from lunch and tell the boss what you think of him. I did that once or twice in bygone days and now look at me. I must say that Harry Evans was remarkably tolerant towards me when he was editor of the Sunday Times and after I had called him by a rude name. I saw him the following day and he simply said, 'Swear at me if you must, but please don't in front of my secretary'.
Of course the business of being typecast is originally self-inflicted and God knows I have written about drinking enough, but from thereon in the exaggerations blossom like something tropical and well-watered. I have heard at least six versions of why it was that I got the sack from the Sporting Life in 1971, the most extraordinary one of the selection being that one day I put my genitals on the editor's secretary's desk.
The truth of many matters is far too bor- ing for some. In fact, I was simply drunk when it came to giving an after-dinner speech at one of the Life's soirees for the denizens of National Hunt racing. It is true that I once phoned the same story over to them three times in one afternoon from Newmarket, but I would call that an instinctive dedication to duty come what may. So now I have ended up by having to write about vice while I know of seriously evil men who go undetected in Fleet Street.
I should have gone to live in Ireland years ago. They know the difference there between the sound of a man having a gar- gle and the sound of a rattlesnake winding up to strike. And that reminds me of the good news this week: Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell is being put on in Dublin in Jan- uary, with Dennis Waterman in the title role. We live again.
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