DIARY
ALEXANDER CHANCELLOR People have many different images of New York in their minds, but the one I like best — because it is so surprising — is that of the late Claud Cockburn, who was a cor- respondent there for the Times between the two world wars. In his 1957 autobiography, In Time of Trouble, he said he found the city remarkable for the leisurely quality of its life. 'Voyagers have a note in their books to the effect that in America what you have is "tempo and hustle",' he wrote. 'But in reali- ty the tempo of New York on a day of busi- ness is like the tempo of Brighton on a day of holiday.' When I lived there in 1993, I used to wonder about this. I had always been attracted to New York for the conventional reasons — what Salman Rushdie calls its 'famous electricity' and its 'bustle and noise'. `It's a Western re-write of Bombay,' Rushdie told the New York Times. But if you ignore the noise, which is clearly worse than Brighton's, there is still some truth in Cock- burn's observation. Perhaps a majority of the people thronging the streets on a week- day are not engaged in urgent business but doing the sort of things you do in Brighton on a day of holiday — window-shopping, promenading and people-watching.
People move to New York to get away from places they find oppressive, to start a new life, to feel free and to make money. These are perfectly understandable reasons for going there, especially in the case of Rushdie, who has spent many years in Lon- don cooped up in safe houses with the Spe- cial Branch always in attendance. But high- profile British immigrants also have an irri- tating tendency to justify a decision that needs no justification by making wrong- headed, bitter-sounding comparisons between New York and Britain. Anthony Holden, the journalist and royal biographer who recently decided to settle there, wrote in the Observer a few weeks ago, 'After the rank, enseamed sweat of English racism [to "enseam", according to the OED, means to "cleanse (a hawk, later also a horse) of superfluous fat"], how sweet it is to breathe the air of a nation based on the simple, pure intent of seeing if all the peoples of the world can live and work together, side by side, in mutually supportive harmony.'
Apart from the fact that this was not `the simple, pure intent' of the Founding Fathers, but an intent that has been forced on the United States by successive waves of immigration, it is not widely perceived as America's greatest achievement. In a stim- ulating anti-American tirade in last Satur- day's Guardian, Julie Burchill wrote that Britain had always been a magnet to 'bril- liant Americans such as Ava Gardner, Stanley Kubrick and numerous blacks who cannot believe the lack of racial segrega- tion that exists here'. While there is, of course, plenty of racism in Britain, I am sure that Burchill is nearer the mark than Holden is. Holden also attacked Britain's `cult of celebrity', as if this were not a dis- ease that started in America and remains endemic there.
Aid take Rushdie's familiar comment that he has left London to escape the 'back- biting and incestuous' literary culture that exists here. My experience of New York is admittedly limited but it has never struck me as lagging behind us in backbiting. When a British writer praises the Ameri- cans for their generosity of spirit, it usually means he feels more respected in the Unit- ed States than in Britain. But Rushdie has already had a few knocks during his first few months in New York, including the rejection by residents of his application to buy a flat in a co-operative building. And the American tabloids haven't been uni- formly kind to him either. The New York Post has even suggested that his third wife, Elizabeth West, whom he has left for the luscious Padma Lakshmi, deserved what she got 'for marrying a notoriously turgid and self-righteous writer'.
Still, Holden is right about the strength of the cult of celebrity in Britain. The huge success of those ludicrous celebrity maga- zines Hello! and OK! is proof of it. They spend millions of pounds on photographs of celebrity weddings, honeymoons and babies, accompanied by interviews of unspeakable sycophancy and tedium. But people love them all the same. The celebri- ties love them too, because they get paid so much — a reported £1 million from Hello! to the pop singer David Bowie for 'world exclusive' pictures of him with his wife Iman and their new baby; £1.2 million to David and Victoria Beckham by OK! for the same; and £600,000 by OK' to Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta Jones for 19 pages of them mooning about, often half- naked, with their little baby Dylan. Occa- sionally, things go a little wrong, as in OK's coverage of the wedding of Anthea Turner, the former TV lottery lass, which showed her and her new husband, Grant Bovey, munching Cadbury's chocolate bars in what appeared to be part of a Cadbury's promo- tion (though OK' denies this). But despite Anthea's public shrieks of horror at this humiliation, she is back on the cover of the current OK!, honeymooning in a bikini in the Seychelles. The deal must have been too good to break. According to Hello!'s Marquesa de Varela, she gets calls from celebrities all over the world wanting to be in the magazine. Shame on them for their greed and vanity! If only the public would come to its senses and stop playing their game. One day, I hope, disgust will set in. That moment could come if either OK! or Hello! manages to persuade Sir Bob Geldof — as I am sure they will try — to be pho- tographed cuddling the children of his late- departed ex-wife, Paula Yates.
Ifeel a salute is due to Geoffrey Robin- son, the former paymaster general, for his stewardship of our rival weekly magazine, the New Statesman. He shoulders its losses with benevolence and good humour, appears not to interfere with the editorial and gives very jolly lunches. When I read in Andrew Rawnsley's new book on New Labour, Servants of the People, that Tony Blair tried to have him replaced with another proprietor because he couldn't be trusted to 'stay on message', I think 1) what a nerve! and 2) what ingratitude to a man who introduced him to the delights of Tus- cany and to his munificent benefactor, Prince Girolamo Guiccardini Strozzi!
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