DIARY
GREY GOWRIE This year, I visited the Festival on my own. On solitary walks round the magnifi- cent city, between bouts of cultural con- sumption, I meditated on Scottish politics. Scotland is a country as distinct as my native Ireland, perhaps more so than our adopted Principality of Wales. The smaller countries of the kingdom, and also the Republic, are comfortable with the idea of European Union in a way in which the English, in my judgment, are not. They are used to exploit- ing the big neighbour while basking in the belief that they are the ones being ripped off. They define their identity in terms of kinship and culture; the English define theirs through politics and Parliament. Devolution may be genuinely desired in Scotland, but only if it continues to advan- tage the Scots against the English. I suspect that Tony Blair knows this. Certainly his body language seems awkward when the issue is raised. If he forms an administra- tion, he is right to worry. Through the Arts Council, I deal closely with big city govern- ment in the regions, all of it under Labour control. As one leader of a northern city council put it to me, We are used to a dou- ble whammy for the Scots — more MPs per head, more public spending per head. A triple whammy, where the Scots vote on our affairs and we don't vote on theirs, is a whammy too far.' This is the famous West Lothian question. Like many former Tory ministers, I have respect, with question marks, for New Labour. In recent years I have enjoyed, too, the opportunities afford- ed me, as a quango castrato, of working with shadow ministers. But seeking to enter Office weighed down by the luggage of par- tial constitutional reform and Scottish devo- lution seems barmy to me: a recipe for par- liamentary traffic jams at best, massive foul- ups being more likely. If I were Mr Blair, I Would compile lists of more pressing priori- ties each time I took a bath.
There have been complaints that the Festival is too inchoate, that there is insuf- ficient quality control, that the star show collapsed ignominiously through technical discombobulation. On the evidence of three intensive days and nights, I disagree. I ant a wholehearted Brian MacMaster fan. I concentrated in the main on art, theatre and dance, keeping music for later. The Festival divides into posh and fringe. It is best if, as in life, you shuttle between the two. The high point of posh was work Which started, in a New York context, on the fringe. The Mark Morris Dance Com- pany comes all too seldom to Britain, but is now a Festival regular. It is worth going for Morris alone. He is a great choreographer, and has a unique ability to marry seemingly inappropriate music (this year a Montever-
di motet) to modern situations. He is him- self an unusual dancer. Though obviously fit, he looks and moves like someone in early middle age; he is also chubby for his trade. He performed a solo piece in pyja- mas. The effect was of a man enjoying a personal, and self-parodying, fantasy before getting dressed in the morning. You felt there was a wife offstage, getting out the cereal, preparing to drive him to catch the 7.15. Last year the company performed a short piece, sad and funny, on corporate downsizing. Executive types danced into an office full of beans and exited with leaden steps, flawlessly mimed. Catch Mark Morris at Edinburgh if you can. Save up and fly to New York if you cannot.
Iwas sacked myself (again) as chairman of the English Arts Council while shopping in Princes Street. 'Is it true', a journalist buttonholed me, that if Labour wins you
Maurice Saatchi speaks
will be replaced by Harold Evans?' Last time it was to be by David Puttnam, who rang me comfortingly from Ireland. If Harry, the present head of Random House in New York, came accompanied by a dowry from his employer, Sy Newhouse, one of the five richest men in America, it would indeed be worth giving way graceful- ly. I doubt if Sy would give up Tina Brown, Mrs Harry, without a fight, as she rescued the New Yorker for him. I must ring my old firm of Ladbroke's and see if one can get odds on David.
Iran into Jann Parry, the Observer's acute dance critic, at Mark Morris, and asked which other groups might be worth visiting. She told me that the young Hun- garian dancer-choreographer, Yvette Bozsik, had a talent without ceiling. She added, cryptically, 'Chaps tend to like her stuff as well.' I went next afternoon, think- ing I would stay for half the programme as the whole day was devoted to frenzied graz- ing on the Fringe. I lasted the course, and was rewarded with the most intense (non- participatory) erotic experience of my life. The company consisted of two men and four women, including Bozsik herself. One of them, Hedwig Fekete, could stop a clock with her beauty (and I, aged 18, once saw Garbo plain and had tea with her in County Donegal). They were performing a version of Kafka's The Castle. The Castle is a great work, but you file it in the pity and terror section. Bozsik doused it with high-octane sex. Josef K, who looked like one of those thuggishly handsome men painted by Fran- cis Bacon, had to run a gauntlet of attempt- ed seduction, any of which would have overcome chaste Sir Gawain. Jann Parry was right. The audience was in the main young and attractive too, the only disap- pointment being that the beautiful Satie music was canned. Edinburgh boasts many a fine pianist, and one could, surely, have been found. 'You should', I told the ush- erette sternly on the way out, 'put up a notice banning men over 50, for fear of car- diac arrest.'
Unlike my first visit to the Festival in my twenties, you can eat well in Edinburgh these days, at all price levels. The ingredi- ents — Angus beef, Orcadian scallops, undyed kippers — are without peer. I fin- ished a meal with raspberries from the Carse of Gowrie, the area being the Château Lafite of raspberry-growing. Alas, I can declare no interest. The Carse (unkind schoolfellows would delete the C from our textbooks) is in any case affected by undercutting from Eastern Europe. Rather like the Festival, in fact.
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