Desert song
Jeffrey Bernard
It's been a rotten week. Very grey and without a single highlight. It's true I upset a few people but they were fairly boring incidents. There was the row in the Colony Room Club with an Irish publisher who got upset when I told him how disgusting I thought terrorists were and there was nearly a fracas in a pub when I said I thought it a pity the human race couldn't show as much concern over the thousands and thousands of people worse off than the 52 Americans. Well, that's all over bar the media ramming it down our throats and into our eyes for another few weeks, so what have we got to look forward to after that? What's to tide us over till the sun comes out? I mention the sun because the weather really is frightfully important, to my moods anyway. I could have even borne listening to Princess Margaret's Desert Island Discs selection on a summer's day, but as it was and by the time the strains of an excerpt from Swan Lake filled my sitting room, I was feeling quite suicidal.
The way she must have been brought up! Souza, Sid Phillips and a hymn sung in Welsh to name but three. I ask you. Lumbered with that lot I think I could, at last, learn to swim. But it got me thinking what and who I'd least like to be stuck on a desert island with. The fantasy was quite Painful. Included in the First XI were Gilbert and Sullivan, Cliff Richard, Erin Pizzey. and the staff of the Guardian Women's page. On another island in the Bering Straits all eight of my records were Saint Saens, my luxury was a box of tea bags and my book — eschewing of course the Bible and the bard — was In the Name of Love by Jill Tweedie. Escaping from that Place, clinging on to a baby iceberg, [found thyself washed up on a beach accompanied by a box set of Cesar Franck, the Reverend Ian Paisley, Jean Rook, Kate Millet, the Ayatollah Khomeini and [lie Nastase. My luxury was a crate of brown ale and my book the Yellow Pages for Warrington. It was With all this in mind that the week began. I sallied into Soho hoping a day there would act as a sort of anaesthetic and stop me thinking about Princess Margaret wind ing up her gramophone to play 'Rule Britannia' to an audience of iguanas, but the depression was to get deeper. Walking down Old Compton Street an old mate of mine shouted from his window and dropped the door keys down to me on the pavement. I really had no alternative but to go up to his chambers. Frank is his name, and we have known each other for years. The trouble is he does love tripping down memory lane, and all his memories seem to be of me. Furthermore, it's difficult to catch his reminiscing since he doesn't put his teeth in until he ventures forth at opening time. They lay soaking in a pudding bowl in front of me next to an overflowing and smouldering ash tray. `Do you remember coming up here in 1952 to borrow half a crown from me?' he spluttered. Unfortunately I did. This went on while we played a few hands of kaluki, and when he reminded me of an occasion, when I got knocked out sparring in Jack Solomon's gym in 1950, I found myself including him in my desert island party and asking him to bring his own record of Fingal's Cave. I took my leave, almost in tears with depression by this time, and immediately bumped into a man [owe £12 to.
By now my island was becoming as overpopulated as a penguin breeding ground and [looked with envy through my telescope over to Taki's island. The laughter, the popping of champagne corks and the Beethoven came to my ears quite clearly over the water. It was then that Esther Rantzen nudged me, half blinding me with the telescope, and I came back to earth. Half an hour later, toying with the steak pie and two veg in the Coach and Horses, it dawned on me that Soho was my desert island. Did I want to be rescued? Roy Plomley was asking me. Well, yes and no. This week, yes. Next week, who knows?
That was Monday, mind you. Things have slightly improved since then. Take yesterday. That, was tremendous fun if you like skating on thin ice. [took a man to a sort of Mafia-run afternoon drinking club I know and, unfortunately, he got drunk. No had thing in itself but not good news if you're surrounded by wops and suddenly come out with the statement, 'All Italians suffer from premature ejaculation.' Whether, thanks to my friend, I'm allowed back in the club or not or whether I'll get shot when I return, I'm not sure. But he's definitely one more for the island. He can bring 'Come Back to Sorrento' with him.
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