ANOTHER VOICE
Change and decay in all around I see
AUBERON WAUGH
There was a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful picture in last Wednesday's Daily Mirror. Reporting on the Budget, and complaining bitterly about the extra £69,000 a year awarded to the handsome, popular Duke of York and his delicious bride (`Thanks for nothing, Lawson'), it compared a slightly disturbing portrait of the royal couple with the picture of a British family of the sort which had not done well out of the Budget. The couple concerned was called Chris and Rita Watts; they were shown, in full colour, with their two children, glaring at the camera, Chris holding a small bundle of £20 and £10 notes. The first thing that struck the eye was how extraordinarily unattractive they were. Mother and daugh- ter were red-haired, the father was balding and bearded with the sort of spectacles which might make any employer lock himself in his office. But the most striking aspect of this dismal group was the intensi- ty of its resentment and its humourless- ness. The caption, after a reversed white- on-black 'Disgusted', read: 'The hard-up Watts family reckon they won't be any better off through the Budget. Mother of two Rita said: "I'm furious Mr Lawson's done so little for poorer families." ' My own reaction, if ever I was con- fronted by this gloomy family, would be to laugh hysterically, grab Chris's bundle of notes — it looks as if it adds up to about £70— and run for it. I do not suppose that many Mirror readers will have reacted very differently. The point about the Watts family is that they are paraded in the Mirror as objects of curiosity — possibly pity — but certainly not as the sort of people with whom any Mirror reader, however poorly paid, could possibly wish• to identify. They might be animals in the zoo for the warm-hearted British public to coo over, but they are certainly not any recognisable part of the warm-hearted British public.
I suppose it must be hard for Mirror editorial staff, none of whom, I imagine, is paid less than £22,000 a year, to identify with these poorly paid wretches. But when I worked for the Mirror, a quarter of a century ago under the great Hugh Cudlipp, we jolly well made a better attempt at it than that. It is as if the Mirror had despaired of the prosperous working class, who have been taken over by the Sun, and is now attempting to appeal, in an opportu- nistic and incompetent way, to some
pilgerish projection. An important piece of old England is in danger of being lost.
So, it would appear, is another great British institution with which I was once proud to be associated. The current (17 March) issue of Private Eye has a story in it which, if true, deserves to be blazoned over the front page of every newspaper to set the nation laughing. Even if it is not true, it deserves greater prominence than to be lost in a boring item about squabbling Blair Peach committees. The story is that the Friends of Salman Rushdie, who per- suaded over 1,000 writers, including some quite eminent ones, to, subscribe £25 a- piece towards full-page advertisements in his support, have nothing to do with Rushdie, and are in fact disowned by him, but are a front organisation for the Social- ist Workers Party which must have made huge sums of money from the wheeze. Although it stuck in my throat a bit to describe myself as a Friend of Salman Rushdie, I contributed my £25 on the vague feeling that we should all do our bit to encourage a new Western Crusade to defeat Islam and recover the oil fields and other holy places of the East. Never mind about Rushdie, but now the fundamental- ists are trying to suppress the Divina Commedia after 680 years, the time has surely come for us to emulate Don John of Austria and take our weapons from the wall. But the suggestion that my £25 and all the other £25s went instead to the Socialist Workers Party strikes me as exquisitely funny, if only Private Eye could see the joke.
Yet another institution, even closer to home, which shows alarming signs of insta- bility is the great St Peregrine himself. In a splendid leader last week which had us all clapping our hands and dancing in Somer- set, he denounced his fellow editors of the Sunday Times and Observer in the round- est terms:
Certainly the great quality paper editors of the past had better things to do with their spare time than hold hands with ladies of easy virtue in public.
In the grandest of British traditions, he accuses the hapless couple (now 'forever known as Randy Andy and Dirty Don') of 'endangering irresponsibly and self- indulgently the authority and reputation of great historic organs of opinion, of which they happen temporarily to be in charge, by themselves becoming figures at best of fun, at worst of disrepute'. Remembering an occasion when he was himself publicly caned by his then proprietor, Lord Hart- well, for using a four-letter word on television, he concludes: 'Let us hope ... that the two newspaper proprietors con- cerned take as dim a view of their editors' frivolity as Lord Hartwell did of mine.'
Let us indeed hope so. This is all the most splendid stuff. The Uriah Heep tradi- tion runs strong, pure and true through all the great historic organs of opinion. If I could be sure that all the readers of the Literary Review also took the Sunday Telegraph, I would invite them to set this historic sermon, 'Playboys as editors', to verse in such a way that it could be sung to the tune either of 'Battle Hymn of the Republic' or 'Abide With Me'. But in the course of his noble oration, St Peregrine allows himself a little digression on the 'excesses at the bottom end of the market', mentioning 'the sins of sensationalism, bad taste, sexual titillation, invasion of privacy, vulgarity....'
But then what, oh what did we see just eight pages earlier, advertised on page one of our beloved Sunday Telegraph? 'My mother's affair with Lord Astor' by 'novel- ist and biographer' Simon Blow? Sure enough, there it is at the top of page 16 across four columns: 'My mother had an affair with Lord Astor.'
Who on earth, we might ask, was Simon Blow's mother? Well, she was called Diana Bethel!. Her affair — a brief one — took place about five years before the Profumo scandal. Having sold his mother in this curious way, Blow is reticent about the details or significance of it all:
Bill offered financial security. She refused the money, but submitted to the brief affair. Since I was very close to her, she told me about it. She submitted because she had a fondness for him, and anyway he had been entreating her for 20 years.
What on earth does the saintly editor of the Sunday Telegraph think he is doing? Perhaps this is not quite as lurid as the News of the World's dirty clergymen, but it is obviously the Sunday Telegraph reader's equivalent. Whatever will they print next? 'My father had an affair with Kenneth Rose's grandmother, by Winston S. Chur- chill Jr? Like Chris and Rita Watts, I'm Disgusted.
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