Another voice

Wine and the Press Council

Auberon Waugh

Next month marks the launching of the Spectator Wine Club with a monthly wine column promoting its wares which will be written by myself. Also next month, on 28 October, Gollancz publishes an English version of Louis Forest's famous Monseigneur Le Vin of 1927 under the title Wine Album and at the price of £6.95. The text offers a wine vocabulary 'engaging'; 'seductive': 'amorous'; 'volup- tuous'; 'shameless': 'plebian'; 'a lout' which I, as a wine writer, almost certainly won't find useful at all.

This problem of trying to describe a taste was one which I tackled quite squarely — or so I thought — in the first of a series of wine columns which I have been writing for some time in Tatler magazine under the pseudonym of Crispin de St Crispian. Although the original inspiration for Mr de St Crispian came from Bertram Wooster's famous article on What the Well Dressed Young Man is Wearing in a similar publica- tion, Crispin rather ran away with the part to emerge as a somewhat exaggerated sort of fellow. If Spectator readers will forgive me for importing this improbable character into their own chaste pages, I will quote the relevant passage. My reasons will soon be clear:

... Prose writing which tries to describe a taste can become vulgar and even rather disgusting, when it resorts to metaphor and allusion. The art of the business is to choose references which become more and more preposterous and inappropriate as the se- cond and third bottles are produced.

`Comparisons may be made with music, or motor cars, or favourite football players, the sexual performance of famous women or shared acquaintances, but it must be ex- travagant, histrionic and absurd. It simply will not do, when given a wine which costs more than £6 or £7 a bottle, to say it is jolly good or absolutely delicious. That is not playing the game ... People who have skimped on wine should be made to suffer for it. Their wine should be compared to a creaky old woman's bicycle in a Merseyside cul-de-sac, a bunch of dead chrysan- themums on the grave of a still-born West Indian baby ... '

Some time after this had appeared, I received a letter which purported to come from a midwife in Camden. She said that her experience with still-born West Indian babies made this reference to them in a wine article both tasteless and offensive, and that she proposed to complain to the Press Council. I do not remember whether I answered her letter or not — I hope not, because at this stage I was half-persuaded that it was a practical joke by Patrick Marn- ham. Those who know Marnham have to

suffer these little jokes from time to time. It seemed most unlikely that Camden mid- wives would read the Tatler, unless in their dentist's waiting room. Nobody's judgment is at its best when suffering from a toothache. Best thing was to get rid of the letter and forget about it all.

But I can quite see that the reference might indeed have stirred unhappy thoughts among West Indian mothers who had suffered a still birth and among those public functionaries whose business it is to cope with such tragedies. No use to argue that for such people the image would be even more relevant, more poignant. The plain truth is that writers cannot hope to cater for everybody's private grief or anxie- ty. Wodehouse's famous description of the prize-giving at Market Snodsbury Grammar School would not be suitable reading at the funeral service of an alcoholic, but that is not criticism of Wodehouse. Similarly, I cannot think of a single thing I write which would be suitable for the Health and Social Welfare workers on Camden Borough Council. There are plenty of magazines which cater almost exclusively for their gloomy preoccupations. I do not read New Society or New Statesman or New Depar- tures in Modern Verse; why on earth should they read Tatler?

There the matter rested until this week when a sheaf of papers arrived through the post from the Press Council. Ms Somebody-or-other's complaint had been taken up by no less a person than the Camden Community Relations Officer on behalf of the Camden Committee for Com- munity Relations, Mr Christopher (`Chris') Adamson. At the same time as complaining to the Press Council, Mr Adamson issued a press statement, published in part in the Hampstead and Highgate Express on 23 July, describing my article as 'totally distasteful':

`I consider at best that the sentence is in extremely bad taste, and at worst could well be considered racist,' says Chris, explaining, `by the addition of the reference to a "stillborn, West Indian baby" he implies that another baby (perhaps a white one) would not be so bad.'

Oh dear, oh dear, I have great admira- tion for the Press Council, and strongly believe one should always keep a-hold of nurse for fear of finding something worse. Under normal circumstances I would not dream of discussing a complaint against me until it had been heard, but I fancy that

when the complainant issues statements to the press putting his point of view in ad- vance then he has forfeited his right to that particular courtesy. Among the sheaf of documents, I see a reply to Mr Adamson 's original complaint from Ms Tina Brown, the elegant and energetic Editor-in-Chief of Tatler. She wrote: `There is, in my view, no question of "racism". It is quite clear that Mr Waugh is using the illustration to which you object, as with the reference to the old woman s bicycle, to evoke pity. He is comparing poor wine to something sad and depressing. That is all.' Ms Brown, bless her, is obviously used to dealing with these people. My ignorance of the Camden Borough race industry and its strange theology is almost total, living as do in West Somerset. Surely a white racist would be more appalled by the thought of a little white corpse? 'West Indian', applied to wine, suggests a hint of curried mangoes, with chillies and other spices — none of them flavours I would normally look for in wine. Does this makes me racist?

The truth is I neither know nor care. But the suggestion that Camden's Community Relations Officer is a suitable person to pass judgment on matters of literary taste strikes me as a bizarre one. I wonder what he and his Committee make of the follow- ing, and whether they would allow it to be chanted at public performances in the Borough:

`Liver of blaspheming Jew Gall of goat and slips of yew Silver'd in the moon's eclipse Nose of Turk and Tartar's lips Finger of birth-strangled babe Ditch-deliver'd by a drab Make the gruel thick and slab.'

Let the Press Council decide. I see that.' am invited to attend, although no date Is fixed for the hearing. If I am in England, I shall certainly do so. Perhaps they will let me wear a false moustache in my Crispin de St Crispin persona. If they also allow me,, shall take along some bottles of reallY unpleasant wine, so they they can judge f°r themselves whether my comments are justified or not. The bottle which inspire' the 'dead chrysanthemums' image was serv- ed by a cousin (quite a bit richer than I am) in North Devon, but he has since improved the quality of his wine — possibly as a result of my comments. I have plenty of bottles which are even worse. One, sent to me hY, the Hungerford Wine Company a' £3.11 1/2p, is a Californian Alicante Bouschet from the Angelo Papagni vineyards. Its, taste of kerosene, scorched buildings 0'1 other more biological smells conjures only one image in my mind, that of a bombed hospital in the Arab quarters of Beirut. Carl this get by the Camden community rela- tions literary panel? Or the Camden Borough midwives' circle? Or any of the busy-bodies and trouble-makers, the bor- ing, bossy, ignorant, humourless cows of both sexes on the Camden Borough, payroll? Let the Press Council Wine Panel decide.