DIARY
CRAIG BROWN Last week at the Liberal Assembly I wrote in the Times conference sketch that David Steel's adviser Mr Richard Holme looked like the kind of bogus major who cons old ladies in forgotten seaside towns out of their fortunes. By chance, Mr Holme and I were staying in the same hotel, and my heart missed a beat every time I passed him the next day, lest someone had pointed me out to him. I thought that I had got off scot-free until that evening I was approached in a Harro- gate restaurant by none other than Mr Holme. He would like to inform me, he said, that he was the only Liberal on the platform who had in fact been a genuine captain in the army. I didn't like to tell him that all bogus majors are in fact genuine captains. Instead I smiled, shook hands and played grown-ups until he returned to his seat. But things aren't always so easy. Tapped on the shoulder at a party recently, I turned round to be confronted by Mr Robert Kilroy Silk, whom I had never met before. `So, Craig Brown,' he said, his oddly meaningless eyes staring from his grey puppet-face, 'Why did you write that I was sinister, then?'
My paranoia was increased when I was invited on to a radio programme to review a Sunday Times book with the godless title of Lifeplan — This Book Could Change Your Life in front of one of its authors. A couple of days before I was due to appear, word came through from the publishers to remind me that the author in question, Mr John Nicholson, had reviewed a book of mine enthusiasti- cally a year or two ago. The author himself then mentioned this coincidence to the producers. But truth will out, even among reviewers, and I found myself calling the book drivel to his face. I now think that my outburst might have been influenced by something other than the awfulness of the book and an overreaction to log-rolling. One of the book's more upsetting claims is that anyone drinking five bottles of wine a week should either cut down to three or admit that he is an alcoholic. I drink roughly a bottle a day, have no plans to cut down and certainly won't admit that I'm an alcoholic because I know for sure that I am not. I don't like the idea of Sunday Times journalists who have been forced into the drink-free zone of Wapping turning their deprivation into a virtue and pooh-poohing those who are still free. Perhaps some of this irritation coloured my review.
Iwas very pleased to meet Arthur Marshall and Jonathan Miller on the same programme. Arthur Marshall was such good fun that I couldn't pluck up the courage to ask him what on earth he is doing being featured in Mr Peter Wright's blossoming book Spycatcher. It would be hard to think of anyone less likely to have made an appearance in that book, though possibly the Nolan Sisters or Mr Rolf Harris might just scrape ahead. Neverthe- less, there he is, twice mentioned on page 242. Jonathan Miller was equally chatty, though perhaps a little on the gloomy side. When I told him where I was going on honeymoon he gave me a lengthy descrip- tion showing how ghastly it was. He must have suddenly realised that this wasn't what I wanted to hear, so he swiftly said, `But you'll find it interesting though, very interesting indeed . . .' But then truth got the better of diplomacy and he added `. . . as an approximation of hell.'
0 ur wedding day is now a little over two weeks away, so there is still plenty of time for those who have not yet done so to purchase suitable presents. My own record of buying wedding presents for others has been lamentable, I'm sorry to say, and I suspect the crows of this negligence will now come home to roost. One of the peculiarities of approaching wedlock is that one finds oneself pitched into a pool of conventions, most of them enjoyable, some less so, and the only way to keep going is to swim with the tide. I somehow thought we might manage to duck the convention of the Wedding List, but sure enough we have found ourselves traipsing around department stores like everyone `His mum said, "Don't you go nicking stuff our to old MacGregor's."' else looking at things of previously unim- aginable irrelevance, like cut glass. My only advice to any couple in our position is don't go to Peter Jones. While the other shops are friendly, albeit to a fairly strict format (`And when's the Big Day? The 10th! Well, there's a man who knows what he's about!'), Peter Jones operates a sys- tem more reminiscent of a dole queue than a wedding list. First you must pull a number from a dispenser and then wait in a queue until your number is called. Even- tually you are given a frosty, driving- examiner welcome by a bossy woman who produces a sheaf of what look like 0-level papers but are actually instructions on the intricacies of jotting down serial numbers to facilitate their computerised wedding list programme. 'Familiarise yourself with the contents of the instructions and then report back,' says the woman, already looking over your shoulder for the next in the queue. At this point in the procedure, we headed for the exit, leaving the sheaf of instructions on the sofa. Our list, for those interested, is now at the Conran Shop, where they are friendly, uncomputerised, and do not sell cut glass.
The new Spitting Image book arrives through the post. Its directionless ugliness and abuse now seem part of the process it set out to despise, but as I have contributed to it I had better show solidarity. The publishers have asked different writers to be rude about different celebrities, and they think — rather naively in my view that the country will be sent into a frenzy trying to guess who has been rude about whom. But I don't think the people who buy comic picture books care one way or another about which little-known writer has got a chip on his shoulder about which famous person. This means that the only result of the lack of attribution will be that friends suspect me of writing someone else's unfunny jokes and suspect someone like John Mortimer of writing mine. A similar journalistic convention prevents reviewers mentioning the denouement of any play whose appeal relies solely on plot, such as a whodunnit. But sometimes this convention should be dropped for ques- tions of greater public interest. Let us imagine, for instance, that a famous writer has recently been in court and has vindi- cated his claims that the accusations against him are false. This man then writes a West End play about a man on trial who, to everyone's relief, is found not guilty. The denouement comes when the man,
celebrating, tells a friend that he was guilty all along. But because of the journalistic convention, the triumphant perversity of this denouement can never be raised. Or can it?
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