Low life
Shaken
Jeffrey Bernard
Idon't have the most recent issue of the Sunday Times with me but if tnY memory serves me, which it doesn't often, I fancy that Sir Harold Acton was quoted a,s . saying he was slightly shocked by how much we in England eat and drink. He went on to say that there was a chap called Benny Green who writes for the Spectator `w1.1,° seems to spend his entire life in pubs • Anyway, it was something very, very nearly like that and I think the old boy has at last got his wires crossed. Benny's alarming compulsion to cover blank sheets of paper with words keeps him far too busy to go In- to pubs. What chokes me though is the fact that he can afford to, whereas I have to
sacrifice — trivialities admittedly — the likes of food, clothes and holidays to pur- sue my unchosen profession in pubs.
What I'm getting round to is the fact that a lot of people recently have suffered severe losses of blood feeling sorry for sacked journalists and hacks on the verge of redun- dancy. Ron Hall with his alleged £65,000 handshake lumbers to mind and try as I may I find it very hard work to feel sorry for a man with a house in Hampstead and 65 Grand in his bin. Nothing against Ron mind you, who's treated me better in the Past than I've served him, but it's all a bit galling for a man whose last handshake preceded a third-round knockout.
Actually, come to think of it, I did once get a few — very few — quid when the Dai- ly Mirror magazine folded round about 1969. I bought my wife a car to facilitate the household shopping but she used it as a vehicle to facilitate her leaving me. What sort of handshake that could be called I'm not quite sure but I think it once happened ata slightly higher level to Sir Cecil King. Still, if you aspire to depths and not heights I suppose a wife and a car disappearing down the road is something to be shrugged off and food for considering whether to replace them or not.
The thing is, £65,000 is mind-boggling to Me. D'you realise that it probably takes the likes of Osborne, Pinter and Ayckbourn a week to earn that much? And what of the other hacks who haven't had the good luck to be sacked? My heart bleeds for them too. It was worked out once by some cynic in Fleet Street that the average feature writer cm .a posh paper got about £300 a week for wilting an average of 200 words a week. I know a woman who was sent to Provence for a week — a buckshee holiday really who returned to her desk to write 200 words on how to cook an aubergine. (Sorry about tins, but a little more moaning and I'll get it out of my system). Yes, I know of one paper where they throw the expenses at you. They can't get rid of the stuff fast enough. I would have Made a brilliant newspaper accountant if I hadn't chosen to be a gentleman instead, and like quite a few other gents I was due to appear in court last week. Because of an old debt involving a horrid suite of furniture I bought for another wife (she at least had the decency to leave me in a taxi and not my car), the court want to examine my finan- cial situation. The real bastard though is the fact that when registrars, judges and Magistrates read about the vast sums jour- nalists earn they'll automatically put me in the Ron Hall/Benny Green class. It's very difficult explaining to these people just how one lives. I remember once standing on the Pavement outside a court with a barrister who'd just given me a roasting for being skint; I said goodbye to him and hailed a taxi. He looked nonplussed. Why? Mayn't a Man spend £1.50 of his last fiver on a taxi to the Coach and Horses? Apparently not. Meanwhile Ron, if you're reading this by any chance, I've got some cracking ideas about how best to invest £65,000. Please contact me at my office if you're interested.
Previous page
