Low life
Lights out
Jeffrey Bernard
So that's it then. The gravy train is going to be derailed tonight. I might go along to the Apollo to see my name in lights for the last time. When they turn them off it will be like seeing my own life support system switched off. Then I really will be unwell. The road to obscurity is looming up ahead and I am reminded of the morning after a brilliant one-night stand. As I was leaving the lady's flat I said, 'I'll see you tonight then?' She said, `Tonight? Today is Tuesday. You were Monday.' Ouch.
If I didn't think that very nearly all of life was totally absurd then I suppose I would be feeling a little down. As it is I can only marvel at the fact that the play just crept into its second year. As I have said here before, I thought Keith Waterhouse was stark mad when he told me that he was going to turn this column into a play. That was one afternoon in the Groucho Club nearly two years ago. Then I thought no one would put it on and if anybody did it would come off after a couple of nights. But a year in Shaftesbury Avenue utterly amazes me. And it does so because not a day goes by without my remembering awful aspects of the past, like living in that ghastly dosshouse in Camden Town. I had lunch up there with Anna Haycraft yester- day and we both said that we still think of getting a taxi and going to a decent restaurant to be no less than luxuries.
I just wish it hadn't taken Keith 57 years to get around to me. He, Peter O'Toole and Ned Sherrin have been the Orion's Belt that has lit up my narrow horizons for a long time. My only regret is that Tom Conti seemed to me to disapprove of the character he was playing. A hiccup in the run. I would rather be disliked intensely than disapproved of. If I have to be judged then I prefer to be up before the beak in Bow Street magistrates' court. And now there is talk of a film of the play, but only talk, mind you. If they do do it who on earth will they get to play Norman? His lookalike, Walter Matthau, would be far too expensive. Meanwhile there are matters of much more import occupying my mind. For instance, last week someone told me that Jill Tweedie and Midge McKenzie have just gone or are about to go to Iraq to speak to Saddam Hussein. If anybody had told me a few weeks ago that I would ever end up feeling sorry for that lunatic I should have damn nigh fainted. I could even have felt a touch of sympathy for Hitler had Andrea Dworkin or almost any American feminist paid him a visit. There are people who should be kept aside in cases of political or military emergencies just to be dropped, parachuted that is, on to various countries. Terry Wogan would act as a permanent curfew in Beirut once he opened his mouth.
Another thing that gives rise to some speculation is the fact that Lord Howard de Walden could have changed the course of history. A man in Newmarket told me on the blower yesterday. It seems that Lord Howard was motoring through Germany just before the war and winged a pedes- trian just enough to knock him over. His passenger told him that the victim was Hitler. Lord Howard then sought him out to apologise and later reported that Hitler was a 'terribly nice chap, thoroughly charming'. Funny people the English aris- tocracy. What might have been if the car was a couple of inches closer. I still wonder about that when I think of the Royal Mail van that struck me down. Anyway, now it Is one more walk down to the theatre and then it will be as my prep school headmas- ter would shout at 9 p.m., 'Lights out'.
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