BOOKS

Only a wit among lords?

Robert Harris

TELL THEM I'M ON MY WAY by Arnold Goodman Chapman, £20, pp.464 NOT AN ENGLISHMAN: CONVERSATIONS WITH LORD GOODMAN by David Selbourne Sinclair-Stevenson, £17.99, pp. 237 Is Lord Goodman a wit? In his view, yes — 'I have always regarded myself somewhat complacently as being rather funny' — and almost every review of his memoirs (and how many there have been in the past fortnight, and how gushing) has taken him at his own assessment. David Selbourne, who has conducted 23 inter- views with his subject and compiled them into a book, also believes Lord Goodman (or `G' as he mysteriously calls him) to be a wit and, indeed, a kind of philosopher- genius.

It is therefore with some trepidation that I enter a minority opinion. I do not consid- er him a wit. On the contrary. I have now toiled my way through some 700 pages of Goodman's ruminative, oracular and long-winded Augustan pastiche and have registered barely a flicker of amusement (I did laugh once; I shall come to that later).

Consider the following example, quoted by Selbourne, when his Lordship ponders the commandment to 'love your neighbour as yourself:

'If your neighbour's rottweiler is in your gar- den and about to tear you to pieces, it is diffi- cult to operate this maxim,' G. said. At which he began to laugh until there were tears in his eyes; his laughter was infectious, and it was some time before we could resume.

Perhaps you had to be there. Let us try another occasion, when `G', in a character- istically original phrase, describes Pavarotti as singing 'like an angel':

G. broke into laughter. 'However, it would give me a rude shock if, on arrival in heaven, I was to find that all the angels looked like Pavarotti.'

Laughter here stopped our conversation for some moments.

If you have to make a funny speech, my advice is to book this man Selbourne for the audience immediately.

I dwell upon the matter of Lord Good- man's wit only because he is supposed to possess, and clearly believes he possesses, the cadenced repartee of a latter-day Samuel Johnson. Instead he sounds like nothing so much as an elderly alderman rising to address a Rotary Club after a good luncheon, unshakably convinced he is the drollest fellow in town. In the 1970's, as a member of the South Bank Theatre Board, Goodman and his colleagues were confronted with a revolving stage which refused to work:

I offered a simple solution to the problem. I pointed out the proximity of the theatre to the Thames and that it would not require great exertion to push the turntable on to the edge and watch it happily disappear beneath the waters.

This is really just a long-winded (and pompous, and pedantic) way of saying 'Let's tip it in the river'. Lord Goodman's jokes depend almost entirely for their effect on his orotund and sham-antique manner, whereas a true wit's jokes — John- son's, for example — are timeless because they encapsulate truths still recognisable centuries later.

If not wit, then, what of the other quali- ties which are meant to make Lord Good- man such an ornament to our nation: his public service, his sagacity, his goodness?

Goodman, by all accounts (not least his own), is supposed to have been one of the most powerful figures in the land, moving

in stately fashion through the drawing rooms of the great and good, spending three hours a week in Downing Street with Harold Wilson, seeking and bestowing favours, issuing a writ here, a word of advice there. He was Chairman of British Lion Films, the Observer Editorial Trust, the Arts Council, the Newspaper Publishers Association, the Committee of Inquiry into Charity Law, the Housing Association.., two more chairs, as Woody Allen might have put it, and he would have had a dining room set. He was also Deputy Chairman of the British Council, a Direc- tor of the Royal Opera House, Governor of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre and Master of University College, Oxford.

All this involved a great deal of oiling and greasing behind the scenes, fixing com- mittees, interviewing candidates, arranging knighthoods, lunching proprietors. Of course, not once has Goodman done anything so vulgar as being elected to a position by his fellow citizens. He prefers to operate 'quietly and away from the light of day ... no sensible decisions are made under the searching light of inquisitive scrutiny...'

And, really, when one looks down that list of quangos, sinecures and failures (British Lion Films! The Observer Editorial Trust!) what evidence is there that he has accomplished as much in his career as even the most average junior minister? Not only are the triumphs won and the battles fought now half-forgotten, they were mostly quite unmemorable and unimportant in the first place.

Anyone wishing to make a close study of the Goodman phenomenon should buy Selbourne's book as well as the autobiogra- phy, for this serves as vinegar to its oil. `I entertain hostility to virtually nobody,' purrs Goodman the autobiographer, 'I can- not remember any piece of malice that rolls across my tongue which I am avid to utter: Goodman the interviewee is less magnani- mous. Lord Denning 'is an unfortunate example of a man who built up a reputa- tion on sand'. Andrew Neil is 'an editor who is totally incapable of making a moral judgment'. `If there is to be such a thing as a Minister for the Arts it ought to be anyone but a David Mellor.'

In the memoirs, Goodman claims: 'I am not an anti-feminist.' In the interviews, he declares: 'I have a deep-seated conviction that women are intellectually inferior to men.' His views on blacks also belie his saintly image: 'in America it is almost impossible to find a Negro who is legiti- mate.' You are not saying,' gasps Sel- bourne at one point, 'that all Africans are barbarians?' No,' replies the blessed Arnold smoothly, 'but a good many are.'

Does a wise and tolerant man really hold such views? Does he say (as Goodman says of the former Soviet Union) that

I have no particular affection for communism but it seems to me purblind to ignore the fact that the system kept a vast country in relative social tranquillity for 70 years.

What a wonderful, oily lawyer's phrase that is — 'relative social tranquility' — and what a pity that Stalin, Beria and the rest died without availing themselves of the ser- vices of Goodman, Derrick & Co.

So vast is Lord Goodman's self-regard, so immense his self-absorption, he seems to have no idea how ridiculous he can some- times appear:

On one occasion I was invited, as many other people are, to lunch at Buckingham Palace ... On another occasion I found myself in more intimate circumstances as the only guest, apart from Her Majesty, at a dinner party organised by Lord and Lady Rupert NeviII at their London home. The evening was an enormous success. We were supposed to depart at 11.30 pm, but so lively and interest- ing was the conversation that in fact it was midnight before the party broke up.

A whole extra thirty minutes! What shim- mering wit our hero must have displayed! It is the bathos of this anecdote that is the true comic highlight of Lord Goodman's autobiography — proof that nobody, in the end, is quite as Pooterish as a Somebody.