DIARY
BORIS JOHNSON It was him! We had just put some money on a couple of losers and were staggering down the rain-lashed concrete landing towards the Telegraph box at Ascot, and there, bowling towards us, looking lean and tall in a dove-grey waistcoat and tails, was Wafic Said. We'd seen his horse was on the racecard, a filly by the name of Lady Carla, after the Pussy Galore of the Referendum Party, Carla Powell. But now was no time for chit-chat. This was Wafic! the man who was there, with Jonathan Aitken, in the Paris Ritz on that fateful weekend of 17 September 1993, one of the trio of busi- nessmen called Said — Wafic Said, Said Ayas and Right Said Fred — whose pres- ence so compromised the ex-minister for defence procurement. For a second I hesi- tated, remembering that we had never been introduced, and that Wafic had apparently taken exception to a piece of mine which referred to him as an 'arms dealer'. For the record, Mr Said is not an arms dealer. He is an estate agent with interests in Riyadh. If you want to buy some real estate with 20mm cannon on both wings, he's your man. But more importantly, the Syrian- born tycoon (is that OK?) who was striding past down the grandstand corridor is the very man who introduced Jonathan Aitken to the realtor's art — you know, how to sell those highly desirable properties with rotat- ing turrets and surface-to-air missiles. He's the man who knows what really happened in the Ritz, who, if he but opened his mouth, could probably clear the former Chief Secretary's name and bring him back from his hidey-hole in `the Americas'. For what is the gravamen, as mleamed wife puts it, of the charge against Aitken? That he attempted to 'procure' prostitutes from among the women of Kintbury? Pshaw. Even World in Action says he merely mum- bled to the head of the hydro, Dr Kirk, that it might be an idea if the sheikhs had some female company. Is that pimping, Kintbury- style? You may think it unlikely, but we cannot altogether rule out the possibility that Aitken's only goofs were breaking the rules of procedure for ministers by letting his daughter's godfather pay his hotel bill, and then lying about it. One man could now settle the matter. `Wa—,' I said as his pale eyes flickered towards us. `Wa—.' Too late. Wafic wafted past. He has denied even being at the Ritz, in spite of the ocular proofs offered by Mohamed Fayed. Some- one later said he wasn't in a particularly good mood. A slow day for Lady Carla, it seems.
If Tony Blair were seriously smart he would be at Ascot, too, dressed like Wafic and the rest of the mob, ecstatic and roar- ing with white wine. My friend with Tony's ear pretends to be interested. 'Tony and Cherie in the royal coach, eh? Could be good.' Tony can't send his tanks too far into Tory territory, I urge him. Isn't that the essence of the Mandelson strategy? `Yeees,' he says weedily, 'but we've got to watch out for the tanks in our rear.'
From Ascot I begin driving, driving in the driving rain to North Wales. Have you ever tried the Ml and M6 on a Friday afternoon? It is almost an argument for Gordon Brown's petrol tax. Finally on a remote hedgerow I spot a brace of deflated blue balloons. The marquee is sodden. But there are roars of laughter within, the raffle as keenly contested as ever. Spirits are high in the Conservative Association. The resolve is firm. A great beast is stirring. They will fight this ban on hunting and, broadly speaking, they will be right. From the high, damp places of Clwyd South the keepers, the grooms, the hunters and the shooters will march on Hyde Park on 10 July in the first battle of the Kulturkampf against the tyranny of those so politically correct they dare not show their faces even at Royal Ascot.
You remember Meg Ryan in that film When Harry Met Sally? You should have been in the committee corridor when they announced that William Hague had won the Tory leadership. Some said she was Nicholas Soames's secretary, some that she was David Heathcoat-Amory's. Whoever she was, she knew all about having an orgasm in public. 'Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!' she said, raking her cheeks like a victim of Beatlemania. `Yeerrsss! There is a God!' This struck me as perhaps being a one-off until Janet Daley confessed in print to simi- lar behaviour in a taxi when the news came over the radio. Interesting, isn't it, that William should already be having this effect? Spying Alan Clark shouldering his way through the crowd, I asked if he was similarly moved. He turned in his saurian way, so that I was looking up his nostrils. `Sod off,' he said, with about four syllables. What have I done to offend Alan Clark? I've never made fun of his diaries, the way he calls a balcony a bakon. Once upon a time, when he was in search of a seat, Clark was pretty cordial to the gentlemen of the press. Now he basks in his majority in Kensington and Chelsea, not to mention the public orgasms of the blue-rinse brigade, and it's 'sod off. It turns out he has 'abstained' in the leadership election, one of two to do so.
Iam reading the Oxford Companion to Philosophy for a swotting contest with my uncle. The objective, naturally, is to be able to show off. After a while it becomes clear that the book is a scam. It is just like that ridiculous work called Debrett's People of Today, which invites suckers to write a bio of themselves for inclusion. They then receive a series of increasingly menacing letters inviting them to buy this compendi- um of self-puffery, and if they fail to fork out f120 they are ruthlessly edited out, so becoming 'People of Yesterday'. The editor of the Oxford Companion to Philosophy, Ted Honderich, a Canadian with a theory about free will, has obviously decided to sell this book on the same principle, by mentioning everyone who might conceiv- ably want to buy it, so that various obscure professors at Calgary are up there with Plato and Kant. Some of his editing is frankly dubious, for instance the entry on `animals'. It seems the philosophical discus- sion of animals had been fairly cretinous until the arrival of one Peter Singer. At which point 'Singer argued' this, and `Singer urged' that, and 'Singer compared speciesism with racism and sexism'. And what initials appear at the foot of the entry? `P.S.', that is, Peter Singer, of Monash University, Melbourne. It is a dis- grace. If Peter Singer has any intellectual integrity he will come to Hyde Park on 10 July and explain `speciesism' to the keepers from Corwen and Llangollen.
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