The Questing Vole
0 n Saturday, the RSPCA will announce the results of the elections to its governing council. With efforts being made to involve the society in some sort of compromise on foxhunting, huntsmen won't be pleased to see on the list the name of David Mawson. Nor will anybody in the RSPCA who fancies a quiet life. Mawson — a hard-line animal-rights campaigner who rejoices to receive his email at the address gayvegari@hotmail.com —was the catalyst for a series of ferocious rows when he previously sat on the RSPCA's council. The RSPCA spent .£40,000 on an internal inquiry into his activities, which alleged that he called his fellow council members 'animal abusers' for failing to censure the Queen when she was photographed wringing a pheasant's neck, leaked confidential documents and brought the RSPCA into disrepute by posting abusive messages on the Internet. (The inquiry — which included legal advice that he was guilty of 'grave misconduct' — was, wouldn't you know it, leaked.) For the record, this column is unequivocally in favour of all documents (the results of the RSPCA council elections, to pluck an example from the air) being leaked as soon as possible. Should either Mr Mawson or his enemies in the RSPCA choose to pass me some in the course of the coming punch-up, I'd be delighted.
Joschka Fischer, the combustible German foreign minister, is extending the principle of perpetual revolution from his political into his personal life. He was only 19 when he made his first marriage, eloping to Gretna Green. Now, at the age of 55, he is still going strong. He has parted company with his fourth wife, Nicola Leske, 33, and is reported to be squiring around town a 'gorgeous half-Iranian theatre student in her mid-20s'. This has gone largely unremarked in his native land, however, where they have a more grown-up attitude to politicians nipping off with young popsies. Gerhard Schroder has had four wives and is all the better thought of for it.
rrhere was great rejoicing in the land of .1. Rupert when a team of the Times's senior pointyheads — headed by Mary Ann Sieghart and Michael Gove — succeeded in trouncing some politicians (Lembit Opik — I ask you) on University Challenge. How did they fare subsequently? Future episodes will show that they defeated a team of fine-art auctioneers but have now returned, heads hung in shame, to their Wapping headquarters after being seen off by a team of weather forecasters. Interview of the year so far must be that with Muhammad Saad al-Beshi, 42, Saudi Arabia's leading executioner. In an exclusive Hello?-style chat with the Arab paper Okaz, Muhammad says an early job handcuffing and blindfolding condemned prisoners was what first kindled his ambition to be an executioner when he grew up. He says the job has 'no drawbacks for my social life' and that his son Musaed is planning to follow in his father's footsteps. His family isn't afraid when he comes back from work in the evening: 'Sometimes they help me clean my sword.'
While his wife was drawing the limelight with her book, and, no doubt, annoying him by dredging up that silly business with the intern, Bill Clinton used a speech in Boston to float, quietly, an idea that is starting to appeal to him. He wants the 22nd Amendment, the bit of the US constitution which barred him — sorry, bars anyone — from being president for more than two terms, changed. 'I think, since people are living much longer,' he said, 'the 22nd Amendment should probably be modified.' It may be a long shot, but it would allow the Hill and Billary show to have its final act with husband and wife competing, Jerry Springer-style, for the Democratic nomination.
Now, to the issue of the moment, The Prime Minister's wonky spectacles. Is there a reason that, at every single PMQs he has ever worn them, they have been listing perilously to port? Watch him on the telly. Once you notice it, you can't pay attention to a word he's saying. Either it is an official distraction tactic, a Campbellinspired bid for Hugh Grant charm, or one prime ministerial ear has been stuck higher on the side of his head than the other. Nothing could be more delightful than the (cynics will suspect) entirely bogus feud between our two leading Page Three lovelies. The defending champion. 'Jordan 32FF' (as she describes herself), has seen '32C Jodie' off with a ringingly de haur en bas open letter. 'You're not just Jordan without the brains. you're Jordan without the class,' she writes, adding with what can only be called genius: 'Or the boobs.'
pity my agricultural correspondent Adams. 1 The poor clot was trying to reach Lady Antonia Fraser on the phone the other day.
answers a gruff male voice. 'Hello.' pipes Adams. 'Could I speak to Lady Antonia, please?' Lady 'oo?“I'm trying to get hold of Lady Antonia Fraser.' 0i fink you are tryin' to wind me ap,' says the male voice with a hint of steel entering it. The poor chap, it emerges, had been given in error the phone number of the retired East End gangster `Mad' Frankie Fraser. No relation.
1/ y coincidence, after years as more or less the only member of the Fraser Gang (Lady Tony's mob, that is, not Mad Frankie's) not to have published his literary efforts, young Benjamin Fraser has at last cracked and tumbled into print. His debut collection of poetry. City Poems (Greville Press), is dedicated To Harold', though there's scant sign of Pinter's influence in the poems. Much less swearing, and one even begins, 'Pray Americans come.Booted, On, Now.', which, if memory serves, is not quite Harold's line. Anyway, jolly good they are too.
In keeping with the slimmed-down, modern and democratic new constitutional set-up that the Prime Minister has been good enough to think up for us, it is a slimmed-down, modern and democratic new Lord Chancellor whose bottom now reposes on the Woolsack. The Charlie Falconer of three years ago was a complete butterball; the present one, looking trim and happy, is a great improvement. His old shape, I'm told, was the result of comforteating ice-cream Bounty Bars as he struggled through the Dome fiasco.
Incidentally, when the PM defended his attempt to abolish the Lord Chancellor on the grounds that he wears (giggle, giggle) 'a full-bottomed wig, 18th-century breeches and women's tights', didn't anyone think, as I did, sexist pig? Why `women's tights'? Nobody asks why his missus wears `men's trousers'.
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