hris Patten. asked by the BBC to characterise the defining
moment in his life, says it was the '15 minutes of fame' he enjoyed as a result of his governorship of
Hong Kong. He tells a story by way of illustration. 'I remember shortly after I had come back from Hong Kong, walking near my house in France, and meeting an old gentleman who asked me where I came from,' he says. 'I told him the village and he said: "Ah, have you met the great man from Asia who has just moved in there?" So I said no, I hadn't. And he said: "Ah, he was a great man — the governor of Saigon!" ' Fe'things could be more unappealing than Michael Barry-rnore's determination to stage a comeback, with the inevitable grinning, mugging and flirting with coach-party grannies. (Not because of the body in the swimming pool, mind —just because he is Michael Barrymore. What he does in his private life is probably his own affair.) Happily, his public seems to be voting with its feet. What gossip-writers like to call `theatreland insiders' affirm that advance sales for tickets of his one-man show at Wyndham's Theatre, due to open in September, are so far 'catastrophic'. The Stage's box-office expert, who goes under the nom-de-guerre of 'Boffo', explains it thus: 'Nobody is going to fork out £37.50 for the West End's answer to Fatty Arbuckle.'
Since everyone's at it, how about another Campbell conspiracy theory? Here's the thing. You are the bagpiper-in-chief, and your number is looking to be up unless you can establish that the BBC is a purveyor of speculation, innuendo and simple untruth (which, you ruefully note, is a usurpation of your own customary role). So you allow a senior political journalist, say. Andrew Marr of the BBC, to be briefed off the record that you are definitely going to resign. Hullabaloo ensues. Then you deny, firmly and unequivocally, that you are even contemplating quitting. Then you stay obdurately put: thus proving yourself right, the BBC to be nothing more than a malicious rumour mill, and obviating the need for a resignation. Well, it may sound silly but it's certainly what I'd do in the circumstances.
Failing which, of course, Alastair will have to find a way of scraping together a crust in the private sector while he labours on preparing his diaries for publication. Westminster talk has it that he has been approached privately by the American news network CNN. The sidelines of Hollywood superstars. For Paul Newman, it's salad dressing. For Sean Coombs, it's bling-bling
streetwear. For Kevin Costner? Centrifuges. As controlling shareholder in Costner Industries, Texas, the star of Sizzle Beach USA and Field of Dreams told this year's Offshore Technology Conference that his new centrifuges could one day clear oil spills the world over using something called 'small footprint reciprocal rotation'. 'This is a very proud moment for me for what started out nine years ago,' he said as he unveiled the new technology. 'Common sense said to me to stop, many, many times. Business wisdom told me to stop, many, many times. . . ' Nevertheless, he persevered. See what you can achieve when you follow your dreams!
A s this column noted a fortnight or so .riago, it was game of the Guardian's editor, Alan Rusbridger, to have published his salary (a tidy £253,000 pa) in his own newspaper, as part of his entry in the paper's list of the nation's 100 most powerful media movers and shakers. But then out come the latest accounts of the Guardian Media Group — which reveal his current salary is actually £265,000. Not such a difference numerically, perhaps, but it's getting on for the price of one trainee/work-experience power. I contacted the paper's admirable Corrections and Clarifications department to ask whether they'd be setting the record straight. 'We haven't published a
correction,' they said, 'because no one's drawn it to our attention,' In a spirit of unhelpfulness, I volunteered to draw it to their attention. 'You should send an email.' And so I did. The paper's readers' editor, Ian Mayes, wrote back promptly. He said Mr Rusbridger's current salary was 'not available' to the compilers of the list, because the annual report wasn't published until a fortnight later (and, presumably, they were shy of asking the man himself). The paper won't be correcting the figure.
Thepoet Craig Raine was telephoned by a young reporter this week about the new play, his first, which he has just completed. Mr Raines work doesn't shy away from the bawdy (he is the author, inter alia, of the language's most famous poem called `Arsehole'), so when the reporter heard the play was to be called Acts of Great Indecency, she asked enthusiastically, 'Is it a kind of a farce, then?' Raine, horrified (he has yet to live the `Arsehole' thing down): `No! No! It's called Acts of Grace and Decency.'
The Collected Poems of the great American poet Robert Lowell. at last just published more than a quarter-century after his death, caused an anxious moment for Seamus Heaney. Lowell's editors, Frank Bidart and David Gewanter, discovered in their researches that Lowell had translated, but never published, a section of Beowulf. Heaney won the Whitbread Prize for his own translation of Beowulf, and has an interest in being the only game in town. Gewanter ran into Heaney in New York, and mentioned it. 'Seamus said, "Really?" 'he reports. 'Then he gave me a sly look. "Is it any good?" ' Alate-night repeat of the other day's ouse Magazine Parliamentary Awards ceremony provided a drunken, slumped-on-the-sofa Vole with an experience so unexpected, and so emetic, he feared he was going to have an embolism. I refer to the videotaped message from the Prime Minister, apologising that he was unable to collect his Speech of the Year award in person for the parliamentary barnstormer which led us into Iraq. 'It's my daughter's school play,' he explained, before adding with a level of unblinking, folksy sanctimony distinguished even by his standards: 'Family has to come first.'
Sir Vidia Naipaul is unquestionably among Sir most distinguished writers but, according to friends, has yet, miffingly, to be offered recognition or congratulation by any of the government's arts panjandrums. They didn't even write to him when he won the Nobel Prize. It may or may not be a coincidence, mind, that a year or two ago he gave an interview blaming 'this appalling government' for creating an 'aggressively plebeian culture that celebrates itself for being plebeian' and having 'destroyed the idea of civilisation in this country'.
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