DIARY
ALEXANDER CHANCELLOR Ihave an embarrassingly large collection of farewell presents marking my departure from various jobs. There is a fine water- colour by Man Powers of the office I occu- pied in Doughty Street for nine years, pre- sented to me by Charles Moore when he succeeded me as editor of The Spectator in 1984. This prominently features two large ashtrays and two whisky glasses. Then there is a caricature by Michael Heath of me smoking several cigarettes at once in front of a television set, marking my transition to television critic after 1 was removed as edi- tor. From 1992, when I left the Independent for the New Yorker (my choice this time), I have — in addition to some delightful drawings by Nicholas Garland — a mock cover of the Independent Magazine, showing me looking dishevelled and dissolute, together with a parody by Mark Lawson (now of the Guardian) of the column I used to write in it. This, pretending to be me, begins: 'I have been reflecting on differing British and American attitudes to lunch. In this country, it is still, as far as I have been able to ascertain, considered normal for a senior executive to spend three or even three-and-a-half hours over lunch with a colleague or friend. If the restaurant should be some distance from the office, he might even be absent for as many as four or five hours in the middle of the day. Yet his absence from his desk is scarcely noticed, his colleagues make no comment whatsoev- er. However, in the United States of Amer- ica, attitudes are apparently very different. Lunch is no more than a functional nutri- tional interlude, lasting perhaps as little as forty-five minutes.' I also have mementos of my year at the New Yorker — notably a splendid original cover by William Steig of a prancing nude with a garland in her hair, a gift of Tina Brown — but at present, because of recent changes about the house, these things are all piled up in the fireplace in my bedroom, and I can't decide where to put them. I am fond of them all, for differ- ent reasons; but together, they can induce feelings of melancholy and self-reproach for the bad habits with which people seem to have associated me. So I am very grate- ful to my friends on the Sunday Telegraph, from which I departed last week, for their generous gift of two cases of good red wine. These be will rapidly consumed and leave no trace behind them.
Ialways get irritated when journalists report as fact things which they cannot know to be true, such as stating that the Prince and Princess of Wales have never discussed divorce, or, as in last Sunday's Observer, that the pain endured by the par- ticipants in the Rosemary West trial was, in the case of the lawyers, 'eased considerably by large fees'. I am sure the lawyers were pleased with their fees, but who is to say that they made the horror of the evidence any more palatable to them than to any- body else? Having said that, I must admit that my sacking by the Sunday Telegraph has been made a great deal more palatable by the large cheque (equivalent to several months' salary) with which I was presented when I left. I carried it around with me for three days, cherishing it as a symbol of sud- den freedom — evidence that I needn't do anything at all for a bit if I didn't feel like it. It was only after reading in a Sunday newspaper that the Chancellor of the Exchequer might be planning in his Budget last Tuesday to remove the tax exemption on the first £30,000 of redundancy pay- ments that I rushed off in panic with it to the bank. But I have kept a copy to look at, of course. That the Telegraph Plc has to waste money in this way whenever new edi- tors are appointed to its titles was recog- nised in the company's recently published interim report which, announcing the appointments of Charles Moore to the Daily Telegraph, Dominic Lawson to the Sunday Telegraph, and Frank Johnson to The Spectator, said: 'Senior editorial changes inevitably give rise to a degree of rationalisation, and costs associated there- with, as the appointees take on their new challenge.' That's brilliant. I wonder if there are courses one can take in euphemistic writing?
Iswing about wildly in my attitude to the Princess of Wales. When I am feeling responsible and have the nation's interests and stability at heart, I regard her as a men- ace and wish she would go abroad and marry Taki or someone. But when I am in subversive mood, she is my heroine, and I A three-person marriage in a palace in Kensington is down by . . . ' see her as the leader of all free spirits against the dreary, stultifying establishment of the monarchy and parliament. It is then that I imagine founding a political party which would win every seat in a general election on the simple programme of giving her absolute power and the right to indulge her every whim. Being required to leave my job as editor of a new magazine that was doing rather well put me in a highly subver- sive frame of mind, and I was all for back- ing the Princess in her revolution until I remembered that the man who did the deed, Dominic Lawson, is reputedly an inti- mate of hers and could therefore have been acting on her instructions. Now I don't know where I stand.
If you are unemployed, I am told, it is easy to lose your dignity and self-respect, not bother to shave, let your clothes get ragged, and so on. Finding that my clothes were already ragged, I took the Under- ground last Saturday to Oxford Street for the purpose of buying a new suit at Marks & Spencer. A dark-blue double-breasted suit would do the trick, I thought. I must have been mad to even think of going to Oxford Street on a Saturday in the Christ- mas shopping season. To begin with, it took some 15 minutes to get out of Oxford Cir- cus station and onto the pavement, the steps and the area outside being jammed solid with people. To get to Marks & Spencer, I had to make a serious detour through Hanover Square and then back to Oxford Street, squeezing my way through the crowd. The store itself was a sort of nightmare. Bossy security persons with megaphones shouted repeatedly at the peo- ple on the escalators, telling them to stay on the right-hand side if they were not walking, and became angry and peevish when they were disobeyed (as they occa- sionally were by foreigners who clearly knew no English). 'You, the woman with the red handbag, WILL YOU GET OVER TO THE RIGHT!' In the men's clothing department, there was fierce competition among would-be purchasers of dark-blue double-breasted suits to get a look at the measurements on the jackets and trousers in their separate racks. Having finally assembled two pieces which I hoped would fit me, I struggled across the enormous crowded floor to a changing cubicle on the far side, only to find, of course, they didn't fit me at all. I did this twice more before, more than an hour after entering the shop, I finally reached the front of a queue at the payment counter. They didn't take Visa; they didn't take Access; they didn't take American Express; and I had forgotten my cheque book. I vow never to visit Oxford Street again for the rest of my days.
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