Low life
My nights at the opera
Jeffrey Bernard
It was with a mixture of amusement and irritation that I received the news that Taki had written in the Sunday Express that I was decadent and that Geoffrey Wheat- croft had written in the Daily Telegraph that he found it odd that I should have included 'listening to Mozart' among my hobbies listed in Who's Who. Odd, he said, because he had never seen me in the Royal Opera House.
I know full well that it is sometimes extremely hard for a journalist to find anything to write about, but for a man who has served a prison sentence for smuggling cocaine to call me decadent — morally corrupt — indicates a hack of little in- formation, mean understanding and uncer- tain temper. As for Geoffrey Wheatcroft never having seen me in the Royal Opera House, I am not in the least surprised. You have to keep your eyes open to see somebody, especially if they are as diminu- tive as I am, and that can be difficult after a hard afternoon in the Garrick Club.
But just for the record I must tell you that I have always had connections, howev- er tenuous, with the Royal Opera House. My father was resident scenic designer there in the days of Caruso. They often lunched together and although I was not alive to have witnessed those meals I had the word of my mother — an opera singer — on it. Later, when I was a decadent baby, Sir Thomas Beecham used to spend the odd weekend with us. I never spoke to him myself because I always had either a thumb or a bottle in my mouth. Years later, when Wheatcroft was still at school and planning his meteoric rise to fame, I worked for a while as a stage hand at the Opera House, so I know the place well. It is next to the Nag's Head and opposite Bow Street Magistrates' Court. Mozart himself couldn't have arranged it better.
But you don't, of course, have to go the Royal Opera House to listen to Mozart. As every opera critic should know, they have things called compact discs these days. If Geoffrey Wheatcroft had been in West Hampstead last Sunday with his eyes open he could have seen me listening to a private performance of Cosi fan tutte in my own sitting-room. I have a splendid auditorium here. A man may smoke without making the singers cough and the bar never closes. It must also be remembered by musicolog- ists that Mozart wrote music other than opera. You know, symphonies, concertos, chamber music, all sorts of stuff like that.
Anyway, apart from Taki and Wheat- croft another sniper emerged last week in the pages of the Observer. This particular marksman or markswoman described me in a subtitle as being a 'seasoned barfly'. I didn't care for that. If anything I am a lounge lizard. We eat barflies for break- fast. In any case the word barfly implies that a man is hanging about with the intention of cadging and sponging drinks from other people. There was a time — but I can buy my own now. Especially if the accusing Observer paid me my bloody fee.
So who else wants to have a go? I also put in my list of hobbies cricket and cooking. I haven't been to Lords for seven years now and then when I did I left in disgust after I dropped my thermos of vodka. And as for cooking, well, what can I say? Last night I had a Marks and Spencer Cumberland pie with some of their ratatouille. Call that cooking? Yes. The timing is of the essence just as it is in cricket and Mozart.
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