Ageing radical
Richard Ingrams
In Character John Mortimer (Allen Lane £6.95)
The face on the cover is deceptive. Behind the thick spectacles the eyes look sleepy. When you meet him the im- pression of laziness seems to be confirmed. His voice is soft and his remarks tentative. He giggles a lot. You would not guess that John Mortimer is a sharp and very suc- cessful playwright and lawyer who gets up regularly every morning at six to beaver away at his television scripts, plays and briefs. Recently he has turned his hand to journalism, writing a number of interviews and guest 'Atticus' features for the Sunday Times, which show that he is far better than anyone they've got on the staff. A collec- tion of these Sunday Times pieces has now been published as a book called In Character.
The combination of playwright and lawyer is one that serves John Mortimer very well in his new role. As a playwright he is interested in all kinds of people and is able without the aid of a tape recorder to reproduce the way in which they speak; as a lawyer, he is expert in asking questions, at Putting people at their ease and then coax- ing them into admissions.
BY and large the 27 subjects featured here reflect Mortimer's own interests; the stage (Olivier, Gielgud); writing (Graham Greene, Dick Francis, Catherine Cookson); the Law (Denning and Anderton). But there are also quite a few politicians and one or two demagogues like Arthur Scargill and Ken Livingstone. A good mixed bag then with plenty of variety; even if it has some of the limitations you would expect of the Sunday Times,)one cannot imagine that Mr Mortimer went to his assignment with Mick Jagger with any great enthusiasm.) One ends up, however, being more in- terested in Mr Mortimer than most of the People he interviews. He calls himself an ageing radical' and obviously feels sym- pathetic towards the Benns and Liv- Ingstones of this world. He is a natural op- timist who believes, sometimes a little too Much so, in the basic goodness of his fellow men. What he likes about the novels of Dick Francis is their 'decency', a favourite word of George Orwell's, and not a quality that is highly valued nowadays. A surprising thing to those who still perhaps think of John Mortimer as a champion of the Per- missive Society, the defender of Oz and tGecii) News' is his interest in religious mat- ters. Almost every one of his subjects is
interviews about his religion. The most personal
In terviews and for that reason the most in- teresting are those in which Mortimer ceases to be the advocate of the Sunday Times and
starts to ask questions because he personal- ly is quite keen to know the answers. There is a distinct touch of the rich young man in the interrogation of Cardinal Hume 'Master, what must I do to inherit eternal life?' — even if the cardinal does not in the end provide any very helpful advice. The most revealing and successful interview, on both sides, is with Graham Greene, whom Mortimer meets very appropriately in a hotel bedroom in Leicester where they both drink whisky out of toothmugs — `Do you think a belief in God is a great advantage to a writer?' I looked at him and tried to keep the envy out of my voice. 'Oh I think so. I've always thought it was having no belief that makes the characters of Virginia Woolf so paper thin.' How long, one wonders, will John Mortimer be able to maintain his belief in the absurdity of life?
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