DIARY STAN
GEBLER DAVIES his is writ upon the fairest pair of bubbies you ever did see.' John Wilkes scratched this greeting as the commence- ment of a letter to a friend who was the son of the Archbishop of Canterbury, circa 1750. The manuscript, crumpled, wine- stained and written under the influence of drink, is in the British Library, as it calls itself. I wish this were written on a similar platform but it cannot be, as I am thwarted in love and the possesor of the fairest etc does not want to know any more. This is not properly a subject upon which one ought to expatiate in the front half of the Spectator so I will vent my spleen instead this week on politicians and railways.
And lawyers. Someone has gone off his trolley at the Department of Public Prosecutions. A woman at Eastbourne has been prosecuted under the Obscene Pub- lications Act for offering to the public 423 saucy postcards. The police, who must be demented, referred the matter to the Director of Public Prosecutions, who told them to go ahead. The case against Denise Clark was dismissed by the magistrates, but her prosecutors are considering an appeal. Meanwhile, one switches from one television channel to another at the hour at Which England goes to sleep, 11 p.m., and finds that while three stations are broad- casting merely comatose rubbish, Channel 4 is offering pornographic homosexual rubbish of an unexampled vileness. This is the libel on St Sebastian called Sebastiane. In order to view so many male pudenda as were on show in this film it would be necessary to visit the locker rooms of at least three Rugby fifteens. The shot of the martyr being punctured in the genitals by an arrow was a particularly tasteful conclu- sion to the entertainment. Do they not have television sets at the DPP and, if they have, why do they not watch them?
An amiable Jamaican tells me that I may no longer smoke even on the open-air platforms belonging to London Regional Transport, on pain of incarceration. This is more than faintly ridiculous. I do not think anyone has ever set fire to a train, let alone a concrete railway platform, with a cigarette, but this is the danger which the Underground advances as good reason why we should not indulge our innocent pleasure. My excellent friend, Mr Jon Akass, the distinguished columnist on the Daily Express, did once manage to set fire to his office when he was working for Rupert Murdoch, but it was not easy. Wondering why there was a commotion of alarm bells at the Sun building, and a general evacuation in progress, he was told he was the cause of it. Not unnaturally, he was the butt of unkind jokes but defended himself stoutly. He bet me £.10 that I could not ignite a pile of torn-up expenses slips in an ashtray even by blowing on a lit cigarette placed under them. I lost. Try it yourself, but not on the train.
Iam surprised by your politics,' says an eminent Fleet Street editor. 'You don't look like a Unionist.' This is true. What I look like is a terrorist. When the finger of a Special Branch man or an immigration officer beckons to a shuffling line at some port of entry, it beckons to me. I thought for a while that I could avoid this incon- venience by more assiduous attention to my grooming and wardrobe, but it makes no odds. Immaculately scrubbed, laun- dered, barbered and shod, I am still detained while the scruffy, unsavoury and obviously criminally-inclined are waved through. At Montreal airport this mystery was eventually explained to me by the civil agent of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police who had grilled me for the best part of an hour. 'I'm sorry, sir,' she said, 'but you fit the terrorist profile.' What she meant by this was that I look like a terrorist, according to the criteria estab- lished by learned criminologists. So, I hope, does Dominic McGlinchy. I will add that I do not travel on an Eire passport but am the proud possessor of that document issued by Her Britannic Majesty's principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs which requires that I be allowed to proceed without let or hindrance. It is a bit scruffy itself, because my Irish cat, who may have Republican opinions, pissed on it, but I am not prepared to go to the expense of getting a new one until it expires.
hat does an Irish Unionist look like? Dog-collar. Rubicund face. General air of rage. Bowler hat. Foam on lips. This is the image so successfully conveyed by oppo- 'Keeping busy?' nents of the Union that even some Union- ists, obviously, feel the need of conforming to it. Others, perhaps in terror of being thought bigots, give up entirely. I was at a party a year ago, thrown by Mr Richard Ryan, counsellor at the Eire Embassy, which impudently calls itself the Embassy of Ireland. Mr Ryan, a first-rate diplomat, is allegedly one of the architects of the disastrous, but undoubtedly historic (as disasters tend to be) agreement which is being debated in the Commons this week. It was a good party. 'Good Lord,' said I, spotting an elderly gentleman across the room whom I last had seen on a television screen in a bar in the Bogside, imploring the lot of us not to be damn silly while petrol bombs and revolver shots echoed in the Derry streets outside, 'it is the Lord O'Neill of the Maine.' So it was. 'He looks like an elderly terrier who's had all his teeth drawn,' said John Montague, Ire- land's most amusing poet. So he did. When I engaged Terence O'Neill in conversation, he admitted he had not been back to our fair land for seven years and had no intention ever of setting foot in it again. 'The Irish are all mad,' said this gentleman, whose family had been there 400 years. When I told him that I was myself a Unionist, he said: 'Good God! You mean you like that fellow Paisley?' If this is the opinion of the former leader of the Union- ist Party and Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, we have little hope indeed of convincing our fellow citizens of our essen- tial moderation and good sense. ('Modera- tion'? 'Good sense'? Look at it this way: would you wish to be ruled by the Dublin Government? How would you react if you were told you had no option?) 0 n behalf of Unionists who are, un- like myself, remaining silent for the mo- ment, I wish to extend an apology to Mr Tom King for the rough usage he got last week. The people are sorely tried, but that is no excuse. More than 2,000 of them have so far been murdered, but that is no excuse either. Bad manners are bad manners. (He was not 'beaten up' by the way, pace Mr Nicholas Scott, but his collar was rudely felt.) Aline of type went missing from my last week's paragraph about Dr Fitz- Gerald. The sentence I wrote should have read 'I met him again at a grand soiree in Dublin Castle in June 1982, when 800 of the creme de la creme of Eire were assem- bled to celebrate the 78th anniversary of the occasion on which Mrs James Joyce first stimulated her future husband to orgasm.' I explain this event in full in a book of mine you can still get from Granada paperbacks for £1.95.
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