Mystery man
Michael Vestey
Until Georges Simenon claimed to have slept with 10,000 women, the Belgianborn novelist was chiefly known for his Inspector Maigret detective stories. After that, though, men everywhere thought only of the women and wondered enviously how he'd managed it. Clearly, the writer and broadcaster Mark Lawson thought the same as his ingenious comedy about Simenon showed this week in the Afternoon Play: The Man Who Had 10,000 Women (Radio Four, Tuesday).
He decided to create a Parisian police superintendent, Maygret, spelt with a 'y.. ordered to investigate the author's life after he died at the age of 86 so that the French president could consider if posthumous honours were appropriate. There had been a swindle, the suicide of his daughter and rumours that Simenon was a German collaborator during the war though there was little evidence for that. As Maygret (Sir Derek Jacobi) sets about his task he finds that the author, played by the gravelly voiced Joss Ackland, was more interested in himself and his books than helping
either side. As one of the characters says, 'He was driven to write and make films and he wasn't going to let a little second world war stop him.'
Simenon had the energy and self-discipline to write 500 books as well as 20 volumes of memoirs. In the play he describes them both as fiction based on fact, hinting that he'd exaggerated the 10,000 women, though confessing that at his peak he'd slept with several prostitutes a day. He wrote a novel in eight days, revising for three. In the play. Simenon recalls that in the 1930s Noel Coward phoned him but was told by his secretary that the author could not be disturbed until he'd finished his latest book. 'All right, I'll hold,' said Coward. It was certainly one of the funniest afternoon plays I've heard for some time and was directed with great atmosphere by Robyn Read.
The misery of Cuba was explored in Crossing Continents last week (Radio Four, Thursday) when Mariusa Reyes talked to people about the food shortages and the repression of Fidel Castro's regime; she had lived there until three years ago. She managed to get a word with the dictator when he went to trade fair attended by a delegation from Minnesota selling food. President Bush allowed the export of food to Cuba after the hurricanes of last year and it cannot be long before the trade embargo is lifted. It does seem an anachronism now. Castro told her the revolution would grow stronger. He was worried though that, if travel links and relations with the United States were restored, too many Americans would be visiting the country. I suspect he was more concerned about Cubans leaving for a better life as so many have done over the years.
Much is made of Cuba's free health and education systems but some books are still banned and the media is state controlled. Reyes reported on the daily struggle of Cubans to feed themselves. She went with her former cook and cleaner to state-owned shops to buy basic foods with a ration card and came across angry women fighting to buy vegetables from the back of a lorry. Despite widespread apathy, resistance is stirring. Independent libraries are springing up from people's living rooms and they even stock banned books such as Orwell's Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four, A dissident who has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by the Czech president Vaclav Havel is constantly harassed by the secret police for drawing up a petition calling for democratically elected representatives and freedom of expression. The only hope, Reyes was told, was for Castro to die when things would change. I wonder. It seems to me that only the complete removal of the trade embargo and travel restrictions, leading perhaps to greater prosperity, will bring greater freedoms.
Listening to the Tory leader lain Duncan Smith on Desert Island Discs (Radio Four, Sunday) I was struck by how old-fashioned he sounds, though this to me is a strength when set against the spinning, actorish nature of Tony Blair and other members of his government. He was relaxed, talking with humour about his colourful father, an RAF pilot and a man who demonstrated firm leadership. He shifted slightly on his 'quiet man' statement at the Tory party conference, saying it was meant to signify resolution. In time, perhaps, as people tire of this government's incompetence, they might come to appreciate this commonsensical Tory. Even his choice of music was fairly straightforward, a mixture of classical and pop. The party would be mad to ditch him.
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