Spectator peregrinations

Exhaustive previewing at the Academy's Summer Exhibition, the National Portrait Gallery and the Chelsea Flower Show have failed to enlighten me on the social importance of being seen at these things. I didn't recognise anyone at the Academy except my aunt. But I saw a lot of people who looked as if they were hoping to be recognised by someone. Very few were.

The National Portrait Gallery's present show in the Mall Galleries is quite diffeiert. The people portrayed like to go along and admire themselves. You often find them standing behind you waiting to catch a flattering remark. This happened while I was inspecting a picture of Harold Wilson by Cowan Dobson. Peter Townend, social editor of the Tatler, was identifying faces, previously unknown to him, by looking them up in the catalogue.

"The extraordinary thing about this place" he said "is that the people are actually interested in the pictures." But my impression was that they were only interested in the people in the pictures. Townend was for a long time puzzled by a picture of Mrs Douglas Anderson by Douglas Anderson. He had met her at a deb dance in the early 'sixties when she was Miss Veronica Marks. She wouldn't remember him now, he told me. In actual fact she was watching him from the other side of the room.

I made my most revolutionary sociological discovery at the Flower Show. A garden roller and a wheel-barrow were described as "Two revolutionary new designs". And at the Allen stand there was a machine which did 7,000 revolutions a minute. When I asked their sales representative Mr David Hyde, if if Was a lawn mower, he said "Well no Sir, not really. It's a revolutionary new concept in grass-cutting."'

Meeting up

I have been to a number of referendum rvetings for and against the Market. As an objective reporter I cannot say which band is the more ludicrous. For the antis, I went to hear my friends Neil Marten, John Farr and Patrick Cosgrave in Quaglinos. The chairman made the mistake of saying, at the tea interval, that "there would be something stronger than tea for members of the fourth estate." As a result the thirsty members of my grubby profession were not seen again. Indeed Mr Anthony Vander Elst, chairman of the Brent East Conservative Political Centre, was kept extremely busy trying to make them keep their voices down and stop clattering bottles. Finally the journalists had to be shut in the room next door so that the speeches could be heard.

For the pro-marketeers, Gyles Brandreth, who must still think he's President of the Oxford Union, collected a lot of non-political stars at the London Palladium. People like the resplendent Lord Weymouth, Lord Montague of Beaulieu and rather strangely, Bonnie Blake a black American singer and sociologist who said she was anti-European. Torn Tickell, the Guardian's reporter, said that they were as camp as a row of tents and that they turned him off with a shovel.

Faintly amused

Sammy Cahn proved hiniself to oe a very adept ott-the-cuff performer at the launching of his book I Should Care — with a piano, a microphone or a pen. When signing the book for David Wigg, the precious show business writer of the Daily Express, he wrote "For David Wigg, who made me bigg." This is

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thought by Wigg's intimate friends to be a bit near the bone. Incidentally, in his book Sammy Cahn refers to my friend and colleague, Peter Ackroyd, as "running the prestigious Spectator magazine." The editor is said to be faintly amused at the prospect.

When in Rome..

The Daily American, an English language paper printed in Rome, tells me that the city council of Stanfield in Oregon has ordained that animals may no longer copulate in public view — threatening their owners, including farmers, with jail sentences. Next, presumably, their 'homosexual'activities in private. Also in the same paper, a picture of a cow with a bra.

Advice to Oregonian animals: "When in Rome ... "

Thin time

When Harold Wilson spoke recently of the ghastly plight of the British film industry, I hope he was thinking of his former landlord, Jerry Epstein, ' the film producer. He put the Wilsons up in their Vincent Square house after Labour's surprise defeat in 1970 had left them suddenly homeless. An American whose wife is English he is now finding things so thin in Britain that he's going back to Los Angeles as soon as he can let out the house. If you would like to live in the house once occupied by the Prime Minister and frequently visited by Charlie Chaplin let me know and I'll put you in touch.

More meetings

There are all kinds of Annual General Meetings. Fleet Street printers unions are as insufferable as any. But the Jacob Sheep Society and the London Library put on very entertaining AGMs. Jacob Sheep people wear uniform grey tweed fleeced from their black and white pets. And the London Library's AGM, conducted by eminent literary folk like Sir Rupert Hart-Davis, Peter Calvocoressi and Lord Clark, is an eloquent occasion even when they are discussing the minutes of the last meeting or the shortage of cash. I remember Lord Clark of Civilisation, four years ago, standing against a background of priceless leatherbound books and telling us about the much-needed new fire-proof wiring system as if it were by Michelangelo.

Coming home

My great-great grandfather Sir Robert Warburton, Warden of the Khyber Pass, who was tragically bored to death in 1899 while trying to complete his autobiography Eighteen Years in the Khyber (John Murray 1900) would have enjoyed the Khyber tribal warrior dance put on at the Commonwealth Institute last week. I did anyway. To be honest, when I was at the North West Frontier myself in 73, walking hundreds of miles in the hills near the Chinese border, I found that Pakistanis jumping around making screeching noises were extremely tedious. But now it is coming back to me in a wave of nostalgia. So, if any of my nomadic Pathan cousins are reading this, I may be visiting you shortly.

Behind the news

Arriving at Venice airport on honeymoon my sister and brother-in-law tapped the shoulder of the man in front of them in the queue and asked if he spoke English. It was Robert Dougall, the Well-known master of BBC English and President of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (Peregrines). "How were we to recognise him from the back?" they have since protested. In future, to save embarrassment, all newsreaders must be filmed from behind.

Plate glass?

Travelling to Essex down Leytonstone High Street I saw a rare 'specialist' last week. On the left before the railway bridge, he is advertising 'Dental and spectacle repairs'. This is not just two for the price of one. It is enterprising improvisation at its best.

Bad news

, Bad news for tweedy folk: your days may be numbered. I was caught up in a strange conversation between Lord Bute, who has a tweed company, and Wilf Wooliner, former editor of The Outfitter. Woolmer was telling Bute that he 'should make cheaper tweeds that were more available to "the man in the street." But Bute said that it's only the high-quality stuff that sells these days. Central heating is so good that Lord Bute only needs tweeds when he's in one of those ghastly over-air-conditioned houses in America. Where does that leave the man in the street?

Second-rater

Melbourne's 35-year-old 6ft fin Lord Mayor, Ronald Walker — the world's youngest Lord Mayor — was greeted in London last week as a sort of Australian John Lindsay. Will he too be driven trom office by uncontrollable chaos to become a second-rate film star? Happily, as an Australian his greatest political asset is the broken nose he suffered while playing Australian Rules football. So I think this will preserve him from the fate of the former Mayor of New York.

Pigeon fanciers

I have been shooting pigeons in Vincent Square because they are corroding the paintwork on my neighbour's Bentley. I have been careful not to disturb the peace. Indeed I waited a good two minutes while the Bishop's wife, who lives next door, walked the length of the square, before releasing a salvo at the two unhygienic vermin which were both in line at the top of a plane tree. As she passed she looked up at my accomplice and myself waiting patiently on the balcony and said "Oh, two Romeos."

Peregrine