DIARY
ALEXANDER CHANCELLOR ANew York it so happened, practically the last person I saw in London last week before emigrating for a year to New York was the former Secretary of State for National Her- itage, Mr David Mellor. As I hardly know him, you may wonder why he was singled out for this honour. The answer is that he wasn't, exactly. We had a date for lunch that had been arranged months before, at a time when Mr Mellor was still a prominent figure in the Government and I was still both editor of the Independent Magazine and a commissioner of English Heritage, and the date, I am glad to say, survived all the various changes in our circumstances. So, the day before I was to fly to New York, I went fol.. the last time to the offices of the Independent, cleared my desk, said a sad farewell to my colleagues on the magazine, and set off in a car packed with the debris of six years on the newspaper to meet Mr Mellor in Langan's Brasserie, the once fashionable Mayfair restaurant. We were perhaps both a little distracted — I because the reality of leaving the Independent Maga- zine was only just beginning to sink in, and he because he knew that after lunch he would be recording an interview with Clive Anderson for his Saturday night television show. You may wonder, as I did, why a man in Mr Mellor's embarrassing position should choose to subject himself to public interrogation by such a master of innuendo as Mr Anderson, but I expect that, despite his recent painful experiences with the media, he still shares with most politicians the urge to be in the public eye. Certainly he has flung himself with gusto into jour- nalism as a new way of earning a living, for I noticed three articles by him — in the Guardian, the Evening Standard and the Daily Telegraph — all published within the space of a week.
Of particular interest was Mr Mellor's Piece for the Guardian entitled 'The Tragedy of Covent Garden', in which he predicted that the Royal Opera House was about to 'collapse into insolvency' and con- cluded that there would have to be 'a radi- cal solution' to its problems. (The company had indicated its own desperation three days earlier by issuing an announcement to the press that there were to be unscheduled _extra performances of popular successes like Porgy and Bess and Turandot 'in order to generate further much-needed income' and — as a secondary reason — to 'meet Public demand'.) What kind of 'radical so lution' does Mr Mellor have in mind? It is not the sacking of Covent Garden's gen- eral director, Jeremy Isaacs, to whom he paid unexpected tribute both for what he had achieved artistically and for his readi- ness to accept blame for management fail- ures. No. Mr Mellor has set his sights on a loftier target, the Opera House board itself, which he described as 'an old-style self-per- petuating oligarchy' most of whose mem- bers (the only named exception being the millionaire philanthropist Vivien Duffield) were 'distinguished by who they know rather than what they know, or lack obvious qualifications to supervise the running of an organisation of this size in this kind of crisis'. It is hard to quarrel with this judg- ment, but why has Mr Mellor chosen to make it now and in such a forceful man- ner? One problem for the politician- turned-journalist is that we cannot help suspecting him of some element of self- interest in everything he writes. It therefore occurred to me that the Guardian article might be a sort of job application by Mr Mellor to take over the running of a bankrupt Covent Garden in a couple of years' time. If so, I think it is rather a good idea.
One of Mr Mellor's complaints against the Covent Garden board is its complacent assumption that, if all else fails, it will somehow be saved from ruin by the new national lottery. However, the Opera House is not alone in this. Whatever the lottery may eventually yield, even if this exceeds the most optimistic expectations, has already been spent many times over in the minds of the country's cultural and sporting establishment. English Heritage, the Arts Council and numerous other such bodies are all looking to the lottery to make up for a presumed lack of public funds to pay for cherished projects ranging from the restoration of Stonehenge to the construc- tion of a new football stadium. It is a sign of how desperate they must all be feeling, to rest their hopes on such a dodgy prospect.
One of the reasons why Chris Patten was undeservedly rejected by the people of Bath in the general election may have been the voters' resentment at the ferocity of the city's parking restrictions. Bath is reputed to be the only city in Britain in which tow- away teams work around the clock. Whether or not that is so, it is true that the town has a long history of extreme rigour in traffic and parking control. The 18th-centu- ry architect-businessman John Wood, the key figure in the development of Bath as a fashionable spa town, noted that even then there was a rule that `no person shall tie any kind of Beast to stand above the space of One Quarter of an Hour, under the Penalty of Four Pence'. Such amusing information is obtained by visiting the Building of Bath Museum which was recently opened in the former Countess of Huntingdon's Chapel by the admirable Bath Preservation Trust. The only museum of its kind in Britain, it describes with meticulous models and other ingenious dis- plays how this remarkable Georgian city came to be built, from the planning stages through to the details of construction. No visitor to Bath should miss it.
Ido not know what the polls will be say- ing in the final run-up to the American presidential election, but already last week- end there were the first signs that they might yet again be on the point of getting everything wrong. After announcing long in advance that Bill Clinton had an unassail- able lead over George Bush and that Ross Perot had missed his opportunity, the poll- sters revealed last Sunday that Mr Perot was resurgent and that the gap between the two top candidates was rapidly narrowing. An article by a polling expert in the New York Times argued that the questions on voter preferences are not framed to allow for indecision, with the result that findings tend to suggest a much more decisive elec- torate than in fact exists. Pollsters are then shocked to register improbably sudden last- minute swings, when in reality it is a case of previously undecided voters finally making up their minds. This is perhaps why the polls got it all wrong in Britain last April. If they also get it wrong in America next week, they might as well all give up and pack it in.
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