DIARY
ROBERT HARRIS Iattended my first — and last — millen- nium party on Monday night: the launch, in our local village hall, of 'Kintbury: A Century Remembered 1900-1999' (excel- lent value, I might add, at f6.50, especially if you're one of the 2,500 people who live here). And that's it. I'm not going to any- thing else connected with the millennium. This seems to be the general attitude among our friends. Even some who've been summoned to the big bash at the Dome on New Year's Eve have, by and large, decided to stay at home rather than try to get across London and back. Could it be — dare one hope? — that the whole thing is about to turn into the biggest anti- climax since — well, since the dreary, over-hyped, celestial toenail-clipping that was the total eclipse last August? There are some promising signs. Last January I was warned by our local wine merchant that stocks of champagne would run dry by the autumn; now I see he can't give the stuff away (buy two bottles, get a third free). Hotels are reporting plenty of space. The celebrity chef who recently tried to auction his restaurant for the big night had to withdraw it because he could find no takers. The fashionable thing to do, it seems, is to stay at home and take things quietly. My own theory about this is that most of us became conscious in childhood that we might live to see in the millenni- um, and duly performed the appropriate mental arithmetic, which in my case told me that I would be 42 at the turn of the century. Forty-two! It seemed an unimag- inably old age to reach — a landmark far, far in the distance, lost in the mists of senescence and decrepitude. And now I have reached it, and a whole set of damned fools are telling me I ought to go out and celebrate. Why?
Our cleaning lady gave me a couple of odd looks last week, which puzzled me until I noticed that my wife had left her Filofax open beside the telephone with a single entry for the evening of 24 Novem- ber: 'Bad Sex'. This was not, I think, a ref- erence to me, but to the annual reception given by the Literary Review, honouring the year's worst description of sexual intercourse in a work of fiction. Anyway, for some reason (probably the benign chairmanship of Auberon Waugh, who charms reviews out of us for £50 a time), Bad Sex has gradually established itself as one of the most popular events in the lit- erary calendar, and last week, within 20 minutes of the doors opening, it was almost impossible to move. I stayed for about an hour and was just leaving — was literally on the pavement, smugly congrat-
ulating myself on having avoided humilia- tion for another year — when I was con- fronted by the fragrant form of the editor of the Erode Review, compiling nomina- tions for the most erotic person of the mil- lennium: 'Just give me one name,' she pleaded. For some reason, I blurted out the first person who came into my mind: Rasputin. `Ah,' she said, knowingly, 'that's because of the wart on the end of his penis.' Me: 'Of course.' It was only after- wards that I realised how strange this will look in print: that I should have sidestepped such obvious contenders as Marilyn Monroe and Mata Hari, and have plumped for a mad Russian monk with a wart.
Talking of bad sex, I noticed ominous news for Jeffrey Archer in Tuesday's Daily Telegraph, where Lord Longford had a let- ter defending the collapsed peer: 'I do not know Jeffrey Archer at all well though I should like to know him and his noble wife
better.' Portentous words indeed, coming from the nation's most persistent prison visitor. I remember Richard Ingrams, when Jimmy Goldsmith was suing him for crimi- nal libel, saying that he could reconcile himself to most of the terrors of jail, except the prospect of a visit from the Earl of Longford. Still, I suppose it must be pleas- ant for Archer to discover that he is not completely without defenders. Longford is one. Another, I gather, is the management of the BBC, which has forbidden Newsnight to broadcast a devastating few minutes of footage it has of the former Tory candidate. In it, Archer is seen berating the pro- gramme for its employment of his biogra- pher, Michael Crick ('We hate your), and promising dire revenge when he becomes Mayor of London ('You wait till 6 May then you'll be sorry!'). Interspersed with these bullying tactics are moments when Archer throws his arm round the pro- gramme's political reporter, Mark Mardell, and says, 'But not you, Mark, I love you.' Those who have seen the tape maintain it tells you all you need to know about Archer's odd combination of buffoonish charm and comic menace. However, the BBC's pusillanimous men in suits won't allow it to be used because Archer had not been warned formally that the camera was running.
Poor William Hague — for some rea- son those three words always seem to sit naturally together — poor William Hague: I doubt whether his leadership will ever fully recover from his handling of the Archer debacle. For how, if you think about it, can he restore his credibility? If he tries to expel Jeffrey from the party, he will look mean and vindictive. But if he lets him stay, he will look weak. It's hope- less. The Conservative party, like Labour in the early 1980s, manifestly is still years away from power: there's nothing, really, to be done about it. I was talking recently to a former Tory Cabinet minister — let's call him X — and I asked him why he was no longer bothering to pursue a career in British politics. 'Well,' he said, 'I used to hope that the party was at the John Smith stage of recovery, but now I think it's at the Michael Foot stage.' Coincidentally, the following evening, I met another for- mer Tory Cabinet minister — let's call him Michael Heseltine — and I repeated what X had told me. Heseltine roared with laughter. 'But X is wrong!' he said. 'Things are much worse than that! We don't reach the Michael Foot stage until Michael Por- tillo is elected leader.' Funny? It's almost enough to make you want to celebrate the millennium.
Previous page
