THE SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK

The overweening demands of television were never more tastelessly satisfied than when the Bolivian painter Benjamin Mendoza was publicly__guestiOned not only in front of the cameras : but for the cameras, in halting English, by some Filipino policeman or lawyer. The " gross intrusiveness of the camera somehow seemed to lend Mendoza a kind of dignity. 'Religion', Mendoza has also been quoted- as saying, 'means superstition'. It sometimes occurs to me that the all-seeing, all-hearing, all-pervading, all-demanding, all- Instructing, all-powerful God of the future will be the miniatured television sound- camera, which will be with us when we know t not, and whether we will it or not.

Deaths . to order

I used to think that television was at its most dangerous when' it was the cause of the ac- tion it purported to describe—as when the crews, cameramen, sound men, assistants, reporters,:having set themselves up with all their paraphernalia to record, say, a- riot, look good care to. ensure that a riot took place. The reverse of this also takes place, as hen, for example, during that period in Vietnam when Buddhist priests . set themselves on fire by pouring petrol all over themselves, the appropriate Buddhist authorities' otild usually take the precaution of advising one or Other news agency to be at the appropriate site of the suicide at the ap- propriate time. Once when I. was in Saigon a sisal agency - was- angry at- thus being scooped, and coMplained to the Buddhists, who said they would see what they could do. Within a few days they- had found another bonze to burn himself.

Modern threats

But this sort of behaviour, although offensive, and not conducive to' honest reporting (which J am inclined to believe is mpossible with present television equip- em), may yet prove lets. dangerous than small, concealable, and therefore 'usually oneealed, sound cameras. Candid 'Cameras an produce a form •of honest reporting, but hey represent an • appalling invasion of Privacy and a far more real threat to -in- ividual liberties than any other modern "ice exceptethe computerel data bank. hey are also an altogether more serious hreat than the old bogeyman'of the English. he pope.

resent and future Popes

He has shown great courage and great Personal dignity these past days. I am not " he has displayed equivalent intelligence nd acumen in allowing it to be widely believed that he wants Cardinal Jean-Marie Villot, the French Secretary of State at the Curia, to succeed him. It could well transpire that such marks of Papal favour as the bestowing upon Cardinal Villot Of the use of the Villa Barbarini, and now the reported installation of the Cardinal as Canter- /et:go—Regent in the event of Papal death—could count as much against Villot as in his favour whenever the next conclave takes place.

Last Pope

I recall the conclave before last, which even- tually elected Roncalli, the gentle and revolutionary John, as Pope. Sir Marcus Cheke was then British Minister to the Holy See and he invited some of us to sherry. We sat on little gilt chairs and Sir Marcus said words to this effect: 'I'm afraid I don't know much abotit how the conclave will work, so I've invited along a man who understands committees and such things. He is the Com- mercial Attaché at the British embassy, and he's always sitting on committees at the Food and Agricultural Organisation and so forth.' We listened to the Commercial At- taché with some scepticism, but Sir Marcus's assessment of the situation was correct. The Commercial Attaché concluded by pro- phesying Roncalli for Pope.

Art of gold

It is greatly to be hoped that we do not waste any money or effort keeping Velasquez's portrait of his mulatto servant here. It has nothing to do with us and if, officially, money and effort were to be spent in keeping the canvas, it would have the wholly retrograde effect of seeming to endorse a price which has little to do either with artistic merit or with scarcity. To my great astonish- ment I found myself agreeing with an art critic. Nigel Gosling, and of the Observer at that, when he wrote of the portrait, 'It has been consigned to the cabinetei; curiosities. to be stared at, • quoted in ?Ile book of records. and cited in the price indices': But we need -not be surprised. For many years now paintings have been bought as ob-

jects, much as stamps, or diamonds: as speculative hedges against iillation or as speculative gambles on price in'reases. The dealers who bid up to £2.310.009 for the Velasquez knew perfectly well what they were doing. By more than doubling the record world auction price for an Old Master of great quality, they were, in all .probability, more than doubling the value of the stocks of all the other Old Masters they already possess. Everybody gains, it seems.

But surely someone must lose?

Rockefeller legend

I recall the doubtless apocryphal story of Rockefeller or some such legendary millionaire who spent much time and money holidaying on a Mediterranean island, order- ing and couliming, but not paying, lavishly. At the end, caen he,departed, he paid for all his extravagances with one cheque, which bore his signature. The local currency was at the time unstable in the extreme. The Rockefeller cheque was far more valuable than any local paper money. It passed therefore from hand to hand, and no reci- pient ever presented it for payment. So everyone on the island was happy, and Rockefeller had his holiday for nothing.

Who lost?

Papiernifiche

The answer, in both cases, is the same. The ordinary people lose. Their paper money, which they have to deal in, was and is de- valued. The one thing multi-millionaires hate, for 41110the one thing whose value never grows, is money.

Traditional punch recipe

Last week I found myself for the first time a guest at a Punch Wednesday lunch. The food and drink were good and the company amiable, although there was a certain self- eronsciousness about it, like- that of a bad high table trying to sound like what its mem- bers imagined a good high table ought to sound like.

The talk was of a halfway house kind, neither conversation nor speeches, betwixt and between.

To my astonishment. after pudding, the chairman of the occasion and editor of Punch. Mr William Davis. banged a gavel and called us to order. Our business, it seemed, was to discuss Punch's awards, or non-awards, of the year. and a lot of harmless and tiresome and tired suggestions and jokes were made. People tried hard to be funny, the idea being that out of the lunch ideas woul tome forth which would in due course appear in the magazine. Mr Davis made busy little notes. When it came to my turn to make a suggestion. all I could think of was 'I suggest a Skinflint Award of the Year. to Punch and its editor, for having the gall to invite people to lunch and expecting them to sing for their supper'. This sug- gestion, which was no unfunnier than the rest, was greeted with some, distaste: 'But I thougAt it was generally known'. I was in- formed 'that these Wednesday lunches were to produce ideas for Punch'.

Crux warns God

The cyclone which hit East Pakistan is a catastrophe that must never happen again.'—First sentence in the front-page

leading article of last-week's old , Statesman.