RACHEL JOHNS ON
You once said something I remind myself of at least twice a day,' Alan Rusbridger said to my excitement, over our lunch at Flaneur. 'You told me never to go on TV or radio.' I denied this (Johnsons are not noted for their aversion to publicity). 'But you did,' the Guardian editor insisted. 'You said, never accept offers to go on unless you really have something to say.' I was beginning to feel amazingly proud and wise. 'You said it's a terrible waste of time, and if you do it too often, people stop listening to what you say.' Then I remembered. I was working on the World Tonight when I'd issued this warning. It was sometimes quite difficult to persuade guests to come in to do a spot of radio at that hour. so one had to rely on those who would Never Say No, at the mention of whom a chorus of groans would go round the fetid office. Any Tory was a rentaquote, but Peter Bottomley, I seem to remember, would trample over his own grandmother to come in. I ring my old office to see who would step up to the wicket, and the batting order is much the same. 'Ken Livingstone? Tony Banks?' I ask the duty editor. 'Still easy to pull,' he replies. 'Who are the real tarts, though?' 'I wouldn't call them tarts, more like regulars, except for the LibDems' Simon Hughes,' says my former colleague. 'He will talk about anything, anywhere, any time.' I am quite understandably still glowing that I have contributed in any way to Alan's reputation as Renaissance man: not just an editor, playwright and pianist, but also something of a sage.
Did anyone else resist the urge to hurl their biltong and sjamboks at the television whenever Derek Bond, the pensioner from Bristol who had gone on a wine-tasting holiday to South Africa with his wife, Audrey, appeared, with tears running down his cheeks? 'Get a grip!' we would howl. `Belt up, you snivelling wretch!' What on earth has happened to stiff upper lip? OK, the poor bloke lived in a cage with a concrete floor for three weeks instead of tooling around the vineyards of the Cape. gargling Cabernet Sauvignon, but I was still faintly appalled. We have decided he is, at age 72, part of the generation who never fought in the war, believes in sharing and counselling, and can even deploy the words 'partner' or 'loved ones' without shuddering. I'm sure I would be a wreck if I had been arrested in mid-holiday and put in chokcy. But still, as we all look at the legacy of Stalin, 50 years to this week after his death, one is tempted to point out to the TV producers who gave the tears of a retired civil engineer so much airtime that Stalin's victims still languish, forgotten, in the Gulag. One of them, Anastasia Bugaenko, is 76. She was sentenced to
six years' hard labour in 1949 after young communists denounced her brother for wearing a black armband. He was in mourning for his father, killed in Auschwitz. 'I grew up in green countryside hut I will die here in the snow,' she told the Telegraph. There was no reference to her tears.
Just as Michael Gove of the Times finally confessed his adoration of Tony, I am slightly ashamed of my pash on Cherie. Every time I see her I am struck by her radiance. I want to go up and prostrate myself for having been the one, in these pages, to reveal that her son was privately coached by a Westminster history teacher, and clutch the hem of her raiment. As a friend has pointed out, though, if I ever merited an obituary it would run under the words 'Blair Boys' Tutor Woman Dies'. That is, I feel, mortification enough.
My children have been enchanted by my purchase of four Care Bears videos in my local Oxfam shop, and are now addicted. The household awakes to a squeaky
chorus of 'Daytime, night time, any time is a perfect time to make a friend!' The children are rising early to cram in yet more 'magical stories about caring'. Let me share: the Care Bears exist, a little like Michael Jackson, to bring happiness to all the children in the world. Bedtime Bear, Wishbear, Brightheart and the rest of the Care Bears' Cousins live together in the Forest of Feelings in Care-o-lot. They take care of little twins Tugs and Hugs and stop nasty Auntie Freeze from doing bad stuff like stealing people's daydreams. I suspect that the older two are enjoying it, like a couple of Late Review pointy-heads, on several levels. They like the sing-song tunes, the instructive plots, the heart-shaped clouds, and all that. But the point is they know that it is gooey and icky and American, and find it all hilarious. It has been a defining moment. The age of unreason has been passed and a new era, the awareness of kitsch, is upon us.
Ijust called Clare, a Brussels friend I hadn't heard from in a while. 'Well.' she said in a tart voice. 'No need to ask what's been going on in your life. I seem to know it all already.' Ouch. Perhaps I should be pleased that my dispatches from the Notting Hill front, with tragic stories of escaped hamsters and near-death experiences in the school-uniform department of Peter Jones, are more rewarding than face-time with me. I called to consult agony aunt and fellow 'domestic comedy' writer Mary Killen, also of this parish. 'Polly,' I began. 'Yes, Polly?' she answered in her thrilling Irish brogue. (We call each other Polly in honour, of course, of Polly Filler, a mother my age who writes a brilliant dom-com column in Private Eye about her lazy, overpaid au pair girl.) Dear Mary explained that I. the supplier of Too Much Information, have become an unwitting victim of time famine. People have little time and many friends, and therefore regard the mere act of skimming my effusions as 'working me off'. Isn't Mary a genius? So let no one accuse us Pollys of spreading virally and pointlessly over newsprint. We are not there to amuse, oh please no, but to provide just enough personal data (this just in! we found the hamster!) for friendships to tick over without the slog of communication.
My husband keeps asking me what I am giving up for Lent. At my refusal to answer (I couldn't bear to give up anything), he has made a humble request that I try, just for the duration, to give up using two words in print. And they are? 'My' and 'husband'. I have declined, and have offered to give up name-dropping instead.
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