Will Waspe
The 'left-wing commitment' that has caused Mr Angus Maude to resign from the board of the Royal Shakespeare Company is not, you will be glad to be reassured, likely to disturb the conservatism of the Royal Opera House. A young friend of mine — paying, as it happened, his fourth visit to Covent Garden within a fortnight — ordered a gin-and-tonic for himself and a ' coke ' for his companion in the crush bar the other evening and was put firmly in his place. " I can see that sir is a stranger to the House," said the barman, his rebuke given that light overlay of tolerance which butlers are apt to bring to their relations with the nouveau riche. " His lordship insists that everything here should be as near as possible to the traditions of a hundred years ago. We do not serve the colas."
The young fellow felt, in the circumstances, he was lucky to get the tonic.
Communication problem
I have a press statement at hand from my Lords Goodman and Mancroft's 'Fanfare for Europe' people announcing one of the events of this bizarre carnival as " an audiovisual symposium on communications problems " on entering the EEC.
The affair is being organised at the Queen Elizabeth Hall by someone named Edward Booth-Clibborn and produced by Tony Palmer, whose qualifications for this employment are thoughtfully included: "director of All My Loving and 200 Motels [sic] and author of a book on the Oz Trial." Communications enthusiasts will be additionally entertained to learn that the symposium's "several 'happenings' include a champagne luncsh when delegates will watch overalled workers from EEC countries sitting on scaffolding eating traditional European workman's lunches."
Leg slip
The rumoured suggestion (almost certainly as untrue as it is unworthy) that Miss Jill Bennett broke her leg in order to avoid appearing in a play at the Royal Court's Theatre Upstairs reminds me of the late Wolcott Gibbs's comment on a similar rumour about the leading lady of a Broadway
Lproduction. It seemed to him, he said, like the product of some press agent's imagination: "A couple of fingers I could easily believe — a leg sounds excessive."
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