Will WaSPe Bowled over
Life is not all beer and skittles for the toilers on our contemporary, Private Eye — once a year it is wine and boule, which is a pleasant change for them and I am glad to hear that this year's outing (a day trip to Boulogne by hovercraft) was the usual fun-lovers' shambles. Some of them, to be sure, may have been over-tired by the end of the day — although my erstwhile colleague, Auberon Waugh, kept up to the pace throughout. When last observed he was dancing through the streets of Boulogne, wearing a large picture hat and entertaining the citizenry with his rendition of the famous old sea shanty, The Good Ship Venus.
Glenda's Hedda
I hope for three reasons that toe discouraging (to say the least) reports from Washington on the RSC production of Hedda Gabler — directed by boss-man Trevor Nunn and starring Glenda Jackson — have exaggerated its shortcomings. (Miss Jackson, hitherto a favourite of reviewers, has come in for the worst critical stick of her career.) For one thing, it is always wounding to chauvinists here at home when British shows are panned in the US; for a second, there is no way the production can be headed away from London's Aldwych later on; and for a third, a stage flop may cause second thoughts in Hollywood about Miss Jackson's contract to make three films there — kicking off with Hedda Gabler.
Winning and losing
The intramural rivalry between BBC 1 and BBC 2 has always seemed foolish to everyone outside the Beeb, but it has reached new heights of dottiness over The Goodies, described by Richard Last in the Telegraph as "the fey comedy series" — which I devoutly hope it is not, although Last may have an inside track. The Goodies, as you may know, is the pride and joy of BBC 2 and only last weekend won the Silver Rose of Montreux for the second time. The team now feel they deserve a little indulgence and have asked to be allowed to make a special spectacular for Christmas screening. BBC. 2's budget cannot, of course, run to that sort of thing, and the obvious move would be for BBC 1 to do it. The Goodies would be very happy with that, but the second channel sniffily declines to give them up.
Self-expression
I trust that John Blake of the London Evening News will not mind my quoting (purely in the interests of spreading the pleasure) an extract from his article/interview with the pop star, Keith Moon: "Smashing places up is, indeed, one of Keith's more expensive pastimes. Japes like flushing dynamite down hotel lavatories and driving other people's limousines into swimming pools have cost him about £250,000 in damages. "I suppose to most people the sort of things I get up look like sheer vandalism. But it's just something I must do. I get these feelings bottled up inside of me and they must come out. Sometimes it all gets too much and I just want to smash up everything in sight. It's not something I do just when I'm drunk, although that certainly makes it much worse."
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