Roundabout
Suites
THE GOSSIP COLUMNIST is a sitting target for any reasonably good marks- man. Fleet Street would be disappointed if it did The World of Paul Sliekey, due in the West End in April. After all,, it has received acres of free advance publicity in the Street's gossip columns already.
By an odd irony, the music itself has been written by the son of a journalist. At thirty-one, Christopher Whelan is neither young nor angry. Paul Sliekey will be his third musical. 'My life is now geared to writing musicals,' he remarked in the bar of the Cafe Royal. And he sat back, tilted his head to one side, and smiled con- tentedly.
'I've no use for composing symphonies. My ambition is to make England sing again. There hasn't been a composer to do this since Novello. I've never seen an English musical I've really admired. Who is there today? Julian Slade? Well, that's Mendelssohn and water. Sandy Wilson? No, he's a gifted theatrical creator. But as a composer he's a pasticheur. Gershwin is my god as a musical composer. I want to write musicals about London because I love London. I am writing one about the East End. I like Teddy-boys. They're alive. They're open. They really are very sophisticated. I was speaking to one and he used the word "stigma". . . it shook me.'
Mr. Whelan does not need the traditional Country retreat to work in. 'I work. And this sounds incredible I know, I work in bars, tubes and railway stations. I wrote one of the songs in Slickey—a romantic one, too—in a bar in Waterloo Station surrounded by people. I can't bear being alone. I love actors. They may be vain, but they are open—their curtains are drawn back.'
Music publishers have already approached him to print the music of Paul Slickey. 'One has to be SO careful. They always want one to compromise. They say : alter this chord because the public Won't like it. You know, I feel really savage about their altering my chords. These things make a personal style At least, my friends—who are my most brutal critics—say I have a personal style already ' Mr. Whelan has equally strong views about gossip columns. :They're so boring. Who cares about the nonentities they write about? I suppose the gossip columns serve some useful purpose. For people who are emotionally bankrupt.'
Mr. Whelan smiled indulgently, finished his Whisky and walked out of the bar into a scurrying an;CI alive Piccadilly He walked quickly, like a man in a great hurry to get somewhere, and was SOOn out of sight among the crowds. The gossip columnists are still waiting expectantly for their share of immortality.
Suits
THE CHAIRMAN TAPPED shyly at the hiccoughing microphone. Still the thunder o s round the newly-styled Aquascutum showroom ('contemporary, with an influence of Regency in tribute to Nash"). 'Shout "Order!" in a loud vOice; drawled Sir David Eccles. 'Quiet, please,' said Mr. Gerald Abrahams. 'Quiet, please. Quiet, please.' And as he unfurled the titles—WI.. Presi- dent, my Lord Mayor, your Excellencies'— silence descended like a shop blind.
The President of the Board of Trade said that the Board was interested in ready-to-wear clothes. His own suit, on his lanky, long-jawed figure, was impeccably tailored in a medium grey with a fine stripe. 'When we think we have found sornething expanding, we want to give it every help,' he said. The Eccles tailor had evidently taken the same sort of attitude towards the Eccles waistline, which, though certainly expanding, yet remains tastefully concealed.
There was a flashing, snapping flurry of canieramen as he declared the store open, and a new adornment to an old site in Regent Street, where, he believed, 'potential customers from overseas are always walking up and down.'
Hastily a discreet assistant pointed to the almond-green curtain behind the dais. 'Is it a man or a woman behind it?" quipped Sir David, manfully hauling on the cord. It turned out to be a bronze plaque. There was a pause for hand- shakes amid the photofloods and then , the re- porters set their notebooks barking at him.
'Have you ever bought any clothes here your- self, sir?'
`No,' he said, 'No, I haven't. . . / haven't. . . . But my family has.'
The assembled, directors breathed again, and the temperature, which had momentarily hovered round freezing-point, returned quickly and cheer- fully to blood-heat.
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