Low life
Eye contact
Jeffrey Bernard
Ikeep getting bombarded with unsolicited mail. Sometimes it's pleasant stuff from Spectator readers but more often than not it's publicity rubbish from Channel 4 which should be going to Richard Ingrams, the humorist and television personality. This morning I received an invitation to a preview of something called Pictures of Women — Sexuality. The blurb goes on to say, 'Women today are limited and defined by sexuality in ways that men are not. Star- ting from this premise, a production team called Pictures of Women have fashioned six programmes asking why this situation has arisen and looks, from a woman's point of view, at its effects on a wide range of contemporary social issues.' Etc, etc. Bla, bla. 'The series examines the nature to sex- ual attraction, pornography, sex in adver- tising, prostitution, sexual harassment at work and the continuing limits to sexual equality.' Then, at the foot of the page, `Refreshments will be served after the screening.' After? I ask you. Not only after but the wretched preview itself starts at 11.30 a.m., by which time I will have already been hard at work in the Coach and Horses for half an hour. What's more, you'd need a skinful to sit through this sort of film.
But what's really been getting up my nose for the past five or six years is the revolting way women take sex and themselves so bloody seriously. The fact that so very few of them do so is little consolation to me since being a hack I'm permanently sur- rounded by those very few or, at least, a large proportion of them. I used to have a soft, and occasionally hard, spot for Ger- maine Greer, but just see how fame destroys people. It's awful. With a Booker Prize she'd be certifiable. But I wonder does the business of taking sex so seriously have anything to do with the fact that so few women can bear to own up to simply liking it very much? And just what is the problem concerning prostitution? The ex- pense. If any reader knows of a call girl who accepts Barclaycard I'd be grateful to be in- formed of her name and address. (My new Barclaycard arrived this morning. The old one was cut in half by a shop assistant in the Victoria Wine shop in Berwick Street in front of six other customers. That was far more serious than sex.) What I do think is utterly rotten is the business of 'No Knickers' Joyce who told. me that one of her customers paid her by cheque and then stopped it. Not cricket.
But the business of sexual harassment in the office is, I think, slightly exaggerated. I have, would you believe, been on the other end of it. Fifteen years ago, at the Daily Mirror, there was a secretary who couldn't type for crying over me. It got on my tits as well as the boss's but I suppose tits is a sex- ist word in spite of the fact that men have them — of a sort — too. But I'm all for sex- ual equality. When I was in Moscow I can't tell you what pleasure it gave me to watch women shovelling concrete on building sites. I don't like watching them write very much, they have such a facility for it, but I do like to see them work. Sadly, I know only three equal women, Irma Kurtz, Sally Vincent and Hazel Evans, all of whom generously stand their round. Oh yes, and my landlady and Liz Elliot at Private Eye. As for pornography the worst thing I can say about it which women will be totally unaware of is that it's ruined Soho. My heart bleeds for the low life cafe society that's been taken over by dirty bookshops and strip clubs.
But you note that this film examines the nature of sexual attraction. What is there to examine? Speaking as one whose life has been totally ruined by falling in love with the packaging and not the woman I find it pretty hard to believe that women don't want to be sexually attractive. Of course, I'm in the wrong business and owning a typewriter as opposed to a cosmetic or high- heeled-ankle-strap-shoe factory is a pretty grim financial alternative. And speaking of sexual attraction the most extraordinary thing has happened to me. I've become totally besotted by the woman who works in the optician's shop I go to — I keep los- ing my glasses. It's really quite pathetic. I keep going into the shop on the slightest pretext. It's horribly like being 16 again. She's not what you'd call a knockout but 1 fancy her almost to the point of obsession and I'd very much like to be paid by Chan- nel 4 for talking about the problem on television. Last week I went into the shop three times to have my glasses tightened and when she puts them on my head she has to stand very close to me. I fear this could lead to six months in Wandsworth. What I do know is enough about women to be sure that she spends an age every morning mak- ing herself attractive to the likes of idiots like me. But I can't go on and on having my eyes tested just to be near her. I would be extremely grateful to any female reader of this column who could tell me of an effec- tive and new verbal opening gambit. I fear she can read an awful history book iv my eyes.
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