Will Waspe
Actress Moira Lister turned up dutifully at Radio 4's Start the Week studio this week as directed by the hard-working press-agent for her new play, a Michael Pertwee farce called Birds of Paradise — currently in Cardiff and due into London at the Garrick next week. Miss Lister was all prepared to put over a happy little 'puff' for the show.
Alas, rather different arrangements were in train, and no sooner had the laay accepted the usual sunny compliments and delivered her laudatory opinion of her show than she was engulfed by a ferocious second opinion from programme regular Kenneth Robinson who proceeded to pan it heartily as a dreary collection of spavined and grubby jokes with which it was hard to imagine an actress of any sensibility being associated.
Miss Lister swiftly cottoned on to the programme's spiky at mosphere, though. When the subject of the Bolshoi came up for discussion later, she was asked whether she had any connections with the ballet. "None," she replied tartly, "except that I am constantly being confused with Moira Shearer. I think I've done more to. get her name around than she has."
Niche
Waspe would have thought it difficult for a theatre's literary manager (or dramaturge) to enlist in a trade union. No so. Kenneth Tynan, who lately held this post at the National Theatre, found that the Association of Scientific, Technical and Managerial Staffs was broad enough to include him — and, when the moment came, to negotiate a handsome redundancy payment on his behalf.
Reunion
If you know any members of London's colony of ageing expatriate American 'liberals' (mostly the disaffected class of '52 or thereabouts), don't call them on Sunday night. It's a fair bet that they'll all be rubbing shoulders at the Royal Court in happy dismay over their old country's troubles. The occasion? Sam Wanamaker is staging a public reading of the Nixon tapes.
Musical chairs
Karl Miller, lately editor of our contemporary the Listener is, I understand, taking a chair of English at the University of London, succeeding Frank Kermode (who is moving up to Cambridge along with Christopher Ricks of Bristol). The Miller appointment seems to have aroused little enthusiasm in academic circles — not anyway in those, such as they are, that revolve around George Steiner, who could hardly have been less amused if it had been Auberon Waugh.
Meanwhile, back at the Listener, contrary to popular rumour, Derwent May has deckled to stay on as literary editor under George Scott.
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