Spectator peregrinations

SOMEONE has said that Peregrine is a snake in the grass sailing too close to the wind so I would like you to know of my one charitable act for this week. Walking to Waterloo Station I found a snake on Lambeth Bridge and took it to my sister's wedding at Ascot where I fed it on caviar. I was thinking of taking it to Queen Charlotte's Ball, because that's what everyone does, but it was looking a bit sick that evening.

Harrods' pet shop seemed the obvious answer and I was going there anyway to meet Stanley Marcus who was signing his autobiography, Minding the Store — about Nieman-Marcus of Dallas, the world's most , esoteric shop. I was in the queue with the book and the snake under one arm and a glass of champagne in the other when I found I was standing beside Eric Asprey. He said he only handled these animals if they were stuffed and studded with diamonds. And Mr Marcus, who has been known to supply crocodiles, said he only did snakes on special order.

Meek Craddock, Harrods' general manager, said they had stopped doing snakes some years ago but summoned Mrs Audrey Finevan who was in charge of them at that time. "Isn't he lovely?" she said, "He really is a darling," as the animal coiled itself round her warm sympathetic arm. She took it back to her garden in Holloway where she has terrapins, tortoises, newts, a monitor lizard and a tolerant husband.

Eve! Knievel

As a rather dangerous cyclist, I went along to see if Evel Knievel had anything sensible to say last week. You will remember that he is the "world's highest-paid daredevil" who tried disastrously to jump the Snake River Canyon on a steam-powered bicycle. His big ambition this year is to see if he can, for the first time, survive for a year without going to hospital with multiple breakages. The good news is that every time he breaks a bone it mends even stronger than it was before. And it is because his left leg has been driven two inches into his pelvis that his golf swing is so good. But there is one unexpected phobia for Mr Knievel who has never been out of North America before. He likes to jump buses thirteen at a time and says "Every time I see one of your London doubledeckers, I nearly have a heart attack." So do I sometimes.

Cheers Mike

After last week's Brussels expedition when I nearly dried up and failed to fill this space, I would like to extend some sympathy to the oft-maligned Paul Callan and the rest of the Daily Mirror team who have been sent to Paris and Rome in the last fortnight to try and give the paper a European flavour. But particular commiserations must go to their editor Michael Christiansen who hates aeroplanes. He went to Paris in a staff car which repeatedly broke down and he suffered a stroke himself. He is now in a London hospital where he has been reading 'Peregrinations' in bed and reflecting on its deeper meaning. I hope it helps him towards a speedy recovery.

Quid pro

Sotheby's, the stuffy Bond Street auctioneers, have sent a pompous rebuke to one of their best-known former employees. Anthony For tescue, who runs the Anthony Fortescue Galleries in Walton Street, has a full-page advertisement in the current edition of the Tatler in which he describes himself as "formerly of Sotheby's". Sotheby's have written to say that they do not wish to be associated with Mr Fortescue, who, I would have thought, was a much better advertisement for Sotheby's than they are for him. In fact I think they would be better advised to stick up a blue plaque in Bond Street saying "Anthony Fortescue worked here."

Airborne?

The oddest junket I've been on this week was at the new International Oriental Carpet Centre in Highgate. I went on a minibus and heard some awful stories about a rugger-playing Harrods carpet-buyer. The Centre itself is a warehouse which seemed very like a bazaar in Tabriz, Shiraz or Mashad — except for the vast quantities of alcohol flowing which you don't find in Persia. I was particularly impressed by the man from the Trans-Iranian Carpets Ltd. Flying carpets?

Fitting

Lord George-Brown last week interrupted a televised European junket with Clive Jenkins to launch an epilepsy research appeal at Clothmakers' Hall — contributing £1,000 himself. Brown and Jenkins have not achieved a Johnson-Boswell relationship. The former Foreign Secretary was clearly tired by his travels and of Mr Jenkins. He was kissing frightened blue-haired ladies on the lips. He found it hard to believe that I was the notorious 'Peregrine' but said that if I proved the fact by mentioning epileptics he would give me some terrible stores about Mr Jenkins. At this point Tom Tickell, a Guardian reporter, told Milord that he had already written nice things about epileptics — so I assumed that he would automatically take the prize. No, said George Brown, the Guardian would have to pay £1,000 towards the appeal before they got the Jenkins revelations.

Bat and ball

Feeling over-free-loaded I took the afternoon off on Thursday to watch the cricket from my balcony in Vincent Square. It was hot and sunny and Westminster School was playing the combined Houses of Parliament. The school had an opening stand of 151, which was exactly the score which the Lords and Commons eventually achieved with a team of 12 — the biggest scorer being a Westminster schoolmaster rbought in at the last minute as a substitute. When I told the Parliamentary skipper John Farr, who happens to be my neighbour in Vincent Square. that I had somehow missed his innings, he said with brilliant political circumlocution, "I'd rather talk about the weather but 1 think I had the same score as Nick Scott who didn't alter the total at all."

Performers

Following my recent paragraph about Stan Gailer, the gilt-edged dealer who startled investment analysts in Barclays Bank Pension Fund by blowing a trumpet in the office, I am glad to report further evidence of creative ability in Barclays. They are putting on a performance of A Man for All Seasons on May 21 and 22 as part of the Festival to mark the 1,300th anniversary of All Hallows Barking by the Tower. I have been trying to persuade the producer, Robert Horsfall, a Barclaycard staff manager, that, whatever Shakespeare might think, they should somehow include a trumpet voluntary by Stan Gaiter.

Bull and bare

John Rydon, phillistine art critic of the Daily Express and world champion free-loader generally known as the Immaculate Deception, has been telling me an unsavory story about his underpants getting carried away in a Spanish whirlwind. Rydon, who calls himself a bullfighting aficionado, and pronounces it right,. was at the annual Feria in Seville which marks the start of the season in Spain's oldest bull-ring. He joined in the rapturous applause when the disgusting undergarments came down out of the sky and landed in the centre of the ring. When he got back to his hotel nearby he found that the window was open and his pants had flown. A lot of people I know have heard this tale. I hope we never hear it again.

Debs

The most amazing spectacle at Queen Charlotte's deb Ball was not the rather inevitable drag artist who crawled out from under a table and joined the procession just as this year's fishing fleet was sailing down the stairs. It was Rosalie Horner, William Hickey's representative, inelegantly running down the stairs after the debs four steps at a time and across the floor to get the lad's name. She seemed well-satisfied with this story because later when the Grosvenor House Press officer Peter Cunard kept reappearing with accounts of whipped cream in the face, men with earrings and girls with black ties, she was able to brush them aside.

Charles Maxted, a schoolfriend of mine, who told me rather depressingly that he was there for the first time because his niece was coming out, said the whole thing reminded him of the Eve of Waterloo. And then the Blues and Royals appeared to do the cabaret. Sarah Nicholson would like me to say that she is this year's most beautiful and lively deb. She really is.

Jennifer

Since Mrs Sheila Burns wrote a fortnight ago that this "column has something vaguely offensive about it, rather like reading Jennifer's diary" I have been consulting the real Jennifer to see how I can make it more like that.

But Mrs Betty Kenward of Harper's/Queen says that the secret of her thirty-year survival is that she has never offended anyone. When I told her that in six weeks I had offended just about everyone I know she said, "Well, I'm afraid you won't last, young man."

Actually, on my money, who cares?

Peregrine