DIARY JOHN OSBORNE
Ihave been watching a Channel 4 series called Plague which once again perpetuates the lie that women are infected with Aids by bisexuals. This exercise in blame-switch- ing must be as concerted as any in the his- tory of propaganda. There are no bisexuals. It's sheep or goats time. If it's sheep, you may take on the odd goat, but the matter of preference is always clear and no clinical evidence can refute the experience and closet-close observation of my lifetime. Tony Richardson, my friend and demi- genius, was a homosexual who had vora- ciously romantic yearnings for women. We often pursued, lusted after and, indeed, even captured the same women. It was something only revealed to me in the later years of our fraught alliance. Like the Machiavellian princeling he undoubtedly was, he demanded imperiously to his courtiers that he should have sons. But be not gulled by all this card-sharping about bisexuality from these Gay Goebbels of Clause 28. Homosexuals were almost always shameless proselytisers. I know. As a young actor, I pitched my lonely tent among the sodomite camps of theatre dressing-rooms to the piqued cry of, 'You don't know what you want, dear.'
I f homosexual evangelism isn't open, it is insidious, endorsed by bleeding-heart het- erosexuals who know as little about the squalor of gay life as your chattering class knows of the often irredeemable brutality of the ranks below it. We are not talking of the love that dare not speak its name, but of excremental, rapacious and sporting excesses in parks, bath-houses and heaths, which straight men and women could not contemplate, let alone contain. No, you prefer one happy or welcome entrance to the other. One witness-victim on Plague, in his early 20s, spoke of his achievement of some 5,000 'tricks'. I am not suggesting that all strident gaiety entails promiscuity on this scale, but obsession is the name of the gay game, and the often devoted and touching fidelities of countless odd couples do not eradicate the rabid nature of most homosexual pursuit. This is an opinion, I suppose. I'll give them up again in the New Year. And if such a tame truism is inter- preted as gay-bashing, I'm Ben Elton.
It seems to me that the Yookay becomes daily more like an open prison, the distinc- tion between prisoners and screws, patients and nurses more elusive. Small wonder that the inmates settle into violence. Television crime series and video nasties are denounced as the agents of evil. The truth
is simpler, pronounced by the Ancients and a commonplace to the likes of Shake- speare, Pope and Dryden. It is the inflam- matory power of music and, above all, the human voice, which may take the savagery out of a bear but, equally, can incite and inflame all that is brutish and belligerent in the human breast. The pernicious moral dissonance of pop, rock and reggae thuds incessantly into the inert youthful spirit, inducing a zombie state, numb to the ugli- ness and aggression of sounds that rout all sensibility, gentleness and put intelligence to flight.
What passion cannot music raise and quell? . . . But oh! what art can teach, What human voice can reach, The sacred organ's praise?
But who will withstand the clamour of the electrified guitar?
Until recently, I believe there were some 70 dialects in Scotland alone. Now, the overruling received intonation is a sort of Yookaic, identified by its dangling diph- thongs, its suburban, wheedling pipes and stooping inflections which drop each sylla- 'Behold – I bring you good news.' ble to earth like a blasted partridge. The girls from the meteorological office have perfected it, but you hear it everywhere teachers, civil servants, BBC correspon- dents, activists on Woman's Hour, phone- ins, every sit-corn. Why is it that so many people who are obsessed with their appear- ance are inattentive to the sound they make? A heavenly noise endures forever in the head. A divine form disintegrates. The morning voice from the shared pillow can banish last evening's voluptuary vision. Sound will conquer sight. 'The People's voice is odd/It is, and it is not the voice of God.'
Amost exactly 46 years ago, I first trod the boards, at the Empire, Sunderland, to begin the happiest and most adventurous period of my life and relish 'This bawdy itch of knowing secret things/And tracing human nature to its springs.' What I have learned since is that there is almost always a concensus of intelligent opinion within my trade that utterly opposes all those who write about it. I have my own form book for information: several fine actors, one intelli- gent agent, and the only producer of taste and judgment in London. Against all their advice, I have made some recent forays. To An Inspector Calls, which must be one of the most unilluminating revivals ever mounted. To King Lear, headed by Robert Stephens, an actor of such grating and dis- comforting power it should have ruffled the century itself. It drove me to weep as he was swamped by the antics of his dinner- lady daughters and chorus boys left over from a wartime tour of The Dancing Years. To a dismal production of Pinter's new play. Why didn't he direct it himself? He knows what he's at. To a feeble American import, City of Angels (Test New Musical'). God knows what all those other acclaimed presentations I've avoided may be like, but I trust the percipience of my informants on the course, to say nothing of my broken and golden pinned-together instincts. Most of this newly lauded talent is specious, empty shells for empty men, and most prominent are the new bandit chiefs — the directors, hell-bent on interpretations 'for our time' — their reputations contrived by a conspiracy intent on preserving cushy reviewing jobs by inventing critical discovery.
Thank God I'm out of it. As the Psalmist has it: 'They are as venomous as the poison of a serpent; even like the adder that stoppeth his ears. Break their teeth, oh God, in their mouths.' Happy Christmas and a Yookay Yooltide to you all.
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