DIARY
RICHARD INGRAMS blame the BBC for much of the violence in our cities. Politicians may refer to 'inner city deprivation', moralists to the `irresponsibility of parents' — ignoring the fact that most people don't have parents nowadays. What the BBC does is to create nightly an unhealthy craving for excite- ment by showing news bulletins which consist almost entirely of violent scenes and disasters, the camera zooming in whenever possible on disturbing detail — a black man being clubbed by police in South Africa, flies buzzing round a corpse in Lebanon. Certain clips of film are repeated whenever possible — like the Bradford Football stadium holocaust. Even a little news item about new safety measures may be thought sufficient excuse to show it again. No wonder that so many people have recently felt the urge to set fire to things. They are excited by the film, in this respect resembling Hitler who, we are told by Albert Speer, liked nothing better of an evening than to watch newsreel of blazing buildings, working himself up into a state of demonic hysteria as he imagined the skyscrapers of New York engulfed by flames. The apologists for showing this type of material dictate that we have to see the nasty nature of the modern world if we are to change it. But this is pure humbug. Even the moving film of the starving in Ethiopia had little effect compared to Band Aid. It was the sight and sound of noisy pop groups that got the cash flowing In. As it is, we have reached a stage now when parents of young children will have to think hard about whether they ought to have a television set in the house. That is the answer to the Princess of Wales's moan last week about the bad effect of Starsky and Hutch on little Prince William. Never mind that he learns about drug-taking, the point is that he should not be watching at all. I would go farther and say that his parents should set an example to the nation by getting rid of their telly altogether. Their children will thereby grow up uncor- rupted by rubbish and they will be £58 per annum better off.
Poor Ingrams, I feel he may be dying or going mad' (Auberon Waugh, Another Voice, 12 October). The theme of madness was for some reason uppermost in the minds of contributors to the Spectator last week. As Alice Thomas Ellis said in Home Life, there seems to be a lot of it about at the moment. Although I am only 48 I like to bear in mind a wise saying of a former Spectator contributor, Peter Fleming, on the subject of mental and physical health: `Those of us who are 50 have in my belief one thing in common. We are all extremely lucky, after half a century, to be alive and — more or less — sane.' As for me, a propos Bron's musings, I can report that my health is reasonably good and that I regard myself as more or less sane. (Though having said that, I have noticed some signs of lunacy in my behaviour recently like my new-found fascination with stationery shops and the urge to buy unwanted pens, notebooks and rubbers.) However it is perhaps rather ill-advised of Bron to take as a symptom of lunacy my reluctance to go to court in the case of Tomalin v. Ingrams, Waugh and others. To want to avoid a court case would strike most people as' the mark of a sane man; whereas the law courts are haunted by loonies, just as they were in Dickens's day, .all of whom are pathetically convinced that somewhere, somehow in that echoing mock-cathedral they will find justice, truth and vindication. It was a cruel trick on the part of the architect George Street to make the law courts look like a church, thus encouraging such poor souls in the delu- sion that spiritual comfort could be sought within.
Which leads us to Geoffrey Wheat- croft's dramatic query — also from last week's Spectator — 'is Auberon Waugh mad?' Certainly his liking for the law is rather disturbing. In the case of Tomalin v. Ingrams etc he had even been looking forward to conducting his own defence. I do hope he will not end his days hanging round the courts in a shabby overcoat, pacing up and down the corridors clutching his Gatley on Libel and rehearsing his cross-examination of the, by then, late Mrs Tomalin in a quavering falsetto. hile still on the subject of Bron's mental condition I now realise it was a mistake to inform him that so far only one copy of A Turbulent Decade: The Diaries of Auberon Waugh (Deutsch, £4.95) had been sold in the Wallingford Bookshop (M. Ingrams prop.). No use explaining that the book had been displayed as prominent- ly as could be, and that there was even a copy in the window. The poor sale could only be the fault of the bookseller. But then this sort of mania is common to all authors, including myself. In order to write a book, you have to convince yourself that it is a masterpiece, with the result that when it doesn't sell there has to be a conspiracy against it. Why some books sell, and not others, is one of the great myster- ies of life. But I feel fairly sure that this year's Booker short list will not do well in Wallingford. Last year Professor Richard Cobb's committee produced at least two books, Empire of the Sun by J.G. Ballard and Hotel du Lac by Anita Brookner, which it turned out that the punters en- joyed. That ought to be the function of the Booker Committee — to promote good but little-known writers, whose works are likely to be read when drawn to the public's attention. Immediately the judges start worrying about whether books are `serious', 'important', or 'literature', they are sunk.
Aquestion for Christopher Booker- style quiz lovers: who said 'No man is a hero to his valet'? Godfrey Barker in Saturday's Telegraph attributed the saying to Sorel. But the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations credits someone called Madame Cornuel (1605-1694). Mrs Thrale thought it was Rochefoucauld. Whoever was responsible, the saying is now a bit out of date as few men, not even the Duke of Devonshire I should think, can any longer afford to employ valets. In which case it ought to be re-cast as 'No man is a hero to his wife', the wife — if the husband is lucky — being nowadays responsible for the valeting service. Not to be a hero to one's wife is a beneficial thing. One reason why men become pompous and boring — Ed- ward Heath is an example — is that they are not married. They do not have the advantage of the daily perspective of some- one who does not regard them as a hero.
They may even go mad. As Germaine Greer told us recently: 'The people I know are either married or dotty' — an observa- tion that is not invalidated by the fact that Germaine herself is unmarried. I conclude my reflections on lunacy by stating that so long as Auberon Waugh and myself can be said to be, in Peter Fleming's words, 'more or less sane', we probably have our wives to thank.
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