Gossip columns

I was 'Albany's' footman

James Hughes-Onslow

Kenneth Rose has been ringing me up to ask, `Do you ever dine?" This is an odd question but particularly for me because I am one a the fifteen or so highly dispensable assistants in 3,5 many years who have helped him with Ins ghastly Sunday Telegraph 'Albany' gossiP column. After the Sheer tonnage of typewriters, Burke's Peerages and abuse that he has heaved across the office in my direction, WhY these friendly overtures?

The reason apparently is that after a recent article I wrote in The Spectator, he is worried that I might write about him. In fact I hadn't thought of it. But, as he never tires of telling people, his next book is about to come out so maybe the time has come to review Kenneth Rose.

When I stumbled on the diminutive historian in St James's Street the other day he was waving the dust cover of his latest work, ahotiti Lord Salisbury's family, the Cecils, in front o three or four people and asking them to Vets who took the photograph of the three nipPe'' on the front. Some of the heaviest names ill history dropped around his ears as he beame° silently. "No, .no, no, no," he finally intervened. "Lewis Carroll, yes, Lewis Carroll, Yes' extraordinary isn't it?" It is important if you want to talk t° Kenneth Rose — or have to — to drop as Marl names as possible. But you also have w fin him in a place where he doesn't mind being seen. I have made the mistake of seeing hirn 011 the top deck of the No. 6 bus (a good idea when you don't want to talk to him) where he hides among the racing pages of the DailY Telegraph on his way from his Marble Arcn

flat to Fleet Street. Once off the bus he walks very fast from the bus stop with his umbrella held down over his head — without realizing it seems, that an umbrella travelling at speed five feet above the pavement makes him unmistakable rather than just conspicuous. When I was interviewed tor the 'Albany' job in June 1970 he handed me a list of the new Tory Cabinet. "How many of these are friends of yours?" Much too exhausted to be rattled by Points of snobbery, 1 claimed intimacy with the Cabinet and the Fellows of All Souls, knew the art world backwards and had read Superior Person, his much-acclaimed biography of his hero, Lord Curzon. My informant, who had earlier advised me on the strange ways of Rose, said after seeing him later, that I mustn't treat him like a footman.

To show which footman the boot was on he did a special display soon after I started work. He was planning his holidays in Yugoslavia and Cyprus and wanted to go to Venice on the way. Did I know a good hotel? "No, no, no, no. Silly of me to ask you." Rose then rang up Queen Frederika in Rome. When he finally got through with the familiar high-pitched, "It's Kenneth," the Queen naturally assumed that he was pursuing his grubby Profession somewhere in the Italian capital. She asked him to tea the following weekend. So he scrapped Venice, and after Rome went to the Dalmatian coast on Lord Shawcross's yacht and from there to Cyprus to stay with his former Eton pupil, Eddie Kent (usually known as the Duke of). While he was away I met the Prime Minister

Mr Heath with Mr Profumo (improved namedropping) at the latter's Toynbee Hall centre in the East End. After a stiff joke, "What are you doing here on a Wednesday? Trying to be accurate for a change?" Mr Heath asked, "How's Kenneth? Did someone tell me they saw him in Cyprus?"

I kept this exchange under my hat for a rainy

daY – one of those days which were so stormy that Duff Hart-Davis, the only other person in the office, had got his tape-recorder out. It had reached the point where I usually went off to spend the day in the West End to snoop around the 'art world' for a bit. As I was leaving 1 said, "The Prime Minister was asking after You,"

"Yes, yes of course he was. They all do you

know," he echoed down the corridor after me. When I came back at lunchtime he was still there. When he is not at the Beefsteak for lunch he eats chicken pies, which he buys at the Marble Arch Marks and Spencer, and a lettuce, to the accompaniment of Radio 3 on a crackling pocket transistor. From where I sat I could not ',lea!" the music or see Kenneth Rose because he has a row of enormous reference books along the front of his desk. But I could hear crackling and crunching and see his hands conducting sYrnphonies. This time he stood right up and spat out a bit of lettuce in his eagerness to ask What Mr Heath had said. I worked there for ten months which at the time was very nearly a record. Secretaries sometimes go before lunch on the first day. The trail of disaster began when Thomas Paken ham, son of Lord Longford, inherited and disclaimed his title as Lord Silchester while 1.yorking on the 'Albany' column. Even worse, se had to reprimand Pakenham for talking to "le Printers. Among the other distinguished writers who have had their meagre paragraphs fl to shreds are Anthony Lejeune, Adam 9.gus50n, Ferdi Mount, Dominic Harrod, mark Amory, fOr Oliver Pritchett, Peter Gill and a flier Tory MP, Ian Sproat.

_The difficulty is that you never know which ',.ote he is playing – historian, socialite or gossip

inn-inist. Perhaps he would like to be a Harold t:ncolson or Chips Channon with a country 1",‘°11se and a seat at Westminster. Instead his Te is held together with newspaper.

e$ williarWughes-Onslow has worked for the tc ey co umn,

Alban , as well as for