Low life
Gone with the wind
Jeffrey Bernard
There were a few of us in the bar of the Grouch() Club the other day talking about Camillagate when, during a pause for reflection and a sip of our drinks, a lurking waitress suddenly said, 'I wish I was a sup- pository inside Prince Charles.'
I couldn't afford to choke on my drink, not at £4 a shot, but I did pause to think that my own ambition to be an engine driv- er when I was not that much younger than she was a pretty meagre and unambitious dream. Some strange dreams and fantasies have been manufactured in this head of mine but I have never hoped to be medica- tion in an orifice, royal or not, to melt and then be gone with the wind. To want to be the bee in Saddam Hussein's bonnet would be reasonable enough, or to have been the bullet that killed Hitler in the end would have been a worthwhile dream, but to end up as a fart is an appalling thought.
I didn't realise that women waited on tables thinking such things. Oh well. There was a man once who said that he would like to be stabbed in the back by Carlo Ponti and you can see his point, but how could a seemingly sane Liverpudlian girl want to go for a dip in brown Windsor soup? Our obsession with royalty really does know no bounds. I remain content to know that the Queen used to read my col- umn in the Sporting Life every Wednesday and Saturday some 20 years ago and that was as close as I ever wanted to get to the Palace.
Meanwhile, life ticks by for this common- er and pretty boring it is too, although let- ters from readers in Australia of all places would indicate that they think I live in a bowl of cherries. Last night was OK, though. I went to see Peter O'Toole in Our Song, liked it, liked him, and went around to his dressing-room after to have a drink with him. He autographed a picture of him- self for the sainted Vera, who is about to turn up at any minute. She will be well pleased.
So will I be to see her. Her stand-in last week was a young man, unsuitably named, I think, for a home help, Craig, who wears a Russian fur hat while he washes the dish- es and who studies fine art in Holland when he isn't elbow-deep in the sink. He is rather formal, as befits a Craig — a Tom, Dick or Harry would tell me to get stuffed — and he says he doesn't mind working his way through college at fairly menial tasks. I don't get that. Washing up dishes and hoovering for crocks can't be fun. By the same token he finds it hard to understand that thumping Monica electric de luxe is loathsome to me. I think Olympia typewrit- ers should bring out a new model and call it Camilla electric de luxe. I would like to be the ribbon in her.
Anyway, last Friday I had to buy a sofa in the sales. It is essential. I haven't actually sat next to anybody in this flat since I moved here a year ago. It is a very flashily upholstered job, as bright as a Henley Regatta blazer, and bloody expensive too. I moaned and whinged about the price of it for hours and the very next morning I received a cheque in the post covering the cost with a little bit over. To my amaze- ment the cheque was for royalties for a short run of Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell in Copenhagen. What on earth could the Danes have made of it? Keith Waterhouse and I must speak in Esperanto. Gabby who runs the delicatessen in Old Compton Street tells me he read good reviews of the play as well in the Italian paper he buys. Considering the Italians are tantamount to teetotallers I should have thought it would be absolute Greek to them.
But it bodes well. I need a new cooker as well as a sofa on which to chat up young gullibles. Perhaps 1993 might not be as dis- gusting as I had thought. And don't tell me about small mercies. The big one is not being a suppository.
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