Personal column

Arianna Stassinopoulos

The air is still thick with speculation about who will succeed Mr Heath or whether Mr Heath will succeed Mr Heath. Since the obvious criteria have produced no clear favourite, more bizarre qualifications have come into the centre of the argument. Indeed, we are nearly back in the fantasy world of Hilaire Belloc: The chief defect of Joseph (Keith) Was constant clicking of his teeth, Much worse than Thatcher's winking eye, Or Whitelaw's tendency to cry, Or Du Cann's leer, or Prior's twitch, Or Norman's curious taste for kitsch.

But what defect could ever win Against that shaking-shoulders grin?

One of the more rational of these bizarre arguments currently being advanced is that the choice should be made on purely medical grounds. In this field, the leading dinner table diagnostic is Dr Tom Stuttaford — MRCS, LRCP, and, until February 1974, MP. (It is a sign of the quackery of the times that the electors of the Isle of Ely rejected this worthy physician in favour of the descendent of a mere psychoanalyst.) He seemed concerned about the need to calculate with the precision of an actuary the probability of a Conservative leader's stroke or heart failure, and about the hidden ulcers that plague many contenders of an outwardly placid and jovial demeanour. Even his own favourite, Sir Keith Joseph, has those outstanding blood vessels on the side of his head — they don't upset Dr Stuttaford but I wonder what a phrenologist would make of them? As the Conservative Party is gradually transmogrified into a new Erewhon (Samuel Butler's land where crime and moral lapses were treated but illness punished), we can imagine Members concealing headaches and indigestion as mere dipsomania, sinusitis as spontaneous tears at the fate of the nation, and tuberculosis as nothing but a fraudulent attempt to obtain insurance money. Just as the anti-eugenics lobby never tires of reminding us that on purely eugenic grounds, Beethoven, the fifth child of a syphilitic mother and a drunken father, would never have been born, so one wonders which great politicians of the past would have failed Dr Stuttaford's medical. Churchill, Chamberlain, Gaitskell, Bevin, General Wolfe of Quebec, Lord Salisbury and Castlereagh would all have come under the medical axe. On the other hand, it might have been a good way of getting rid of Hitler, who had Parkinson's disease, was so obsessed with syphilis that many people think he must have suffered from it, and who from his early years was handicapped by an intriguing anatomical asymmetry — at least if the tradition of popular song is to be believed.

To open or not to open...

My appeal for contributions to the Arianna Stassinopoulos Self-Interest Fund last week has clearly touched the hearts of Spectator readers, This morning I heard the welcome knock of the honest British postman which means that he is bearing a gift too bulky to go through the letterbox. He handed me a small but expensively-wrapped parcel, covered in American stamps, which I accepted eagerly. "I am sorry," began the postman, "but before I can permit you to officially open that parcel you must render me the requisite statutory payment of £6.20 in Customs duty and value added tax."

"Can't I open it first?" I demanded of this high British official.

"No," he replied, "There is no provision for opening , in the appropriate statutory instrument. Either you pays or I takes it back." There was no indication of who had sent it, what was in it, or what its objective as distinct from its official worth was. The only hint as to the nature of the contents was a dispatch note from the American department store, Bonwit Teller. "Why don't you write to Mr Bonwit Teller?" said the postman, suddenly becoming sympathetic to my predicament. "I might as well try writing to Mr Marks and Spencer," I replied.

"Well,said the postman, huffily switching back from demotic to officialese. "It is still open to you to write to the appropriate branch and inquire who the purchaser was. Then you can demand of the purchaser precisely what price he paid for the item in question. In the meantime, the parcel will be deposited in our foreign parcels warehouse." This display of cockney bureaucracy was too much for me. I handed him over the money, took off the expensive wrapping, fully expecting a blue flame diamond that the customs office had hiccoughed over. Instead I found myself the possessor of a small fish pendant that I would never wear let alone buy for £6.20. And I had to write a thank-you-letter to my acquaintance in Phoenix, Arizona.

I protested to a Consumers' Group about this absurd customs ruling, but they didn't want to know. Clearly no one trusts the Greeks even when they are receiving gifts.

Greeks bearing votes

Meanwhile back in Greece there is no more talk of gifts — the election is over. I happened to be in Athens when the campaigning was at its height and revealing the enormous gap between modern and traditional methods of wooing the electors. While having lunch with one of the candidates at a restaurant in his constituency, we were approached by the sleekly Greek head waiter who in suitably discreet tones told us: "I can recommend the moussaka today. It's the chef's speciality • Perhaps I could come round to your office tomorrow ... I think I can guarantee you three hundred of my votes."

What a memory we Greeks have! We have had no election for ten years but still remember the way elections were fought and votes bargained over. However, some things have changed. Another candidate has astounded the citizens of Piraeus by bringing English-style door-knocking, hand-shaking and baby-kissing methods into their midst. Fresh from Cara' bridge, he has saturated Piraeus with punchlY, trendy leaflets displaying his shining teeth and intellectual spectacles. One wonders how the old-style ward bosses who control the votes 111 their local areas have reacted to all this.

Sousa on the march

Still, their sense of culture shock can be greater than mine when confronted with the campaigning style of American politicians such as John Philip Sousa IV, candidate for the US Congress — 34th District. Bandwagonning Sousa describes himself as "a young man voll° represents American tradition . . . but wil° marches to a refreshing new tune." In his campaign leaflet, next to a photograph of multi-chinned, barefooted Sousa joggt,,,t1 alongside the Californian surf, the wortPi candidate promises that "I will launch a door-to-door campaign which will include MY walking in every neighbourhood in the district. I plan to visit with the voters at their door, in shopping centres, on the beach and in the lin° at gas stations and wherever I meet a person who wants to discuss the issues of the day." The most striking thing about Mr Sousa's epic prose is not his self-confessed semi-regal title (Soil IV), nor his sub-Churchillian oratory (we fight them in the lines at gas-stations), but ability to compose a lengthy campaign state: ment consisting of nothing but interlinkl clicha, which if introduced in England w°1•1„,le put Peter Simple out of a job — clearly tP,, satirist's life is rapidly becoming an impossin'' one ...

Bucks fizzing

After Sousa's bare feet, it was a relief to viFv1,, the more elegant footwear favoured by Briuse politicians. The other Sunday — deep in what, the estate agents call the 'rapidly improving, part of Islington — the distinguished rachct political writer, Alan Watkins, gave a mldkd party at which we all drank that distinguisn` j radical cocktail, fresh orange juice and cnare pagne. Perhaps the most eminent progresvs present — next to the host himself, that is — " Mr Anthony Crosland, and I noticed that o was wearing bright red leather slippers. Aronns him was a little crowd of trendy sociologiste speculating among themselves as to how tiles f slippers could be explained in terms 'symbolic interactionism.' Some postulate that the slippers reflected elitist social eaos while others who clearly do not know `"„ Crosland and take at face value his membersnlro of the People's Party, ascribed them , proletarian ignorance. Some of the less tren0. sociologists who doubled in bourgeois lite.r% ture, declared that Mr Crosland's identificatt°„( with the eighteenth-century enlightenrnefo had produced a sympathetic attack of gout. ,or the disgust of the sociologists I put the rnatt`:ii to the test by asking him. He mun11:4rar`e something about the need to relax "on the weekends one is not speaking all over t.,11e ,e country." I believed him, but will i',js sociologists? as all, their livelihood depen. et on the public's continued willingness to reIees such obvious explanations in favour of on 1.1 that are obscure, complicated, untrue and a downright loony.te This is the second of three 'Personal colut6' by Miss Stassinopoulos. The third, next wee comes from New York