DIARY MAX HASTINGS
Few politicians of any party feel com- fortable with soldiers these days. Malcolm Rifkind was a disastrous defence secretary, Michael Portillo only marginally less so. Geoff Hoon is obsessed with pleasing Labour's backbenchers by putting women in the front line. The end of the Cold War made reductions in the armed forces inevitable. But first the Tories and now Labour have overdone it, both in cutting capability and imposing political correct- ness. The regimental system is one of the glories of the British Army. Each unit takes pride in possession of a museum to cele- brate its achievements, and to educate new generations of recruits in the traditions of their forebears. Disbandments and amalga- mations have already put many of these charming institutions under threat. Now, an edict has gone out from the Ministry of Defence that every museum must be off army property — 'outside the wire' — by 2003. A desperate struggle is under way to find homes for scores of wonderful regi- mental collections. In the present climate, however eager Mr Chris Smith is to pro- mote museums of pop, mining, abandoned Labour principles and suchlike, I cannot see him encouraging the Heritage Lottery Fund to be generous to warriors' relics. Somehow, these collections must be pre- served. Everybody who values our military heritage should join the fight.
Lunch at the house of an elderly friend, whose career has been punctuated by innu- merable affairs and consequent marital explosions. 'How are you, Michael?' Abso- lutely wonderful — I'm now completely impotent. A whole layer of ghastly difficul- ties has gone out of my life.'
On a brief filming trip to Bavaria for an ITV documentary on the Third Reich, our 30-year-old German researcher heard me talking on camera about her genera- tion's courage in confronting the Nazi lega- cy. Rubbish, she said. She has worked on lots of films about the Nazi era, and still finds Germans of all ages evasive about what happened between 1933 and 1945 or too much the other way. One morning, she returned to us in shock after telephon- ing to locate the Nuremberg restaurant where we were lunching. 'They say cheer- fully that it is opposite the SS barracks!'
Just before we recorded the commentary, I learned that shots of SS men hanging hostages in Yugoslavia in 1942 had to be cut from our film 'to conform with ITV rules'. It seems pretty rich to contemplate ITV chiefs whose staples are sex and mayhem baulking at a ghastly fragment of history. They must be bored with a monotonous diet of camel. If I ever find myself lunching with them, I shall serve gnat.
K'tchen undertakers arrived last week to take away our Aga, which has given up the ghost. My wife said wretchedly, 'I feel like a murderess.' The old cooker has given loyal service since 1947. There can hardly be a rural household in the land where the Aga is not treated as a family member. When I was seven, nurtured on half-com- prehended tales of saving orphan lambs, I attempted to revive a rather sickly fledgling thrush by placing it gently in the lower oven. Unfortunately, my mind then turned to other things, and I left it overnight. I have eaten rarer fare at Wiltons than that poor little bird in the morning.
Afriend who travelled recently to Scot- land by night sleeper was charged £80 for a ticket for his dog. He was told that the cost is justified by the need to steam-clean the compartment after the dog has travelled in it. No wonder none but madmen and Japanese tourists now use the once-glori- ous Inverness sleeper. Personally, I am happy to use a compartment after any num- ber of gundogs have slept in it. You could eat your lunch off my labrador Paddy. For a century and a half, the delicious scent of How come this has a sell-by date?' grouse lingered for days in any proper train in August or September. Nowadays there is none of that — only a discernible but per- fectly politically acceptable whiff of unsteam-cleaned football fan.
Ihave always sagely counselled friends against taking part in fly-on-the-wall televi- sion documentaries. As Gussie Finknottle observed on presenting the prizes at Mar- ket Snodsbury grammar school, they only want to see your trousers split. Against all advice from colleagues and family, howev- er, I succumbed to BBC 2, which has been making a series of day-in-the-life films about people doing London jobs. Come on, I said, having a crew at the Evening Stan- dard for just one day can't be unbearable, and BBC 2 is still quite respectable. In real- ity, the production team proved a giggly lot who would have been more at home on a sitcom. The presenter was an Esther Rantzen wannabe. The chosen day was the slowest in months for news. I ummed and erred too much on camera as usual, and found myself answering questions such as, 'How can you edit a newspaper when you can't bear being in London at weekends and spend your spare time being cruel to animals?' I was tempted to ask if they were mates of dear old Stephen Glover. I declined a matey proposal to be filmed choosing flies in Farlows, but agreed to walk the dog. Kensington Gardens or Hyde Park? 'Oh, we can't possibly do it in a park', said BBC 2. 'They charge £300 an hour for permission to film. We'll have to shoot in the street.' I've never walked a dog on a pavement in my life, but I was wet enough to drag the bewildered Paddy round Fulham, feeling increasingly ashamed of myself. 'Well. Now we know the truth,' said my wife acidly after the crew left that evening. 'You're just a tart. You will do absolutely anything to sell a book or a newspaper.' I pointed out that the Times had had the cameras in recently. I muttered that even J.K. Rowling puts herself about a bit. But in truth Mrs Hastings is right. Tele- vision makes hookers of us all, and I deserved my fate.
Icouldn't muster much interest in the weekend's 'latest revelations' from Geof- frey Robinson about yet another bit of New Labour which solicited him for cash. Familiarity dulls the palate. In the unlikely event that Peter Mandelson ever finds Robinson trying to get through a door in front of him, the Northern Ireland Secre- tary may care to borrow Saki's immortal line, ' "I take precedence, I think," he said coldly. "You may be the club bore, but I am the club liar." '
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