DIARY ALAN RUSBRIDGER
It has always surprised me how few Trot- skyists read the Tatler. Pick up any maga- zine of the far Left and you will find page after page of impenetrable articles about the corruption of the ruling classes and the shape of the revolution to come. How much more effective it would be simply to reproduce pages from the Bystander, that hugely enjoyable photo album of rich young things pulling off each others' trousers at hunt balls. Hand that out at the factory gates at Dagenham of a Monday morning and you might really start the rev- olution. Similarly, if I were editing the Socialist Bugle this week I would run huge chunks of Alan Clark's diaries. Was there ever a Tory minister who so conformed to the wildest Trot stereotype of a Tory minis- ter: a minister with a castle, a personal for- tune of £40 million and a dog called Eva Braun? From the current serialisation in the Mail on Sunday I would reprint three passages which fall into the category of things no self-respecting revolutionary would dare make up. First, there would be the intimate dinner party of Tory bigwigs at which there was much talk of `too many jewboys in the Cabinet'. Then there would be the episode in which a minister debates with himself whether to jump on a shop assistant he meets on the train, mesmerised as he is by the fact that 'she was not wear- ing a bra, and her delightful globes bounced prominently, but happily, under a rope-knitted jersey'. Finally, I would reprint the same minister's dictum on dirty tricks: 'As far as I'm concerned, "dirty tricks" are part and parcel of effective gov- ernment.' Subversive and entertaining though the diaries are, they have so far failed to explain Clark's eleventh-hour decision not to stand for re-election last year. During the week of the election itself he put off an interview with the Guardian, pleading to me that he was imminently to be translated to the House of Lords. It would be interesting to know why that never came about. It may well be that the diaries will come to be seen as the most spectacular act of revenge in the long and tortuous annals of the Conservative Party.
The other passage that caught my eye in the Clark diaries was his entry for 23 June `1983, while Minister of Employment. There is a tiny balcon below knee height. Sometimes I get a wild urge to relieve my bladder over it, splattingly on the ant-like crowds.' The only other person I knew who was troubled by this urge was my former employer, Robert Maxwell, except that he was altogether less inhibited. Someone who travelled with him a fair amount told me that, after landing on the helipad on top of the Mirror building, the fat old crook would often walk over to the side of the building and urinate on to the heads of the ant-like crowds going about their daily business in Holborn Circus. The psycholog- ical origins of this syndrome are obscure. One wonders if it already has a name: Alan Clark's syndrome by proxy?
Wile on dirty tricks, I was fascinated to read this week of the British Airways campaign which appears to have played a part in destroying Air Europe. The cam- paign was the usual routine stuff — private investigators and leaks to sleazy tabloids about the colourful personal life of Air Europe's chairman, Harry Goodman. I have never met Mr Goodman, but I did once go on a junket he organised to Rome, ostensibly to attend a weekend seminar on European air travel. Such were the attrac- tions of the junket that a good many MPs also developed a strong interest in Euro- pean air travel that weekend. I learned lit- tle new about European air travel, but I did develop a huge respect for Mr Goodman, who somehow managed to rope the Pope into the weekend's jollities. One Labour MP told me how he had barely touched down in Rome before he was whisked off to the Vatican to meet His Holiness, who proceeded to make a fulsome speech on the multitudinous benefits of European air travel. Not only this, said the astonished MP, but the entire event was videoed by a member of the Vatican guard. I've no idea what it costs to secure this sort of Papal company promo, but it surely shows. the kind of initiative badly lacking in British industry today.
Who is Britain's most prolific journal- ist? No, not Bernard Levin. Not Andrew Neil. Not even Tiny Rowland. My nomina- tion goes to Rosanna Greenstreet. Just because the name may not ring a bell does not mean that you haven't read one of her articles. You almost certainly have, for not only is she tremendously prolific, she has more or less invented an entirely new jour- nalistic form. You might call it Q & A jour- nalism. It consists of sending a celebrity a questionnaire and printing the response. Celebrities like it because they do not have to have any personal contact with reptilian journalists and because they are in control. Editors like it because it is short, snappy and immensely readable. Rosanna's main column is in the Guardian, featuring the purest form of the new journalism, the Questionnaire. This followed on from her huge success with a column devoted to My School Report. Pretty soon she popped up in the Times with a similar column on the same principle, titled My Weekend. It was no surprise, when the new magazine OKI was launched, to find another Rosanna column with the breathtakingly bold title: My Favourite Object (David Steel talks about his comb). Nor was it any surprise to find Rosanna surfacing in the Telegraph magazine with a series entitled My Mantelpiece. The beauty of the formu- la is that it is infinitely repeatable. It would not surprise me in the least to find My Handbag popping up in the Financial Times, followed shortly thereafter by My Greenhouse, My Thursday, My Divorce, My Prostate Operation, My Dreams, My Bathroom Cabinet and so on. Once she has exhausted every other possibility I sug- gest a column called simply My. Favourite Column.
The most fatuous car sticker of the week: A Greenpeace sticker which reads: `Cars Kill Trees.' Yes, that's right. A car sticker.
Previous page
