The Lost Diaries

February

February 1st

February is the month I devote to rearranging the cushions on the sofa in my dressing room, and I do so without any help whatsoever from our staff. As you might imagine, it is quite a job, there being no fewer than four cushions, each of a different colour. Thus one might choose to arrange the navy blue on one side, the pink on the other, with pale yellow and Lincoln green somewhere in the middle, only to find that, on second thoughts, it actually looks better to have the pink somewhere in the middle, with the pale yellow to the left, the navy blue to the right, leaving room for the Lincoln green to remain in the middle, only this time next to the pink and not to the pale yellow, unless of course it is between the pink and the pale yellow.

Whenever I have met them, I have found the British public extraordinarily ignorant of the demands and pressures with which we in the so-called ‘upper classes’ (how I hate all this ‘class’ nonsense!) are confronted day by day. I sometimes think that the ‘ordinary’ people, for all their immense pluck, fail to appreciate the many onerous tasks that befall the Stately Home owner, and I welcome this opportunity to ‘put them in the picture’. Rearranging the cushions on the sofa in my dressing room is one such task, and the time and planning involved are not to be underestimated. First, I have one of our staff nip out to the local shops to buy me a range of excellent new French devices known as ‘crayons’, which are what we used to know as pencils, but with brightly coloured leads. I then spend a week or so measuring out on a piece of paper and colouring in four squares – pink, pale yellow, Lincoln green and navy blue – and a further week cutting them out. This leaves me just a fortnight to juggle these four coloured squares around this way and that, until I am perfectly satisfied that I have ‘come up’ with the best new arrangement. It all makes for a highly enjoyable topic of dinner conversation too, and come February our guests delight in spending an hour and a half or so over the soup arguing the pros and cons of, say, having the pink on the left or the pale yellow on the right, and thoroughly productive it is too.

ANDREW, DUKE OF DEVONSHIRE

February 2nd

What a decade the Sixties is turning out to be. It was tonight, in that steamy liberated atmosphere of sexual awakening, that I first set eyes on Harold Pinter. We were at a party. It was, as I recall, a fondue party. None of the usual rules applied. Knives, forks, spoons: who needed them? Cutlery was dismissed as conventional, and even serviettes had been discarded. Instead, we would – wildly, madly, crazily – dip pieces of bread just any-old-how into a hot cheesy sauce. Then we would toss them into our mouths as ‘My Old Man’s a Dustman’ played suggestively in the background. The effect was electrifying.

Pinter and I went outside together. I said nothing. He said nothing. I said nothing back. He added nothing. Nothing would come between us. Pinter was already known for his pauses, but in those extraordinary moments he managed to stretch it from a slight pause to a mild hesitation and then, before we both knew it, to a full-blown silence.

Pinter was to become known as the master of the pause. He certainly couldn’t keep his pause off me.

JOAN BAKEWELL

As I was being shaved yesterday morning, I found myself reflecting that no English monarch since the death of Edward III can be put quite in the first class, though Queen Elizabeth I was undoubtedly sound, and Queen Victoria was nearly Beta Plus.

And what of God? Though His mind is too eclectic to be considered truly first-rate, He may still be justly credited with one or two good ideas, the Rees-Mogg family being just one example. We stretch back twelve centuries to Ras Mag, the distinguished President of the Ancient Pict Chamber of Commerce, and a notably successful Vice-Chairman of the Woad Preservation Society. To Rees-Moggs, Windsor Castle is a comparatively modern, somewhat – dare I say it – nouveau riche building, as are its present tenants. But I still incline to the point of view that it should be rebuilt. Life itself is not unlike Windsor Castle: sturdy yet fragile, admitting visitors yet essentially private, permanent yet strangely temporary.

WILLIAM REES-MOGG

February 3rd

This morning, I moved to pour myself a cup of tea. As I sat stirring that cup, or, rather, the hard, strong tea within it, my elbow moved back and for’d, back and for’d in a movement that danced to a mysterious rhythm. I was nearing the end of my stirring, and weary, when as fate would have it my elbow inadvertently nudged the vase on the corner table. In consequence, the vase fell off the table, and the dampened daffodils within it were hurled onto the floor, causing our maid, previously young and carefree, to slip as she passed by. She fell headlong onto my prone body, so that a passer-by, unaware of the incidents that had preceded this tragic scene, might have surmised with good reason that she was nailed to me, like Jesus Christ on the cross.

Alas, that is not what the second Mrs Hardy surmised as she entered the room a few brief seconds later. Instead, she threw up her hands and hurled cruel epithets of abuse at myself and also at the maid, who had, when the caterwauling came to a stop, aged most visibly, her hair now wispy and grey, with furrows deep in her face like time-honour’d sheep-tracks over old familiar hills.

This afternoon, a fresh cup of tea was brought to me, this time by a fresh maid with an uncomely gait and the severest of squints. The second Mrs Hardy looked on with an air that betrayed contentment. I am left in a state of unknowing as to where our first maid has gone. I suspect it is somewhere far away and forsaken, and that our paths are never more to cross.

Why me?

THOMAS HARDY

February 4th

To an exhibition of driftwood jewellery at the Commonwealth Institute. I am waiting for Her Majesty in the company of Denis MacShane, MP, a junior Foreign Office Minister. He is still recovering from the excitement of playing host to Her Majesty three weeks ago.

‘Have you noticed how she wears her hats so well?’ he observes, respectfully. ‘Always firmly on the head. And she’s brilliant with gloves, too. She knows where to put every single finger, one in each slot. I’ve never seen her get it wrong.’

She arrives in lilac coat and matching hat. She approaches a figure holding a labrador on a lead.

‘Ah,’ she says. ‘A dog.’

‘She gets it right every time,’ the Lord Lieutenant of the county whispers to me. ‘Marvellous with animals.’

GYLES BRANDRETH

February 5th

JONATHAN ROSS: Fand-asdic! You look fablus! Cwoor! You look gwate! Just gwate! Darn she look fablus, laze and gennulmun? Fand-astic! Wooh! I twuly can’t bleev you’re here with me today! Unbleevbul! Fancy a quickie? Fand-asdic! And you’ve also done all of us in this little countwy of ours the gwate honour of atchly coming to live amongst us!

MADONNA: Yes.

JONATHAN ROSS: Unbleevbaw. We all thank you fwom the bottom of our hearts for coming to live here. Jes thing of that laze and gennulmun –Madonna atchly living in England! Canyer bleev it? So er I guess you um must like it here?

MADONNA: Yes. Quite.

JONATHAN ROSS: Fand-asdic! Gwate! Thank you so much for answerwing that question! Hilawious! So now Madonna’s gonna tweat us to a toadly genius new song! Let’s hear it for Madonna, laze and gennulmun!

MADONNA:

Ah trahda stayur head, trahda stayon tarp

Trahda playapart, but somehow ahfugart

Ahdlark to spress my stream parnda view

Ahm not chrisjun nodda jew

Ooohweeoooweeoooh

This is American Lahf

JONATHAN ROSS: FABLUS! GWATE! FAND-ASDIC! Now, lez facey, you are the singaw biggest star in the histwy of the whirl of wall time ever. Thas quite an achievemun!

MADONNA: Wodever.

JONATHAN ROSS: Gwate! It must be litwully amazing being you! Tell us what you do on a nawmaw day?!

MADONNA: This and that.

JONATHAN ROSS: Fand-asdic! Gwate weply! Tellyawha, if I was Madonna, I’d get out of bed, stwip naked and just look at myself in the miwwor for hours on end!!! I mean, you’ve got the most FAND-ASDIC physique, you weally have! Gwate bweasts! Cwooor! If I were you, I’d just go STARKERS and look at them in the miwwor all day long – then I’d turn wownd and take a gander at that incwedibull bum! Is that what you do on a normal day, then? Is it?

MADONNA: No.

JONATHAN ROSS: Gwate! Um. So, Madonna, tell us about a day when you do somethin you weally want to do. Like, what would you do on a day when you do somethin you weally want to do – like, a day when you could do anything, so you decide to do not just anything but, like, somethin you weally want to do, f’rinstance?

MADONNA: Hmmm. A day when I do something I really wanna do. Hmmm.

JONATHAN ROSS: Yeah. I mean, like a day when you just wake up and you think, hey, I’m Madonna, I can do wodever I wanna do and what I wanna do today is to do, like, wodever I wanna do. Like, if I were you, I’d fondaw my bweasts all day, thas what I’d do! I mean, lez face it, you got twuly gwate tits, you weally have!

MADONNA: My husband and I might go to the movies. We read books. Go to a pub.

JONATHAN ROSS: Amazin! Laze and gennulmun, Madonna goes into our English pubs! Thank you so much, Madonna – you’re a world superstar, but you are happy to go into an English pub! Thaz fand-asdic!

MADONNA: My husband and I go down to the Old Bull and Bush with Burlington Bertie to spend our bobs and quids on a pint of ale and eat fish and chips with brown sauce served by Pearly Kings and Queens. Chim chiminee, chim chiminee, chim-chim-cherooo. And then my husband and I jump aboard a double-decker bus and rabbit in cockney rhyming slang with Mrs Tiggywinkle and the cheery local bobbies.

JONATHAN ROSS: Fand-asdic! And do you let them feel your bweasts at all?

MADONNA: No.

JONATHAN ROSS: Shame! Ha ha ha! Let’s have another bwilliand classic song. Les heawifaw Madonna, laze and gennulmun!

MADONNA:

Doan tellmedur staaarp

Tell the rain nodder draaarp

Tell the win nodder blow

Cos you said so

Tell meeee larvissun drew

Is jist somethin thad we do-oo-oo.

JONATHAN ROSS: Fand-asdic! Fab-lus! We are so deeply honoured to have you among us! Now, not only do you have the most fand-asdic physique – wiwya just look at that arse, laze and gennulmun – but you are a positive GENIUS at we-invention. Like, one moment you are, like wolling naked on the sand in just a wimple, then you toadly we-invent yourself and for the next album you’ve toadly we-invented yourself and this time you’re wolling naked on the sand – in a cowboy hat! Bwilliand!

MADONNA: I don’t stick to the programme. I reinvent myself.* I, like, play with the whole concept of adopting different personas as a means of, like, playing with the whole concept of different personas. By, like, reinventing myself. As a whole concept. Like, I wanted to wake people up to the whole notion that people get hurt in wars. By appearing naked in a gas mask I wanted to say, like, people wake up, war is such a negative concept.

JONATHAN ROSS: But then you withdwew the vidjo.

MADONNA: Sure. I withdrew the video because by then the war had started, and I wanted people to, like, get behind the whole concept of war, and wake them up to the more positive notion that war could actually stop more people getting hurt.

JONATHAN ROSS: Smashin’! Fand-asdic! Tellyawhat, that Guy Witchie’s a lucky bloke! Fwankly, I wouldn’t mind givin’ you one in my dwessing woom later! Less heary for Madonna, laze and gennulmun – and the gwatest tits in the histwy of poplar music!

February 6th

Today, I almost lost count of the minutes I spent researching the story of Queen Victoria. I sat in the hushed atmosphere of the Royal Library for what seemed like an hour. A few minutes later I left with an overwhelming sense that the story of the young Victoria would make a wonderful film – a film she would undoubtedly have made herself if only she’d had the contacts.

The more I researched her, the more I became aware that poor Victoria had never once appeared on television or radio, had never agreed to guest on a chat show, and had never even attended a Royal film premiere! It’s so easy to take these things for granted, but I wanted to truly understand what it felt like to be deprived of these necessities.

SARAH, DUCHESS OF YORK

I have two tape-recorders, one newer and more capable, the other older and more experienced. For security reasons, I never leave them in a room together, but I have often wondered how they have behaved when they are alone. So simply by way of experiment, I place the two of them together in my office having first – quite unknown to them –placed a third tape-recorder in an upper drawer of my desk with the ‘Record’ button pressed on.

The results are fascinating. For three hours, not a single murmur! Or were they tipped off by the third tape-recorder, as a result of some sort of nod-and-wink from the powers that be? I’ll investigate further next week. A fourth tape-recorder may well be needed.

TONY BENN

February 7th

Poor, dear Hughie Trevor-Roper. I really couldn’t feel more desperately sorry for him. One always held his scholarship in such high regard. But now his reputation has been smashed to smithereens by his over-hasty authentication of the so-called ‘Hitler Diaries’. Oh, deary, deary me! It makes one want to weep!

On the other hand, what good would weeping do for poor, absurd, fallen Hughie? None whatsoever. Far better for him that we should all laugh out loud, and join in all the fun at witnessing a once-revered colleague falling flat on his silly face. It’s what he would have wanted.

When the mirth has begun to subside, I pick up my pen and write a letter to poor old ruined Hughie, offering him whatever help I can give. ‘I see that my local “branch” of Victoria Wine is advertising for a junior sales assistant, no experience necessary,’ I venture. ‘Do let me know whether this might be up your street – a friend in need, etc, etc.’

And with this, I help myself to another consoling glass of first-rate champagne. Infinitely agreeable.

A.L. ROWSE

February 8th

It had been a hugely successful tour. Once again, the Canadians had shown that they loved Queen Elizabeth and she had shown she loved Canada.

‘I have never known anyone who could wave half as brilliantly as Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother,’ recalls a close aide. ‘She had this extraordinary ability to hold her right hand up in the air and then –and this is where the real skill comes in – to move it, with amazing delicacy, very gently from side to side. And she really could do that for literally minutes at a time. I’ve honestly never seen anything like it.’

Another onlooker found himself entranced by her singular ability to combine this skill with another. ‘I remember looking at her in her carriage. She was already performing that outstanding wave – it literally radiated sunbeams from its epicentre – when it suddenly struck me that she was also doing something else, equally remarkable. Yes, she was waving – but at one and the same time she was also smiling!’

And by all accounts, that smile was the most perfect smile the world had ever seen. ‘I don’t know how she does it,’ one courtier confided to his diary, ‘but it has something to do with her mouth. Somehow she manages to raise both ends at the same time. As if by magic, she creates a smile, and she then holds that smile for several seconds and turns her head, so that everyone can see it. I have never seen such selflessness and generosity. The effect is transcendent. In the shadow of that gracious smile, I have witnessed entire nations moved to tears of consummate joy, peace and understanding.’

By the time Queen Elizabeth arrived back from her tour of Canada, the Vietnam war had been brought to an end, world trade was prospering once more, thousands of patients had been cured of their illnesses, and Britain was enjoying a glorious heatwave.

Once again, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother had smiled her way into the hearts of the people. ‘It’s so very thrilling,’ she confessed in a letter to Queen Mary. ‘The little Canadians simply ADORE me!!!!’

WILLIAM SHAWCROSS *

Day 18,295 in the Big Brother house. 11.27 a.m.: Aisleyne and Imogen are in the kitchen.

AISLEYNE: How long we been in here then?

IMOGEN: Where?

AISLEYNE: Here?

IMOGEN: Here?

AISLEYNE: Yeah. Here.

IMOGEN: Fifty years, babes.

AISLEYNE: Fifty fuckin’ years?

IMOGEN: Yeah.

AISLEYNE: Oh. Right. I gotta do something about these hair extensions.

February 9th

My father always said that one can never do without common sense in matters great as well as small. He never let anyone in his shop who had not first handed over their shoelaces to my mother at the door. In this way he sought to put an end to petty pilfering. ‘No one can run far without their shoelaces,’ he once said as an elderly lady crashed to the floor, a bag of stolen flour bursting beneath her arm. My father was a man of firm principles and firmer forefinger. Aged ten, I asked him why, when serving the smoked ham, he made a point of placing his right forefinger on the scales. He explained it was to give the customers better all-round service, by helping them pay that little bit extra for quality produce. ‘A finger on the scales is a penny in the till,’ he explained, and it is advice that I have treasured ever since.

MARGARET THATCHER

An actor must be a gazelle at a waterhole, a cabin bursting into flame, a bottle thrown into the ocean, a distant planet newly discovered by an astronomer whose wife has just left him for a younger guy who’s into baseball.

And sometimes, just sometimes, all four at once.

BRAD PITT

February 10th

Odessa. I visit the Odessa Steps: lots and lots of steps, all named after Odessa. Odessa is one of the very few cities I can think of which begin with an ‘O’ – unless you count Orpington! Actually, it’s rather like Orpington in a way: there are lots of buildings, and quite a few people, plus cars and so on. As cities go, Odessa is literally indescribable.

Before I came here, I had no idea how big Russia is. It really is very, very big indeed. The people here are very friendly. Today, after quite a comfortable night, it has been my privilege to meet a marvellous old character, a gentleman who speaks near-perfect English, dresses very smartly in suit and tie, has heard of the Pythons (always a help!) and is anxious to cooperate in any way he can. ‘We must get him on film – he’s a marvellous old character,’ I say to my producer.

‘He’s our assistant director,’ explains my producer.

Later, I rehearse the next day’s script. ‘I must say this view is simply stunning,’ I say over and over again. Tomorrow, we will find a view to go with it.

MICHAEL PALIN

February 11th

Dreadfully distressed at this morning’s news of the death of HRH Princess Margaret. She may have been the teensiest bit COMMON, bless her, but my goodness she had RAZZLE DAZZLE. In so many ways, Margaret personified the sheer devil-may-care spirit of the Sixties. I shall never forget a spectacular luncheon party she threw on the Isle of Mustique in August, 1969. Everyone who was anyone in the Sixties was there. Tripping around the exquisitely-mown lawn on my allotted golf-buggy before the serving of the Pina Coladas, I remember overtaking Gerry and the Pacemakers, all crammed into one little buggy, and Sir Gerald Nabarro, Frank Ifield and Freddy ‘Parrot-Face’ Davis having a whale of a time in another.

Luncheon was a delightful affair. One now forgets what the Princess was wearing, but I myself was wearing a crushed-velvet suit in the most beautiful deep purple, with a Burlington Bertie smock to match. Prompted by sheer JOIE DE VIVRE into perfectly SHAMEFUL indiscretions, I hugely amused the Princess with my running commentary on all the latest goings-on among the senior heads of department at the British Museum. The Princess sat fixed to her seat, her head cocked to one side, her eyes tight-shut, so as to soak it all in. It is greatly to her credit that she would surround herself with people far more intelligent than herself.

After a sumptuous luncheon, a vast cake was wheeled out by the most magnificent pair of coloured gentlemen. And then – PURE THEATRE! – Kathy Kirby and Norman Wisdom leapt out and proceeded to polka the afternoon away to the music of Burl Ives. MAGIC!

Margaret – who I will always remember as one of the most intensely musical figures of that era – clapped quite brilliantly in time, getting every other clap almost exactly right.

SIR ROY STRONG

I had an idea for these gloves today, and I was like, wow. I really want to be really, really creative and like really push ideas to their furthest creation. My fashion philosophy can be summed up as like, I want to take reality to the furthest reality, as part of the creative process. Because it’s only by really pulling ideas into their furthest creative reality that you can find where you’re gonna like push them.

I wanted these to be very, very stylish, very, very classic and very, very contemporary. That was my whole philosophy of them, my whole glove philosophy. But first I had all these different like THINGS to work out, cos I have always paid very, very close attention to detail, cos basically I’m a very-close-attention-to-detail kind of person, that’s just the way I am. So first – how many fingers on each glove? I thought about this and like really studied the whole human thing, and eventually I thought like – wow! – yup, it’s got to be four fingers and a thumb. And not just four fingers and a thumb on one glove, but four fingers and a thumb on both gloves. And that’s not because I’ve got anything against thumbs. I was always brought up to really appreciate thumbs, and I’m dead against people who are, like, against thumbs. No – it’s because if you look at the average human hand and count the fingers and thumbs, like I have, you’ll find it’s got four fingers and just one thumb, and that’s what I wanted to, like, mirror, in my own gloves.