August 12th - August 18th 2002
Sunday Soham
Saturday Picture this
Friday Cliff steps
Thursday Updates
Wednesday De-la-Noy
Tuesday Kiki and Herb
Monday Do you?
Sunday 18th August 2002
Mentioning public relations in the same breath as the Soham schoolgirls is not quite as bizarre as it seems: there have been some fascinating lessons to be learnt from the way the police have chosen to manage the news as the case has developed.
By carefully timing their on and off-screen briefings the police have drip-fed the eager media with a new angle on the story each day, thus ensuring that it has remained the lead story for practically every one of the last fourteen days: an unprecedented record, assisted by the fact that we're in the thick of the otherwise silly season where there's a dearth of real news.
One can see two motives for the police high-profiling the story in this fashion, and neither of them appears to have worked.
The practical reason for keeping the story hot is to encourage an influx of information from the public. Whilst that has certainly happened - the police have received over 10,000 calls - it currently looks as if none of that information proved useful: the woman who thought she saw the girls out walking, the taxi-driver who thought he saw them being abducted, the jogger who thought he'd found their graves - all of these have now been discredited.
Another, sightly less healthy, rationale for keeping the story visible is a political one: to pre-empt any criticism of the police investigation by demonstrating that a great deal of work is being done.
That has proved a high-risk strategy inasmuch as many of the so-called leads (the taxi-driver, the jogger) have been revealed as being only belatedly followed up. The public, via the media, get to ask why, if so much is being done, has so little been discovered. (Cynics may care to inspect the url of this on-line Book of Condolence; compare and contrast what is, or is not, happening at soham.org.uk)
Now that the bodies have been found (and we note with alarm that they do not appear to be in any fit state to be easily identified), media interest switches to the personalities of the chief suspects, both of whom have already been revealed to have certain unexplained episodes in their history.
The police have until Wednesday to charge them and you may count on the fact that a great deal of the energy demonstrated by the 400 or so journalists covering the story will now be deployed in exploring what the two of them got up to before thay arrived in Soham.
By law, in order to avoid prejudicing the suspects' defence, this public investigation of their history and motives must cease as soon as they are arrested - at least in the British press. Foreign reporters, on the other hand (and France, America and Japan have each sent several TV teams) are under no such injunction - so keep your eyes focused on the relevant net news sites...
Saturday 17th August 2002
Well at last: courtesy of Jonce and the soft light of a rainy day in Brighton, an up-to-date photo of myself that, whilst definitely doing me no favours, does at least not make me look like either an aunt or my father. Ooh, and look, there beneath my right nostril - you can just make out what remains of the scar from my escalator incident. Sexy, eh?
Friday 16th August 2002
"So. Better when we on English stay then you no German speaker is."
Typical bloody foreigner response to an Englishman mangling a mere adjectival ending when speaking otherwise fluent German, as reported by Indy columnist Philip Hensher.
This week's picture-the-headline:
Nudists stranded as cliff steps vanish
And another angle on the ongoing fag-hag debate:
Working class hen parties strike fear in city's gays
"Those continually identified as a problem were working class women from Wythenshawe and Salford."
Thursday 15th August 2002
Updates:
"Contrary to popular belief, most journalists dislike getting it wrong - and prefer to set the record straight."
In a laudable (because rare) attack of candour, the Independent's Phil Reeves has admitted that he (like many other journalists) was in error in claiming that the Israeli army had been responsible for a three-figure massacre in Jenin:
"The reality has turned out to be closer to 75. Palestinian allegations that there was a mass grave in the camp also failed to stand up."
The motivation behind this admission?
Subsequent to my own report from the front-line, Andy regaled us on Sunday with his version of Brighton Pride, much of which he seems to have spent locked in a Portaloo beseiged by angry lesbians. Dave's moment-by-moment reconstruction reveals the exact timing of my awning moment: 2pm.
Elsewhere on the day apparently, someone was busy pouring strong glue into each and every one of the 32 doors of Hove's public conveniences; close study of the story reveals the doors were locked shut rather than open, leading to the conclusion that the motive was murky rather than mucky.
(Homophobe alert on the headline, by the way: Glue vandals spoil gay parade. And there was me blaming it on the rain.)
Even further afield, the group that organises Sydney's Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras was placed in voluntary administration last week, a move which may well mean that next year's carnival may not go ahead. More news from our Sydney correspondent - as and when he -quote- finally gets himself sorted -unquote-.
Adam Ant - last heard ranting from the back of locked van - has pleaded guilty to threatening pub customers with a fake firearm.
His motivation? "Prosecution lawyers told the court that Ant's appearance in the pub wearing a 'cowboy' ensemble of combat jacket and matching flat cap caused customers to laugh and hum the theme song from the spaghetti Western The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly."
Boom boom ba boom - twiddle ee dee, twiddle ee dee...
Frances Hewson (the rather silly woman who attempted to claim for wrongful dismissal by the Duke and Duchess of Westminster) has had her case dismissed.
One suspects that Ms Hewson (not one of nature's tricoteuses) will be one of the many aristo-fans manipulated into a state of snorting outrage by a recent story in the Telegraph claiming that vile socialist politicians are attempting to stealthily speed up the overdue reform of the House of Lords by insisting on referring to peers of the realm as mere "Members of the Lords".
"It is now the preferred way of referring to them" a Lords official said. To underline the move away from titles, the website urges less formality. For example, dukes should be addressed as "Dear Duke", instead of "Your Grace".
Even if it were true, this hardly seems a particularly radical move given the paucity of peers in one's everyday life: it's not as if one knowingly hobnobs with the nobility at the bus stop, the sandwich queue or the neighbourhood darkroom.
In fact, as the website explains, 'Dear Duke' is a purely epistolatory salutation; "Yeah fuck that manpussy your grace" remains the preferred form of address for face to face conversation.
The Telegraph obituary of Michael De-la-Noy fills in some the blanks, especially as concerns what he himself described as a "ludicrously misconceived and bungled Machiavellian plot" to oust him from his post as the Archbishop's press secretary:
"This followed publication of an article he wrote about a transvestite Army colonel in Forum, and another, in New Society, which reported in frank terms the life of a bi-sexual man."
Better off bashing the bishop?
Jamie O'Neill's At Swim Two Boys which several of us loved when we read it in hardback late last year is now out in paperback, and garnering fresh reviews:
"...a story of such tenderness, wit and metaphysical comviction that you might well be tempted to have it placed on your breast when the earth takes you."
Agreed.
Wednesday 14th August 2002
Some extracts from an obituary published yesterday bear close scrutiny:
Michael De-la-Noy was 49 before he published his first biography, a life of Sir Edward Elgar. He then proceeded to produce on average a book a year.
The speed at which De-la-Noy was now to work astonished, and sometimes worried, his editors.
For many years he harboured resentment about his adolescence, and like many creative Englishmen from middle-class families he never really grew up.
He stood for election to the General Assembly of the Church of England.. making his maiden speech by commending a report on abortion, about which he later confessed he knew very little indeed.
In 1970, when De-la-Noy fell victim to a ludicrously misconceived and bungled Machiavellian plot to oust him, cooked up by an establishment cabal who were jealous of his intimacy with the Ramseys, the wrath of Fleet Street fell on the archbishop's head.
De-la-Noy himself had a nervous breakdown, and eventually lost his religious faith. He suffered periodically throughout his life from depression, a condition that was suicidally debilitating in his thirties but gradually subsided as he achieved some sort of equilibrium through work and personal happiness.
He was an occasional obituarist for The Independent and The Guardian and a contributor to the New Dictionary of National Biography.
The sense of fulfilment he experienced towards the end of his life was shared by Bruce Hodson, for 31 years his selfless and devoted companion.
It was The Independent that first broke the taboo that obituaries should be written anonymously.
Thanks to that, we can now know that the author of this obituary of Michael De-la-Noy is none other than: Michael De-la-Noy.
After what I would guess was considerable head-scratching, his fellow-obituarists also allowed themselves the comparative luxury of writing him a further obituary, partly to explain and ponder the whole phenomenon of 'auto-obituary'...
Michael De-la-Noy wrote his own obituary some years ago, and put the finishing touches to it the day he suffered a major stroke at the end of July.
Goodness knows how often the traditional broadsheets publish an "auto-obituary" - they don't sign them, so no one can tell - but this is the first time The Independent has done so.
Dame Barbara Cartland, one of the many eccentrics by whom De-la-Noy was bewitched ("she has sex on the brain"), once delivered an auto-obituary tied with pink ribbon, but we didn't fall for that.
Why then De-la-Noy? The answer is, there is no reason why someone should not write their own, any more than their father's or mother's, obituary. It is just more difficult.
..and partly, I suspect, because they wanted a chance to pay their own oblique tribute to De-la-Noy's elliptic bitchy style:
He would research zealously, write letters, visit, interview, sit in libraries. And then he would settle at his old-fashioned typewriter and simply turn the book out. The particular virtue of this method was the directness of style it engendered.
De-la-Noy wrote with freshness and a vivid turn of phrase; he enjoyed mild polemic and a bright dash of gossip; he never stumbled into obscurity or the historical bog. On the other hand, he could sometimes appear a bit slapdash or frivolous, underdressed, as it were, for the hardback party.
The moral of this story?
One can write one's own obituary - but it will always be someone else who publishes it.
Tuesday 13th August 2002
Last night five of us were privileged to audit Kiki and Herb at the Soho Theatre.
Kinda redundant to attempt a critical dissection of an act whose entire point is to stare sentimental meaninglessness straight in the face and fight on through to the other, under, side: from Bacharach through Brecht to Beckett.
Let me just say it was the best night I've had in a theatre for a long long time, and move swiftly on to some unconnected thoughts:
A cabaret act in a theatre? I didn't time the show but it was a hell of a lot longer than the average drag slot. Were Kiki and Herb always a show, rather than an act? Makes me wish I was a native New Yorker who knew them when they were nothing.
But have I seen them before? Several years ago upstairs at the London Apprentice, shortly after it went straight, at some wannabe bizarre night? I don't remember them being as good as this.
Forewarned of potential audience participation, we quailed to find ourselves in the second row from the front. We survived intact, but I never thought to hear "Where ya from, darlin'?" turned into the four most frightening words in the English language.
David gave me a sideways look when I barked with laughter at Kiki's talk of her "two surviving children" and only afterwards explained that fans follow her ongoing revelations about her dear deceased with rabid interest.
So, for those of you not entirely up to date with the latest family news: "I left her momentarily to satisfy my, uh, carnal desires. I mean, where can they go on the deck of a boat?"
Kiki and Herb on stage, Butch and Topping in the row behind us. And Tina C in Edinburgh. Rather her than me.
Drag acts are rather rare in America, or so I'm told; I wonder why?
It might simply be something to do with the lack of a Music Hall tradition. But I think it goes deeper: they don't feel the need for that layer of protective irony that dressing a man as a woman provides.
When Americans fancy some fun from a frail elderly female, flailing at a song in spectacular sequins, why, they simply send for a female: think of Mae West, think of Phyllis Diller, think of Bette Midler, ripping themselves to pieces in front of an adoring public.
Then think, if you can possibly bear it, of Petula Clark, Cilla Black, Dame Vera Lynn. How come our Dames don't act like their dames?
"Between AIDS and Alzheimer's we don't have a fan over 40." Hey! Over here!
Monday 12th August 2002
Would you like to see the custom of greeting strangers in the street reinstated?
Do you think calling cards and guest books should be resurrected?
Do you think children should be polite to their elders?
Would you give up your seat to an elderly person?
Do you write thank you letters to friends and relatives?
Do you think the National Anthem should be played at the start of films?
Do you think television newsreaders should wear a dinner jacket?
Do you think that formal social introductions should be de rigueur?
Would you like to see elevenses reinstated?
Do you want high tea to make a comeback?
Hover over the question marks to see the answers as represented in a recent survey by the Future Foundation; some of the figures may surprise you...
......previous week