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She passes me the receiver. Someone is talking on the other end.
It’s the Home Secretary. Douglas Hurd is my godson, and still runs the occasional errand for me.
‘Oh, Dukey, how would you like to be in charge of the BBC?’ he asks.
‘BBC?’ I say. ‘…Remind me.’
‘Broadcasting. Radio, telly, that sort of hoodjamaflip.’
‘To be perfectly frank, Douglas,’ I say, ‘I’ve got no use for a telly. I mean, where would one put it?’
‘But you don’t have to buy a television, Dukey – you just have to be in charge of it.’
‘You’ve convinced me,’ I say, and go to sleep.
MARMADUKE HUSSEY
February 25th
I’ll never forget something the great Laurens van der Post
(#litres_trial_promo) once told me. Things, he said, are as they are. Yet being what they are, they are also somehow different. And if things were not as they are, they could not continue to be what they both have been and will be. And consequently, they – the things in question – will always be not only what they might have been and what they are, but also what they will be. It is these simple truths that we are, I fear, in danger of losing.
HRH THE PRINCE OF WALES
February 26th
I am halfway through Tess of the D’Urbervilles when I throw it away in disgust. Thomas Hardy had no right – no right whatsoever – to write a book about me without my express permission. His presumption in this matter represents a total invasion of my rights to privacy. May I also point out that, like many a hack before him, he has got a startling number of the facts wrong.
FACT: I was born in Australia, not Wessex.
FACT: I was christened Germaine, not Tess, a name I have long despised. Has the guy never considered checking his facts?
FACT: I was never impregnated by a guy called Alec.
FACT: I have never – I repeat NEVER – been arrested and hanged.
GERMAINE GREER
February 27th
I peel the onion of my memory, first one layer, then another, and then assuredly another, when suddenly buried deep in it I espy the glint of something unexpected, namely something I had not expected to espy therein.
At first I can make out the shape distantly only, but then I realise that it is – oh yes! oh no! oh yes! oh no! – a hat, quite military, initialled with two distinctive letters, both the same. The first is S and so is the second. SS.
My goodness, the hat in question is undeniably an SS helmet, and at that moment I recall with a start that I was, unbeknownst to me, a member of the SS, an organisation that had done uncalled-for things but so very many years ago that it is most extremely hard to remember without forgetting.
GÜNTER GRASS
Picasso’s attitude to boiled sweets has been the subject of much debate. His preference, some say, was for Barley Sugar, whilst others maintain he preferred the old-fashioned ‘gob-stopper’.
One or two, including the meretricious Clive Bell, have even suggested he enjoyed Liquorice All-Sorts. Such a claim flies in the face of reason, since experts have proved that the Liquorice All-Sort has never counted as a boiled sweet. For one thing, it is far too chewy, but these stupid people – among them the pushy Clive Bell, who had no knowledge of boiled sweets whatsoever – couldn’t be expected to know that.
Did Picasso ever include a boiled sweet in a painting? Received wisdom suggests that his Weeping Woman II (1936) is seeking comfort from a throat lozenge. Others point to the figure on the right in his Bathers Outside a Beach Cabana (1929) and say that her transparent sense of Weltschmerz is caused by the bubble-gum that may have enlodged itself in her tresses. And then there will always be those who maintain that the gentleman’s erect member painted as a circle in Seated Male Nude (1927) is in fact a Polo Mint.
JOHN RICHARDSON
(#litres_trial_promo)
News comes through of the death of Harold Acton. For me, no man was less like the area of London associated with his name. To be linked with that most unprepossessing part of West London must have been a matter of perpetual ignominy for poor, dear Harold.
DIANA MOSLEY
Today was the day of my funeral, which was so great. I came in a hearse ($154) in this beautiful open coffin in a black cashmere suit ($374) and sunglasses ($56) and the church was full of people like Diane von Furstenberg and Liza and Calvin Klein and Yoko and Bianca and Robert Mapplethorpe and just about everybody, they all showed up and everyone was saying how great I was looking and how I’ve never looked better which was really great, and my blood pressure’s right down which is great. Liza’s put on weight though, and I spotted Calvin’s got a pimple on his nose and everyone could tell he was embarrassed about it. Afterwards, I was buried in Pittsburgh, so totally depressing.
ANDY WARHOL
February 28th
One of the key things I’ve uncovered during my research is that Victoria became Queen of England at a very young age – and managed to remain Queen all the time until she died! And as a Duchess myself, I feel I have a duty to let the rest of the world into this truly extraordinary secret which has been kept undercover for a century, which is nearly a thousand years.
Instead of a childhood filled with the bestest kind of great big huggy-hugs, the young Victoria had to cope with a starchy, no-can-do, hands-off atmosphere of stuffy, po-faced courtiers telling her do this, don’t do that: no, you can’t get your rocks off with all the hunkiest blokes on the disco floor of Kensington Palace; no, you can’t have a bit of fun going skinny-dipping in the Balmoral pond when there’s a hoity-toity, tutty-tutty garden party in progress; no, you can’t let it all out with a jolly good scream in the middle of a formal dinner party for the President of Snooty-Land, even if you are feeling stressed-up.
But Victoria wasn’t the kind of girl to let a rulebook stand in her way. ‘No way, José!’ she exclaimed, ‘I’m out to have fun!’ One of my totally favorito scenes in my screenplay is when the young Victoria gets a fit of the absolute gigglies when her chewing-gum shoots out of her mouth while she’s talking to the Archbishop of Canterbury, a very senior vicar at that time! And the next minute, she’s standing up to the German Prime Minister Adolf Hitler, telling him straight up that no way is he going to invade England, not while she’s Queen. It’s that kind of period detail – fun and laughter, yes, but also quite a few tears – that’ll make the whole film such an emotional roller-coaster!
SARAH, DUCHESS OF YORK
Henry James died today, in 1916. He was the worst writer in the world. He never went out. He never rolled up his sleeves and put his arm up the backside of a cow. He never slapped a woman about the face to teach her a lesson. He never lived. It is an absence which shows in his ‘novels’.
V.S. NAIPAUL
March (#ulink_3bac504a-8a01-579e-ab58-6a632b6804e5)
March 1st
Harold a little peeved over dinner at L’Artiste Assoiffé when the under-waiter fails to congratulate him on the truly splendid production of The Caretaker that is presently running to ‘packed houses’ (theatrical speak for ‘full up’!) at the Shaw Theatre. I don’t think anyone else around the table notices, but I can always tell when Harold is a bit ‘put out’ because he tends to smash the plates with his fists.
But otherwise an evening of great jollity, with the best intervention coming from David Hare who expatiated on how we must all strive to help liberate the ‘working class’. (How I hate that term – it implies that some of us aren’t workers, even though we may work fearfully hard on a biography of Marie Antoinette for absolutely years and years!!) When the aforementioned waiter comes over and asks whether everything was all right for us, Harold interjects – brilliantly – that it’s a damn fool question.
We end by ordering a bottle of Château d’Yquem on behalf of the sugar-plantation workers of East Timor.
LADY ANTONIA FRASER
Buy new fuckin house for a load of bread, but at least it has a brilliant swimmin pool for the car.
KEITH RICHARDS
March 2nd
Lady Diana Cooper was a lifelong beauty, famous for wearing impossibly large hats. I once asked her why she wore such big hats. Her reply was delightful.
In response to another question I put to her some years later, she told me that the answer was yes – but only in some respects!
I now forget what the question was. Dickie Mountbatten may have been in the room at the time. Dickie was very proud of his suede riding boots, and rightly so.
CLARISSA EDEN
March 3rd
The full history of Picasso and his vexed relations with boiled sweets must, alas, wait for a future volume, Picasso: The Too Good to Hurry Years. For the moment, let it suffice to say that he was rarely, if ever, observed sucking on a boiled sweet whilst painting, and since, when offered a Lemon Sherbet by the rich, spoiled homosexual narcissist Jean Cocteau, whose family money, incidentally, came from dry-cleaning, of all things, and whose coarse, unsophisticated father sported a singularly ill-fitting toupée, Picasso declined, saying thank you, but he had just had luncheon. Three days later he painted Woman in an Armchair, now hanging in the Musée Picasso, and some have detected a suggestion of Lemon Sherbet in the distinct yellow oval just above the woman’s right eyebrow.
JOHN RICHARDSON
March 4th
The sight of a fresh spring daffodil bursting forth into the dappled sunlight fills me with disgust and despair. What sort of a world have we created for ourselves that allows these yellowy, sickly, foul-smelling, so-called ‘flowers’ to shove their misshapen and elongated necks through the Lord’s earth and then lets their vomit-coloured petals infringe the sanctity of our own old and very dear English countryside? What have we as a nation in, I fear, a deep and irreversible decline, busily wallowing in our post-colonial cowardice, puffing our chest up and then wheezing like some bronchial old colonel, what have we as a nation come to when we allow these daffodils, these malevolent globules of terminal jaundice, all yellow, yellow, yellow, to poke their noses through our ground and into our private lives?
DENNIS POTTER
Find corpse of chick in swimmin pool. Downer. Sell house.
KEITH RICHARDS
March 5th
The anniversary: of the death of Iosif Stalin. Beast and Monster. Mass-murderer. What do we need to call him? What is it necessary to call him? Stalin is too simple: too simperbubble. In considering our selection of an appropriate word, I must first contend that the simple word ‘Stalin’ does nothing to convey the guy’s sheer horrid horridity. Let’s think again: let’s reinvent the language to form a noose around his head.
Mister Walrus Whiskers. That just about does the trick. I can candidly argue that, following a great deal of research, I know he wouldn’t want to be called Mr W-W: not one little bit. Or what about ‘Starling’? No way, José Feliciano. It sounds too like a bird: and a bird he was most certainly not.
The guy hated flying: hated it. Nor can we call him by his matey primonomenclaturalition, which is, of course, Iosif: Iosif is no mate of mine.
And why, pray, is it necessary to point out at this post-millennial juncture that Iosif Stalin – or Starling – is no mate of this fifty-two-year-old male novelist? Or, to put it another way: Novelist male old year fifty-two this of mate no is – Starling or – Stalin Iosif that juncture this at out point to necessary it is, pray, why and?
It can here be stated, boldly and fearlessly: Iosif Stalin was a very bad man. And my contention goes further, and can herein be tersely stated: he wasn’t nice at all.
MARTIN AMIS
March 6th
Buy new house with lovely clean swimmin pool. Build new upstairs room for throwin TVs out of.
KEITH RICHARDS
Women divide into two categories. The kind who does what you tell her to. And the kind who doesn’t. Frankly, I’ve got a hell of a lot of time for them both. But one or two I can’t abide.
Not long ago, I had lunch with Mother Teresa at Wilton’s. She was no bigger than the partridge on my plate. In fact, I was half-tempted to pour my remaining gravy over her. I could have downed her in a couple of mouthfuls and still had room for a decent rice pudding.
God helps those who help themselves, I advised her. You’re frankly barking up the wrong tree grubbing around the backstreets of Calcutta. No one goes there. They’re not what I’d call serious players.
Sadly, she chose not to take my advice. Small wonder she died with barely a penny to her name. With her reputation and connections, she could have expected – what? – 250, 300K?
No one likes a little person, be it man or woman. If you’re going to be a hard-hitter, you’ve got to be over 5ft 2ins. And let’s not imagine that slogging around in a grubby habit gets you anywhere, either. For all her undoubted domestic virtues, Mother Teresa would never have made the position of Sub-Editor on a national newspaper.
MAX HASTINGS
The X-Factor. Don’t get me started! When those lovely young men come on stage in their tight little trousers and sing their hearts out for Sharon, my heart melts. I truly care about every single one of them, I really do, and the public senses that, and that’s why they love me.
Just yesterday, I was being driven along by my chauffeur in our $463,000 limousine. I was in the back with my plastic surgeon Roger, who was just putting the finishing touches to my new toes (sorry, but you’ve got to have six on each foot these days if you want to be noticed). Suddenly, we hear this fucking yell from the river. A boat had capsized, and there’s five people in the water struggling for their fucking lives, bless ’em!
Call me a great big softy, but I couldn’t just leave them to drown, I’m sorry, that’s not the kind of person I am! So I get the chauffeur to park near the river, and I get out the old mirror and make sure I’m looking fan-tastic – I’d never let the fans down, they want to see me at my best – then I squeeze into my $3,000 stilettos and walk ever so sexily down to the riverside, where there’s just the one lifebelt to throw them.
The five of them are still thrashing about in the river, all fucking soggy and that, hair all over the place, only now there’s only four, bless, because one’s gone under! ‘Sorry guys, I can only rescue the one of you!’ I announce, as sweetly as possible, because I truly care about them all, and I’d dearly love to be able to save each and every one of them from drowning.
‘So which of you lovely young people is it going to be?’ I ask them. They look so adorable, all shivery and panicky and cuddly, thrashing about in the river and that. By now, they’re all so desperate, they’re screaming for help at the very tops of their super voices, they really are! Yes, they love me!
‘Decisions, decisions!’ I say, flashing my trademark smile. ‘I only wish I could save you all, you’re all so truly fabulous!’
By now another one’s gone under, and there’s just the three left –but it doesn’t make my choice any easier! ‘Ho-hum!’ I say. ‘This is one of the toughest decisions of my life. It’s truly momentous! You know what, guys? Sharon’s going to have to have herself a little sit-me-down before deciding.’
You could almost feel the tension in that river! So I have’s myself my little sit-me-down, and check on my make-up – but when I get up again, the last three have disappeared below the water!
Yes – I’d left it too late! Story of my life! I’ll never forget those young people’s faces. I’d made their day! They looked so thrilled to have met Sharon Osbourne before they drowned. I walked back to the limousine with a lovely warm feeling in my heart. See, when you’re in my position, you’ve got to put something back, you really have.
SHARON OSBOURNE
I hate pineapple. It should be banned.
GERMAINE GREER
March 7th
A hectic week ahead. After church, Mr Lucian Freud, who is a painter, arrives to paint another portrait.
He is quite old.
When I ask if he likes corgis, he tells me he does.
Good, I say. I ask him if he has been painting long.
He tells me he has.
How interesting, I say.
He doesn’t reply.
Otherwise precious little small talk. He tells me he paints pictures, mainly. A lovely hobby, I say.
I might have asked him if he wouldn’t be awfully kind and paint over that crack on the bathroom ceiling, but I forgot. They tell me he can be desperately expensive, so I think we got off lightly!
