How could I not remember getting "Make-up Tips for the Busy Woman" from Margaret Thatcher?
Published 29 May 2000
Rumours of my impending "retirement" surfaced in print a few weeks ago. Although my indignant denial seems to have been noticed by only a few, it did concentrate the mind wonderfully on My Life So Far. It was a nice excuse to spend a few hours trawling through the BBC sound archives back at Broadcasting House. There, on vinyl, tape and DAT, reside the bits of more than 30 years of asking people questions that the archivists have deemed worth filing away. It was rather like looking at three decades worth of old theatre programmes, which I did recently when I moved house. I'm afraid I chucked away all the programmes relating to plays of which I could remember absolutely nothing. I can't do quite the same with the sound archives if they draw a blank, but it was a strange experience to scroll through the lists. Thousands of old broadcasts passed before my eyes. How could I not remember getting "Make-up Tips for the Busy Woman" from the education minister, Margaret Thatcher? And what about the time when women were literally kicked out of El Vino's for daring to stand at the bar? I was there - and I suppose, if I looked carefully, I might find that I still bear the scar.
I also discovered that John Humphrys and I made our first radio appearance together almost 31 years ago. I'd quite forgotten that, too. We didn't actually meet at the time, but we were both on World at One one day in the autumn of 1969. He was reporting the latest stoppage at a Vauxhall car factory, while I was finding out about the significance of dreaming from an Edinburgh academic. Rapid Eye Movements during sleep, then as now, were con-sidered a good thing. Except that mine are now probably brought about by panicky thoughts of the 3am alarm not going off.
The Beeb's boob over the Queen Mum's birthday parade still has its critics in full attacking mode. Her admirable longevity seems to have taken our bosses by surprise. There are plenty of tributes promised for the big week, but the advance parade wasn't deemed special enough to televise. Much more thought has gone into the planning round her eventual departure. We've been rehearsing it for years. I must have participated in more than half a dozen mock-ups of an edition of Today that assumes a royal demise overnight. Various colleagues have impersonated the Prime Minister, the expert royal-watchers, a devoted old friend and the Archbishop of Canterbury. Eventually, the impersonators move or retire, and we have to do the mock-up all over again. Meanwhile, the Queen Mother regally carries on. It must be said that, when a real royal death occurred one night in August nearly three years ago, it was the most unexpected of all, yet the reporting and tribute machinery moved smoothly into place, quite unrehearsed.
Thabo Mbeki has been in town, and the South African High Commission gave him a big lunch at the Dorchester. The Soweto String Quartet accompanied the preprandial roar of voices and we heard a speech from the president over the chicken. Three weeks earlier, the High Commission had hosted another party for South Africa's Freedom Day, with the same band from Soweto accompanying community singing of the country's anthem. The new version amalgamates the old Afrikaans hymn "Die Stem" with the ANC's "Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika", and the words move from Xhosa to Afrikaans to English. It's an extraordinarily magnanimous gesture on the part of the new regime to accept the language of the old oppressor. But I can't believe the words that invoke the apartheid years will remain there for very much longer. Apparently at rugby matches, few among the (largely white) crowd can cope with the Xhosa words; but at state occasions hosted by the ANC government, few join in with "Die Stem". The Afrikaans words were drummed into me at school in the Cape, and they still have a strange emotional pull.
First, we had the shrinking croissant; and then, the disappearing breakfast. The caterers for the Today food trolley are a whimsical lot. Croissants contract, cereals are removed and not replaced, and only the toast is consistent - barely warm and floppy. Then, one day last week, there was no breakfast at all. Fuel is important for us broadcasters. Three hours on air on (in my case) one banana and a glass of water? We'll get Humphrys back on that picket line if they don't watch out.
The Royal Academy has just launched this year's Summer Exhibition, and Sir Joshua Reynolds would not have been disappointed by the lavish dinner hosted by the current academicians. We were able to wander among the new entries and make our own judgements - Piccadilly Mainstream, perhaps, rather than the Tate Modern - and admire the special Frank Stella section. The American artist has just been made an honorary academician, and his Leviathan metal sculptures and massive abstracts have a room all to themselves. I noticed that the man himself was sporting some particularly impressive shirt buttons. They were his recycled gold fillings, he told me over dinner. When he had his dental implants, he kept the old tooth ironmongery and had it adapted. Next idea: titanium earring, perhaps?
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