He peed in his own letterbox to avoid embarrassing an elderly couple who were passing on their way to Mass
Published 11 December 2000
With the untimely death of Malcolm Bradbury, there has been some discussion as to whether novel-writing really can be taught. No one has asked whether it ought to be. I have just completed a novel, my 14th, and it does not get any easier. In fact, as I was panting towards the home stretch and reflecting that there must be less taxing ways of passing the time, such as humping coal, I swore I should never write another. Having typed out the words "The End", I heaved a sigh of relief, carried the manuscript to the copying bureau (I am not one of your mechanised writers - I still use a manual typewriter), then took myself over to the pub for a celebratory glass of wine. Before I had finished it, I had got the idea for my 15th novel. Less than an hour after typing "The End" I had fed a fresh sheet of paper into the typewriter and was pecking out the words "Chapter One". It is an addiction.
This is the last week of a long regional tour of my play Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell, starring Tom Conti. Meanwhile, it is opening in Paris. I shall be interested to see what the French make of it. Ned Sherrin and I saw a production in Rome a few years ago which, while playing to packed houses, was listened to in total silence. The producer was quite unperturbed. He explained that the audience regarded it as a social documentary about the curious institution of English pubs. Although the piece has attracted its share of rave reviews over the years, there is always the odd po-faced critic, probably a medium-sherry sipper of the worst sort, who takes exception to that curious institution of English pubs. This year it was the turn of the Bath Chronicle: "For some inexplicable reason some people find drunks and drunkenness uproariously funny. Some of these liquor-fuelled people are the very ones, of course, who will, red-faced from over-indulgence, get into their cars this Christmas and mow people down on zebra crossings, go home and beat hell out of wives and children and line up in the high street to urinate through shop letterboxes. Last night, a rather nasty story about someone urinating through a letterbox was greeted with howls of laughter, though not, as one suspects, by anyone who is a shop worker whose work each day begins with a mop and a bucket . . ."
Which rather misses the point, I feel, that our man - who was, as a matter of fact, that bibulous restaurateur the late Peter Langan - was peeing through his own letterbox in order not to embarrass an elderly couple who were passing on their way to early-morning Mass.
The play first came to Bath over ten years ago on its way to the West End with Peter O'Toole. Jeff himself came down for the press conference. Fragile and haggard, hands shaking, he was a sight. As he trembled a vodka to his lips, a young man from one of the local weeklies, a rookie reporter on his first assignment, had a question: "If I stay in journalism, am I going to finish up looking like that?" I assured him gravely that the possibility was there. I like to think that young fellow went on to become a drama critic.
I feel rather sorry for people who don't do trains. Everyone else has a railway horror saga. However the details may differ, there is one constant refrain: a) they didn't give us any information, and b) the promised transfer bus or taxi to get us home at 3am after a nightmare journey, wasn't there to meet us. My own rail ordeals have been comparatively slight, but three times in the past couple of years I have been turfed off the train at Swindon to continue my journey to Bath by bus. On none of these occasions was the bus there waiting for us - we had to hang around for up to half an hour. The people who cock up these arrangements are in the transport business. Why can't they do the job they're paid for?
I find that I know at least four people who have put their names forward, or allowed their names to be put forward, to the selection commission which will be vetting applications to be the so-called "people's peers" in Tony Blair's rejigged House of Lords. A disparate crew, they have one thing in common: they all have bees in their bonnets. They are all single-cause fanatics who hope to use the Lords to ride their own particular hobby-horse. If they are a mini-sample of the types with whom Blair hopes to pack his reformed chamber, as I believe they probably are, the reconstituted Lords is going to resemble the South London Mock Parliament so hilariously described by Norman Collins in his 1945 epic London Belongs To Me. In short, a windy talking-shop bloated by its own self-importance.
I see that David Lodge is about to publish a novel called Thinks. He is obviously unaware that I published a novel called Thinks in 1984 ("A masterpiece" - Auberon Waugh). Since a reprint is on the cards, it could be interesting. "Do you have a novel called Thinks?" "We have several, sir. Which one would you like?" I am reminded that upon publishing his novel Summer Lightning, P G Wodehouse was congratulating himself upon having found the ideal title when he learnt that he was not the only one to think so - no fewer than five novels of the same name had already been published. So Wodehouse wrote in his preface: "I can only express the modest hope that this story will be considered worthy of inclusion in the list of the Hundred Best Books Called Summer Lightning."
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