A flaccid willy, which is unbelievable. Or an erect one, which is unacceptable. Was the BBC's choice right?
Published 01 October 2001
The little things have been the ones that have characterised the second wave of feeling about New York. After the first shock, and an effort to perk up, everyone seems to have become prey to a creeping fear. How odd that the taking away of party conference rituals should reveal the depth of that apprehension; but it does. The wanderings up the Lanes to the restaurant that turns out to be behind you, the umbrellas turned inside out by the Blackpool wind, the Spanish Hall and the Dome and the Welsh Liberals' bookstall, the annual argument about whether the Tribune rally will ever recover, and all the rest - the truncated conferences are strangely telling signs of the effect.
Everything seems peculiar. My computer tells me that I can fly to Geneva and back for £15. A friend tells me he knows someone who flew to Bologna for £2.89, plus tax. You could go there for lunch and not feel guilty. Weird things are all around, and somehow the scattering of these random symptoms of a different world has added up to a sense of nagging unease. A friend in Washington e-mails me about "how odd it seems to see empty streets and F-16s passing over the house". British Airways bans cricket bats, tennis rackets and knitting needles from its cabins. Alistair Cooke adds a personal reminiscence from the First World War to a Radio 4 letter. Surely, this isn't another balmy last summer like 1914? No. It only feels like it.
I was able to escape briefly from absorption in 11 September at the opera. Covent Garden's marvellous new Rigoletto was a bold affair on BBC2 because an orgiastic first scene would be shown at 7pm. That famous switchboard would certainly be jammed, we thought. It wasn't. But at the risk of this diary becoming too raunchy, in view of the story that follows this one, I can describe what we might call "the orgy producer's conundrum". There was a flash of willy - no more - during the writhings. Naturally, the organ in question was not in what the manuals call "a state of excitement". The stage is quite cold at the start of the show and a lot of people were watching. If it had been in the aforesaid state, of course, there would have been a storm, involving the Daily Mail, Tessa Jowell and the culture police.Yet the man in question was about to pounce on a naked woman. Didn't realism demand tumescence? Without it, could you believe what you were seeing? Erect and unacceptable or flaccid and unbelievable? You choose. I've heard about being between a rock and a hard place but . . . No, enough. Verdi survived. He always does.
Daft things happen when you write a book. The daftest this week was an answerphone message from the Express diary. They wanted to talk to me, it seemed, about something "strange, rather bizarre and quite odd" that had happened a long time ago. The words "involving yourself" gave the message a sinister ring. I quailed, opened up a few dark places in my memory - was I once rude to John Birt, was I once nice to A N Wilson? - and rang the Express. After a passage of embarrassed mutterings and coughings to indicate that they were unhappy about having to be so personal (during which my quailing coagulated into fear) I was presented with the following tale. "We have heard from a reliable source a story about a wasp," said the diarist. I waited. "It flew through an open window into a room where [a well-practised stammer of embarrassment was inserted here] you were intimately engaged with a lady." Then the punchline. "It stung you on the bum." The comforting pay-off was: "It happened a long time ago, before you were married." I was in the back of a cab during this call and my roars of laughter were so loud that the driver thought I might be a medical emergency.
I have been stung by many things - horseflies, bees, thousands of midges, hairy Scottish flapping things that we used to call cleggs. Creepy-crawlies around the world have feasted on me. But never a wasp. And no insect has had the temerity to attack my backside. I hooted with glee, and relief. What if it had been a real story . . . like the time I woke up in a New York apartment with a python nestling unexpectedly between my legs? But that is a saga for another day. The wasp is a myth. If it were true, would I tell the New Statesman?
When I decided to write a book about Tony Blair and Gordon Brown - and to make it a portrait rather than a biography - it wasn't the diarists that worried me. It was my subjects. Should I speak to them? The obvious answer, which came in a flash, was - no. What would be gained? On-the-record interviews with each about the other were bound to be exercises in blandness. Off-the-record conversations - in the most unlikely event that they could have been arranged - would have been unsustainable. How could I be asked if I had spoken to them in the course of writing the book and give the answer "I can't say"?
But I can reveal the one comment to me from the Prime Minister. He asked me if it was true I was writing a book. "Yes." Was it about the relationship between him and Gordon Brown? "Yes it is." He said he could tell me something about that which I would find interesting. I quickened. "It is certainly a very fascinating relationship." As revelations go, it reminded me of John Major and the fine day at the Oval that was certainly not inclement. But at least he laughed.
James Naughtie is a presenter on the Today programme. His book The Rivals is published by Fourth Estate (£16.99)
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