The Lost Diaries

JOHN RICHARDSON *

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

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!

Freud: not a name you hear very often.

HM QUEEN ELIZABETH II

Let’s face it – we are at a watershed in world history. And like all watersheds, it’s full not only of sheds, but of water too. Yup, this shed is full of water – and we’ve got to do something. So let’s be brutally honest. You can’t store all that water in a shed without something dreadful happening. First of all, the water could spill out through the gaps in the walls. Look, I don’t pretend to be an expert in watersheds, or how they’re constructed. I’m an artist. But what I do know is this. If there’s too much water in the shed, then it doesn’t matter how many people you’ve got guarding it, or trying to plug the holes. That shed is going to burst.

And then we’ll all get soaking wet.

Our clothes will be ruined. Our hair will go all flat. And there’s no point even talking about highlights in a situation like that. It’ll all be totally unmanageable.

And that scares the shit out of me.

GEORGE MICHAEL

March 8th

8 March 1960: Happy Birthday Dear Me! Twelve today! The Headmaster approaches me personally and wishes me Many Happy Returns of The Day!! I tell him how simply WONDERFUL he’s looking, and insist (‘There’s nothing in the world I’d like more, Headmaster!’) on walking with him. He is understandably overjoyed, but says he’d rather walk alone. Poor old fellow – no one likes to be outshone!! Onwards and upwards!

GYLES BRANDRETH

8 March 1970: Happy Birthday Dear Me! Twenty-two today!! That’s twenty-two years of fun and laughter and all-round entertainment for all my family and friends! I’ve had the most MARVELLOUS year with literally billions of achievements to my name! I’ve built a full-size traction engine (The Gyles Brandreth) out of 5,734,297 matches, I’ve written, directed and starred in my own musical (Gyles: The Musical), I’ve published The Gyles Brandreth Book of Irish Knock-Knock Jokes, I’ve become the first ever person to sing ‘Yes We Have No Bananas’ backwards on Radio Luxembourg, I’ve made best friends with Fanny Cradock, Gilbert Harding and Mr Pastry, I’ve climbed the world’s smallest hill, and I haven’t even mentioned my exciting new range of brightly-coloured pom-poms to brighten up your dowdy old oven gloves! Next stop: I plan to ascend Mount Everest!

GYLES BRANDRETH

8 March 1980: Happy Birthday Dear Me! Thirty-two today!!! I may not yet have quite managed to climb Mount Everest – the offer from the gentlemen’s mountainwear sponsors simply wasn’t jolly enough, financially! – but I did manage to break the world record for playing twenty-four different songs on the spoons in under two minutes while standing on one foot on a lilo dressed as a nun!

Yesterday, I attended a formal dinner for all us former Presidents of the Oxford Union. Frankly, I stood out from the others. I was the only one who came as Little Bo Peep.

This year I wrote thirty-two books, including the bestselling 501 Uses for a Daffodil, I ghost-wrote the Simply Fantastic Michael Miles Quiz Book, I was paid nearly £17,542 for telling my ten best John Gielgud Bloopers at 167 luncheons, I continued to present my own daily mid-morning phone-in programme on Radio Solent, I masterminded the Potty Putty Museum in Bradford-on-Avon and I helped market a splendid new keep-fit machine which lets you run flat-out without getting anywhere! All this and my new best friend Jeffrey Archer has assured me that if ever I feel like becoming an MP he’ll see to it that I’m Chief Secretary to the Treasury before the year’s out!

Next aim: to climb Mount Snowdon!

GYLES BRANDRETH

8 March 1990: Happy Birthday Dear Me! Forty-two today!!! I never quite managed to climb Mount Snowdon – but at least I’ve done the next best thing, which is to make the world’s second largest sherry trifle!!

Other noteworthy achievements over this most tremendous of all years: I sucked my way through fifty-eight delicious fruit pastilles in under four minutes on the marvellous Radio Stoke-on-Trent, I was appointed Vice President of the Yo-Yo Club of Great Britain, I was runner-up in the Tie Wearer of the Year semi-final, I launched Betamax, a revolutionary new videotape that’s set to take the world by storm, I became best friends with Monty Modlyn, Captain Mark Phillips and all three Beverley Sisters, and I’ve just handed in my fantastic tome, Absolutely the Best: 100 Years of Asbestos!.

We arranged a tremendous birthday dinner, with guests Mr and Mrs Charlie Drake, Larry Grayson, Magnus Pyke, the Tim Rices, the Lionel Blairs, the Jeffrey Archers and the Krankies. Larry told a truly classic anecdote about John Gielgud – apparently, in a fit of madness he once mistook Eileen Atkins for Maggie Smith!!! Cue the sound of clangers dropping!

Promise to self: in the next five years I shall certainly climb the Eiffel Tower!

GYLES BRANDRETH

8 March 2000: Happy Birthday Dear Me! Fifty-two today!!!!

I still haven’t got round to climbing the Eiffel Tower, but at least I have spoken on the art of plate-spinning to the Epsom and Ewell Back Pain Association Annual Dinner!!

Today I finish my Illustrated History of the Novelty Pullover, tomorrow I write my Life of William Shakespeare (now they’ll HAVE to take me seriously), the next day I get going on Gyles Brandreth’s Great Big Book of Fun Party Games Involving Balloons and over the weekend I’m ghosting The Michael Barrymore Book of Totally Impossible Brain-Teasers. Meanwhile, plans for my National Museum of Cocktail Party Umbrellas in Rottingdean are coming on apace.

GYLES BRANDRETH

March 9th

My uncle Stiffy, who lived for a lightly-poached tongue, had strong views on food. ‘Never remove the gunk from a trotter before boiling it,’ he would say, whilst tending to a particularly troublesome toenail with a fine sixteenth-century silver corkscrew. ‘There’s oodles of nutrition in filth.’

At Chatsworth, we take care to remember Uncle Stiffy’s maxim whenever we boil a trotter. This is what makes this receipt so particularly tasty.

TROTTER ON HORSEBACK

1 pig’s trotter

2 onions

2 pts water

2 slices Mother’s Pride

Do make sure your pig is completely dead before removing its trotter. Great Aunt Squinty forgot, and lost an eye as a consequence. Thankfully, the eye boiled up well, and made an interesting addition to the fruit salad we served on Coronation Day. Waste not, want not, as our old Governess used to say. If ever she came across a dead insect – a bluebottle or wasp – she would never dream of throwing it away. After all, what is a Lemon Curd without insects?

First, discard the onions. You will not be needing them for this receipt.

Now boil the trotter in the water for 10–15 minutes, but not a second longer. It should remain nice and chewy, with that delicious trottery flavour.

Wrap it in the two slices of Mother’s Pride, buttered to taste. Serve warm-ish. Ideal for a late breakfast, or perchance as that ‘little something extra’ for afternoon tea.

DEBORAH, DUCHESS OF DEVONSHIRE

I’m five years bloody old. My parents and me have nothing in common, no conversation, no small talk, nothing. Now I find they’ve booked me into a primary school. How bloody dare they? Don’t they know who I am?

The school is rotten. The uniform is a total turn-off, the teachers are middle-aged with no like sense of style and the service is truly appalling.

JANET STREET-PORTER

March 10th

England in March! What a horrid, class-ridden, snobbish nation, packed with the most ghastly common little low-brows.

Today I am forced to suffer a disgracefully expensive five-course luncheon at the Savoy with Arnold Wesker, who, I regret to say, certainly isn’t up to much, intellectually speaking: I ask him to name five plays I had personally directed in the past three years – and he doesn’t even know!

But we agree on the burning need for a truly savage and satirical film that skewers the fat-cats in our overblown, moribund, post-imperial society.

Suddenly, an impertinent suburban waiter interrupts us to ask if we would care for a sweet.

‘“Care for a sweet”?’ I complain bitterly. ‘“Care for a sweet”?!! What sort of a country are we living in when a functionary interrupts a highly serious discussion to ask if one would “care for a sweet”! Very well, I’ll have the Black Forest Gâteau – but only as a symbol of our overblown and tasteless age.’

Outside the Savoy, a pompous hotel functionary in a top hat and braid asks if he can hail me a cab.

I tell him in no uncertain terms that, as an anarchist, I am perfectly well equipped to hail one for myself. But the first cab drives straight past me with someone else in the back. I have never known such a kick in the teeth. I have been suppressed and disregarded in this country for decades – and now this! It’s really too much.

LINDSAY ANDERSON

I crave simplicity. What could be more satisfying than a simple boiled egg? Ever since, as a young man, I became the first Englishman to visit Europe, I have pursued a love affair with the boiled egg. A boiled egg is a feast for all the senses: the eyes amazed by the deep rich yellow contrasted with the stark, translucent, almost virginal white; the ears alive to the gentle knock-knock-knock on the warmly curvaceous and softly yielding shell; the mouth teased by expectations of the flowing yolk softly easing its way along the salivating contours of the tongue, and down, down, down into the throat; the penis quivering in readiness to be used as a spoon, diving deep, deep, deep, deep into the very nub and hollow of the ovoid, then rising up once more, now drenched in the brightest yellow. And it’s also very pleasant with toast.