Diary

For 50 years, I’ve avoided wearing anything resembling formal tennis kit but in a rather lame way, I’ve been seduced by the current tenniscore fashion movement. Although tennis is my only sport, I’ve never owned whites, but a rather fabulous white – actually ecru – tennis ‘skort’ has arrived in the post. I only just prevented myself from adding a V-neck white sweater with navy trim to the order. Now I’ve just got to get on the court for the first time this year and stop with the shopping. Sadly, there is absolutely no resemblance at all between how I look in this hybrid of shorts and skirt to the gorgeous Zendaya, female star of the new Luca Guadagnino film Challengers. And it’s not only Zendaya in her little tennis dresses who hits the spot.

I blame Thierry Henry and I never blame Thierry for anything. He’s funny, charming and was a majestic footballer. But it was his outrageous handball assist for a France goal against the Republic of Ireland in 2009 that ushered in VAR – Video Assistant Referee – technology to rescue on-field refs from ‘clear and obvious’ errors. VAR was meant to end debates over refereeing decisions. Yet this form of VAR, usually a man in a ref’s outfit sitting behind a bank of screens in an industrial unit near Heathrow, has caused carnage in the Premier League. Some decisions take five minutes while fans chant obscenities. Football’s many Luddites blame the technology but it’s really human incompetence. We need to improve the operatives, not scrap the machinery.

As a child I was fascinated by the exotic names of certain cities: Havana, Rio de Janeiro and Los Angeles sounded so glamorous to me, and I was determined to visit them (which I eventually did). But never in my childhood musings did the country of Czechoslovakia join this roll-call of dream destinations. However, since a few friends returned from filming in the renamed Czech Republic and extolled the virtues of Prague, it started to interest me. So, I was delighted when producer Mark Rozzano offered me the role of Francesca Carlyle in his murder mystery Murder Between Friends. ‘Brad and George have made movies there,’ he said, ‘and the technical crews are extremely experienced.’ He was so right.

Eastern Europe is the graveyard of empires. Rome failed on the Danube, Napoleon on the Dnieper. The epic struggle between the empires of Austria, Russia and Turkey in the first world war ended with the destruction of all three and the fragmentation of eastern Europe, giving rise to the word ‘Balkanisation’. Driving through the Balkans today, I am continually reminded that history has no full stops. Every empire leaves its ghosts to haunt its successors. Vienna, like London, is an imperial city without an empire. The ethnic antagonisms of the Balkans, which provoked the first world war, survived to divide Yugoslavia in the second and then destroy it in the 1990s. The region still wears the robes of the past.

It’s my birthday this week and the end of my seventh decade (mathematicians will note that this does not make me 79). Looking at my long and generally happy life, I do wonder quite how we arrived where we are with this all-pervading sense of gloom and despondency. Gaza, Ukraine, Putin, Trump, Islamic State, Brexit… whichever way you look, there’s something you don’t want to see. The doomsday clock now stands at 90 seconds to midnight, the closest we’ve ever been to complete annihilation. Happy birthday to me. It’s not all bad though. Last week my son came home with a borrowed Apple Vision Pro, the wrap-around headset which retails at around £3,000.

This diary is late. Two months late. The columnists who missed my Evening Standard deadlines often had elaborate excuses. Mine is that I’ve been involved in working out who is going to own this magazine. We’ve seen some oddities in this particular drama. Those vehemently opposed to government interference in a free press suddenly calling for government laws to regulate press ownership. Columns from advocates of free trade and open investment in every industry except, it turns out, their own. I don’t doubt some are motivated solely by high principles; but it’s worth asking the question of others: do their high principles happen to accord with their view of who in practice they’d like to see own The Spectator and the Telegraph?

To W12 to be in W1A. The spoof TV series on internal BBC politics (one of that vanishingly rare UK television species – a comedy that’s actually funny) filmed a special episode for Red Nose Day. It poked fun at Lenny Henry’s final appearance as Comic Relief host after nearly 40 years at the helm. I featured as myself, cockily pitching for his job in front of an increasingly outraged Lenny. Richard Curtis’s script was hilarious, but filming was a surreal experience. Not because I was in the same room as the W1A cast, all in character as appalling BBC apparatchiks, but because we really were in the equivalent of W1A: the BBC’s offices in Wood Lane, Shepherd’s Bush. Art imitating life imitating art.

By chance, I was living in New York when John McPhee published his New Yorker essay ‘Brigade de Cuisine’. It was 19 February 1979. It caused quite a stir. McPhee described in lip-smacking detail a restaurant which was situated somewhere upstate. He inflamed the reader’s imagination by detailing how delicious the food was without revealing the restaurant’s name or location. McPhee knew what he was up to. He succeeded in animating the most intense aspirational fantasy of middle-class Manhattan. There existed an ideal dinner place of which no one knew. It was, he said, run by a mysterious chef called Otto whose technique was so fast it ‘became a collage of itself’. At one point, I believe, three investigative reporters from the New York Times were assigned to try to identify it.

A visit to Jerusalem last week reminded me of the enduring value of sociology as a discipline, despite its lamentable politicisation in recent times. The founders of sociology – I think especially of Max Weber – would have been fascinated by Israeli society. In their politics, Israeli citizens are deeply divided: there are 12 parties represented in the current Knesset, of which seven belong to the governing coalition. One regularly encounters protestors outside government buildings, but no two groups seem to be shouting the same slogans. And yet Israelis are growing together more than they are coming apart – and not just because of the 7 October attacks.

A work outing to Venice. Sweetpea (yes, her real name) has captained my ship, run my life, steered me from countless disasters for 15 years and she deserved a decent break. Luckily two of my oldest friends have an apartment in the city. Our first supper at Corte Sconta in the authentic Castello district was sensational. Mixed grilled fish of the day, gleaming artichokes. No showiness, just exquisite food. We scored again for lunch next day outside in the sunshine on Campo Santo Stefano. Trust me to break the magic by booking us a Saturday night table at Harry’s Bar. We had to settle for 7 p.m. and then in an inner room, no view. It went from bad to worse. The bread was stale; the waiter, irritated each time we questioned the menu, unashamedly hostile.

Barry Humphries would have been 90 on 17 February. To commemorate his life, Radio 4 is broadcasting Barry Humphries: Gloriously Uncut that evening. For the programme, I recalled the joy of talking to Barry about the column he wrote for the Oldie. What a delight, too, it was to hear from the great diplomat Sir Les Patterson on everything from Australian politics to the history of lesbianism: ‘A lot of high-achieving Sheilas – like Cleopatra, Mary Queen of Scots, Boadicea, Dusty Springfield and Florence Nightingale – all paddled the pink canoe at some stage of the game.’ One day, he asked my colleague Penny about me. On hearing I wasn’t married, he said, deadpan, ‘Is he a vagina-decliner?’ Barry had immaculate manners and so asked Penny not to pass on the question.

My family despises war movies, so it’s way after Christmas that I get to see Ridley Scott’s dire Napoleon film. The most embarrassing scene is where Josephine lifts up her dress and tells Bonaparte: ‘If you look down you will see a surprise, and once you see it you will always want it.’ It strikes me that something similar is going on between Reform UK and the Conservative party, with the result being long-term electoral irrelevance for the latter. When I think of conservative values, the words chivalry, monarchy and the church come to mind. In Penny Mordaunt, the Tories have a politician who has wielded an actual sword, in an actual church, in the presence of the actual King.

We’ve just found out the core message of Joe Biden’s re-election campaign. It is the same as his original election message: I’m not Donald Trump, who, if re-elected, will be Hitler 2.0. This is a message destined to inspire the Democrats’ base and MSNBC viewers but suffers from one obvious constraint. The truth is that we already had four years of Trump, and he wasn’t Hitler 1.0. He was, rather, a Mel Brooks version of Hitler, performative, reactionary and, ultimately, lazy and toothless. All the grim authoritarian threats – his pledge to deport 11 million immigrants, to prosecute Hillary Clinton, to reinstate torture, to abscond with Iraq’s oil – fizzled out in office.

Monday and Tuesday I gave over to two long conversations with Arvid Ågren, a Swedish biologist who wants to write a scientific biography of me. As the author of The Gene’s-Eye View of Evolution, he knows the subject inside out. Disconcertingly, he seems to have read every word I’ve ever written, and has an almost telepathic familiarity with my entire stock of humorous anecdotes. I wouldn’t put it past him to divine what my mother, who died at 102, would certainly have said: ‘But I don’t understand. Why would anyone want to write a biography of you?’ He’s now going to start looking for a publisher, and she would no doubt want to wish him luck. I’m reminded of a nice publicity campaign for one of Douglas Adams’s books.

George Osborne was originally meant to fill this slot. We were always rather mean to him when he was chancellor (deservedly so) so it pains me to admit what a good diary writer he is: always stylish, engaging, ready to spill some beans. He had agreed, but then suddenly pulled out, leaving us scrambling. Something had come up, he said. But what? The next day’s papers brought the news: he has been hired to advise the Emiratis in their bid to buy this magazine and the Telegraph. To write for us and sell us at the same time may have been a bit much, even for this famously adept multitasker. I’d love to know what advice Osborne is giving the UAE. The Emiratis stand to be the first government in the world to buy a national newspaper in another country, so it’s a test case.

Newly returned from the best ever New Year in Scotland, I walk down Portobello Road and waft through nostalgia. All those felted hats in primary colours and Mongolian knits with floral patterns. The smell of frying falafel, dodgy hash and second-rate coffee. It takes me back to Hull fair, seven decades earlier, with my gloves dangling from elastic on the sleeves of my nap coat and a scarlet face full of vinegary, newspapered chips. I realise it is the first time in a while that I have moved slowly in a crowd without carrying a banner saying ‘Bring them home’ and shouting: ‘Shame on Hamas.

To the Garrick, for a festive feast with my dear ex-husband and offspring. My daughter and I decide to make the pilgrimage from Turnham Green by taxi, owing to a combination of torrential rain, vulnerable blow-dries and high heels. Schoolgirl error: we could have flown to Manchester in roughly the same length of time – and at a fraction of the price. Thank you, Sadiq Khan. What a splendid job you’ve done turning London into a giant car park. We eventually arrive, half an hour late, dodging the garish rip-off rickshaws blaring headache-inducing yuletide tunes which now infest the West End (again, take a bow, Mr Khan), and enter the wood-panelled sanctuary.

In Chekhov’s The Seagull Dr Dorn is asked which is his favourite foreign city. Genoa, he replies: in the evening the streets are full of strolling people and you became part of the crowd, body and soul. ‘You start to think there really might be a universal spirit,’ he says. I remembered Dr Dorn when I was discovering Genoa in October. Then it suddenly came to me that I had been to the city before. Genoa was where my family embarked for the Far East, when I was 18 months old, fleeing the Nazis. I don’t know about the universal spirit, though. I’m reading Enemies and Neighbours: Arabs and Jews in Palestine and Israel, 1917-2017 by Ian Black. I had reached 1953 when at midnight a text pinged in from an old friend: ‘Who will cross the street when we pass?

This week I have been working with the great Dame Judi Dench. We have been rehearsing a song by Noël Coward for a show we are doing together at the Royal Albert Hall next Friday. Judi met Sir Noël not long before he died in 1973. What she remembers best is his amused smile and the strong scent of the fragrance he wore. Whenever I think of him, I recall his wise advice to anyone confronted with unfair criticism: ‘Rise above it.’ I hope that is what the King is going to do in the face of the bewildering brouhaha that has come with the publication of Omid Scobie’s book Endgame. Charles is not a racist. Not remotely. Anyone who has spent any time with him over any number of years will tell you that. I don’t know if Scobie-Doo has met him. In fact, I am not sure who he has met.