Jonathan Maitland

With hindsight, Milli Vanilli’s 1989 worldwide smash hit ‘Girl You Know It’s True’ should have been called ‘Actually, It Isn’t True at All’, for reasons some Spectator readers of a certain vintage may well remember.    Before I explain why, it’s important to say that it wasn’t just any old hit. The catchy electro-pop ditty went platinum six times over in America and led to the telegenic singing duo Rob Pilatus and Fabrice Morvan – black, pretty, dreadlocked, androgynous and with great clothes and moves – winning a Grammy in 1990 for best new artist. By that time, they had sold 30 million records.

Hell, I have come to realise, may not be other people, but repeated, everlasting exposure to 30-second radio adverts featuring one or more of the following:  A voiceover so annoying it creates a Pavlovian resentment – hatred, even – towards the relevant product or company. A poisonous and moronically simplistic earworm jingle. A terms and conditions bit at the end which may contain even more words than the actual advert itself.  And sometimes – abandon hope all ye who hear it – you get all three of the above in one cosmically hellish half minute.  Aural exhibit A: McDonald’s ads voiced by Adolescence star Stephen Graham.

The best thing about being a playwright? The satisfaction of creativity. The worst? Press-night parties attended by friends, industry people and celebs. Playwright Terry Johnson says he knows writers who find such occasions so hellish they’ve been put off writing plays altogether. The problem is the corrosive, deeply unsettling belief that everyone is lying to you. Everyone knows the rules: on press night, say something nice, even if it was a giant turkey. No negatives. That’s the critic’s job. But writers know this, so never believe any compliment, ever, even if the person paying it is telling the truth. The only time a writer can be sure of something is when they hear the dreaded words ‘You did it again!’ or ‘What an achievement!

I have become rather obsessed with Martin Bashir and his downfall. Three years ago, I began researching for a play based around his infamous 1995 Panorama interview with Diana, Princess of Wales, which he secured by forging bank statements and reinforcing her belief that there was an Establishment conspiracy against her. When I started writing I thought I would soon understand him. But he still baffles me. When we corresponded recently via email, he suggested playing himself on stage or, failing that, what about Idris Elba? I couldn’t tell if he was joking.   I knew Bashir pretty well back in the day. We were fellow reporters at the BBC and ITV for 13 years. He even joined my covers band Surf’n’Turf on percussion, and very good he was too.

For some of us, world war has already broken out. Since 1 January, when a decision to ban 419 ‘offensive’ Scrabble words became ‘law’ on the orders of game owners Hasbro and Mattel, the previously genteel world of competitive Scrabble has become riven with hostility. The conflict started three years ago when the North American Scrabble Players Association polled its members about the issue. After more than 1,000 ‘passionate responses’, it decided to inflict a word cull. According to the association’s head John Chew, the 91-year-old game needed to be ‘more inclusive’: ‘How can we tell prospective members they can only play with us if they accept that offensive slurs have no meaning when played on a board?

How to sum up David Frost? The lazy writer’s friend, aka Wikipedia, calls him ‘an English journalist, comedian, writer, media personality and television host’. To which I would add only: ‘Britain’s first TV superstar.’ (To some he was also ‘The Bubonic Plagiarist’, but we won’t dwell on that.) That Was The Week That Was, The Frost Report and The Nixon Interviews made him a key cultural figure of the 1960s and 1970s. But his true significance struck me only recently. He may have damaged Britain, unintentionally, as much as anyone in living memory. Frost, in my view, was a Pied Piper who helped to lure a generation of the brightest and best away from meaningful careers and into the often vacuous, inconsequential world of television.