Adolf Busch, an honest musician, and Tully Potter's biography of the man

To room VG10 of the School of Oriental and African Studies in Vernon Sq., London, for the launch party for Tully Potter’s rather massive two-volume biography of the German violinist Adolf Busch (pictured). I was invited because for the
past 20 years, ever since I have known Tully, in fact, I have been helping him out by translating German letters, memoirs, concert reviews and any other pieces he came across and which he wanted to use. Why the School of Oriental and African Studies? I don’t know, but the publisher, Toccata Press, is small and perhaps it was all it could afford.
I was rather looking forward to the evening, especially as a few short pieces were being played which Busch had written, but in the event, I wasn’t able to get away from work before 7.30 – I only worked a single shift and should have left at 6, but clock-watching is frowned upon and casuals such as myself had better believe it – and then I had to get from Kensington to Kings Cross where the excessively convoluted layout of the St Pancras/Kings Cross Tube station delayed me even further. Then I had to find the place, so I didn’t arrive until almost 8.30, by which time the music-making was over. I consoled myself with several handfuls of sushi (which I thought were based on fish, but these weren’t) and several glasses of 2010 Chilean Sauvignon Cabernet, which tasted like alcoholic fruit juice. The cardinal rule of gatherings such as book launches and exhibition openings (of which I attended a few while I was a reporter on The Journal in Newcastle in the late Seventies and also wrote its weekly art column – you didn’t know that, did you?) is to stick to the red wine. It might be bloody awful, it usually is bloody awful, but it is never as bad as the white wine served on these occasions, which is always extremely acidic and which will always give you very bad heartburn.
There were a good few men there with paunches, many of them rather younger than me. It is always quite odd to see a youngish man with a paunch, but otherwise no other signs of obesity. I assume that they were all musicians and that growing a paunch is a concomitant hazard of spending your professional life sitting down. That explanation makes sense, anyway.
‘Martin’, the owner of Toccata Press, was spectacularly fat, dressed in a blue Hawaiian shirt and waddled. I said hello to Tully but didn’t linger speaking to him, because he had to sign copies of his two books – two volumes, remember – and there were plenty of others who wanted to talk to him. If you are interested, you can find out more about Tully’s book here.

Hague gay? Who gives a toss. I just hope he knows what he is doing

It’s a truism in journalism that it isn’t the scandal which does the damage, but the subsequent cover-up. So it might be with William Hague, Her Majesty’s Secretary and all things Foreign, and, as far as I’m concerned, an all-round good egg. And because I like and respect the guy, I am rather disappointed by the ham-fisted way he appears to be handling the situation.
I was first told that he was gay — or rather was thought to be gay — several years ago by a colleague and friend who — I hope I get this straight (absolutely no silly joke intended there) — heard it from a friend of the ex-boyfriend of his sister, or the brother of the ex-girlfriend of his brother, or something or other (doesn’t inspire much confidence, does it, but there you go, that’s the problem with unsubstantiated rumours which might not have a leg to stand on). Apparently, whoever it was knew him well and said so. (I repeat my aside about tittle-tattle not inspiring much confidence.) At the time, I thought it was nonsense. But then all this business came up and I heard rather more credible info, including the comment, made after Hague released his PA statement, ‘well, that’s a hell of a hostage to fortune. What will he do when one of his ex-lovers comes forward?’
I gather that there is 100 certainty that Hague is gay, that he was at the centre of a Tory gay mafia while at Oxford (note to foreign readers: while a student of one of the colleges there, not just visiting the town) and that Ffion is his beard (and if that is the case, I like to believe — remember, I am a fan of Hague’s and like to think he is an honourable man — that she was squared from the off and wasn’t just cynically used). So I come back to be original point: it is not the ‘scandal’, but the refutations and rebuttals which cause the damage.
Furthermore, the true irony is that for the first time for many, many years in Britian, no one gives a fuck whether or not a politician is gay, although what does upset Joe Public is apparent hypocrisy, i.e. someone attacking gays is subsequently revealed himself to be gay. I cannot say so for certain, but being gay is really not regarded as even being remarkable these days, except, again ironically, by the worthy left-of-centre broadsheets who
insist on publishing tacky Pink Lists of the ‘most influential’ and richest gays to demonstrate how liberal, broadminded and tolerant they are. (My picture is of a generic influential and wealthy gay, quite possibly the editor of the Guardian dressed for work.) From Peter Mandelson, Nick Brown and Chris Bryant on the Left to Alan Duncan and Nick Herbert on the Right — and not forgetting David Laws — from Graham Norton and John Barrowman to Lord Browne (once of BP) and Andrew Pierce of the Mail, all are now mainstream and their sexuality is the least interesting thing about them. There was a ‘scandal’ of a sort over Lord Browne, but it didn’t centre on his homosexuality but that he told a lie to hide that fact he got to know his then partner through a gay dating website. Then there are the legions of gays who seem to be able to lead perfectly open lives these days with no one giving a fuck. And thank God for that.
So if what I have heard is right, what on earth is Hague playing at? Good Lord, if the worst comes to the worst and the News of the Screws carries loads of ‘reports’ from all sorts of men about ‘spending nights of passion with William’, he is going to look like a complete pillock. One explanation could be that he has been closeted for so long that he calculates coming out would do more damage than staying in; or that, as was the case with David Laws, his family don’t know and he would prefer they didn’t.
I cannot say exactly why I like Hague, although it is partly his wit which, as far as I know, is unmatched in the Commons, and his intelligence, but I do like him and wish him well. And I hope for his sake that this whole business is concluded without damage. Today the papers carry reports that he has been soured with the political scene and might jack it all in, reports which, as far as I’m concerned, are simply exercises in journalistic kite-flying; and that he is independently wealthy and doesn’t need the money (or something like that), but I think that is unlikely. The world first came across Hague when as a 16-year-old and with a full head of hair he made a speech at a Conservative Party conference. I think that politics is in his DNA and is Foreign Secretary. I really cannot see him packing it in. So, I wish him the best. And I do so hope I am wrong. Use your loaf, William.

Want a successful career (and not just on a newspaper)? Just say Yes

This picture (below) appears on page 27 of the Daily Mail on Monday, August 30, 2010. When a similar picture was lying around the picture desk here at the Mail several years ago, I was tempted to stick it on one of the columns here in the office and add a particular caption. Wisely, I thought better of it. Although many individuals at the Mail have a very good sense of humour, there comes a point where that sense of humour tends to fail, and given the caption I planned to add to the picture, such a failure was a racing certainty. (In fact, more than a racing certainty, because many such ‘certainties’ in racing are nothing of the kind.)

When the picture below appeared this morning, the opportunity is proving to great to miss given that I can publish it here in my blog where the chances of discovery and a consequent sense of humour failure in Northcliffe House are pretty low.



'Yes, Paul'
My caption will be rather obscure to many, but my sense of self-preservation obliges me not to elucidate, even though few, if any, read this blog. For greater impact, the reader would be best advised to substitute the name of his or her boss.

I should add that I hold a minority view of the chap in question. Those higher up the food chain are often subjected by him to frequent and profane invective, whereas I am of such sheer insignificance here in Northcliffe House that such bollockings blow right over my head. On such occasions it is reassuring to belong to the rank and file.

Understandably, senior and junior execs are inclined to be less than charitable about their boss, and no one can be quite as bitchy as male journalist. On the other hand, I think this guy, who is a tall chap, is essentiallty rather shy, and very private who does not like the limelight. Furthermore, I suspect that he is a very good and loyal friend to those he regards as his true friends. And from where I sit - i.e. as someone not exactly in the loop - there doesn't seem to be any side to him, which, for a newspaperman is nigh-on unique. If, on occasion, he stamps his foot - once quite literally - to get things as he wants, it has to be said that his insistence on getting things spot on in the way he thinks is spot on most certainly plays a significant role in the Mail's undoubted success.)

There’s one born every minute (more or less)

I’ve just been reading that ‘a star with two Saturn-sized planets’ has been spotted by the US planet-hunting’ Kepler telescope and that scientists are seeing whether there might be a third ‘earth-sized’ planet also in orbit. (The Kepler telescope, incidentally, was named after the Southend-on-Sea turf accountant (‘bookie’) Jeremy Kepler, who put up most of the money for its development, and not, as you might have thought Johannes Kepler, the 16th-century German mathematician and astronomer, an account of whose life you will find here.)
Fair enough. As a lad now in his late 90s who was brought up on Dan Dare and the Mekons, the mere mention of extraterrestial life is enough to get my pulse racing. But it also reminds me of several oddities which always occur when we discuss ‘intelligent life elsewhere in the universe’. But before I launch into tonight’s diatribe (or this morning’s if, like Olly, you live in New Zealand), I must confess that I find it inconceivable that life, in some form or another, has not also evolved elsewhere in the universe.
This afternoon, on Radio 4’s Material World in a piece about black holes and magnetic stars, I heard that there are something like 100 million stars in every galaxy (with most stars having about it several planets) and that there are several billion galaxies in the universe. Well, do the maths and tell me that ‘life on Earth is unique’. If it is, then in 1966 I was the only teenage alive who thought that existence was shit and unfair, and that all I wanted to do with my life was to make fun of it so that it retreated into its cave red-faced, defeated and full of shame. Such was the scorn of my anger.
When there is talk of ‘intelligent life elsewhere in the universe’ — and future generations will fervently hope that whatever ‘life’ they do come across is ‘intelligent’, because there will otherwise be precious little opportunity to engage in trade with ‘unintelligent’ algae or what an Alpha Censorius takes the place of algae — we always seem to make the same assumptions. On the one hand that we assume that when extraterrestrials do finally spot Earth and decide it might be worth a stopover, they will always ‘come in peace’ (‘We come in peace’). And if peace is rather further from their minds than is laid down by some UN charter or other, that they are always unbelievably ferocious bastards who merely want to rape our women, steal our cattle and then destroy what’s left of Earth’s ‘civilisation’.
Now why do why think either must be the case? Why do we think that the ‘aliens’, the ‘extraterrestrials’, who make it to Earth — and who have presumably survived the vicious interrogation all aliens are subjected to by US Immigration when they arrive — are the sole representatives of their civilisations? When, finally, the US and, a little later, Russia, land four or five of their chaps on Mars (and sorry, girls, but you know as well as I do that it will initially be chaps), did they really consult Sri Lank and Venezuela and Canada and Georgia and Mongolia and Namibia before launch as to what the best approach might be if and when ‘natives’ are encountered? And what exactly will the US’s/Russia’s Mars visitors do if and when they are regarded by that planet’s suspicious natives as invaders and treated accordingly? Will they loudly proclaim in one voice and with renewed vigour repeat the declaration that ‘we come in peace’? Or will they shoot back when they are attacked? For if it is the US rather than Russia which first gets to set its foot on alien soil and which, subsequently, is the first to be made aware that it is not quite as welcome as it thought it might be, will it treat the indigenous populations of Mars and the other distant planets it visits as it treated the indigenous population if America when it first set its dainty foot on the sands of Cape Cod? Most recent reckonings estimate and accept that more than two million Native Americans succumbed as the ‘white man’ who ‘came in peace’ chose to impose his authority on ‘the savage’ in the 200 years which followed his arrival.
And why do we assume that ‘alien’ civilisations aren’t equally as riven by rivalries and paralysed by bureaucracies as the Earth’s ‘civilisation’ is? Why do we assume that the spacecraft which has recently arrived on Earth from Alpha Zeta Beta Phito II (and if it has arrived on British soil, preferably not on a weekend) speaks with one voice for the peoples of Alpha Zeta Beta Phito II? And if the ‘civilisation’ which lands its fleet of UFOs at Cape Cod at some point in the future does speak with one voice, it would be safe to assume that that one voice speaks uniquely for an authoritarian system which will brook no dissent. And thus it is unlikely ‘to come in peace’. Earlier today I read an account of the problem India and China face over deciding on the line of their mutual frontier (although they both might not regard it as a ‘problem’ but, at best, more as an ‘irritation’.) That rather puts our future concerns of how to treat visiting aliens into perspective. Will, it be: ‘OK, your Zorgon bastards, you can have Solihull and Kings Heath, but that’s it, OK, understand? You step one foot — one foot! — north of Mosley and it’s curtains. Savvy?’ I think it was something like that the Patuxet told the Pilgrim Fathers in 1622. Something like that. For all the good it did them.
Alien invasion? Bring it on! We’ll show the bastards.

Hate mail in the shires or why it’s wisest to take nothing for granted, not even good manners among the self-regarding middle-class great and good

The following is a true story. I don’t know whether it’s funny or sad, and I hope it doesn’t embarrass the chap involved. I work with him, and although I don’t know him well — he is an acquaintance from work rather than a friend — he is a nice, decent guy, the sort you (or, at least, I) always wish well rather than not.
This chap, Mark, is unusual among national newspaper journalists because although he is a freelance, he works in several executive capacities on different newspapers, and he does so on the Mail, where I got to know him. Most ‘freelancers’ are writers who are in the loop and can make a reasonably good living from their work. Other ‘freelancers’ are, like me, casuals who (in my view) only call themselves ‘freelancers’ because they think it might impress others a little. In fact, they are, like me, ‘hacks’ in the truest sense of the word, i.e. subs or writers hired by the day, journeymen. But Mark is in a rather more rarefied league, that of the true freelancers. I believe there is family money in the background, and I’m pretty certain he was educated privately. That family money might account for the fact that although he lives in London, he also owns a weekend cottage in Wiltshire. On the other hand, and knowing the range of his work and where it pops up, it is perfectly possible that Mark makes a very, very good living from his freelance journalism and that it is his sole income.
As I say, I know him from the Mail, but a month or two ago when I was staying with my aunt in Bordeaux, I came across a copy of The Spectator in which Mark had written a piece. The Spectator (‘The Speccy’ to those who like to indicate that they are somehow in the know) is not a magazine I ever buy and not one I read at all regularly. Ann, my aunt, a retired university teacher, gets it from a friend and former colleague who passes it on once she has read it. For me the trouble with The Specator is that it is eternally preaching to the converted, it always seems to be bemoaning ‘modern life’, it’s politics are always wholly predictable, and it has about it a rather stand-offish air which says ‘if you’re not one of us, you’re not worth bothering with’. (On the other hand, that might be my hang-up. Discuss.)
However, one evening, I picked up a recent copy and, flicking through it, came across a piece by a ‘Mark Palmer’. ‘Is that the same Mark Palmer I know,’ I wondered. The piece was headlined Social Pariah In The Shires and you can read the piece here, but briefly it is about how he and his family bought a weekend cottage in Wiltshire and where he hoped lead a pleasant weekend existence and build up a circle of friends, but for some reason was never accepted. He was invited to early evening drinks where he was introduced to the rest of that village’s great and good, where, a friend later assured him, he will have been given the once over but that village’s leading lights. Appartently, he didn’t pass muster, because no more invitations followed.
It is a readable, amusing and entertaining piece, though rather wistful. But after I read it, I did think to myself that Mark was making of himself something of a hostage to fortune by publicising the goings on, or rather lack of them, in that Wiltshire village.
Once back at work and when I was in (he only works at the Mail for three days a week, and our working weeks only coincide on Wednesdays), I asked him whether he was the same Mark Palmer. He said he was. So I told him what I have recorded above, that surely he was making of himself a hostage to fortune and that given their rather unwelcoming nature, some in the village would have been none to pleased to see it publicised in the oh-so-middle-class ‘Speccy’ which, even if they don’t actually read it, many in the village will have lying around the living room hoping friends and visitors will notice it and be impressed. What had been the reaction? I asked him. Oh, he said, they weren’t very pleased at all. In fact, he added, he had even had hate mail.
I started this piece by stating that I didn’t know whether the conclusion to this anecdote was funny or sad. I now know: it is not in the slightest bit funny, and it is more than sad. I am certain that the authors of that hate mail would be the first to lecture others on courtesy, manners, the ‘kind of thing one doesn’t do’ and generally how a well-brought up chap should behave. So not only are they pretentious, they are also nauseatingly hypocritical.
It makes me think that the plots of Midsomer Murders aren’t quite as far-fetched as I thought.