The story of a young office worker who emptied a teapot down the toilet, not knowing how much it would annoy him
✒Last week I mentioned Spike Milligan ("the performing man") and I'm delighted to see that his life is to be celebrated on BBC2 tonight, in a programme called I Told You I Was Ill. This is the legend he wanted to be on his gravestone, but the local diocese, Chichester, refused to allow it until 2004, two years later, and then only on condition that it appeared in Irish.
Last weekend we were in the Lake District, at the Words by the Water festival, and at dinner I found myself next to Maureen Lipman. She was a huge Milligan fan, and told me a story about his office. A young woman had just started work there, and not knowing how much it would annoy him, had emptied a teapot down the toilet.
Milligan saw what had happened and returned in a rage. "Who put the tea leaves down the loo?" he demanded. The young woman nervously confessed to the hideous crime.
"Well, you will meet a tall, dark stranger …" said Milligan.
✒The festival is always held in early March, so the weather can sometimes be pretty horrid. But Sunday was glorious, with the sun illuminating the patches of snow left on the mountain tops and Derwent Water sparkling brilliantly, as if a clear night sky had somehow dropped to earth. We picnicked on Cat Bells fell, then took the launch round the lake. But everyone says business is down this year. With petrol approaching £60 a tankful, even domestic trips are beyond many.
Normally at this stage I recommend a delightful country pub, but I've previously mentioned the Queen's Head in Troutbeck, just north of Windermere town. It's the one with the good food, and the bar made from a converted four-poster bed. But we also loved the Tebay service station, the only nice one I know, with a farm shop, a butcher's counter selling tempting local meat, and a duck pond, surrounded by sheep and rabbits.
✒I had thought of stopping crazy labels, but they keep coming in and some are wonderful. Margo MacLellan bought a pair of Puma shoes: the box said "average contents, 2". GM Pugsley picked up a packet of aspirin at Boots, the till receipt helpfully marked, "contains aspirin". Jim Gulcher found a toy ball in the shape of an egg at Tesco. The packaging contains a big WARNING sign: "This ball may bounce in unexpected directions." (No doubt to stop Tesco being sued if it zoomed off and broke a Ming vase.) And Jill Horobin bought some beef lasagne at M&S. The inner cellophane packaging displayed, in red letters, repeated several times, the warning: "Contains meat".
✒Not a label, but John Lechmere sends me an email from the Local Better Regulation Office. It is, perhaps, the most convoluted jargon I have ever read: "Master classes in pathway development. We are hosting a master class to be run by RAND Europe in our offices in Birmingham on March 16 to take local authorities through the process of developing outcomes and impacts dashboards against their developed pathways.
"The session will focus on local authorities who have gone through the process of developing their logic model, and now require additional expertise on how to develop indicators to measure achievements against outcomes.
"Follow up support to each delegate will be provided by facilitators, in the development of your own dashboard. As this session is free, we require delegates to provide a copy of their completed dashboard to share through the LBRO website."
Makes you want to dash your completed dashboard over somebody's head. As Mr Lechmere says, "be strict with take-aways" or "don't be horrid to restaurateurs" would convey the meaning far more readily. But it wouldn't convey the incredible importance and gravitas of the people conveying it.
✒I was sorry to see that Vivian Schiller, the CEO of National Public Radio in the US, has had to resign after a rightwing sting operation. I used to appear on NPR sometimes when we lived in the States, and was a keen listener. Driving in, say, the midwest, you would hear a procession of manic disc jockeys, all sounding like axe-murderers, then twiddle the dial till you heard the calm – sometimes too calm – voice of NPR. "The president has been shot, and the vice-president has been sworn in. But first, here is writer Charles McTavish with some thoughts on how to stay friends with the cat in your life."
And it could be ludicrously PC at times. One NPR reporter addressed Nelson Mandela thus: "As an African-American yourself, Mr Mandela …" And a friend swears she heard a woman describe herself as "a person of gender".
But it is honest, thoughtful, well-informed, unhysterical and often very funny. The neocons are out to get it, and it will be a tremendous loss if they succeed.
✒We said goodbye to my friend Derek Brown on Thursday, at Hereford crematorium. There was a great turnout of old Guardian hands, many of whose names would be recognised by old Guardian readers. Many people who couldn't come had sent messages and memories of Derek.
Martin Woollacott remembered a barbecue at the back of Derek and his wife Eileen's house in Jerusalem. Derek was sizzling bacon on the grill, and alternately wafted some of the smoke towards the Muslims on one side, then to the Israelis on the other – to demonstrate, he said, that they had more in common with each other than they might think. And that it was usually a mistake to let religious ritual get in the way of life's great pleasures. He was good on pleasures, was Derek, and loved to share them.