Garret FitzGerald and the Earl of Onslow were a rare breed – politicians who were surprisingly nice
✒ Two politicians who were surprisingly nice died this week. Former taoiseach Garret FitzGerald was perhaps the most decent statesman I've ever met. He was also endlessly obliging. He used to be a journalist, and had worked freelance for the Financial Times. Years after he'd stopped the paper needed a report on some minor story – the sale of a quarry, I think. The paper's Dublin correspondent was at the races, and so, it seemed, were all other recent employees. Finally, at the end of a list they came to the name FitzGerald. A newsdesk person phoned him. "FitzGerald, we need 250 words on the quarry story – in half an hour!"
"But you don't understand, I'm the foreign minister now!" But he wrote it all the same, because nothing was too much trouble.
✒I had been, some years ago, at the funeral in a Surrey village of a close friend who had died far too young. Usually we mourn the death at the service and celebrate the life at the wake, but the grief was too raw for the party to raise our spirits, so we made for the local village pub, The Earl of Onslow. It was a picture-book English pub, with twinkling horse brasses and a crackling log fire with settles around it, which is where we all sat. And then, in walked the Earl of Onslow! This has never happened to me before or since. It's as if you were to be drinking in the King's Head when Charles I arrived. He was a regular, unsurprisingly, since the pub was close to his estate. He was funny and chatty, and best of all he bought his round, which is not true of all politicians. He too died this week.
✒ Another peer, Earl Ferrers, has just launched his book, Whatever Next? His most famous forebear was the fourth earl who suspected his steward of taking the side of his estranged wife, and so shot him dead. He refused to say that it had been a mistake, though he did try to claim lunacy. However, his plea was so coherent and so convincing that the jury of his fellow peers decided he could not be insane – a classic Catch-22. In the end he was hanged from, allegedly, a silken rope. He was the first victim of the dropping floor, a quicker and more humane method of hanging.
By contrast the present earl has been a blameless junior minister in various Conservative administrations.
✒ Last week I said what a good idea Scottish independence would be. Inevitably the tone of the correspondence has been, "we would quite happily be independent, but we can't bear the thought that you don't mind". In other words, the true joy would be in winding up the English – but most English people don't care either way! As David Cameron recognised this week when he ruled out an all-UK referendum.
It would also end the ludicrous West Lothian problem, by which Scottish MPs can vote on English matters but not the other way round. In the meantime, Scottish Labour members are so terrified of the SNP that they are becoming more aggressively Caledonian by the day. There was a surreal exchange this week between Boris Johnson and Jim Sheridan, the MP for Paisley. Mr Sheridan was grumbling about the cost of the Olympic swimming pool. "If the good people of London are not satisfied with that swimming pool, the impoverished people of Scotland would be delighted to have the pool – and we would supply our own water."
Boris replied: "But convoys of your constituents would be welcome to come down to London and swim in the pool – and they will find bags of water to swim in!" Mr Sheridan did not look entirely mollified. Expect much more of this "It's Scotland's water!" and similar nonsense in the next few years.
✒ Like you, I remember the great landslide of 1997. Yes, the very day after Tony Blair walked into Downing Street, Katrina and the Waves had an overwhelming victory in the Eurovision song contest. Britain is, by a huge margin, the second-greatest creator of popular music in the world, but has never come near to winning since. But Saturday's broadcast had the biggest audience – over 12 million – for ages.
I suppose it's because the whole thing is like Heartbeat, or Poirot – wonderfully retro. The songs get worse, the costumes more absurd, and every year it looks more like a Peter Kay spoof of the Eurovision song contest. Part of our pleasure, I suspect, is that many Europeans take it very seriously, and deeply resent the mockery of Wogan and now Norton. Yet the winning entry, from Azerbaijan, was unspeakable, a whining, repetitive plaint, rather like when a child gets a snatch of some horrible tune into his head and will not stop repeating it until he has driven everyone mad.
✒ More crazy labels. Sybil Edwards bought a Philips TV, which has a helpful leaflet, warning you in graphic form not to kick it, hit it with a hammer, or set fire to it. (Even during the Eurovision song contest.) John Landau has a jar of Batt's English mustard: "Allergy warning. Contains mustard."
Shirley Neish bought some Uvistat sun cream: "The recommended dose is approx 6 teaspoons per average size adult." That would make an odd spectacle on the beach, and I wouldn't fancy stirring my tea afterwards. Bill Pritchard bought a pair of football boots, which came in a box marked: "Average contents: two." Peter Barr went to B&Q for a smart seagrass and bamboo window blind. Luckily he knew what to do, so didn't need the warning on the bag: "Do not eat."
It's not just in Britain. In France Cathy Sprod bought a jar of mackerel rillettes. The glass was marked: "Risque de lesions en cas de casses." ["Risk of injury if broken"]. Back home, John Charlesworth bought some DIY goods. "The wearing of safety glasses with side shields is recommended." This is on a packet of cup hooks.