The Lost Diaries. Craig Brown

us and, at one and the same time, us to look down on them.

      Nowadays, to my certain knowledge, The Times is staffed almost exclusively by common people, many bussed in from the East End in boilersuits. Even Lord Rees-Mogg is obliged to adopt a flat cap, grubby overalls and a cockney accent before reporting for work. And a certain coarseness has crept into the prose. For instance, leading articles on the situation in Iraq invariably begin with the lamentable phraseology, Fuck this for a game of soldiers. It all goes to show that equality may be a good thing in theory, but, like mathematics, it never works in practice.

       SIR PEREGRINE WORSTHORNE

       March 22nd

      Nelson Mandela is one bloke I hugely admire. I can’t imagine being locked up in a cell for literally days on end without a personal assistant or even face-cream. I wrote a song about Nelly’s time in prison – ‘It’s Those Little Things I Miss So Bad’ – and I was privileged to sing it at a concert in his honour:

      Larked up in jay-ul

      Cos my skin’s not pay-ul

      Yit’s those lit-tul thungs I myiss swooo bad –

      Thwose lit-tul things

      That Santa brings

      Like dia-mond riiiings

      An’ pure gold wiiiings

      An’ thwose pearl yearrings I once had

      When I finished singing this soulful tribute, I glanced over at the great man. The guy was in tears.

      Afterwards, I attended a ceremony at which Nelson Mandela was going to give a bit back to society by presenting yours truly with an honorary degree. It was a marvellous moment as I received my degree from Little Miss Mandela, truly a legend in her own lifetime.

      

       SIR ELTON JOHN

      Now I hear that the brave firefighters, lovely, decent lads, are going on strike to try and stop this whole ghastly business of the government’s secret time-changes.

      I pop into the local home furnishings store, march up to the bedding counter and ask for some Polos. They say they sell pillows, not Polos, and they show me one. ‘Well, I’ll never be able to fit something that size in my ear!’ I exclaim. What a bunch of proper Charlies!

      Eventually, I locate some Polo mints at the sweet shop next door. ‘Do they come with batteries?’ I ask, but it turns out these are extra, like so many things these days. So blow me down if they haven’t even privatised Polo mints! I have no wish to bring personalities into it, that’s not my style, never has been, never will be, but I place the blame fairly and squarely on that smarmy, self-satisfied, grinning lickspittle Tony Blair.

      

       TONY BENN

       March 23rd

      Buy new house. Find it’s in France. Fuckin drag. Have to sell it.

      

       KEITH RICHARDS

       March 24th

      TO BERNARD BERENSON

      My dear BB,

      I must apologise, inter alia, for my tiresome silence. I have now emerged from les horreurs de la term, a pleasing respite, and one that allows me time to devote a generous portion of my thankfully not inconsiderable intellect to the service of this, our most deliciously civilised correspondence.

      It was whilst walking round the Christ Church Meadow, and pondering on the complicated subtleties of St Augustine’s theological system, which I had long tried to take seriously, though to little avail (for St Augustine was, frankly, a second-rater, perhaps even a third-rater), that the undoubted truth came upon me that my erstwhile colleague A.L. Rowse is singularly ill-suited to the teaching or writing of history, being dwarfish and plebeian. There is neither breadth nor depth to him, and precious little width or height.

      On my return to my study, I set in motion a plot to discredit the oikish Cornish charlatan. Creeping along the corridor on tip-toe, I eased open his door the merest half-inch, deftly placing an open bottle of black ink of the darkest hue on its uppermost surface before tip-toeing back down the corridor again. The entire operation was o’er in something less than a minute.