Novel way to make money

On the principle that you should never throw anything out, I see that the original paperback of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, used for reference by the judge at the legendary obscenity trial of 1960, is going up for auction at Sotheby’s at the end of next month.

The outraged prosecution of the time asked the jury, in those far-off, class-bound days, if they would be happy to have their wife or servants read this controversial tome.

Obviously, Sir Lawrence Byrne, on the bench, had no such scruples as his copy had been read, marked and probably inwardly digested by his wife, Lady Dorothy, whose annotated musings in this one-off literary landmark are still there for all to see.

Author DH Lawrence, a man with no little conceit of himself, would no doubt be mortified to note that it is Lady Dorothy’s blue-pencilled jottings that make this slim volume so valuable, rather than his purple prose but ‘twas ever thus, I fear.

There were many worthy books in the library of my all-girls school in which you could spot all the pages turned down and dog-eared by previous generations of intrepid teenage smut-seekers. You could hardly get the DH Lawrences closed and back on the shelves for folded edges.

Heaven help us if we had realised back then that the aforementioned Lover would eventually (in 2015) be played by Bodyguard star Richard Madden, a man rapidly overtaking Poldark’s Aidan Turner in the under-clad heartthrob stakes.

It is said that Sir Lawrence, obviously a man of delicate sensibilities, brought the said Penguin paperback into court every day concealed in a pale blue damask bag, way classier than a plain brown wrapper.

When the jury threw the case out, the entire print-run of 200,000 sold out in one day; that, and the current valuation of this latest chapter in the saga of sexual liberalisation being valued at around 15 grand, goes to prove that, if nothing else, where there’s muck, there’s brass.

Speaking as someone who has never seen an episode of Game of Thrones, The Wire or The Great British Bake-Off (we will gloss, speedily, over The X Factor, Britain’s Got Talent and every incarnation of Big Brother), it will come as no surprise that I have never watched The Apprentice.

This particular “reality” franchise has a lot to answer for, being as how it is at least partially responsible for Donald Trump currently occupying the White House.

But apart from that, I have somehow managed to miss the previous 13 British seasons of this monument to retrogressive employment practices which only goes to show that my life hasn’t been quite such a hollow mockery and empty waste of time as you might have thought at first glance.

I am, of course, open to persuasion but the interjections of Lord Sugar’s current on-screen sidekick, one Claude Littner, are not really going to help there. “Not one Apprentice candidate is actually stupid”, he says, earnestly.

Now, understatement has its place in this world. But for a show with a USP of producing thrusting business tycoons and whose supposedly go-getting mantra is perfectly encapsulated by the slogan, “Everything I touch turns to sold,” I’m afraid that’s not going to go very far in selling it to me.

We all know that royal protocol is an arcane area of British life as none of us are ever likely to know it. But it seems, nevertheless, to exercise an unhealthy fascination for those who have nothing better to do.

Or those, like me, who can’t believe their eyes and ears about what is still, in this day and age, regarded as worthy of comment. Usually barbed. I still have great difficulty in accepting that we are a nation that can still get its knickers in a knot about who curtseys to whom and how, rather than laughing to scorn the whole notion of curtseying in the first place.

Meghan Markle has broken through a few barriers in her recent incarnation as a royal wife and good luck to her.

If we have to have a monarchy, let’s have one or two associate members who have, at some time, earned their own living and done things for themselves.

She has taken stick for wearing trousers, not wearing tights, holding her husband’s hand, signing an autograph and crossing her legs.

I don’t suppose for a minute she gives much of a damn about any of this but even she must be having a mega eye-roll and, I hope, a good old chortle up her Givenchy designer sleeve this week after being taken to task, after her first solo engagement, for shutting her car door behind her and not waiting for someone to do it for her. You can almost hear the ghost of Larry Grayson, can’t you?

Know what? I don’t want to start a vicious rumour or one of those viral wotsits, but I think she probably puts her own toothpaste on her own toothbrush of a morning, too, which is more than you can say for her father-in-law.

My life hasn’t been quite such a waste of time as you might have thought

Picture: PA. The original paperback of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, used for reference by the judge at the legendary obscenity trial of 1960, is going up for auction at Sotheby’s at the end of next month.