Night Chips sailed into a very salty royal mix-up

There has never been another American interloper quite like Sir henry ‘Chips’ Channon, who married a Guinness heiress and became both an MP and the darling of London society.

But perhaps even Channon would have been astonished that his Diaries — now published in unexpurgated form for the first time — would inspire frenzied debate more than eight decades after he wrote them.

One entry — for November 19, 1936 — is generating particular excitement. This now records not just that ‘tiaras nodded [and] diamonds sparkled’ at the dinner party Channon and his wife held for edward VIII at their house in London’s Belgravia, but also the King’s startlingly modern turn of phrase when, after dinner, he announced that he needed to relieve himself.

‘At length he rose, and said: “I want to pump s***”,’ reads the newly published edition, ‘and I led his Majesty to our loulou! he proceeded to pass water without shutting the door, talking to me the while.’

This has prompted broadcaster and writer Libby Purves to argue that the King had in fact said ‘pump ship’, meaning to urinate — an expression, she says, which is ‘still common among naval and yachting types’.

Purves’s interjection has caused the Diaries’ editor, Simon heffer, to reinspect Channon’s work. ‘I got the senior trustee to send me a photograph of that page of the manuscript,’ he tells me. ‘It’s a “T” and not a “P”.’ heffer adds that he has ‘no naval connections’ and so was unfamiliar with the sea-dog slang: ‘I didn’t know it and Chips obviously didn’t know it either.

‘he probably thought that because the King was saying he wanted to go to the lavatory, it was “pump s***”. Whether he misheard or misunderstood I don’t know. I’m sure that edward VIII did not say ‘pump s***’;

I’m sure he said ‘pump ship’. It means that the just published hardback edition is destined to become a collector’s item. ‘When we get round to the paperback, we’ll change it — for the avoidance of doubt – and include an explanatory footnote along the lines of: “This is what Chips wrote, and he may well have misheard,”’ says heffer. ‘But at the moment we’re leaving it as it is.’