Gyles Brandreth’s Diary
Her Majesty’s senior staff aren’t worried by Woking Pizzagate
I was lucky enough to be invited to a royal reception the other day – not at the Woking Pizza Express, but at Buckingham Palace.
It’s not been an easy few weeks at the Royal Family’s HQ. When I arrived, I found the normal entrance, the Privy Purse gate, closed for repairs. A contractor had accidentally bumped his van into it, dented a unicorn and left the gate inoperable. I had to find another way in and cross the courtyard on foot.
Inside, I’m happy to report, I encountered members of Her Majesty’s senior team as imperturbable as ever. Their impressive sang-froid reminded me of the story the author Basil Boothroyd liked to tell. Like me, Boothroyd once wrote a biography of Prince Philip and, as his was authorised, he was given an office at Buckingham Palace to work in.
Arriving one morning, crossing the courtyard, gravel scrunching underfoot, the eyes of a hundred tourists boring into him, Boothroyd encountered the Queen’s Private Secretary coming the other way. Boothroyd paused to greet him. Pleasantries were exchanged. Courtesies were extended. The weather was discussed, the Queen’s blooming health was touched on and progress on Basil’s book reported – and then the Private Secretary threw in gently, ‘If you’ll forgive me, I must be on my way. I’ve had an urgent call to say my house is on fire.’
My father died in 1981, at the age of 71.
He knew he would die then. In fact, he had known he would since the summer of 1921 when, aged 11, he had his palm read by a gypsy fortune-teller at Dreamland, the amusement park at Margate on the Kent coast.
My father was an easy-going sort of fellow and accepted the fortune-teller’s prediction without complaint. ‘It’s there in my lifeline,’ he used to say, almost cheerily, lighting up another cigarette. ‘At least I’m going to get my three score years and ten.’ (Du Maurier, Olivier, Craven A – my father smoked a lot and always the classier brands.)
When my father died at 71 (the age I am now), it was early in the morning at the hospice and Radio 2 was playing in the background. My father was not really a Radio 2 sort of person, but there you go. When my turn comes, I hope I won’t gasp my last to the sound of Radio 2 – unless it happens to be one of those nostalgic music programmes I believe they still put out at unsocial hours over the weekend and I can slip away to Whispering Jack Smith, Charles Trenet, Tino Rossi or Jack Buchanan.
I am more of a Radio 4 spoken-word chap. I’d be quite content to die with Martin Jarvis reading David Copperfield to me. No one does Dickens better.
I saw Nicholas Hytner’s dazzling production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream the other day. It was originally presented at London’s Bridge Theatre – I caught the filmed version at my local cinema.
I rather rushed supper to get to the performance on time and, as a consequence, gave myself a bad bout of indigestion. Naturally I was convinced I was having a heart attack but, being 71 and feeling I should be phlegmatic like my father, I decided to sit back and face my destiny like a man.
The Dream is one of my favourite plays, full of my favourite Shakespearean lines, and I thought it would be rather marvellous to snuff it on one of them. I survived both ‘Lord, what fools these mortals be!’ and ‘The course of true love never did run smooth.’ I had a real spasm on ‘Take pains. Be perfect’ – and then realised the moment for my departure was at hand. As Pyramus cried, ‘Thus I die, thus, thus, thus, now I am dead, now
I am fled, my soul is in the sky,’ my wife turned to me and whispered, ‘There’s a lot of burping going on. Did you forget to take your Gaviscon?’
I have been walking the wet and windy streets of Kingston and Surbiton recently, out canvassing support for my daughter, Aphra, who is standing as a Conservative candidate in the general election.
It’s tough pounding the pavements, but essential. You have got to meet the people somehow. When I was first a parliamentary candidate myself, more than 30 years ago, I recall one of my predecessors as MP for the City of Chester, a ‘good Cheshire man’ by the name of Sir Jack Temple, telling me how these things should be done. ‘Put a rug on the bonnet of your motor,’ he explained. ‘Sit on the rug and get your driver to drive you around the constituency at a steady pace – slow enough to be seen, but not so slow that any of the voters can run alongside asking damn fool questions.’
Gyles’s new book for Christmas is an anthology of poetry to learn by heart, Dancing by the Light of the Moon (Penguin Michael Joseph, £14.99)