In Absentia
By Sir Les Patterson – recited at the Oldie of the Year
I was in a sauna suckin’ on a coldie When I got this email from my mates at The Oldie: ‘We’re having a big lunch at the Savoy – There’ll be Royalty present.’ I said, ‘Oh boy!’ It was then that I read the bit under my thumb: It said, ‘No offence, Les, but please don’t come.’ So now I’m cancelled as if I didn’t count, Thanks to that bald bastard, Harry Mount – He probably thought I wouldn’t be missed, Or make a pass at Camilla or turn up pissed. It’s true when I make a speech, there’s seldom much doubt That when I reach my climax, something slips out.
But when something slips out, the ladies protest: They yell, ‘Good on you, Les – now show us the rest.’ They’re shit-scared that the ladies might go into shock, But I know a few here who’ve been round the block. Now I’ve cleaned up my act – I’m squeaky clean, I’m woke And I’d never offend with an off-colour joke. I never use the ‘f’ word in the presence of minors And I stick up for lezzos and vagina-decliners, And there is nothing more beautiful, I have to say, Than a wholesome, sexual relationship between a happily married politician and his PA. So, my dear little Duchess, I’m sorry to trouble you – But please give Les’s love to the POW.
Flaubert was prosecuted for offending public morality and, though he was acquitted, the book was banned by the Vatican and placed on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum (List of Prohibited Books) from 1864 until the Index was abolished in 1966. Praised by Zola, it was trashed by Henry James in French Poets and Novelists (1878): ‘ Madame Bovary was spontaneous and sincere; but to read its successor is ... like masticating ashes and sawdust.’
As befits the son of a doctor, in his study Flaubert had a bust of Hippocrates ... as well as an inkwell in the form of a toad.
Diplomatic memoirs can be dry affairs. Not so the new memoir by Lady Bullard, widow of Sir Julian Bullard (1928-2006), the British Ambassador to Germany from 1984 to 1988.
In Endangered Species: Diplomacy from the Passenger Seat, Margaret Bullard remembers the tragicomedy of the visit to Germany by the Prince and Princess of Wales in 1987, when the royal marriage was on the rocks.
Before they arrived, the couple were asked what their favourite dishes were. Charles ‘liked bits in his orange juice and her favourite foods were lobster and caviar’. When the Queen had been asked the same question before, the answer has been ‘Anything you think it appropriate to