Craig Brown - The Lost Diaries

Once again, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother had smiled her way into the hearts of the people. ‘It’s so very thrilling,’ she confessed in a letter to Queen Mary. ‘The little Canadians simply ADORE me!!!!’

WILLIAM SHAWCROSS *

Day 18,295 in the Big Brother house. 11.27 a.m.: Aisleyne and Imogen are in the kitchen.

AISLEYNE: How long we been in here then?

IMOGEN: Where?

AISLEYNE: Here?

IMOGEN: Here?

AISLEYNE: Yeah. Here.

IMOGEN: Fifty years, babes.

AISLEYNE: Fifty fuckin’ years?

IMOGEN: Yeah.

AISLEYNE: Oh. Right. I gotta do something about these hair extensions.

My father always said that one can never do without common sense in matters great as well as small. He never let anyone in his shop who had not first handed over their shoelaces to my mother at the door. In this way he sought to put an end to petty pilfering. ‘No one can run far without their shoelaces,’ he once said as an elderly lady crashed to the floor, a bag of stolen flour bursting beneath her arm. My father was a man of firm principles and firmer forefinger. Aged ten, I asked him why, when serving the smoked ham, he made a point of placing his right forefinger on the scales. He explained it was to give the customers better all-round service, by helping them pay that little bit extra for quality produce. ‘A finger on the scales is a penny in the till,’ he explained, and it is advice that I have treasured ever since.

MARGARET THATCHER

An actor must be a gazelle at a waterhole, a cabin bursting into flame, a bottle thrown into the ocean, a distant planet newly discovered by an astronomer whose wife has just left him for a younger guy who’s into baseball.

And sometimes, just sometimes, all four at once.

BRAD PITT

Odessa. I visit the Odessa Steps: lots and lots of steps, all named after Odessa. Odessa is one of the very few cities I can think of which begin with an ‘O’ – unless you count Orpington! Actually, it’s rather like Orpington in a way: there are lots of buildings, and quite a few people, plus cars and so on. As cities go, Odessa is literally indescribable.

Before I came here, I had no idea how big Russia is. It really is very, very big indeed. The people here are very friendly. Today, after quite a comfortable night, it has been my privilege to meet a marvellous old character, a gentleman who speaks near-perfect English, dresses very smartly in suit and tie, has heard of the Pythons (always a help!) and is anxious to cooperate in any way he can. ‘We must get him on film – he’s a marvellous old character,’ I say to my producer.

‘He’s our assistant director,’ explains my producer.

Later, I rehearse the next day’s script. ‘I must say this view is simply stunning,’ I say over and over again. Tomorrow, we will find a view to go with it.

MICHAEL PALIN

Dreadfully distressed at this morning’s news of the death of HRH Princess Margaret. She may have been the teensiest bit COMMON, bless her, but my goodness she had RAZZLE DAZZLE. In so many ways, Margaret personified the sheer devil-may-care spirit of the Sixties. I shall never forget a spectacular luncheon party she threw on the Isle of Mustique in August, 1969. Everyone who was anyone in the Sixties was there. Tripping around the exquisitely-mown lawn on my allotted golf-buggy before the serving of the Pina Coladas, I remember overtaking Gerry and the Pacemakers, all crammed into one little buggy, and Sir Gerald Nabarro, Frank Ifield and Freddy ‘Parrot-Face’ Davis having a whale of a time in another.

Luncheon was a delightful affair. One now forgets what the Princess was wearing, but I myself was wearing a crushed-velvet suit in the most beautiful deep purple, with a Burlington Bertie smock to match. Prompted by sheer JOIE DE VIVRE into perfectly SHAMEFUL indiscretions, I hugely amused the Princess with my running commentary on all the latest goings-on among the senior heads of department at the British Museum. The Princess sat fixed to her seat, her head cocked to one side, her eyes tight-shut, so as to soak it all in. It is greatly to her credit that she would surround herself with people far more intelligent than herself.

After a sumptuous luncheon, a vast cake was wheeled out by the most magnificent pair of coloured gentlemen. And then – PURE THEATRE! – Kathy Kirby and Norman Wisdom leapt out and proceeded to polka the afternoon away to the music of Burl Ives. MAGIC!

Margaret – who I will always remember as one of the most intensely musical figures of that era – clapped quite brilliantly in time, getting every other clap almost exactly right.

SIR ROY STRONG

I had an idea for these gloves today, and I was like, wow. I really want to be really, really creative and like really push ideas to their furthest creation. My fashion philosophy can be summed up as like, I want to take reality to the furthest reality, as part of the creative process. Because it’s only by really pulling ideas into their furthest creative reality that you can find where you’re gonna like push them.

I wanted these to be very, very stylish, very, very classic and very, very contemporary. That was my whole philosophy of them, my whole glove philosophy. But first I had all these different like THINGS to work out, cos I have always paid very, very close attention to detail, cos basically I’m a very-close-attention-to-detail kind of person, that’s just the way I am. So first – how many fingers on each glove? I thought about this and like really studied the whole human thing, and eventually I thought like – wow! – yup, it’s got to be four fingers and a thumb. And not just four fingers and a thumb on one glove, but four fingers and a thumb on both gloves. And that’s not because I’ve got anything against thumbs. I was always brought up to really appreciate thumbs, and I’m dead against people who are, like, against thumbs. No – it’s because if you look at the average human hand and count the fingers and thumbs, like I have, you’ll find it’s got four fingers and just one thumb, and that’s what I wanted to, like, mirror, in my own gloves.

So I rang up my glovemaker and I’m like, a pair of gloves, four fingers and a thumb each, and I want it very, very stylish, very, very classic and very, very contemporary. And she transformed my own distinctive vision into reality. And that was like really really weird.

STELLA MCCARTNEY

There are always new characters to meet. This evening, I was placed next to Igor Stravinsky, the well-known composer. He is neither very tall nor very short, but if he had been it wouldn’t have mattered as for most of the time we were both sitting down.

He held forth on the subject of music, to the exclusion of all else. After a good few minutes of this, I sought to change the subject.

‘Would you agree with me that this lamb is a little overdone?’ I inquired. I cannot remember his reply, so it can’t have been interesting. He had no real conversation.

CLARISSA EDEN

The Hitch and I were in a burpfarty willybumcrack dive off the Porto-bello Road and drinking like men – one half of Skol leapfrogged swiftly by another, two packs of salt and vinegar, heavy on the salt, don’t hold back on the vinegar, mush, then another half of Skol, this time with a slash of lime, followed by a Pepsi, all black, no ice – when I rasped that fuckitman, I preferred early Conrad to later James and middle Nabokov to either of them. The Hitch immediately puked into the pocket of a passing paediatrician and snorted vomitoriously that middle James could beat early James and late Nabokov hands down, ansdarn.