Craig Brown - The Lost Diaries

We arranged a tremendous birthday dinner, with guests Mr and Mrs Charlie Drake, Larry Grayson, Magnus Pyke, the Tim Rices, the Lionel Blairs, the Jeffrey Archers and the Krankies. Larry told a truly classic anecdote about John Gielgud – apparently, in a fit of madness he once mistook Eileen Atkins for Maggie Smith!!! Cue the sound of clangers dropping!

Promise to self: in the next five years I shall certainly climb the Eiffel Tower!

GYLES BRANDRETH

8 March 2000: Happy Birthday Dear Me! Fifty-two today!!!!

I still haven’t got round to climbing the Eiffel Tower, but at least I have spoken on the art of plate-spinning to the Epsom and Ewell Back Pain Association Annual Dinner!!

Today I finish my Illustrated History of the Novelty Pullover, tomorrow I write my Life of William Shakespeare (now they’ll HAVE to take me seriously), the next day I get going on Gyles Brandreth’s Great Big Book of Fun Party Games Involving Balloons and over the weekend I’m ghosting The Michael Barrymore Book of Totally Impossible Brain-Teasers. Meanwhile, plans for my National Museum of Cocktail Party Umbrellas in Rottingdean are coming on apace.

GYLES BRANDRETH

My uncle Stiffy, who lived for a lightly-poached tongue, had strong views on food. ‘Never remove the gunk from a trotter before boiling it,’ he would say, whilst tending to a particularly troublesome toenail with a fine sixteenth-century silver corkscrew. ‘There’s oodles of nutrition in filth.’

At Chatsworth, we take care to remember Uncle Stiffy’s maxim whenever we boil a trotter. This is what makes this receipt so particularly tasty.

TROTTER ON HORSEBACK

1 pig’s trotter

2 onions

2 pts water

2 slices Mother’s Pride

Do make sure your pig is completely dead before removing its trotter. Great Aunt Squinty forgot, and lost an eye as a consequence. Thankfully, the eye boiled up well, and made an interesting addition to the fruit salad we served on Coronation Day. Waste not, want not, as our old Governess used to say. If ever she came across a dead insect – a bluebottle or wasp – she would never dream of throwing it away. After all, what is a Lemon Curd without insects?

First, discard the onions. You will not be needing them for this receipt.

Now boil the trotter in the water for 10–15 minutes, but not a second longer. It should remain nice and chewy, with that delicious trottery flavour.

Wrap it in the two slices of Mother’s Pride, buttered to taste. Serve warm-ish. Ideal for a late breakfast, or perchance as that ‘little something extra’ for afternoon tea.

DEBORAH, DUCHESS OF DEVONSHIRE

I’m five years bloody old. My parents and me have nothing in common, no conversation, no small talk, nothing. Now I find they’ve booked me into a primary school. How bloody dare they? Don’t they know who I am?

The school is rotten. The uniform is a total turn-off, the teachers are middle-aged with no like sense of style and the service is truly appalling.

JANET STREET-PORTER

England in March! What a horrid, class-ridden, snobbish nation, packed with the most ghastly common little low-brows.

Today I am forced to suffer a disgracefully expensive five-course luncheon at the Savoy with Arnold Wesker, who, I regret to say, certainly isn’t up to much, intellectually speaking: I ask him to name five plays I had personally directed in the past three years – and he doesn’t even know!

But we agree on the burning need for a truly savage and satirical film that skewers the fat-cats in our overblown, moribund, post-imperial society.

Suddenly, an impertinent suburban waiter interrupts us to ask if we would care for a sweet.

‘“Care for a sweet”?’ I complain bitterly. ‘“Care for a sweet”?!! What sort of a country are we living in when a functionary interrupts a highly serious discussion to ask if one would “care for a sweet”! Very well, I’ll have the Black Forest Gâteau – but only as a symbol of our overblown and tasteless age.’

Outside the Savoy, a pompous hotel functionary in a top hat and braid asks if he can hail me a cab.

I tell him in no uncertain terms that, as an anarchist, I am perfectly well equipped to hail one for myself. But the first cab drives straight past me with someone else in the back. I have never known such a kick in the teeth. I have been suppressed and disregarded in this country for decades – and now this! It’s really too much.

LINDSAY ANDERSON

I crave simplicity. What could be more satisfying than a simple boiled egg? Ever since, as a young man, I became the first Englishman to visit Europe, I have pursued a love affair with the boiled egg. A boiled egg is a feast for all the senses: the eyes amazed by the deep rich yellow contrasted with the stark, translucent, almost virginal white; the ears alive to the gentle knock-knock-knock on the warmly curvaceous and softly yielding shell; the mouth teased by expectations of the flowing yolk softly easing its way along the salivating contours of the tongue, and down, down, down into the throat; the penis quivering in readiness to be used as a spoon, diving deep, deep, deep, deep into the very nub and hollow of the ovoid, then rising up once more, now drenched in the brightest yellow. And it’s also very pleasant with toast.

SIR TERENCE CONRAN

The young Victoria’s life, it seems to me, really begins the moment she sees the super-sexy Prince Albert in his skin-tight figure-hugging uniform and thinks to herself, ‘Hmmm, tasty! You know what? I want some of that!’

The couple fall head-over-heels in love, and simply adore driving around the little country lanes near Windsor in his fast car on hot summer days. They love each other totally, and uncovering that really was revelatory for me. The more I read about her – and in the end I finished an entire biography, non-swanks! – I couldn’t believe how their love was so exactly like my own love for Andrew.

As couples, we were like peas in the proverbial iPod. Victoria and Albert used to eat meals together – and so did me and Andrew. Victoria and Albert used to sometimes go out together – and so did us. Victoria and Albert stayed married until the day he died – and so did me and Andrew, or nearly. Victoria wrestled the whole of her life with weight issues bound up with a lack of self-confidence – and so did me. And, just like I, Victoria eventually went to live in the United States of America, where the people respected her honesty, admired her for her amazing work with WeightWatchers and literally took her to their hearts. The list goes on and on.

SARAH, DUCHESS OF YORK

Albert Einstein. Let’s face it, the guy didn’t know the first thing about science.

GERMAINE GREER

Violet and I attended pre-luncheon drinks with the Somersets at Gloucester. Then on to the Gloucesters in Somerset. The Devonshires had brought Kent along. Halfway through the luncheon, the butler informed us that Lady Avon was at the door. ‘Tell her to join us!’ said Gloucester, drawing up a chair for her. She sat down and was halfway through her main course (medaillons de veau, pommes Lyonnaises, épinards à la crème – all perfectly eatable), entertaining us with fulsome praise for a new lemon-scented shower gel, whatever that may be, when it emerged that the butler had misheard. She was not Lady Avon at all, but the Avon Lady.

ANTHONY POWELL

In the operations room at Downing Street, the telephone rings. Prime Ministerial aides sigh knowingly. They know from long experience that when a phone rings, there is sure to be someone on the other end of the line.