Craig Brown - The Lost Diaries

ANTHONY BURGESS

I collar Reagan over a brandy and give him some advice. ‘A lot of people tend to forget,’ I say, ‘that America’s a very big country.’ He is very grateful.

WOODROW WYATT

My God, I despair of women sometimes. My whole life and my every breath has been informed with the imprint of my love and respect, admiration indeed, of women. But for Christ’s sake, they sometimes let me down. If there is one type of woman I hate it is the very thin type of woman. And if there is another type of woman who gets up my nose it’s the fatty. And what about those detestable in-betweenies, those spineless wretches who don’t have the guts to be one thing or the other? They frankly get on my wick. Not until woman can truly be herself – neither fat nor thin nor in-between – can our sisterhood hope to save this doomed planet.

GERMAINE GREER

Time to leave Windsor Castle. I worry over a point of etiquette. How much should one tip the Queen?

WOODROW WYATT

You are wrong, I am right.

I am right, you are wrong.

You are Ron, I am Reg.

But who is he?

EDWARD DE BONO *

Pair of Siamese twins knocks on my door, lovely couple of ladies, joined at the hip or wherever, they say we need the media attention, one of us has a tragic terminal illness, the other’s struggling with a tragic drugs problem, we want to strike while the iron’s hot, Max, so how can you help us?

As luck would have it, this very morning my client and good friend Simon Cowell of X-Factor fame had been on the old mobile asking if I knew a pair of Siamese twins he could perform his magic on, so, swings and roundabouts, to cut a long story short I put Simon and the tragic Siameses in touch at a mutually agreed venue of my choice and Bob’s your uncle, the twins are lined up for a major role on next season’s X-Factor, followed by an episode of their own on Celebrity Surgery, I can’t tell you any more at this moment in time but believe me it’ll be dynamite, and between ourselves one of them’s enjoying something of a fling with one of Stephen Lawrence’s young killers, so that can’t be bad, especially if a marriage results, Hello are interested, so’s UK Living TV, you name it, sweetheart, we’re talking mega-bucks. Yes, it’s nice to be able to put something back.

MAX CLIFFORD

We invaderate Iraq. Thanks to our courageous actions, today our world is a safer place than it will ever be.

GEORGE W. BUSH

I have often heard it said, and sometimes within earshot of the upper echelons of respectable society, that two and two make four. Yet this is quite plainly not the case. How could two and two possibly make four when it is so obvious to one and all that they make six? To put it simply, if I have two snuff boxes in my left hand, and two snuff boxes in my right hand, the total number of snuff boxes I have in both hands is six. Or to translate the same truth into the characteristically modish and inelegant language of numbers favoured by the more churlish mathematicians:

2+2 = 6

Point proven. Yet our present system of egalitarian government, by which is really meant totalitarian rule by the proletarian hordes (many if not most of whom have dandruff), has convinced generations of citizens (their shoes in grave need of a polish) that the equation 2 + 2 = 4 can somehow be made to hold water. Down this path lies madness. Next, they will be telling us that one and one makes two!!!

This grave mathematical deception, from which floweth the depraved and decadent condition of England today, must needs rightly be placed at the feet of Harold Wilson, who, far from being an aristocrat, was the product of inferior breeding, misusing the adverb hopefully and never learning to hold his pipe in a manner befitting a gentleman.

And, forsooth, how much has changed! When I first joined The Times as an apprentice leader-writer in 1950, all journalists on that newspaper were expected, quite rightly, to don top hat and tails at all times. Nor were we permitted to write our own articles, for it was considered an activity unfit for a gentleman. Instead, the necessary pieces were written for us by uniformed parlour maids, whom we would tip generously (sixpence ha’penny every Christmas) for their troubles. Never let it be said that there was a jot or tittle of snobbery about this. Like slavery, it was valued equally on both sides, allowing them to look up to us and, at one and the same time, us to look down on them.

Nowadays, to my certain knowledge, The Times is staffed almost exclusively by common people, many bussed in from the East End in boilersuits. Even Lord Rees-Mogg is obliged to adopt a flat cap, grubby overalls and a cockney accent before reporting for work. And a certain coarseness has crept into the prose. For instance, leading articles on the situation in Iraq invariably begin with the lamentable phraseology, Fuck this for a game of soldiers. It all goes to show that equality may be a good thing in theory, but, like mathematics, it never works in practice.

SIR PEREGRINE WORSTHORNE

Nelson Mandela is one bloke I hugely admire. I can’t imagine being locked up in a cell for literally days on end without a personal assistant or even face-cream. I wrote a song about Nelly’s time in prison – ‘It’s Those Little Things I Miss So Bad’ – and I was privileged to sing it at a concert in his honour:

Larked up in jay-ul

Cos my skin’s not pay-ul

Yit’s those lit-tul thungs I myiss swooo bad –

Thwose lit-tul things

That Santa brings

Like dia-mond riiiings

An’ pure gold wiiiings

An’ thwose pearl yearrings I once had

When I finished singing this soulful tribute, I glanced over at the great man. The guy was in tears.

Afterwards, I attended a ceremony at which Nelson Mandela was going to give a bit back to society by presenting yours truly with an honorary degree. It was a marvellous moment as I received my degree from Little Miss Mandela, truly a legend in her own lifetime.

SIR ELTON JOHN

Now I hear that the brave firefighters, lovely, decent lads, are going on strike to try and stop this whole ghastly business of the government’s secret time-changes.

I pop into the local home furnishings store, march up to the bedding counter and ask for some Polos. They say they sell pillows, not Polos, and they show me one. ‘Well, I’ll never be able to fit something that size in my ear!’ I exclaim. What a bunch of proper Charlies!

Eventually, I locate some Polo mints at the sweet shop next door. ‘Do they come with batteries?’ I ask, but it turns out these are extra, like so many things these days. So blow me down if they haven’t even privatised Polo mints! I have no wish to bring personalities into it, that’s not my style, never has been, never will be, but I place the blame fairly and squarely on that smarmy, self-satisfied, grinning lickspittle Tony Blair.

TONY BENN

Buy new house. Find it’s in France. Fuckin drag. Have to sell it.

KEITH RICHARDS

TO BERNARD BERENSON

My dear BB,

I must apologise, inter alia, for my tiresome silence. I have now emerged from les horreurs de la term, a pleasing respite, and one that allows me time to devote a generous portion of my thankfully not inconsiderable intellect to the service of this, our most deliciously civilised correspondence.