You prob’ly seen de well-known David Frost on De Amin Programme de other night, just show you de strides Uganda makin’ under de new management, never got no David Frost comin’ out here for De Milton Obote Show.

Yes, yes, I know that ‘de’ stuff is construed as racist; and it’s probably no de-fence to mention that the Irish have had similar flack (Englishman to Irishman, in Co. Wicklow: ‘Can you tell me where Demesne Road is?’ Irishman: ‘Dis is de main road.’)

I was fond of Alan; I once said to him, ‘You’re the only bully I ever liked’. He gave me a column in Punch. I attended the riotous Punch lunches, at the table carved with the initials of Thackeray, Tenniel and Prince Charles. (Alan loved a royal). I have to say that in his last years, Alan’s Times column became tiresomely formulaic: always the dragging, teasing intro. He had ‘gorn orf’. But in this book Giles and Victoria have garnered the very best of him. What fecund invention! What verbal mastery! Who could better his dismissal of the David Niven film, A Matter of Life and Death, in five deadly syllables, ‘Two hours of fey tosh’?

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