Status Anxiety

3 May 2008

Boris has played me like a violin twice in my life — even appealing to my conscience

But Boris was too shrewd to give us our marching orders. Instead, he sent us a postcard that read: ‘I always knew my life would be turned into a farce. I’m just glad it’s been entrusted to two such distinguished men of letters.’

This turned out to be a masterstroke on Boris’s part because it meant that he still had some leverage when we subsequently received an offer to take the play into the West End. I don’t mean that he could still threaten to sack us — we would have gladly sacrificed our jobs on The Spectator for the chance of a hit on Shaftesbury Avenue. I mean that he was now in a position to apply the moral thumbscrews, something he did not hesitate to do.

Shortly after we received the offer, I got a call from Boris. It was the first time he’d contacted me in person since the play had debuted six weeks earlier.

‘I’ve got a favour to ask, old bean,’ he said. ‘Could you pull the plug on this jamboree of yours? It’s causing me a spot of bother with She Who Must Be Obeyed.’

I talked it over with Lloyd and we decided to do as he asked. Partly because he had behaved so decently about the whole thing, we both felt guilty about having made him an object of ridicule in the first place. Here was an opportunity to make amends. So what if it meant foregoing the chance of a West End hit? We could always write another.

I have often wondered whether Lloyd and I made a mistake, particularly as it has proved much harder to write a follow-up than we imagined. On balance, though, I think it was the right decision. Boris made sure that if we had gone ahead we would have felt as if we had struck a Faustian bargain, betraying a friend for the sake of worldly success. Sometimes it is better to appeal to a person’s conscience — and it takes a good judge of character to know that such an appeal may strike home even if the person in question gives every appearance of being an incorrigible rogue.

Toby Young Is Associate Editor Of The Spectator.