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Saturday 22 November 2008

Diary

Anne McElvoy reflects on Peter Hain's predicament and the joys of a long bath.

Back in London and bumping into an old neighbour who has moved to a grander place, I ask how it compares with her old house. ‘Heating doesn’t work,’ she says. ‘It’s just one of those houses where it never does.’ As her husband is a successful investment banker and they are famously good at interiors, this is puzzling. I grope for a polite way of saying, ‘Oh but you’re so well off you could surely have the whole system turned hydrotastic?’ She catches my drift straight away. ‘Still wouldn’t work,’ she says. There is something very British about this.

My other winter vice is watching reruns of the BBC’s Grumpy Old Women. It taps into that moment before you are officially middle-aged but suddenly start thinking, ‘That plastic twine is so horrible, Must save bits of proper string.’ Early grumpy list for 2008: people who use the phrase: ‘Your old friend X’ when they are really trying to score a cheap point. People who say ‘Not a problem’ when asked to do something. Recordings saying, ‘Your call is important to us’ (just not so much that we would get the staff to answer it). People who tell you, ‘You should get out more.’ (Because?) And anyone who says ‘You’re a star!’, an apparent compliment but with the undertone of addressing a slightly simple housemaid. Oh I could go on. And on. And on.

The Standard will be running the first of its mayoral debates next week in which Boris Johnson faces his public. As chair I am scrupulously neutral for the night: the Switzerland of London politics. But I do wonder whether our candidates aren’t too well-behaved. My own favourite mayor is the Berlin incumbent the sunbed-tanned Klaus Wowereit, known as ‘Wowi’ and not for nothing. Wowi set his mark on the city hall by hosting a sexual fetishism conference. He has a pierced nipple (left, since you ask) and enjoys a night out with his gay partner dancing in the later of Berlin’s late clubs. Faced with dwindling budgets, he declared that the German capital’s motto should be: ‘Poor but sexy’. One thing I do miss from our lot is any obvious sense of fun about the job. For all its problems and rows, London is where you can be grown up and still enjoy yourself, so let the candidates give us their manifesto for good times, as well as the sober stuff.

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