A family affair

Around 15 years or so ago I was fast asleep late in the morning when I got an ear-splitting telephone call from Greece. It was Vicki Woods, a Telegraph writer, and she sounded anxious. If memory serves, and it does because she subsequently wrote a piece about it which made it into The Week, the conversation went as follows: ‘Oh, hello, my name’s Vicki Woods, we’ve met a couple of times… ah, at The Spectator.’ Me: ‘Have we made love?’ Vicki: ‘Er — no! Ha-ha — absolutely not! But I’m ringing because…’ Me: ‘Why not?’ Vicki: ‘Well, I’m not your type, ha-ha, too old for you for one thing; anyway, the reason I’m ringing is…’ Me: ‘How old are you?’ Vicki: ‘Er, forty-seven, but anyway, I’m ringing because…’ — Me: ‘Forty-seven. My God! Forty-seven! Get off the phone at once.’ So she did.

Yes, I know, it sounds terrible but at the time I thought it rather funny. Not so funny, as it turned out, for Vicki Woods and her poor husband. Apparently they were on the Greek island of Naxos, and had had a car accident, her hubby was bleeding and there was no one around who spoke English. So she did the next best thing and called me. The trouble was she had acted English. By this I mean old English. Instead of immediately stating that this was an emergency and my help was needed, she began like an Evelyn Waugh character, hello, oh, hello, hello, and so on. I thought she was some hackette ringing to find out gossip, and I reverted to type, the type hacks think I am — a conceited, arrogant womaniser who is always rude to women and the needy — and I played my part to the hilt. When I read in her column what the call was all about I felt like emigrating to Albania, but by then her hubby had recovered thanks to the Greek nurses that Lord Mancroft did not meet during his recent stay in hospital.