Diary – 11 April 2013

Whenever feminists have complained in my presence about neglect of female high-achievers, other than rock singers and courtesans, I always like to mention brilliant Margaret Thatcher. It always makes them furious. They can’t bear to think of her as one of the most successful women of the 20th century. I had afternoon tea with her and Denis once in their chintzy flat at No. 10, where she expressed a great interest in Rupert Murdoch, whom she rather admired. My father-in-law, Stephen Spender, was also a Maggie fan and once, after he had delivered a speech about Henry Moore at Westminster Abbey, she repeated the whole speech back to him at the party afterwards word for word. Tragically her prodigious memory failed her in the end.

Last night I went to see an engaging cabaret performance by Donna McKechnie at the Crazy Coqs, adjacent to the Brasserie Zédel, deep underground off Piccadilly Circus. To think that I have done three stage shows at the Piccadilly Theatre and never knew that these spectacular subterranean premises existed. Zédel, once the ballroom of the Regent Palace Hotel, fell into desuetude and was rescued by Christopher Corbin and Jeremy King, who have given London its best restaurants. I overheard a fellow diner ostentatiously demand ‘tap water’, which is the new thing apparently, although London water is only slightly healthier than a splash in the mouth from the Ganges — but isn’t that what we always drank before they invented overpriced and slightly dirtier water in bottles?

A couple of the press notices for the screamingly funny Book of Mormon have primly suggested that it is a childish, or at best an undergraduate effort. These are the same sort of people who like to say that pornography is boring, Los Angeles is ‘fake’ and Woody Allen isn’t the least bit funny (but they liked his early work).