Who first declared that nothing counts a lot and very little counts at all? The cynic and sesquipedalian Alastair Forbes claimed it, but he spoke with a forked tongue. Iris Murdoch hinted that it was hers, but she, too, was known for bending it. It doesn’t really matter because the saying is utter crap. A hell of a lot counts, starting with the fine line between mad love and pure madness. No, don’t be alarmed, I will not go into yet another reverie about Jessica-Jenny, as my friend John Sutin has finally come to the rescue by pledging he will do something about it.
Incidentally, this last weekend was like the lost weekend of movie fame, with yet another Mick Flick extravaganza that ended late at night, followed by a Sutin oyster and caviar lunch on the terrace of the Palace during which I thought I saw a Nero-like figure strumming a harp. Excessive drinking, they say, can produce delusions and be harmful to one’s sex drive, but in my case I think it has the contrary effect. Or it could all be in my head. What is certain is that I sympathise with Terence Rattigan’s heroine in The Deep Blue Sea. It’s all about the ravages of erotic love in repressed 1950s Britain.
When the 1955 film version came out starring Vivien Leigh and directed by Anatole Litvak, I couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about. I was 19 and was in the midst of adulterous relationships with two married women, and thought it normal that older women would go bananas over younger men. Fifty-five years later, I have switched sides and now root for the oldies. Later on in Paris I met Litvak, a sensitive director whose wife Sophie liked staying up late at Jimmy’s with young men. I wanted to know about Rattigan and the intense, repressed characters he invented. ‘Ses caractères sont lui,’ said Anatole. This was around the time Rattigan had been shoved aside by the great unwashed playwrights of the early Sixties, something that really infuriated me, especially as I had become a theatre addict just after school owing to my relationship with an actress.
What amazed and continues to amaze to this day is the cuckolded hubby. True that British women back in the Fifties did not leave their husbands, but how does a man stay married to a woman who has gone ape over someone else? I know, I know, it’s a double standard, but that’s why double standards were invented. For types like me. Passion, according to the director of the latest film version of the play, Terence Davies, is considered vulgar by the Brits, but what kind of Brits is he talking about? Modern Brits are fat, drunk, aggressive, loud, sloppy and obviously very, very vulgar. Passion was seen as vulgar by the Brits Rattigan wrote about, but that was half a century ago. Hester meets young Freddie, discovers real sex, and it’s bye-bye to her faithful but sexless hubby. So what else is new?
London has become the sinkhole where dodgy foreign billionaires sue each other. I saw the ghastly Boris Berezovsky speak utter rubbish to the divine Emily Maitlis — he’s lived in England for close to 15 years and he still can’t string two proper sentences together. His enemy Abramovich, another son-of-a-bitch, is just as bad. To see Chelsea lose is now one of my great pleasures, although it’s sick-bag time when the cameras close in on him.
Football has now replaced cock-fighting or female mud-wrestling as disgusting spectacle. But watching a young, white, sporting Bilbao team wipe the floor with Manchester United was a rare pleasure. I find African footballers too aggressive and too ready to take offence for my taste. But as they say, if the head is rotten, there’s not much one can do for the body. Sepp Blatter, head of Fifa, is football’s equivalent to the Tchenguiz brothers, ugly, decadent, money-grubbing and rootless.
He was re-elected unopposed after a rival withdrew in dubious circumstances. Now Fifa will investigate the match referee and players of Bahrain in an ‘unusual’ 10–0 win over Indonesia. The Lebanese ref sent off the Indonesian goalie in the second minute and awarded four penalties to Bahrain. Bahrain is as rotten as the rest of the Gulf states, now demanding a Syrian change of government along with that wonderfully democratic paradise that is Saudi Arabia.
What a bunch! Tchenguiz, Blatter, the Gulf crooks, even European governments who use high-sounding language while selling arms to the bad guys. Rattigan was lucky to go when he did. The erotic triangles he wrote about are no longer. This is threesome time. A crestfallen husband whose wife has run off with a younger man now buys some happy dust and settles down with a tart. Everything is for sale, starting with female bodies. Just look at the ghastly names I’ve listed above — I can’t bear to repeat them — check out their women, and there you have the name tart spelled out in living colour. And while you’re doing that I am dreaming of Jenny riding her bike to work down in the East End and I wake up happy and raring to go skiing.
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