The great American journalist and satirist P J O’Rourke has died. He contributed a number of articles to The Spectator over the years. This diary from December 2010 was the last piece he wrote for our London edition. RIP.
— New Hampshire
Just back from London, 40 years to the week since my first visit. It was a wonderful city then, in a cold- rooms, dark-streets, early-pub-closing, single-TV-channel way. And the food… I ordered a steak, it arrived boiled. But London was more polite and intelligent than America. The language was full of manners. If one didn’t like a person, one could say, ‘One quite likes him.’ One could use the politely impersonal ‘one’. No dialogue began with the rude Americanism ‘What do you do?’ Real conversation was on offer, about shoes and ships and sealing wax and cabbages and kings and who was the more appalling paedophile, the Reverend Dodgson or J.M. Barrie. Besides, since six shillings an hour was considered a living wage, my London friends were too intelligent to get a job. Not that being American made me feel stupid — quite. There was a white Christmas in 1970. We had an immense snowball fight. Never mind fast bowling, your cricketer stands no chance against a baseball pitch.
Intelligence continues to shine here. One was in town to flog one’s book until the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Nonfiction lodged a complaint. Thus radio and TV interviews. These entail pre-interviews. A young woman producer gets the author to say everything he has to say, leaving him with nothing to say in the interview proper but ‘um’ and ‘up to a point’. In America producers are chosen for good looks, chipper attitude and good looks.

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