Londoner's Diary: It’s all a bit of a scrimmage at the Garrick

Getty Images / Hulton Archive / Stringer
12 December 2016

The Garrick’s rugby-tackle mystery continues. On Friday, The Londoner noted a paragraph in the gentlemen’s club newsletter mentioning footage on its CCTV system showing a “lady guest who was rather the worse for wear ended up performing a sort of rugby tackle on a distinguished club member, bringing him to the ground”.

Whodunit? One member has contacted us to suggest that the only woman spirited enough to do this would be Ruth Dudley Edwards, controversial historian, crime writer and game girl, whom The Londoner wouldn’t want to meet in a scrum. But she has ruled herself out.

“I very occasionally attend the Garrick for a Detection Club dinner,” confesses Dudley Edwards. The Detection Club was founded in 1930 with members including Agatha Christie and Dorothy L Sayers. “But though we are a friendly group and often embrace each other affectionately, rugby tackling is not one of our pursuits. Being 72, it certainly isn’t one of mine.”

Over to the Garrick, which this morning was ruffled by investigations. Could it elaborate on the story in its newsletter? “I can’t comment,” said the club secretary’s office. And were any charges pressed? “I can’t comment.”

By coincidence, Dudley Edwards is the author of Clubbed to Death, in which the club secretary of a gentlemen’s club in St James’s mysteriously falls to his death from a gallery.

If anyone has any information, please get in touch. This morning, Dudley Edwards predicted the Garrick will one day be mixed — “when the single-sex, boarding-school generation dies off”. There were many strident members who voted to keep women out in 2015. Another scrum is in the works.

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Happy news that Private Eye journalist Adam Macqueen is writing a history of politicians’ lies and dishonesty called The Lies of the Land, published by Atlantic Books next year. Macqueen had hoped to bookend the tome with the Brexit campaign but then came Donald Trump. “The lies are coming so thick and fast that I can’t keep up,” he told The Londoner. “It would be nice if everyone could just stop lying for a bit until the book comes out.” We can hope.

Ed Miliband suffers from reader’s block

The Londoner saw Ed Miliband on the Tube last Wednesday trying to read Success and Luck: Good Fortune and the Myth of Meritocracy by Robert H Frank. Turns out Ed was taking part in Frank’s LSE lecture that night.

“I want to draw out... lessons on progressive politics,” Ed told the audience — The Londoner listened to the podcast. “It’s from page 12, unfortunately, but doesn’t quite prove I’ve read it,” Ed added.

He isn’t known for his dedication to reading. In 2014 Ed tried to read Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century but told several reporters over a series of months: “I’m [still] in the early stages.” Fair enough, he was leading Labour to a glorious defeat, but what’s his excuse now?

Life is so sweet for the queen of Soho

The Look of Love on Friday night as Soho heiress India Rose James took over the Makers House in Manette Street for her 25th birthday party. James shared a passionate kiss with her beau Hugh Harris, pictured together right, guitarist with The Kooks, who is the father of her baby, born earlier this year. Also dancing the night away were designer Betty Bachz with her friends Liam Toon and Ranald Macdonald, pictured above. James is the granddaughter of Paul Raymond, known as the King of Soho for his nightclub empire. He would have been proud of the revelry.

Is the Lolita effect lost on Angel?

Flicking through the London Review of Books, The Londoner alighted upon a charming but bizarre poem dedicated to Mitzi Angel, head publisher of fiction and non-fiction at Faber & Faber.

The poem In Late December is written by award-winning American poet Frederick Seidel, and addresses a young woman described as having a “crazy smile pickled in brine”.

Angel, who had been vice-president at Farrar, Straus & Giroux in New York, was enticed back across the pond last year by Faber, which publishes Seidel.

“The man using the pay phone on Wall Street/ His back to you, is using it as a urinal/ And urinating — only logical!/ Our degradation is complete/” he writes.

The 80-year-old poet goes on to describe the young woman reading a copy of Lolita while “Cross-legged on the sidewalk in a T-shirt that says TOMORROW/ Holds a sign telling her sad story/ She’s reading a paperback of Lolita, stealthily, behind the sign.”

Seidel, who once inserted a minor correction to Ezra Pound’s translations of Confucius without a full grasp of Chinese, is clearly bold. “She could be you/ Stranger things have turned out to be true/ He could be me —/ Don’t rule out the possibility”.

Angel sadly hasn’t picked up the phone today to return the tribute.

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Lord Pannick QC has the wig, but you can have the T-shirt. The barrister — star of the Supreme Court Article 50 ruling — has such a fan club that T-shirts are being made by UCL law professor Richard Moorhead. They feature Pannick’s face and the slogan “You say De Keyser, I say De Geezer”, in tribute to a court pronunciation debate. Let no one say we don’t take Brexit seriously.

Penelope lifts the curse

A glowing double-page spread on Penelope Fillon in glossy French royalist weekly Point De Vue, featuring a magnificent photo of Penny in fur and velvet at Dior’s 60th anniversary bash in Versailles. “A true lady!” coos the headline, as the piece notes she is likely to become the first British “première dame” of France since Mary Stuart, thus lifting an apparent curse.

Stuart married Francis, heir to the French throne, in 1558. Within two years, Francis had become king and then died. Mary’s next husband also died within two years of marrying her. But Fillon is different. “[Penelope] has nothing in common with her tempestuous predecessor,” assures the mag, praising her “British phlegm” and noting she hopes to “bring a touch of English humour to the role”. Très bon!

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Dog of the day: a male Akita, intended as a gift for Vladimir Putin from Japanese PM Shinzo Abe, a companion for his female Akita, Yume. Putin turned it down. Ruff.

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