A side effect of last week’s failed putsch is Peter Mandelson resuming his position at the front end of Gordon Brown’s election pantomime horse — pushing Harriet Harman into the rear. This is not good news for the Tories, as Harman would undoubtedly have alienated even more floating voters. I sat between her and Boris Johnson at a lunch recently, and what hard work it was. The Mayor was the guest speaker, but (naturally) arrived late and completely unprepared. He spent 20 minutes frantically scribbling on a piece of paper, talking to no one. I had no choice but to speak to the person on my left, the aforementioned Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, Lord Privy Seal, Leader of the House and Minister for Women & Equality.
While it’s never easy conversing with someone with whom you ideologically disagree, I like to think I can make a fair fist of talking to most people. But obviously not our Harriet. A fairly charmless creature at the best of times (although still, rather bewilderingly, quite cute) she obviously had no interest in talking to me, or to the Sunday Times’s Martin Ivens, on her left. This made it rather difficult for either of us to engage with her. I couldn’t think of a single piece of small talk, I actually asked her all the things I really wanted to know...like, how did she feel about Labour being dumped by the Sun? Is it fair to say that Labour has had its worst year since 1993? And so on. It took her exactly seven minutes to haul herself up and go and sit somewhere else.
It says a lot about Team Brown’s spin operation that the gossip about a general election in March was actually put about by Conservative high command. How inept can Brown’s inner office be when it allows almost whimsical Tory spin to get such successful traction in the newspapers? Gordon’s modus operandi has always been to take things down to the wire. It makes one wonder if the press will believe the latest piece of Westminster gossip: that, in preparation for the three televised election debates, the Prime Minister is taking acting lessons from none other than The Thick of It’s Peter Capaldi.
You may not be familiar with the word iSlate, but I suspect you soon will be. No one who has seen this game-changing piece of technology demonstrated on the internet (on Wired, Sports Illustrated etc) will be in any doubt as to its importance. There are still many in the newspaper industry who, touchingly, think that normal service will resume after the recession. In fact, the industry is about to witness its greatest technological development for 20 years. The newspaper world’s reluctance to embrace change reminds me of the famous Henry Ford quote: ‘If I’d have asked the public what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.’ After my lunch last week with Jeremy Hunt, the Tory’s shadow media minister, I now know more about how the Tories think all this will impact the newspaper industry. But, for the time being, I’m keeping it all to myself. As Damien Hirst once wrote on a postcard to Gordon Burn, ‘For Gordon: Hear all, see all, say nowt.’
As I have taken great delight in telling anyone who will listen (although not Harriet Harman, obviously), one of the highlights of my summer was my daughters getting painting and drawing lessons from professional friends (by which I mean friends who are professional artists, rather than professional friends). Edie, 11, was given lessons in Hay-on-Wye by Janet Lance Hughes, the artist painting my portrait for a series she’s doing on St Martins and Central alumni (Terence Conran, James Dyson, Barbara Hulanicki, etc). And when we were staying at Tracey Emin’s house near St Tropez, she gave Edie and Georgia — aged nine — a lesson in monoprinting, which had them enthralled for a whole morning. A week earlier we had visited Salvador Dalí’s house in Port Lligat, although Trace’s house obviously went down much better with the kids. Why? ‘Her obsession with cats, obviously,’ said Edie. ‘And mice,’ said Georgia. ‘You should never forget the mice.’
I love Tracey, as she’s a constantly evolving whirlwind of enthusiasm — and loyal to boot. How different to Jake and Dinos Chapman, whom it’s easy to regard as the Hale and Pace of the British art world. I have met Dinos a few times socially recently — and he’s pretty good company, although my view of them is forever tainted by my inclusion in one of their works which they premiered at the Institute of Contemporary Arts 15 years ago. They had obviously objected to something I’d written about them (which still baffles me, as I had actually been rather appreciative), because scrawled in spidery writing on some sort of triptych along the corridor in the gallery were the following words: ‘Dylan Jones is a domesticated tw*t.’ And I don’t mean twit. It’s just as well that, under Dave’s Conservatives, this word will no longer be considered offensive.