It was the call that never came. For three hours last week, I sat with my hand hovering over the phone. I had been told that Bill Kenwright would be getting in touch between 3 p.m. and 6 p.m. Yes, the Bill Kenwright, theatreland big shot and chairman of Everton FC. This was exciting. Was I about to be hired for a cameo role in his West End production of Cabaret? Better still, perhaps, he fancied my prospects as a burly striker, playing at Goodison alongside Andy Johnson? Sadly not. The reason I had been put on red alert was that Kenwright and his inamorata, Jenny Seagrove, were panellists on the celebrity edition of Who Wants To Be a Millionaire — and Bill was keen that I should be his ‘phone-a-friend’. In the celebrity version, famous people are invited to display how little they know and then give all prize money to charity. The rules allow victims to dial a chum for help if a question is unreasonably testing. You know, something like: who is the new president of France? a) Matthew Parris, b) Paris Hilton, c) Frenchie Nicholson, d) Nicholas Nickleby. That Bill asked me to perform this role suggests that either he’s desperately short of mates, or that most of his have IQs smaller than their boot sizes. I wonder why he never called me.
By the time you read this, I shall be in the orbit of Catherine Zeta-Jones and Michael Douglas. Don’t sneer — it’s true. Well, true-ish. It’s my good fortune to be a member of Langland Bay Golf Club, located high on the Mumbles cliff tops, part of the Gower Peninsula. Every year, in August, I take a short holiday there to soak up the spectacular scenery and rediscover the penalty for whacking my balls seaward. Just across the bay from the golf club, next to the cricket pitch, is the home of local-girl-made-good Zeta-Jones. When she and her superstar hubby tire of life in the spotlight, they retreat to this lovely part of South Wales for 18 holes at Langland, a plate of lavabread and a few pints of Brains. It doesn’t quite have the pizzazz of Beverly Hills, but the media is less intrusive and the neighbours are more stylish than the Beckhams. With her father and brother both members of the club, golf-loving Catherine has no trouble in keeping up with the Joneses.
It’s at this time of year that guilt starts to kick in. The cause is all those magazine features about ‘must-read’ books for the beach, plus the latest shortlist of ‘must-read’ novels from the Man Booker Prize. My shelves are already overflowing with ‘must-read’ literature from previous years’ recommendations. The trouble is, while smart friends seem able to polish off half a dozen books a month, I struggle to get beyond the business press, The Spectator and the Racing Post. As I write this, I’m staring with horror at neat rows of books, bought with good intentions: biographies, histories and fiction, all stacked up in unthumbed condition. Some still have a price sticker on them. To make matters worse, Ian McEwan has again made the Booker shortlist — with On Chesil Beach. This is particularly depressing, because though I did finish Amsterdam, the novella for which he won the Booker Prize in 1998, I have yet even to open The Cement Garden, Saturday or Atonement. Martin Amis, Antony Beevor, William Boyd, Dan Brown, Sebastian Faulks, Niall Ferguson, Robert Harris, Yann Martel and William Trevor are just a few of the other authors whose works, expensively purchased, are piling up in pristine condition, demanding my attention. As for Alastair Campbell, forget it — life’s too short. Will editors and sponsors, please, halt these wretched ‘must-read’ selections until I have cleared the backlog? The guilt is excruciating.If not guilt, then it’s hypochondria. We are told that half of all cancers are caused by ‘lifestyle’ — especially, it seems, mine. Red meat triggers bowel cancer, strong drink prompts kidney cancer, smoking cigars leads to mouth cancer, and the sun beams down melanoma. As for unsafe sex, let’s not go there, other than to assume that if it’s enjoyable, it’s bound to be carcinogenic. As Basil Fawlty nearly said, ‘that particular avenue of pleasure has been closed off’. What used to pass as a treat — steak and chips on a sun-kissed terrace, a bottle of Rioja and a Cohiba Robusto — now seems more dangerous than wrestling alligators. But is it? As a correspondent to the Daily Telegraph’s letters page pointed out: cancer is overwhelmingly a disease of old age. It’s because we are all living much longer that the incidence of cancer is increasing. I’ll drink to that.
The best decision I made this year was to make my summer an airport-free period. Fed up with being treated like a beast of burden, I vowed not to fly (other than for work). As a result, I have re-engaged with the joys of domestic holidays: the culinary delights of coastal Norfolk, the magnificence of Ely cathedral, the beauty of the Yorkshire moors, the sheer Englishness of an evening’s racing at Royal Windsor. No check-ins, no security queues, no rows over identity cards, no passport control, no soulless terminals, no delays, no lost baggage and no protestors. The unusually wet weather has not dampened my delight at avoiding airport aggravation. My only regret is that, for the first time in a decade, I have not had a golf-and-whisky trip to the far north of Scotland. Next year, I’ll catch the sleeper train.
Jeff Randall is the Daily Telegraph’s editor-at-large.