Even now, I’m not sure I can believe it has actually happened. The Spectator Book of Wit, Humour and Mischief was conceived, possibly over lunch, as a belated follow-up to Christopher Howse’s 1990 volume The Wit Of The Spectator, and as the first of a putative series of themed books using the vast and rarely tapped resource of the Spectator archive. My friend and publisher Richard Beswick and I pitched the idea to the magazine’s seniors, and they embraced it with enthusiasm. They gave me the run of the website and the digitised archive, but being the sort of person who writes for The Spectator, I favoured a more old-fashioned approach. I asked if I might come into the office once a week and leaf through binders of old magazines, prospecting for gold. I thought it might take three months of Fridays. It took nearly a year.
The magazine has new and elegant offices in Old Queen Street in St James’s, a short stagger from the Houses of Parliament. The building has five storeys and an ancient lift, which I have been in once. (I’m not sure anyone goes in it twice.) On the top floor is the office of Andrew Neil, former editor of the Sunday Times and now chairman of the Press Holdings group, which owns The Spectator. It’s a glorious space, but a little out of the swim of things, so he prefers to use the mahogany-panelled conference room in the basement. This left the office free for me to use on Fridays, and the occasional Thursday, throughout 2015. I sat at his meeting table, reading old articles, and taking care not to spill crumbs from my sandwiches on his floor. A more unscrupulous individual, or a better journalist, would have rifled through his desk drawers or the pockets of the spare suit (pinstripe) hanging in the corner. But I am far too well brought up to do any of that. I just read and read and read, did some photocopying, and read some more.
The book starts in 1990 because that’s where The Wit Of The Spectator ended. Though relatively brief, Christopher’s book was rich in Auberon Waughs and Jeffrey Bernards, and included Kingsley Amis’s justifiably famous ‘Sod The Public’ essays from 1985 and 1988. All three writers are represented here as well, although not as comprehensively. Waugh ended his long association with the magazine in 1995, and as Bernard’s health started to fail (he died in 1997), he was compelled to dictate his columns, and their quality became more variable. But as one generation departs, possibly in a drunken haze, the next one steps forward. Indeed, in my first edit, certain writers cropped up so often I had to pare back their contributions with a scythe. Mary Killen’s etiquette column, ‘Dear Mary’, was like Japanese knotweed, while Jeremy Clarke’s ‘Low Life’ pieces proliferated like leylandii. Later on came Deborah Ross’s wonderful stream-of-consciousness restaurant reviews and the wild, frothing (but elegantly sculpted) rage of Rod Liddle. But there are also countless diary entries, many letters, a handful of book reviews and even one or two pieces by me. The book is strictly chronological, partly to distinguish different eras of the magazine from each other, but also because I liked the idea that the book should be a lucky dip, that you would never know what was coming next. This isn’t a work of reference, it’s an entertainment. For similar reasons, I have kept explanatory footnotes to a minimum. I have also have kept the type of pieces that need explanatory footnotes to a minimum. Detailed knowledge of the Maastricht Treaty is not required in these pages, although it might help to remember that Robert Maxwell died by falling off a yacht.
To attempt to sum up a 460-page book in a few short pieces might seem foolhardy, but let’s have a go anyway.
Here’s a paragraph from John Mortimer’s Diary of 15 June 1991:
“‘Life is full of marvellous stories. The following account was given to me, during a local dinner party, of how a neighbour came to break her arm. Her husband came home drunk one night and fell asleep at the foot of the stairs. The two sons came home later, found their father sleeping, went to the refrigerator from which they extracted a turkey's giblets, unzipped their father's fly and inserted these pieces of offal. The unfortunate mother awoke and came out onto the landing to see the cat apparently eating her husband's private parts. She was so appalled that she fell down the stairs. Yes, life is full of marvellous stories, but if you put them in a book no one would believe them.’
This is Joan Collins writing on 12 September 1998:
“‘When I heard of the recent death of Akira Kurosawa, I was reminded of one of Billy Wilder's stories about him. In 1985 Billy, Kurosawa and a terminally ill John Huston had been asked to present the Academy Award for best picture, as a trio. Huston was to read out the nominees, Kurosawa to open the envelope and pass the card with the winner's name to Billy, who was to announce it and present the Oscar. All this had to be done at lightning speed to enable Huston to get off the stage and back to his oxygen mask. On the big night all went according to plan, until it was Kurosawa's turn to open the envelope. Having managed to open it, he couldn't seem to find anything inside, and was peering and fumbling for what seemed like an eternity. Billy, whose wit is still the greatest on the planet, said he had to use every ounce of self-restraint not to say in front of an audience of some 800 million, “Pearl Harbor you could find.”’
And here’s Barry Humphries from 18 December 1999:
“‘I'm living in a wonderful building overlooking the East River and Roosevelt Island, on which stand the romantic ruins of a lunatic asylum. On the horizon are LaGuardia and Kennedy airports, and I can see the Qantas jumbos landing after their long haul from the Land of the Hot Christmas. Dear, distant homeland, probably the only country in the world outside Iran whose intelligentsia live abroad. To the right of my vista is the imposing ziggurat of River House, where Lilian Gish and Ethel Merman once lived, and where now resides Henry Kissinger. Through my powerful Zeiss binoculars, from which no illuminated apartment window withholds its rosy secrets, I can watch the former secretary of state flossing, and much else. My building is among the few on the East Side which accepts tenants with dogs, so that it resembles a high-rise kennel, a Crufts in the sky. The lifts are crowded with Pomeranians, Labradors, chihuahuas, standard poodles, Yorkshire terriers, Afghan hounds, dachsunds, pugs and Rottweilers, all cleaner and better groomed than their shifty and anoraked owners. The other day a friend's cocker spaniel died, and he experienced extraordinary difficulty in arranging for its dignified committal. His vet was on holiday, the building supervisors unhelpful, so because of the prevailing heatwave he decided to place the body in a suitcase and take it to the park himself for surreptitious burial. However, while hailing a cab on the corner of East 54th Street and First Avenue, a black man leapt from the shadows, seized the suitcase, and made off with it into the night, deftly solving his problem.’
Copies of The Spectator Book of Wit, Humour and Mischief can be bought here.