Ben Schott

Saturday

4 Apr 2020
Ben Schott

Unreal, uncertain and mostly silent: life in the centre of New York’s coronavirus storm

‘How are you bearing up?’ ‘Is everyone terrified?’ ‘What’s the mood?’ These are the questions concerned family and friends are kindly asking about New York City which, according to my armchair epidemiology, is about ten days behind Italy and ten days ahead of Britain. It would be reckless to describe things as calm, not with a New Yorker dying every seven (?!) minutes, and refrigerated trucks parked ominously outside hospitals. But I sense no mass panic. Life, of a sort, still goes on. People run, dogs are walked, post is delivered, Amazon arrives, and the shelves are stocked with food. The absence of cars without the presence of snow is a novelty, as are the nods of camaraderie. Those who venture out mainly respect the cordon sanitaire — except for joggers; always the joggers — and the pavements are spotted with blue surgical gloves.

Unreal, uncertain and mostly silent: life in the centre of New York’s coronavirus storm

Thursday

9 Jan 2020
Ben Schott

Ben Schott: I’m Tony Blair’s brother (according to Google)

The globe (Golden and otherwise) has rightly fallen h-o-h for Olivia Colman who, before The Crown, The Favourite and Peep Show, had an early role as Bev in the ‘Bev-Kev’ ads for AA insurance. But I was there at the very beginning, when she starred opposite her husband-to-be in a 1995 Cambridge production of Alan Ayckbourn’s Table Manners, directed by the incomparable Kate Pakenham. I was in charge of the sound and lights, which weren’t very elaborate, given the 80-seat Corpus Playroom could be lit with a 100-watt bulb. But I did have one minor creative triumph. Act one, scene one opens in an empty dining-room in late afternoon, and I persuaded Kate that as the lights faded up, so should Radio 4 — allowing Olivia to switch off the radio as she entered.

Ben Schott: I’m Tony Blair’s brother (according to Google)

Thursday

21 Mar 2019
Ben Schott

Speaker-speak

Much has recently been written about the incumbent Commons Speaker, from (vigorously denied) allegations of bullying to (less vigorously denied) suggestions of Brexit-foxing chicanery. And to call John Bercow a ‘Marmite politician’ is to state the obvious. A little less obvious is his idiosyncratic style of address — the bizarre collision of a Dickensian clerk with aspirations to eloquence, a stern headmaster out of P. G. Wodehouse, and a contestant on Just a Minute desperate not to hesitate, deviate or repeat. Some of the Speaker’s vocal fireworks are plain to hear. His musical calls of ‘Jer-emy Cor-byn’ have been compiled into an ascending harmonic scale, and his strangled cries of ‘Oaaaaaarderrrrrrrrr’ have achieved social-media virality.

Speaker-speak

Thursday

3 Jan 2019
Ben Schott

Diary - 3 January 2019

You’ll be relieved to learn my penguin is back. ‘How long was it gone?’ you ask. About six months. ‘And sorry, it’s a real penguin?’ Actually, no. Here’s the story: back in 2005, I was staying at the 60 Thompson Street Hotel in Manhattan. On my first afternoon in town I went for a stroll along Bleecker Street and popped into a shop called Leo Design where I spotted and purchased a charming bronze penguin — three inches high, and ounces heavy. Back in my room I placed Mr Penguin among my coins and keys, and thought little of him. The next afternoon, after housekeeping had visited, I spotted Mr Penguin on top of the television. Odd, I thought, moving him to the window-sill. Over the next week, housekeeping and I engaged in an anonymous battle of whimsy, moving Mr Penguin around the room twice a day.

Diary - 3 January 2019

Thursday

13 Dec 2018
Ben Schott

Jeeves and the Midnight Mess

‘Christmas Eve in Mayfair, Jeeves! There’s nothing in heaven to top it. Even with the terror of eleventh-hour shopping for the gang Travers.’ ‘Indeed, sir.’ ‘But we can’t pitch up at Brinkley Court tomorrow bereft of g., f., and the other one.’ ‘Myrrh, sir? No, sir.’ ‘I fear I’m both a little later and much tighter than expected. I bumped into Bingo, you see, and had a snifter at the Feverish Cheese. Then we met Tuppy for a quick ’un at the Startled Shrimp, and finally we were accosted by Barmy who marched us for a gargle or two at the Mottled Oyster.’ ‘Very good, sir.’ ‘But I did not forget the Christmas presents! I have polka-dotted socks for Uncle Tom, shaving caboodle for Cousin Bonzo, something hideously perfumed for Cousin Angela, something hideously floral for Aunt Dahlia… and a little surprise for you.

Jeeves and the Midnight Mess

Sunday

24 Dec 2017

Wednesday

13 Dec 2017
Ben Schott

Miscellaneous Notebook

I have, for utterly explicable reasons, not been asked to guest-edit Radio 4’s Today this Christmas. Had I, though, I would have revived an idea first suggested, I think, by Tony Benn. Everyone loves the Shipping Forecast. But the weather forecast? That’s a different kettle of Michael Fish. The weather is rarely read, it’s emoted. ‘I’m sorry to say it’s been a rainy old day!’ Or, ‘Brrrr, bit of a frost, do wrap up!’ So why not replace emotion with detachment? First we carve up the country into meteorologically logical areas — since it’s Radio 4, let’s use Roman names — and then apply maritime thinking inland. ‘And here is the weather forecast issued by the Met Office at 0600. Pinnata Castra: moderate westerly winds; cloudy; 12 falling to eight.

Miscellaneous Notebook

Thursday

8 Dec 2016
Ben Schott

Traveller’s Notebook

I was drinking in the bar of Manhattan’s Nomad Hotel when in snuck The Most Seen Human Ever To Have Lived. This is an old puzzle: who is the most ‘observed in the flesh’ individual in history? Since we’re discounting depictions (paintings, photographs, films), it has to be someone alive in the jet age with a sustained international career and multi-generational appeal. John Paul II — who visited 129 countries — is a contender as, to a lesser extent, are Billy Graham, the Queen, Hitler, Stalin and Mao. But, for my money, there’s only one candidate: someone who’s still zigzagging the globe after five decades, appearing regularly in front of thousands of people — albeit often at a distance. Given our new kaleidoscopic culture, it’s likely that no other human will be seen in person by so many people ever again.

Traveller’s Notebook

Thursday

19 May 2016
Ben Schott

Jeeves and the Cap that Fits

The Secret Service said it would investigate Donald J. Trump’s longtime butler over Facebook posts laced with vulgarities and epithets calling for President Obama to be killed. — New York Times, 12 May 2016 I had only just risen from a deep slumber, when in shimmied Jeeves with the cup that cheers. ‘Does the day look fruity, Jeeves?’ I yawned. ‘Indeed, sir,’ he assented, opening the curtains to an expanse of cloudless sky, ‘decidedly clement.’ ‘Perfect conditions for a perusal of the racing form in the long grass, would you say?’ ‘I would, sir. However your aunt has asked me to inform you that she desires you to entertain a guest this morning.’ ‘A guest? What guest? I thought we were all alone at Brinkley this weekend.

Jeeves and the Cap that Fits

Wednesday

23 Mar 2016
Ben Schott

Diary - 23 March 2016

Killing time in a Heathrow first-class lounge, I notice how many men adopt an unmistakable ‘first-class lounge’ persona. They stand like maquettes in an architect’s model (feet apart, shoulders squared, defining their perimeter) and bellow into mobiles like they’re the first person ever to need ‘rather an urgent word’ with Maureen in HR. Along with this ‘manstanding’ comes the ‘manspreading’ of jackets, laptops and newspapers (FT for show; Mail for dough) over a Sargasso Sea of seats. In many ways, ‘first-class-lounge persona’ echoes ‘country-house-hotel face’ — the affectations couples embrace during weekend mini-breaks. These include: pretending to be at ease in a Grade I Palladian mansion; summoning tea with a patrician wave; claiming to know about topiary; and throwing shade at new arrivals with the air of those for whom the house has ‘been in the family’ for hours.

Diary - 23 March 2016

Wednesday

23 Dec 2015
Ben Schott

How I discovered my umbrella’s magical powers

I’ve just been reunited with my magic umbrella for the fourth time in a decade. Hewn from oak by Swaine Adeney Brigg, this umbrella was a wildly generous 30th-birthday present from my old friend (and mutual best man) Aster Crawshaw. It was almost immediately purloined from the cloakroom of Joe Allen’s in Covent Garden. I mentioned this in an interview I gave to the Daily Telegraph, and was amazed to receive an email from Swaine Adeney Brigg offering me a replacement. All was well for several years until I realised the umbrella was again missing. I had no memory of the last time I’d carried it. Too bereft to buy a replacement, many umbrella-less months passed until, one night, I was in a minicab on the way home from supper with my brother.

How I discovered my umbrella’s magical powers

Thursday

10 Dec 2015
Ben Schott

Diary - 10 December 2015

Flying home to New York, I noticed a disturbing innovation in pre-flight cabin announcements. After the welcomes, exhortations, and promotions the purser itemised the number of passengers (205) and crew (12) on board. Presumably, this is for the ‘black box’ recorder — so the correct complement of dental charts can be assembled should gravity win. But the broadcast concluded in a startlingly metaphysical manner. ‘So,’ she said cheerfully, ‘that’s 217 souls on board.’ Taxiing for takeoff is a disconcerting moment to contemplate the existence of souls, let alone enumerate them. (Do they count pets in the hold? Children in utero? Makers of Faustian pacts?) And it reminded me of William Gibson’s crisply cool novel Pattern Recognition, where he defines jet lag as the time it takes for the soul to catch up with the body: ‘Souls can’t move that quickly, and are left behind, and must be awaited, upon arrival, like lost luggage.

Diary - 10 December 2015

Tuesday

15 Dec 2009
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