It might not rank with Smokin’ Joe Frazier versus Sting-like-a-bee Muhammad Ali, but it was certainly my prize fight of the past year. When Steamin’ John Reid took on Sneer-like-a-maître-d’ Jeremy Paxman, all the blows were aimed decisively below the belt.
Jeremy accused Reid of being a new-Labour attack dog, a description which, if anything, underplays the carnivorous aggression that the Defence Secretary brings to his role. Instead of turning the gibe into a badge of honour, Reid responded by taking offence at what he perceived to be Jeremy’s prejudice towards Scots working-class boys made good. Or at least on the make.
Briefing and counter-briefing followed, in which Reid denounced Paxo as a “West London w*****r” and Jeremy hit back by slamming into the “Scottish Raj” who were now ruling London. For most spectators, the bout between the two would have provided the usual ration of amusement to be found when sumo-size egos collide. But though I enjoyed the scrap as much as anyone I did find my loyalties dangerously divided.
As an economic migrant from north of the border now occupying a Westminster seat for an English constituency, I just about qualify for junior membership of the Scottish Raj. And as an erstwhile resident of North Kensington I’m afraid I’ve been caught bang to rights as one of that distinct subgroup of West London w*****s known as “The Notting Hill Set”.
My Scottishness I can do nothing about, and indeed would not wish to. While I don’t quite have the gargling-with-broken-beer-bottles accent of John Reid, my teeth (which look like Stonehenge after a cluster-bomb explosion) and my belief that there is no foodstuff that can’t be improved by deep-fat-frying mark me out as an aboriginal Scot. Scottishness is woven into my character like the yellow check on a Dress Gordon kilt: it may not be to everyone’s taste, but it is integral to the package.
My Notting Hill connections, however, are altogether easier to escape. Now that my home is outside London, and the whole area around W11 appears to have become a byword for empty modishness, perhaps I should try to play down the years when I hung out there as just a stage I went through. “Yes, I did experiment with goat’s cheese and chicken mousse when I was younger. I once even spent a whole evening mainlining Argentine malbec while wearing wire-rimmed spectacles. But I now deeply regret the whole thing and promise never to go near a light and airy bistro with a zinc-topped bar ever again.”
However, I just can’t do it. Or rather, won’t. I may no longer live there but I’m not running away from Notting Hill. Even though the area has in the past months received the intellectual equivalent of US Air Force shock-and-awe aerial bombardment, even to the point of being damned comprehensively in these very pages by my colleague Tim Hames, I am still willing to stand up for the embattled communities of Portobello and Ladbroke Grove.
I don’t see anything wrong in choosing to live, work, shop or just enjoy hanging out in a part of London which is still, despite the proliferation of delicatessens and boutiques selling over-priced kaftans, genuinely and genially multicultural, inclusively aspirational and creatively original. And though I would not want to make extravagant claims for W11 (or its ever-expanding suburbs, W10, W12 and W14), I can’t help noticing that far from rejecting its habits and mores as ugly, outré and depraved, the rest of Britain seems to be queueing up to adopt them. A nation that takes its cue in the kitchen from Jamie Oliver and Simon Hopkinson, its home-improvement tips from Sarah Beeny and Kirstie Allsopp, and which considers Richard Curtis its very own Frank Capra, can hardly be said to be turning its back on the guiding spirits of West London life. I may no longer have my letters addressed to W11, but Notting Hill is now more than a postal district, it’s a state of mind. Sneer at the people who live, work and visit the area, and you don’t belittle just a select group of so-called high-flying “w*****s” (to whom in any case such mudslinging is water off a duck’s back); you also dismiss the lifestyles and aspirations of more and more Britons, too. And that, surely, is not the sort of thing with which new Labour would ever wish to be associated.
When it's good not to talk
For most of this week, I am in West Lancashire rather than West London, at the Conservative Party conference in Blackpool. It is fashionable for politicians, and journalists, to dismiss these weeks as dyspepsia-inducing, sleep-depriving, mind-numbing festivals of self-importance. But I love them.
Even I, however, have to acknowledge that there can be downsides to a week spent in the company of hundreds of other political obsessives. Sooner or later you’re bound to spot the one person whose company you simply have to avoid. Whether its because you once offended them, or simply cannot remember their name, there are some encounters where brief is still too long.
Indeed, you needn’t be at a party conference to experience a chill at the thought of suddenly spotting an old enemy, messily ditched ex or cash-hungry creditor bearing down on you. It can happen in theatre foyers, outside football grounds or even, perhaps especially, at literary festivals.
The answer at such times, a party conference veteran has informed me, is always to have your mobile phone to hand. When you spot the potentially cringeing encounter looming, whip your handset out, jam it to the ear, jabber away and shrug apologetically to the person whom you daren’t risk engaging in direct conversation, as though to say, “I’d love to chat, but I can’t break off from this vital call from my wife/bank manager/NTL customer-services manager.”
While I can see the obvious utility of using my mobile as what my friend calls a “social prophylactic”, I fear I’m simply too technologically inept to deploy his form of self-protection with any sort of efficiency. I just know that were I to have the thing fixed firmly to my ear, pretending to be deep in conversation with some person of great import, I would have forgotten to put the thing on silent. And in the middle of my own animated repartee there would come the unmistak able shriek of the ringtone, exposing me not just as unforgivably rude, but tragically incompetent as well.
