Bubblehammerblog

Almost everyone has heard the story, probably an urban myth, about the feller on an aeroplane who finds himself sitting beside the Dalai Lama. To his astonishment the traveller notices that His Holiness is enthusiastically devouring an enormous fried bacon banjo...You know the rest.

When I come across anecdotes of this sort, ones that briefly illuminate some unexpected biographical aspect of the far-famed, hopefully amusing or intriguing, I copy them into a dedicated notebook. I prefer the stories to be verifiable, or at the very least plausible. Perhaps one day I'll tidy it up a little and post it on the net.

I came upon one a couple of days ago, in David Cesarani's biography of Arthur Koestler,(London 1998). I'm no great admirer of the latter, but in the late 1950s, just before I became a teenager, Koestler, Malcolm Muggeridge, Doctor Bronowski, and Bertrand Russel used to appear on the telly. I liked them immediately because they didn't sing or dance, or appear on what they then called 'variety' shows.

I hated all the singing on television, a sickening, depressing series of moans and shrieks that went on for too long. Hearing names like Alma Cogan, Alan Breeze, Mario Labonza, Frankie Vaughan, Peculiar Fart, Andy Stewart, Sabrina, Maurice Chevalier, Doris Day, Winifred Attwell, Flanders and Swan, made me feel ill. The Black & White Minstrel Show was the worst, and brought on explosive diarrhoea. Whenever singing or dancing came on telly I left the room.

But Koestler, Muggeridge, Russel and the rest, I quickly gathered, were called intellectuals, as indeed was Bernard Levin. People looked up to them. The idea of them crooning brainless songs accompanied by dancing nancyboys got up as jamjar golliwogs was preposterous. I was deeply impressed, and resolved, there and then, to become an intellectual myself. I became a regular viewer of shows like 'The Brains Trust', gradually abandoning the antisemitism my Red Grandad had exposed me to.

Koestler was the best looking and most stylish of the TV intellectuals, so he became an early model in my bid to join their ranks. I was unaware as a twelve year old that he was a CIA asset, and a wife-beating piss artist. Koestler often sported a cravat or spotted dicky bow, which I thought the finest garments I had ever seen. I longed to wear a spotted dicky, often taking the tram to the local branch of Austin Reed to gaze at them through the window. But it was impossible. Where I was born, walking the streets in a spotted dickie bow would have the same outcome as putting a sign around your neck saying, 'Please beat me to a pulp and leave me hanging from the park railings.'

The anecdote I came across in the Koestler biography has in it Koestler, Sartre, and Camus - Simone de Beauvoir is the diarist. 'Mamaine' is Mamaine Paget, Koestler's longterm partner and skivvy:

As a joke, Sartre was making love to Mamaine, though so outrageously one could scarcely have said he was being indiscreet, as we were all far too drunk for it to be offensive. Suddenly Koestler threw a glass at Sartre's head and smashed it against the wall. We brought the evening to a close. Koestler didn't want to go home, and then found he'd lost his wallet and had to stay behind in the club; Sartre was staggering about on the sidewalk and laughing helplessly when Koestler finally decided to climb back up the stairway on all fours. He wanted to continue the quarrel with Sartre. 'Come on, let's go home', said Camus, laying a friendly hand on his shoulder; Koestler shrugged the hand off and hit Camus, who then tried to hurl himself at his aggressor; we kept them apart. Leaving Koestler in his wife's hands, we all got into Camus' car; he too was suitably soused in vodka and champagne and his eyes began to fill with tears: 'He was my friend. And he hit me!'

A street in central Paris in the late 1940s. It's three thirty in the morning. Raining heavily. Koestler crawls along the pavement, muttering about his wallet and emitting dog noises. Sartre is doubled over the torrent rushing down the gutter helplessly laughing. Camus sits at the wheel of his car blubbering. .

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