CHRIS BEETLES GALLERY ON BEHALF OF THE MARK BOXER ESTATE
The Old Un’s Notes Will Boris Johnson finally fall from office – thanks to the Case of the Three Sirloin Steaks at the Garrick Club? As Stephen Glover wrote in his Oldie media column, he co-hosted a dinner at the Garrick for the Prime Minister and his old Telegraph colleagues last year. The Prime Minister’s three police bodyguards ‘wolfed sirloin steak at [Glover’s] expense’. And now a retired police sergeant has written to Met Commissioner Dame Cressida Dick, before her resignation, asking for an explanation. The retired sergeant said to her, ‘Thousands of public pounds have been wasted on non-existent police expenses, called “refreshers”, and I daresay that a Garrick sirloin steak with the trimmings and a drink goes well into £40 plus.’ The Commissioner’s office has passed on the letter to a Chief Superintendent in the Royalty and Specialist Protection squad. There is no suggestion the bodyguards claimed expenses for the steaks. But surely someone should pay poor Stephen Glover back! ‘This boy is not suitable for university,’ declared the Dean of King’s College, Cambridge, after interviewing the lad who grew up to become the first presenter of University Challenge. Bamber Gascoigne, who died in February, aged 87, won a scholarship to Eton at 13.
Once there, he was daunted by the intellects of fellow scholars (two of them used to play chess at meals without a board). Consequently he became merely ‘the sort of chap who played games’. At 16, the unsuitable boy, asked about his interests by the Dean, gave a highly disappointing reply: ‘Shooting and fishing.’ He hastily and untruthfully added ‘reading’ – but was stumped when asked what he was reading at the time. Finally, he remembered his grandmother was halfway through The Cruel Sea. What did he think about this gung-ho wartime yarn which
Triple first: Bamber Gascoigne
wasn’t exactly on the A-level syllabus? Er, ‘It’s about convoys crossing the Atlantic.’ Chastened by the Dean’s verdict, and tutored by more academic fellow Etonians, he
Among this month’s contributors Tom Ward (p16) played Dr Harry Cunningham in Silent Witness. He was also in Doctor Who, Death Comes to Pemberley, Vanity Fair and The Infinite Worlds of H G Wells. Jonathan Meades (p20) wrote Pedro and Ricky Come Again and An Encyclopaedia of Myself. His latest BBC film is Franco Building with Jonathan Meades. The cartoon of him (left) is by Mark Boxer. Duncan Campbell (p31) was a senior reporter and correspondent at the Guardian from 1987 to 2010. He wrote The Underworld: the Inside Story of Britain’s Professional and Organised Crime. Daisy Dunn (p34) is a classicist and the author of Not Far from Brideshead: Oxford Between the Wars. She also wrote In the Shadow of Vesuvius and Catullus’s Bedspread.
worked so hard that he won an exhibition to Magdalene, where he achieved a First in his first year. In his second year he informed Arthur Sale, his supervisor later described by his pupil John Simpson as the best English teacher in Cambridge, that he wouldn’t be handing in any essays for a bit. He was writing and directing the college revue, Share My Lettuce. It transferred to the West End. Gascoigne pulled off Firsts in not only his second but also his third year. Not bad for someone who wasn’t university material. This year is the 80th anniversary of Desert Island Discs, first broadcast on the BBC Forces Programme on 29th January 1942. But how do you qualify to get on the show? Bruce Beresford, Oldie contributor and director of Oscar-winning Driving Miss Daisy (1989), cheerfully admits that he’s tried to appear – without success. ‘Anxious to broadcast my music choices and book and luxury selection, I’ve often wondered how to become a guest on the programme,’ says Beresford. ‘The BBC website offers no advice on the matter – so I assume an invitation from the producer is the only method. Despite this and despite my innate reticence, I have made a number of attempts, over many The Oldie April 2022 5
