People often come up to me in the street and ask me how I manage to make my hair look the way it does. What hair product do I use to give it that bright and shiny look?
“Brylcreem”, I tell them, “lots of it. You see, when Denis Compton announced his retirement, I had a feeling that the era of Brylcreem was drawing to a close and took the precaution of stocking up with several crates of Brylcreem, and this explains the lustrous, glossy look of my hair to this very day”.
“And soap?”, they enquire, ‘what do you use for soap? “
“I use Camay”, I reply. “With fabulous pink Camay, I look a little lovelier each day”.
***
A beautiful summer’s day for the Fête de la Musique yesterday in the village. As the music drifted gently over the field and into our garden. I couldn’t help thinking that, of all the gifts that could be showered on one at birth, the gift of music must be the most gratifying. I’m not talking about being a virtuoso or anything like that, just the ability to make music at a basic level of competence. I write as someone who loves music of many different kinds but who doesn’t have a musical bone in his body. In this respect, if in no other, I resemble Stephen Fry whose autobiography covering the earlier years of is life I have just finished.
***
The book in question, Moab is My Washpot, is a brilliant endeavour and fully deserves its success. The book succeeds triumphantly on its own merits and relies little if at all on the mention of famous people for its appeal. One has to ask, though, whether it would even have been considered for publication if it had been written by an unknown. From a publisher’s point of view, what made the book a marketable proposition was the fact that, in the years following those covered in the book, Stephen Fry had become a “famous person”.
The message is clear: first become a celebrity and then write whatever you like!
