New name… new blog

What’s in a name? I’ve kind of grown used to the name Sandra Fraser, I’ve had it for more than 20 years, so when my long-term partner proposed marriage and asked me to take his surname instead of my ex-husband’s I admit, I wrestled a little with the idea. It’s a name I share with my children, for one thing, and a name by which I’ve become known professionally. But as he pointed out, it’s not my maiden name and he’d like us to share a surname as well as our life together.

In this day of internet, mail redirection and websites, I’m hoping that whoever goes searching for me will find me as easily under the letter K as they did under F.

If you want to read the articles on here, keep scrolling down.

Alternatively click on my new name and you’ll get taken to my new blog and a whole new world besides. Nothing else has changed, I still smell as sweet… Sandra Kessell

The Great British Blackcurrant

The Great British Blackcurrant.

Character interview – Colin Dexter’s Guilty Secret

…I wrote this feature in 2007 – it’s still one of my favourites.

He feels the gods have smiled on him and is one of the world’s best-read crime writers. But Colin Dexter is hiding a guilty secret – he confessed all to Sandra Fraser.

Crime writer Colin Dexter doesn’t appear to be a man to make startling revelations. Considered statements, perhaps, but not breathtaking admissions with the potential to leave his Oxford neighbours reeling. He’s saved the thrill of exposé for readers of his books. Not that he is planning to resurrect his much-loved creation, Inspector Morse – he is adamant that he never will. He doesn’t need to confess that he is directly, or indirectly, responsible for making Oxford the murder capital of Europe – that fact has done tourism no harm – Morse fans flock to Oxford and his Lincolnshire-born creator is a freeman of the city. No, Colin Dexter’s secret is dark and has been kept behind locked doors – until now…

Colin Dexter’s mild manner is the first surprise of the day. His mind is razor-sharp but there’s no hint that he has been national crossword champion six or seven times and he doesn’t feel the need to patronise those of us who struggle to complete The Telegraph’s daily offerings. Gentlemanly, kindly and softly spoken, he differs from his creation, Detective Chief Inspector Morse, who is an irascible, mean, intellectual snob. That said, Mr Dexter does admit Morse is part-biographical. Beer drinking, crossword solving, music appreciation and Archers listening are all Morse indulgences drawn from Colin Dexter’s own passions. But where Morse is intolerant and has trouble with personal relationships, Colin Dexter is considerate and has been happily married for more than 50 years. Perhaps his own life trials have tempered his brilliant mind. Deafness forced him to give up his beloved teaching in favour of a job with the Oxford Delegacy of Local Examinations in Summertown – hence the move to the city with his wife Dorothy in 1966. Born in Stamford, he’d been a bright student, who had studied Classics at Cambridge University before going on to teach Greek and Latin. There’s no false modesty when he says he was a popular and successful master who managed to get his pupils through exams with better results than they expected for themselves.

“I think it’s truly more satisfying than writing,” he says. “It forms very strong links in your life.”

Before writing fiction he wrote general studies text books, which were published by Robert Maxwell. He slotted his writing in after his day job and in between listening to long-running radio soap “The Archers” and a nightly visit to the pub.

“I found if I wrote a page a day, 360 days a year, it soon built up,” he says.

A wet summer holiday in Wales with two complaining children and a lack of reading material gave him the impetus to write his own detective story. His chosen name for his lead character resulted from his friendship and admiration for a fellow crossword compiler and champion Jeremy, later Sir Jeremy, Morse – who went on to become chairman of Lloyds Bank, a director of the Bank of England and held a chairman of the deputy’s post with the International Monetary Fund.

“He is just about the cleverest man I’ve ever met,” says Mr Dexter. He chose the name Lewis for Morse’s sidekick after another admired crossword compiler. Morse’s forename, which was long kept a secret, is the logical amalgamation of Morse’s mother’s Quaker beliefs and his father’s interest in Captain James Cook. It was given added significance when, after choosing the name Endeavour, he spotted that Sir Jeremy’s car had an Endeavour Garage sticker in its rear windscreen.

Perhaps it was because Morse wasn’t an instant success – indeed the original manuscript was turned down by Collins and eventually published by Macmillan – that made Mr Dexter apply practicality to the whole of his Morse writing career. He kept on his day job for 22 years until he retired.

“I never, ever, had to earn a living out of writing. I was well looked after and paid at the University Schools Examination Board.”

It took a while for the books’ popularity to gain momentum. Last Bus to Woodstock hit the shelves in 1975 and first edition copies now sell for around £1500. His thirteenth and final Morse novel, The Remorseful Day, published in 1999, sees Detective Chief Inspector Morse dying of complications from his neglected diabetes. In the television series a heart attack finishes off Morse in 2000, and in real life, John Thaw, who played the perfect Morse in Mr Dexter’s eyes, died 15 months later from cancer.

Macmillan’s advisers told Mr Dexter to retain the copyright to his character – he’s grateful because despite not writing the television scripts he is still in control of Morse’s destiny. There’s no going back, he insists, Morse will not be restored to life. Twenty years after the character first hit the television screen Mr Dexter still has a say in the spin-off series Lewis, who is played by Kevin Whately, a popular actor swapped in for the television productions – a soft-spoken Geordie family man instead of the sixty-something Welsh sidekick who inhabits the books.

So what does Colin Dexter plan for the future? He’s given up alcohol on medical advice, (he suffers from diabetes) so there are no more nightly pints of real ale or shots of single malt whiskies – his greatest pleasures in life along with crosswords. But he works for charities and is often in demand for speaking engagements, retaining the ordered mind which gave his novels such deft plot lines. He is a member of the Crime Writers’ Association and has won the coveted gold dagger for best crime novel of the year on more than one occasion and several runners-up silver daggers. He’s a member of the exclusive Detection Club, to which one has to be elected and in 2000 was awarded an OBE for services to literature.

He’s lived near the Banbury Road for 41 years, has been married for 51 years and has two grown-up children, Sally and Jeremy, who are in their mid-forties. If he was going to move away from Oxford it would have been when he retired from the exam board, he says.

“I thought then, I could have gone to any place in the world,” he says. “I didn’t want to go anywhere. Oxford’s a wonderful city and I’ve enjoyed being here.”

It’s not all sweetness and light, with its own proportion of yobbos and oiks, he says, but he feels the city’s residents have been very kind to him.

“My only claim to fame is to make it the murder capital of Europe,” he says. “The body count before Lewis started recently was up to 87, now it’s up to 93.”

There have been occasions when Morse was filmed away from Oxford, in Italy and Australia, but viewers clearly preferred the city’s distinctive backdrop, and said so.

With his East Anglian connections, and the rivalry between the two Universities, Mr Dexter has been asked why he never sought to write books set in Cambridge and raise the profile of the city where he gained his degree.

“Of course, it’s a very beautiful place as well… but I could not have written about a place in which I wasn’t living. In Oxford I could walk around – visit Jericho, Summertown, the heart of Oxford – and if I wrote that you turned right into a street from a location, you did,” he says, adding that the need to film in a condensed time frame rather than inattention to detail was responsible for the apparent lack of accuracy in the television series.

And it’s this potentially divided loyalty that produces Colin Dexter’s long hidden and dark secret – one that he has managed to conceal from Oxfordshire’s finest despite 40 years in the city. Keen to extract the truth I ask the crucial question. Surely Morse himself was never more, well, remorseless. Which university does he cheer for during the annual Boat Race?

“Cambridge,” he admits rather sheepishly and a touch defensively. “It’s about the only thing I feel very strongly for. If I watch the Boat Race I’ll be very, very strongly wishing that Cambridge win.”

Morse might turn in his grave, but the rest of us should allow Mr Dexter his aberration. But for his ill health back in the 1960s, it could be the Cambridge streets that formed the backdrop to this world-famous series. And that, for Oxford and its many proponents, would be a fate far worse than death.

Five facts about Colin Dexter

1. Colin Dexter’s first name is Norman.
2. Colin Dexter was a Morse operator during his National Service in the army – but that’s not how Inspector Morse got his name.
3. Like his creation, Colin Dexter loves the music of Wagner, the paintings of Vermeer, the writing of Charles Dickens and the taste of real ale.
4. In true Hitchcock style, Colin Dexter appears in all but three Morse episodes. He was “the man in the wheelchair at Magdalen Bridge” and “the man with crutches in the hospital waiting room” he often appeared at the bar of the pub where Morse was drinking. In 1993 he achieved his ambition and played a small speaking role.
5. Colin Dexter was awarded the CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger for outstanding services to crime literature in 1997.

More Morsels about Inspector Morse

• Morse’s car, in the original books, was an old Lancia. It was swapped for an iconic 1962 Jaguar during filming because the production company couldn’t find a Lancia to suit.
• The Morse code for MORSE (– — •-• ••• •) features in the background of the famous Morse theme and incidental music, written by award winning composer Barrington Pheloung. He occasionally spelled out the name of the killer in his music using Morse code.
• Top-name guests who have appeared in Morse include Sir John Gielgud, Richard Briers, Anna Massey, Keith Allen, Barbara Flynn, Michael Hordern, Simon Callow, Peter McEnery, Robert Stephens, Cheryl Campbell, Geoffrey Palmer, Lionel Jefferies,  Adrian Dunbar, Rupert Graves, Jason Isaacs, Zoe Wanamaker, Frances Tomelty, Richard Wilson, Sheila Gish, Frances Barber, Joanna David, Sean Bean, Sorcha Cusack, Jim Broadbent, Diana Quick, Amanda Burton, Philip Middlemiss, Martin Clunes, Charlotte Coleman and a young Elizabeth Hurley, who appeared as a schoolgirl.
• The first-ever Morse screenplay was written by Anthony Minghella (who wrote and directed Truly, Madly, Deeply and won an Oscar as director of The English Patient). Other screenwriters have included Julian Mitchell, Charles Wood, Peter Nichols and Malcolm Bradbury.
• Other behind-the-scenes stars have included John Madden (director of Shakespeare in Love and Captain Corelli’s Mandolin) and Danny Boyle, of Trainspotting fame. The first producer was Kenny McBain.
• Inspector Morse has a global audience of a 750 million people in 200 countries.
• The late John Thaw received a BAFTA for best actor for his portrayal of Morse.
• The name of the killer in all but one of the books is based on the winner of the Observer Azed crossword.
• John Thaw and the Mark II Jaguar appeared on a Royal Mail stamp to celebrate 50 years of classic ITV in 2005.
• Inspector Morse walking tours take visitors around the murder sites and haunts of the tv series and books.

[This feature first appeared in the May 2007 edition of Oxfordshire Life magazine]

On-line shopping V The high street

Despite working in an on-line media environment, I’ve never really trusted the Internet when it comes to shopping. As the mother and stepmother of four teenagers and two tweenies, I recognise this is a failing on my part and definitely not a cool attitude to buying. Why go out in the cold and wet, pay exorbitant parking fees, and stand toe-to-toe and elbow-to-elbow with crowds only to end up foot-sore and grumpy?

You might well ask, especially if you’re under 30. The answer is, once you’ve put something in your basket, stood in a queue and paid for it, you know it’s bought. You can tick it off your to-do list, your gift list or your shopping list, delete it from your Blackberry or your mental checklist. If the purchase is for you, perhaps a little black dress for all those pre-Christmas, pre-New Year parties, it’s sorted. You know it fits, you know what it will go with, you can buy matching shoes, boots, hair clips, stockings or whatever takes your fancy to make it an outfit rather than just a pipe-dream. Dammit, you can even leave the shop wearing it if you like it that much. Barring a mugging on your way back to the car park, it’s yours to put in your wardrobe or to give to your lucky friend or relative if it’s a present.

Contrast this with the on-line shopping experience. If all goes well, you surf suppliers on the net, find your chosen item, bundle it up with other purchases so that you only pay one lot of P&P, then make a coffee, sit back and relax while other people run around a warehouse, get in their vans and bring your gifts and purchases to your house. That, of course, is only the theory. The reality goes something like this in my experience.

• You surf the net, find what you want, order it, pay the P&P charge, sit at your desk hoping the item is in stock and awaiting a confirmation e-mail.
• You receive the confirmation e-mail and start tracking your parcel, wondering if it’s safe to go out for a walk with the dog. You ensure one person in the household is on door duty, just in case.
• Your parcel doesn’t arrive on the appointed date.
• You start to wonder where it can be, you ask your friendly postal worker (they’re still friendly around here) – he or she hasn’t seen hide nor hair of it.
• You send an e-mail to customer service.
• They send a standard e-mail back confirming they’ve despatched your goods and telling you to check with your postal worker.
• You start wondering if you’ve been out when a delivery was due and make a mental check-back to establish no, you haven’t been, and though you may have visited the loo at an inopportune moment, you know the dog would have thrown herself against the door the moment the post was delivered or the bell was rung.
• You search outbuildings, speak to neighbours (if you have any, we don’t), and tape a message to your gate with very clear instructions about what you’re waiting for.
• You send another e-mail to customer services to ask when can you expect your parcel. They tell you to check your garage, check with your neighbours and ask if you’re sure you’ve been in 24/7.
• They tell you they can’t find your house. You tell them to put your postcode into Google maps.
• This e-mail table-tennis continues for several days…

Add a few inches of snow into the equation and you have the perfect excuse for customer care not to take your enquiries seriously.

“It’s the weather,” they cry, fobbing off your disappointed teenagers. “Give it another 24/36/48/60 hours.” The teenagers’ faces drop a hundred miles, yet trusting beings that they are, they resolve to go out to a party in a borrowed dress/tell their friends that their present has been delayed/ make the best of their disappointment and believe the line that is being spun, so build their hopes up again for the next party/occasion/purchase.

By contrast, we 40-somethings start hopping up and down when something doesn’t arrive and we’ve exhausted our reserves of politeness. We start looking on-line for a telephone number to talk to a real person. None of this “standard reply” nonsense for us. Except that’s the trouble. There is no telephone number. Only an e-mail address – this is modern technology in action. Why say in one minute what will take three text messages/e-mails to establish? IE “My parcel isn’t here” and “We’re too busy to care.”

Top of the delivery pops? The good old Royal Mail, whose postal workers trudged through snow and searched their vans to placate a near-weeping teenage girl the day of a VIP (Very Important Party); and to the CityLink Amazon delivery driver who arrived on the doorstep wet, cold and snowed on, but was still cheery enough to wish us a Happy Christmas as he dropped off the last of the on-line purchases.

Chief culprits for giving negative experiences this year are Next and Asos. Though Next’s final apology was accompanied by a £20 gift voucher – the shoes, dress and waistcoat ordered for the tweenies for our wedding simply failed to turn up – they couldn’t even deliver the right order to their own shop a few days later adding exasperation to pre-wedding nerves and the need for yet another shopping trip. Even last week, two months after the order was placed, I was still having to insist I didn’t owe them any money for goods undelivered.

As for Asos, my 17-year-old daughter’s experiences with them would have driven another teenager to tantrums. Let’s just say, it’s now 13 days and counting since she ordered that special dress and it’s just appeared in their post-Christmas sale, £10 cheaper than the price she paid. It’s in the post, they’ve just told me. I’ll keep you posted on its progress, which is more than you’ll get from Asos.

*Update December 30th – With the power of Twitter and the help of Red mag editor Sam, and blogger LibertyLndnGirl, the dress arrived at lunchtime today, 15 days after the order was placed. My daughter looks fab in it and seems unfazed by her experience. Good job as her grandmother had bought her an Asos gift voucher for Christmas.

**Update December 31st – The same dress has been delivered again today – You have to see the funny side!

Val Doonican’s marvellous career

One of the nicest things about my job is meeting people I’ve had the pleasure of watching on television or admiring on screen. I’m not a hero-worshipper, I wouldn’t even count myself as a fan of anyone in particular, but every so often I’m asked to interview someone who has become a legend in his or her own lifetime. This month it was the gentle, warm, funny and self-deprecating Val Doonican. The interview will appear in Berkshire Life magazine in the new year, but having heard him today on Libby Purves’s Radio 4 show Midweek, I couldn’t resist mentioning here that I’ve interviewed him too and letting you know how it felt. I can’t let you see the article, but this was my experience of meeting him at his Berkshire home.

Ever since Val Doonican’s name was mentioned as a future interviewee I’ve had his lyrics spinning in my head and memories of favourite childhood songs. His TV show, for those who never had the pleasure of watching it, and there are many of us who did, used to pull in an amazing 19 million viewers a week. That’s the equivalent of an X-Factor Final week-in and week-out, in an era when fewer of us had televisions and most of us knew what the off switch was for. Charming but never smarmy, gentle but never boring, funny but never loud – that was the Val Doonican we thought we knew. It turns out, on meeting him, that’s how he is in real life. How lovely not to have your childhood memories shattered. But then Val knows all about having childhood snatched away…

Music playing heals – Howard Goodall

James and I almost burst with pride yesterday while watching our children play at The Royal Albert Hall. They are members of the incomparable (and very select) AMC Dance Band which had been invited to the Schools Prom to play before an audience of thousands. It was an amazing night – and should be compulsory watching and listening for all those grumpy old men and women who think today’s kids are tearaways, ne’er-do-wells and layabouts. One of the bands playing consisted of three guitar players and a drummer who could have knocked any of the X-Factor contestants into a cocked hat… one of them arrived on crutches and gigged like a trouper. As compere Howard Goodall remarked – music has the power to heal…

None of this would be possible without the amazing teachers who take very little of the glory, a point also made by Howard who was brought up in Thame and whose father was headmaster at Lord Williams’s School. I interviewed him a couple of years ago for Oxfordshire Life magazine. Click here to go to the AMC Dance Band video http://tinyurl.com/yb478ul

The Five Arrows Hotel – food review

 

Never one to turn down the chance of a food review, I said yes in double quick time when asked to dine at The Five Arrows Hotel in Waddesdon – a mere stone’s throw away from home – certainly within cycling distance… though we took the car.

http://tiny.cc/lhW8v

More than camp comedy – Julian Clary uncovered

Julian Clary - Lord of the Mince

 

Lord of the Mince may be the name of his latest show, but there’s far more to Julian Clary than camp comedy. Interview by Sandra Fraser.

 

 

Outrageous, risqué, shocking – just a few of the words that spring to mind when describing Julian Clary. He shot to fame as the Joan Collins Fan Club (alongside Fanny the Wonderdog), with a brand of humour that was full of innuendo and, at times, jaw-droppingly vulgar. He hasn’t put the double-entendre behind him, so to speak, but recently we’ve been seeing another, softer, less acerbic side of Julian, with appearances on Strictly Come Dancing and Who Do You Think You Are? plus a number of roles hosting and presenting top-rated television chat shows and quizzes.

But just as his public, and perhaps, his parents, may have thought middle age was mellowing him, Julian has set a series of tour dates which will feature his full-on brand of blue humour in all its glittering peacock glory.

So which is the real Julian Clary, the dog loving, chicken-keeping, country-living home-bod who wears shorts, a tee-shirt and no make-up, or the glammed-up, MAC-sponsored diva with a sharp retort on the end of his tongue and an album of air-brushed images on his website?

Julian says they’re both him, one persona “just happens” when he’s on stage, but it could be “a bit unbearable” if he were to stay in stage character all the time.

“On stage is on stage but I can stop being glamorous at home – it’s easy,” he says, adding that unlike Michael Barrymore, who allegedly found real life dull compared with the excitement of performing and presenting, he has never found it difficult to switch between the two.

Julian sighs when I bring up his notorious 1993 quip about the then Chancellor Norman Lamont, on live television at the British Comedy Awards. But though it took place more than 15 years ago, it was a defining moment, not only for broadcasting, but for Julian Clary too – and everyone who knew I was about to interview him couldn’t help but mention it.

“I think I thought it was a funny line. I didn’t think I would still be talking about it this much later,” he says. The “funny line” left him professionally sidelined for more than a year, though the complaints, it has to be said, only trickled in. A mere 12 were received from an audience of 3 million, but producers and TV executives became a little twitchy about what Julian might do next. In retrospect Julian says he understands what made him overstep his own mark.

“Fifteen years later I can see that my life needed to come down a bit. I needed some time off,” he says, musing whether he pushed a self-destruct button to buy himself personal space.

“I quite enjoyed being outrageous back in the Eighties but I didn’t feel like any great crusader,” he says, adding later that in the context of today’s most outrageous programming, his shows and comments were never really that shocking.

Iconic figures like Danny La Rue, Kenneth Williams and Larry Grayson were at the forefront of camp humour throughout the Seventies and beyond, but though they pushed at the boundaries of their era, Julian’s show was unique when he first hit the big time. He brought a blend of shock, horror, humour and high-camp to an open-mouthed and disbelieving audience, the majority of whom became instant fans. Certainly they took Fanny to their hearts. Julian’s star rose and rose, though it hadn’t been his dream to become a stand-up comedian.

“I thought I was going to be a pop star, then an actor. Slowly it dawned on me that writing and performing my own material was much more exciting to do,” says Julian, who studied English drama at Goldsmiths College. He liked being self-sufficient, relying on his own talent rather than waiting at the beck-and-call of a show director or film producer with on-going auditions and castings. Self-deprecatingly, he says he didn’t have the versatility to make a career of acting, though television and stage roles have since come his way.

He is a man to set himself challenges, however, which is why he seized the opportunity to take part in Strictly Come Dancing. He reached the show final with partner Erin Boag, much to his surprise, and restrained pride.

“It’s hard not to learn a few basics when you’re being taught by a world-class dancer,” says Julian, with modest understatement. “She helped me overcome my fear of dancing and I realised any kind of fear can be overcome.”

Armed with his new-found additional confidence, he accepted the role of the Emcee in Cabaret, in the West End’s Lyric Theatre, cutting a chilling character. He has also written two novels, brought out an autobiography and penned a regular column for the New Statesman. So are there any more challenges left?

“A few, yes. You don’t write one novel or two novels, and think, ‘I’ve done that now.’ I want to do more writing. I want to do a musical and act in some Shakespeare. There are lots of things bubbling under the surface,” he says, going on to name some of his recent credits, like Just a Minute and Have I Got News for You.

“I think if I was just stuck doing one thing I would be bored,” says Julian, adding that he likes to diversify, which begs the question, why return to camp and close-to-the-knuckle stand-up? The answer is simple, he loves to make people laugh, he finds it very satisfying. He hopes he finds himself doing another tour to celebrate turning 60 and another when he’s 70.

Seriously? Can he really see himself still on stage in his seventies?

“I can’t see into the future,” he says, a touch defiantly, “so I don’t know.”

He switches into stage persona and delivers the line that there’s a care home down the road that he’s got his eye on when the time is right. He fancies sitting in the window watching the world go by. Not for him the sad decline into lonely old age, like some “miserable old queen,” as he puts it. One wonders what the rest of the residents would make of him, let alone the nursing staff.

Julian has had his sticky moments but says life is pretty settled right now.

“It would be unbelievable if I’d got to my age without any ups and downs,” he says, in trademark whiny voice.

Julian lives with his boyfriend near Ashford in Kent, in a house once owned by Noel Coward, with his dog Valerie, puppy Albie and a growing flock of hens. Former transvestite comedian Paul O’Grady, who has recently thrown off his trademark Lily Savage wig and declared he will no longer be dressing up, is a neighbour and friend.

“I’ve no desire to live anywhere else at the moment, other than with my boyfriend, it’s inspiring,” says Julian. “I’m very contented.”

Finding contentment led to him agreeing to take part in the genealogy programme, Who Do You Think You Are? He feels so much of one’s make-up is genetic and the programme helped on his journey to self-knowledge. He discovered German ancestry on both sides of family tree as well as a genteel artist.

Julian’s show, Lord of the Mince, is the product of looking deep into himself, he says. He promises his audiences not only a bit of biography, but a recently discovered and unexpected new talent of his own. 

“Everything is more acceptable now. But I don’t think it’s anything to do with me,” says Julian. A new generation of comics may well beg to differ and a phalanx of fans are truly grateful.

Julian Clary’s show Lord of the Mince will be at Oxford New Theatre on October 9 and Cheltenham Town Hall on October 29. Julian’s parents live in Swindon and he expects they will be in the audience when his show hits the town’s Wyvern Theatre on October 16 & 17.

For a full list of tour dates and booking information visit www.julianclary.co.uk

This article appears in the October edition of Cotswold Life magazine

Press okay if you want to join in…

I’ve had a trying day – without wishing to name-drop it’s involved the lovely David Jason and the besieged Heston Blumenthal, not in the same place, but almost at the same time.

At the very end of July I was commissioned to write for a new food book – not a great time to start phoning up harvesting farmers and holidaying restaurateurs, who traditionally take a break in the summer. Still, it was, is and will be, a lovely addition to bookshelves and kitchens the nation over, and it’s being brought out by  an award-winning publisher, so I pressed on, despite only having five weeks in the summer holidays to complete it. Most people I approached to be in it were thrilled to be asked. Though they’re regularly acknowledged for being among our nation’s best producers (some had received stamps of approval from Rose Prince and Rick Stein, I found out afterwards) they recognise good publicity has a knock-on effect and no-one can afford to be complacent in these cost-cutting, cash-stricken times.

But in the same week that an international picture agency were trying to sting a colleague for mistakenly using an un-invoiced-for image (it’s a long story, I’m not going there – but their approach is pretty short-sighted if they want future business from him and his account is worth thousands to them each year) I’ve found myself chasing, chasing and chasing again a particular PR company for client photographs. Perhaps their client, the aforementioned Mr Blumenthal, didn’t need the good publicity, I thought, as I fired off yet another e-mail and made yet another phone call. A final post-deadline stand-off ensued, more of which below, resulting in me taking my bat home – I’d write about someone else, I said, as I metaphorically stalked off the pitch.

In fact, I wasn’t on a pitch at all and that, at least, contributed to my huffiness. I was being corralled into a side room at a very posh venue while waiting to interview the adorable Mr, actually Sir, David Jason. My fellow journos and I (including the Beeb, ITV’s Meridian News and local radio) having been promised lunch and a bit of an interview, if we waited through the charity speeches and congratulations, were offered not terribly appetising sandwiches (which were eaten by our minders) and told to stay in our room while the real guests, the ones that we weren’t allowed to mingle with in case we ate all their canapés, got on with the job of networking. I started to feel like a teenager; I wanted to stamp my feet, slam doors and stomp out of the room. I rang my office, found a terse e-mail had been sent telling me not to include Mr Blumenthal, and contented myself with phoning his people (and my publisher) and telling them I’d be writing about the Roux brothers and their sons instead.

Well, despite everything I’m glad I waited for Sir David. He’s as delightful in real life as he is on screen. Okay – the charity was a good cause and all that, so no-one was going to write a bad news story on the back of it, but treating the press like pariahs when you also want a bit of good publicity doesn’t buy you a few extra column inches, or airtime, or goodwill. A couple of the news journos were getting dangerously close to deadline and wondering how they were going to edit their takes, drive to a studio and get on air with what little time they had left. I wondered if I’d want to return to next year’s event, for a freelance job on a flat fee it took five hours, not including travel time and involved an awful lot of frustration.

When I’d finished with Sir David (and I can’t emphasise what a pro he is – charming, accommodating and polite, despite obviously being tired at the end of his busy day) there was a phone message on my mobile. It was Heston’s PR company explaining that the earlier e-mail had been a mistake and their client would like to be in the book after all.

It seems that all’s well that ends well. But a little bit of preaching to PR and marketing companies. Be nice if you’ve got the press asking you for a good news story, even if you don’t want to participate this time you may want them some other time, and you never know who is going to be in charge of the magazine or newspaper you approach in the future and how good their memory is. There are easy ways of saying politely, thanks, but no thanks, we’re too busy, or it’s not a good time for us. Positive press is generally acknowledged to be worth 10 times its size in advertising. Bad publicity? You do the maths.

A good publicist ought to know the difference without a single word from me but you’d be surprised at how many haven’t got the message yet…

Someone in Swansea has a job thanks to me…

I shouldn’t be doing this – I’ve got a commission to contribute 10 features to a food book and an interview with a Vice-Admiral (whom I addressed as a Vice-Admirable yesterday, but that’s another blog) to prepare for. But I’ve finally got a little time at my desk and I can’t help but share that I’ve been reeling this week from a brush with bureaucracy – actually, I feel bowled out by the leg-spinners of bureaucracy, to use a cricket metaphor and show solidarity with our boys at the Oval.

Eight (that’s right EIGHT) brown envelopes arrived on Monday amongst which were notices for car tax (okay, knew about that), income tax (have recently returned to self-employment), changing child benefit (Child One leaving school, Child Two staying on for A levels, Child Three still going through the processes and the step-children not on my books) and, most horrifically of all, a demand that I renew my driving licence. This last absolutely floored me. What, I hear you cry – have I been on the wrong side of the law and been banned for a while? Have I lost my old licence? Have I mislaid something vital? 

No, it turns out that since I have a relatively up-to-date photo-style driving licence, complete with a picture of me, of course, I now have to have it regularly renewed. No matter that I look exactly the same as I looked when I had that photo done (ie. fierce and, I hope, unrecognisable to all who love me); no matter that there must be hundreds of thousands of drivers with paper (ie photo-less) licences; no matter, in fact, that it’s actually only three years since I last updated my driving licence (but not my photo) because I moved house. Why, I can’t help wondering, was I not asked to update my photo then? If there was an option to do so I must have missed it. So it is I find myself having to fork out another £20 to keep a faceless bureaucrat in a job in Wales. It also dawns on me that since I’m obviously “in the system” I will now have to change my driving licence regularly. At least updating your passport is optional on the grounds that if you don’t leave the country, you don’t need to worry that you look 20 years older than the last startled photo-booth image you submitted to the passport office (who, incidentally, have amazingly efficient, helpful and kind staff and no, I’m not being ironic, they really are stars).

I really hope that plans for ID cards continue to be put on hold. Besides my national insurance number card (which doesn’t have a photo, thankfully) and my recently renewed passport, my driving licence is surely ID enough. If ever I get pulled over by the police for anything I do wrong, I hope they recognise me from my soon-to-be submitted photo. I doubt that they will – in fact, I hope that they don’t. No-one ever looks that bad in reality – do they? Not even if they’ve been caught at it.