The Guardian from London, Greater London, England • 27

The Guardian Wednesday August 28 1996 5 Wheen World Footer, the party pooper I MANY years ago, shortly after I making a hasty exit from Francis Wheen Ai LTHOUGH Tories often accuse socialists of practising the politics that this episode is satirising the spurious indignation of those prim, middle-class moaners who inhabit the Daily Telegraph's correspondence page the Herbert Gussetts, the Edna Wel-thorpes, the Disgusteds of Tunbridge Wells. And yet the Telegraph takes it as a huge compliment. "Pooter is not only a comic archetype, but also a moral one," it raves, praising him as one of the "worthy and unglamorous figures" on whom this country's prosperity was founded. "As Carrie Pooter says to her husband: 'You are not handsome, but you are good, which is far more Absolutely. More Pooters, please." I'd say we have quite enough Pooters already.

For the past six years we have been governed by one, reincarnated in the equally gormless and risible form of John Major. How many more does the Telegraph want? hadn't. "Thanks to his pathetic pretensions, Pooter is despised by almost everyone. The Telegraph ignores all these inconvenient facts, preferring to bask in the glory of having once received a letter from its hero. But even that story hardly justifies its adulation of this "decent What happened was that Pooter, after a long journey home from the East Acton Volunteer Ball, told the cabbie that he had forgotten to bring any money and therefore couldn't pay the fare.

Understandably enough, the driver "called me every name he could lay his tongue The shameless Pooter then decided to write to the Telegraph demanding stricter government supervision of the cab-trade, "to prevent civilians being subjected to the disgraceful insult and outrage that I had had to It should be obvious to anyone but a half-wit of envy, they are pretty envious themselves especially of the left's cultural icons. And who can blame them? While progressive causes enjoy the support of Oscar-winning actresses and Booker-winning novelists, the Conservatives 1 TH CO (Kfi.es pohD5rVC pfG-B secondary education, I sent my old housemaster a postcard explaining why I would not be returning. It consisted of a quote from one of Henry Fielding's novels: "Public schools are the nurseries of all vice and immorality." In a brief and bad-tempered reply, the housemaster pointed out that Fielding was describing conditions more than two centuries ago. "It is quite different today," he insisted, "as you know perfectly well." Oh yeah? I wonder if he noticed a front-page news story last weekend, revealing that Scotland Yard detectives "are investigating allegations of a paedophile network involving teachers from some of Britain's top public The network is said to include "Charles Napier, a former treasurer of the Paedophile Information Exchange and a former staff member of the British Council in Cairo, who was jailed last year for sex assaults on youngsters in Charles Napier was my gym-master at prep school and a very good gym-master too, always willing to lend a hand (quite literally) as the boys practised their back-flips and headstands. From time to time he would invite his favourites into a small workshop next to the gym, where he plied us with Senior Service untipped and bottles of Macke-son before plunging his busy fingers down our shorts.

Although 1 rejected his advances, I continued to help myself to beer 'n' cigs from his secret depot when he wasn't around. It never occurred to me to report him to the authorities. Why? Because he was the authorities. Complaining about a teacher was as unthinkable as refusing to participate in crosscountry runs. Anyway, no 11-year-old boy wishes to parade his sexual innocence: Napier warned me and many others that by refusing to cooperate we were merely demonstrating our immaturity.

lets me do it, you know," he said, naming a classmate of mine. For weeks afterwards, sneered at me for my squeamishness. I don't know where is now (running a prep school of his own, probably), but I'm glad to learn that Napier has been taken out of circulation at last. As his half-brother told me a few years ago, "Charles is such a trial to my mother. Every time he gets sacked, she asks him why he can't find some work which doesn't involve children.

And then, after being on the dole for a while, he rings her up in great excitement and says 'Marvellous news, mummy, I've got a new job it's in a youth club. The half-brother, by contrast, has delighted his mother by staying on the straight and narrow. Very narrow indeed, actually: he is a Tory MP. have to make do with Lynsey de Paul and Jimmy Tarbuck. No wonder the poor dears keep trying to pinch other people's artistic property.

Ever since the publication of Animal Farm, they have been claiming George Orwell as one of their own; more recently, they sought to persuade us that the Ealing comedies were essentially Thatcherite in spirit; last year, we had the absurd spectacle of John Redwood taking the credit for Britpop. Now, in a robust editorial, the Daily Telegraph has appointed itself sole custodian of George and Wee-don Grossmith's masterpiece, The Diary Of A Nobody. "Where," it asks, "does Mr Pooter choose to send one of his carefully composed letters of complaint, after suffering abuse from a cab driver? To the Daily Telegraph. This newspaper has always been honoured to be associated with such a decent fellow as Pooter. His values are timeless: he is thrifty, loyal, hard-working and distrustful of those on the make." He is also petty, snobbish and a crashing bore.

Although I cannot prove that the Grossmiths intended the book as Marxist agitprop, their picture of suburban small-mindedness is strikingly similar to another great work, of Victorian social observation. The Condition Of The Working-Class In England written by their near-contemporary, Fred Engels. In a chapter on "The Attitude of the Bourgeoisie Towards the Engels paid a Telegraph-style tribute to Charles Pooter and his kind: "These English bourgeois are good husbands and family men, and have all sorts of other private virtues and appear, in ordinary intercourse, as decent and respectable as all other bourgeois." Nevertheless, he added, they are "incurably debased" by self-interest: "It is utterly indifferent to the English bourgeois whether his working-men starve or not, if only he makes money." This is certainly true of Pooter, who treated his maidservant abominably and was forever whinge-ing about the ghastliness of Borset, the butterman, became so weary of the old fusspot that "he said he would be hanged if he would ever serve City clerks any more the game wasn't worth the Containing his rage, Pooter "quietly remarked that I thought it was possible for a City clerk to be a gentleman. He replied he was very glad to hear it, and wanted to know whether I had ever come across one, for he rell, the National Heritage Secretary at the time, denounced Mowlam 's idea as "off the wall arguing that "if you cut it (the monarchy! off from its roots, which are its palace buildings, then you cut it off from what it draws strength Now the Queen has decided to cut herself off from her roots, her history and her constitution. What does Mr Dorrell have to say? Not a dicky bird.

IT HAS been quietly disclosed that the Queen is planning to move out of Buckingham Palace and live in Windsor Castle. lean 't say I'm surprised: Buck House is one of the ugliest buildings in London. It's handy to be Mandy recognise. But apparatchiks have their place in the scheme of things." Although he doesn't mention it in his article, Sherman has been watching Mandy's progress with interest for many years. "I knew his father when he was advertising manager of the Jewish Chronicle," he revealed when I spoke to him last week.

"He was a most able man." Like father, like son or so one might infer from his complimentary remarks in the Spectator. In conversation, however. Sir Alfred was rather less flattering about the Blairite Svengali. "Peter Mandelson's a poor man's Sherman," he told me. "His problem is that he's only half-Jewish." Can it be that, in spite of his long service to Margaret Thatcher and Radovan Karadzic, Sir Alfred has somehow retained a sense of humour? Are the tabloids spluttering with outrage? Er, no.

Which proves that whenever you hear monarchists wittering on about "British you can be sure they are ignorant boobies who wouldn 't recognise a tradition if it was served up on a silver platter with bread sauce, gravy and redcurrant Jelly. Two years ago, however, Mo Mowlam MP was almost crucified for suggesting that Her Majesty should be provided with a more salubrious residence. The Mail On Sunday insisted that Buckingham Palace was "inseparable from our history, our nationhood and, most importantly, our constitution Stephen Dor- WHAT a busy little chap Sir Alfred Sherman is. After a long spell in the wilderness, living on locusts and honey, he has suddenly written two articles in as many weeks for the Spectator. His latest offering is a surprisingly fond assessment of Milly-Molly-Mandelson.

"Mr Mandelson is under attack for his virtues rather than his shortcomings," he reports. "He is an apparatchik, not an intellectual as anyone who reads his book will All agreed the Queen and Mo Mowlam.