The Pouncer exposed

I EXPECTED the angry tirade from older readers at my suggestion that pensioners have never had it so good. But I was shocked by the reader who wants to see rampant inflation "so my money in the bank will earn more," even though he accepts younger people with mortgages would have to pay for it. Ah, the dignity of the elderly.

AND if pensioners don't think they've never had it so good, when was it better?

I SUGGESTED recently that people with feather allergies should take their own pillows to hotels. A reader suggests you might consider taking your own toilet brushes, too. She recalls a hotel stay that was ruined when she pointed out there was no bog brush in the loo. "The cleaner sees to that," explained the manager brightly. What was actually happening was that the cleaner was going from room to room cleaning the WCs with a single brush which was then carted around the hotel corridors on her trolley. The more my reader thought about it, the more unwell she felt.

IT'S unfair to compare the impact of Indian Summers (C4) with ITV's splendid 1984 Raj epic, The Jewel in the Crown. The world has moved on. Audiences have changed. Thirty years ago there were still thousands of Brits alive who remembered the Raj and had spent their summers in Simla. Today, how many people fully comprehend that for 200 years Britain ruled, governed and effectively owned India? In the 21st century most viewers simply don't get it.

WHICH reminds me of the greatest showbiz scoop I never got. As you may recall, Tim Pigott-Smith played the deeply unpleasant copper Merrick in The Jewel in the Crown. Back in 1982 I was sent to London to interview him about his part in another TV drama, Howard Spring's Fame is the Spur. My then features editor, a delightful old socialist, thought Spring's political yarn would be the telly hit of the year (it actually sank without trace). Pigott-Smith was chatty enough but he was wildly excited about some amazing, enormous new TV epic he was making in India. I, sticking firmly to my brief, kept dragging the interview back to Fame is the Spur. And thus I came away with a pretty average feature about a pretty average TV drama and entirely missed a global scoop about The Jewel in the Crown, months before it even aired. That, as they say, is showbiz.

IF you are a celebrity who craves endless publicity, there are a number of headline-grabbing options. You can offend Argentina. You can make dubious racist comments. And easiest of all, you can say something nasty about Liverpool. In his waspish essay on the city in the Sunday Times, Jeremy Clarkson was in effect saying: "I'm from the North but I've made a fortune in London and I'm much better than all these ignorant Scousers." It was a nasty, offensive little piece and the local newspaper duly took offence. Clarkson then did what he always does. He ducks and dives. He goes all harrumphy and outraged. He pretends he never meant any offence. Clarkson has a way with words but no cojones, as they say in Argentina.

THE legendary, and seemingly-saintly, broadcaster Malcolm Muggeridge is now exposed as a serial sex pest, who was known at the BBC as the Pouncer. His niece claims his behaviour improved in his 60s but does he deserve any credit for that? Muggeridge merely reached an age when male lust diminishes, the stage I once heard perfectly described as "being unhandcuffed from a rampaging beast."