busker

QUEENLY GORE

I really must nail the spelling of Chip Gibbons' name - 's' at the end or not?

Trey Given wishes him happy birthday but calls him Gibbon, begging the question how well the cove knows him to actually *wish* him bonne anniversaire ... but I cavil.

This post is to salute CG's excellent review of the Capote movie and in particular his modesty in saving his and our time with the honest admission that he was

" ... going to write my own review but when I read Roger Ebert’s review, I saw so many of my own observations about the film in his article, I realized there was no need to."

I've heard a bit on radio and Philip Seymour Hoffman sounds creepily stunning.

I head this piece with pics of Her Majesty and Mr Gore Vidal because mention of Truman Capote reminds me of my own time in London book PR as a lowly step'n'fetchit within the empire of the great house of William Heinemann, housed in those days in Mayfair's Great Queen Street. How the puns pack on.

One of the authors on whom I had the honour of dancing attendance was Gore Vidal for his UK press tour for - I forget which - Burr or was it Myra Breckenridge?

Anyway, I was clearly not thought up to the task for one leg of the Great Man's signathon because an outside press relations expert had been hired to make sure things went smoothly and the right tongues applied with sufficient application to the patrician rump.

Ex-army chappie, as I recall - stalwart enough fellow, who went on to make a solid career of ensuring that top writers got the deserved ink and air time.

Anyway, come the end of a particularly gruelling day during which Gore had been magnificent, he commented on the rigors of waving and rictus smiling and dredging up polite responses to ill-informed questions from the press.

Up piped Sarn't Major Press Supremo with the blithe and merry,

"Well, now you know what it's like to be the Queen, hah ha!"

Sans flicker of that patrician brown, Vidal turned to the assembled throng and drawled,