I had been whisked off the streets on election day by my doctor who rushed me up to the Royal Free in Hampstead with severe contusions to my right leg. This was caused by a nasty virus which was quickly taking over my body, corpuscle by corpuscle. The poisons careering through me had made me a trifle demented and I was in great pain. It took five hours to process me and then I was seen by a houseman and examined on a chair in a crowded corridor which was packed with senile bodies awaiting attention - most of them groaning. The houseman said: "You'll have to stay here overnight," indicating (so I thought) the corridor. When he wasn't looking I tried to sneak out. The corridor was no place to be on election night if you are a political animal. He chased me almost to the door and said: "If you leave this until tomorrow, I'll have to take your leg off." Much as I love Jeffrey Barnard, I didn't fancy emulating him enough to have my organs cut off, so I stayed put.
As the election began to warm up my luck changed. They suddenly wheeled me to a private en-suite room on the eighth floor, three doors away from the only smoking lounge in the entire hospital. I had a penthouse view of London and breakfast in bed. A pal turned up with a litre of vodka and tonic carefully concealed in a Malvern water bottle and I found that by twiddling the hospital radio I could get Radio Five, which was broadcasting the election all night. So, full of gallons of antibiotics and vodka things were looking good. And, of course, they got considerably better as the night wore on. I had become so euphoric by the time Portillo was ousted, that I felt rather sorry for him. The last time I felt like that was when Kennedy got into the White House.
But so far I have always managed to avoid the passport office in Petty France, because I had heard from so many others what a cattle truck it was. This time I had no option and was quickly disgusted. This side of Athens airport in July, the PO is by far the most customer-unfriendly situation I have ever been in. By mid-afternoon, they had dealt with 412 people. My ticket was 609 and they were to close at five PM. I'd never get to the till, but no one told me that. There were hundreds of people sitting around all day waiting for attention. But even when your number came up and you got through the first stage, you were redirected to half a dozen next stages, and at each you had to join another queue.
If you try and do this by post the system is riddled with hidden traps and at any stage you go back to the bottom of the "in" tray. Even if all goes well, the "average" time it will take is a month. In this technological age, it is about time the entire passport process was streamlined and made customer-friendly. If you have all the right papers and everything in order, it should be a rubber stamp job which you can accomplish in a few minutes.
Portillo is out for the foreseeable future and may never come back. This was a deep and most unwelcome shock to Scallywag. Without him trying to make a bid for Downing Street, politics dims into an insignificant side-show. Julian Lewis, of course, got in handsomely so it goes to show that a few of the old blue-rinses are still hiding in the undergrowth ready to bring back flogging, hunting and conscription. Do you think it is possible that they will rise up again and sound the hunting horn to lead us back into bellicose Toryism? I do hope so. I really do. What will we do without our daily ration of chicanery and scandal? Scallywag is already suffering from serious withdrawal symptoms.
Simon Regan the writer, however, discarding his Scallywag mantle for a night, grew into euphoric ecstasy as the night went on. It was quite unrelentless and quite emphatic. The people themselves were simply not going to take any more bullshit and didn't they let the Tories know it! As Major and co. came crashing down in such a thunderous tumult, curiosity turned to surprise, and then to pleasure and finally to the elusive feel-good factor which overwhelmed every pore and heartbeat. It immediately restored my faith in human nature, an almost impossible precedent.
As it turned out, Major resigned and this is a real shame because, compared to the others, scrabbling to fill his shoes, he was the only one left with even an iota of decency, even, dare I say, dignity? At least, it appeared, we might have Hezza left, but then even he ran for cover to a hospital bed.
There really was a feeling of national euphoria the next day and in my hospital bed, even the grim-faced matron giggled with glee as she pumped me with antibiotics in the morning. There is not a nurse in the country who voted for the Tories and the continued ruination of the health service.
Will Blair make it? One can only hope so, but if he is going to do so he must do so in such revolutionary style that in five years time we do not recognise ourselves. The Queen's Speech was most encouraging. I hear everywhere the dull ache of misgivings. "Oh, just wait for a couple of years - they'll go the same way as the Tories." Actually, I feel, we have become so completely disillusioned with politicians over the past two decades, that we simply can't believe it might just be different. Okay, so power corrupts, and two decades of labour would undoubtedly bring on fresh disasters. But for now, let's give them a fair innings.
There are some two hundred new boys wandering around the corridors wondering why the hell they are there and just what they should do next. It is not even a sporting chance that at least a quarter of them either have skeletons in the cupboard, or will have by the end of this parliament. That's what makes it all such fun.
Ironically, Blair has the Tories to thank for bequeathing him a stable economy, and that should leave him free to radically change almost everything else. London is falling down. The public transport system is bankrupt, shambollic and a scandal. The NHS needs a revolutionary overhaul. Education, unemployment, the environment, the law and judiciary as well as the whole infrastructure of the welfare state, all need radically shaking up and over-hauling. We need to talk seriously to the IRA. We are in desperate need of a Freedom of Information Act. We need Proportional Representation, a thorough reform of the licensing laws and drastic measures against paedophiles.
In the Queen's speech, Blair promised most of this, and more. I like to think we may even be able to trust him to deliver.
Peter Lilley is making a play for the leadership and it suits me down to the ground if he gets in. Sitting firmly on his bandwagon is John Wittingdale. Wittingdale is an overt bisexual and a bosom pal of Portillo's (holidays together and so on). Portaloo is advising the Lilley camp but by no means overtly. Basically, because he still has ambitions and if he does get a seat he will make a play for the leadership and it will be more difficult for him to oust his old lover Lilley, than any other of the contenders.
One of Wittingdale's close pals is a West Country antiques dealer called Nigel Harts who has also been invited to some of Portaloo's most intimate little dinner parties. Unfortunately, his friends report, Harts is HIV positive, and so is his live-in lover.
Also around is the detestable Tim Sainsbury who has been behaving erratically of late. At a recent consultation group on violence and pornography in the House, Sainsbury and spouse turned up and, uninvited, Tim began ranting and raving incoherently in support of pornography. His wife burst into tears and ran from the room and soon after Sainsbury himself was invited to retire as the delegates looked on in complete astonishment.
You make a great deal of play (methinks thou protesteth too much) about how I have accused you of being gay. To be honest, I could not give much of a toss about whether you are or not and if you are so sensitive about the matter, let's leave it alone and concentrate on the "real" issues. These are what a scurrilous dirty tricksters you have been throughout your clandestine previous political career.
So let us have this public debate right here on the internet. It has advantages for both of us. It is interactive and has no time limit.
I will start the ball rolling by asking if you are denying;
Regular readers will be well aware that Jolly Roger's ultimate pet hate is the new breed of hackettes presently writing for the so-called "quality press" who blatantly bonk their way onto the feature pages through sheer feminist terrorism and who, curiously, all have first names ending in "A" - Petronella, Amanda, Nigella, and so on. Now an absolutely ghastly female called (would you believe) Decca Aitkenhead has managed to screw her way into the editor's favours at the Guardian, which should really know better but has shamelessly sold itself out to the harridans.
Aikenhead has had the incredible temerity to not only attack Weatherspoons pubs in general, but MY local Weatherspoon pub in North London in particular. (The Man in the Moon in Chalk Farm). She claims that the "nice inner circle of pub goers...the discerning drinkers" (herself) dislike all Weatherspoon pubs, which is utter nonsense. What real discerning drinkers detest is whittering, twittering, bickering, simpering hags and vamps like Decca Dickhead.
She writes:
"The whole point of pub conversation is to avoid saying anything at all. A half-hearted exchange of meaningless information conducted by people simply because they are there."She goes on to suggest that for "proper" drinkers like herself there is nothing more "cultural and traditional than the old- fashioned British pub", and cites as an example a small unnamed Tudor pub in the Cotswolds where the barman, someone called Matt, is famous for farting into the Stilton ploughman's.
Delightful! She obviously never got over the nauseating and juvenile lavatorial humour inherent in any Roedean Wannabe.
She naturally blames the popularity of Weatherspoon's pubs on "the trouble with men." For the record, Dickhead, it is these days extremely difficult to find an "old fashioned English pub" anywhere in London, and even those will be dominated by fruit machines, Sky Sports and Capital Radio - all going full blast at the same time.
I cannot actually recall ever having a completely meaningless conversation in a pub with people who just happen to be there, but I suppose it may happen. Personally, I would not even know how to conduct a meaningless conversation, unless it was on the subject of meaningless. But then I haven't met Decca Dickhead who may well be able to teach me.
At least in any Weatherspoon's establishment you can hear yourself speak. I am quite sure that Ducky Decca is one of those repulsive viragos who speak loedly in a squeaky, whining voice which can dominate and distress entire rooms, and that she possesses one of those high-pitched and mind-splitting giggles, reserved especially for when she herself makes meaningless jokes to the meaningless people she so obviously cavorts with.
One doesn't mind dear old Clare Short, for no one in their right mind takes her even vaguely seriously. She is therefore an excellent choice for "Token Fem". But it appears HH the HH is in deadly earnest.
What is REALLY needed and wholly desirable in any new government is a proper Ministry for Men which will protect all our dwindling male rights. We are now a repressed, bullied, subjugated minority, and HH the HH seems hell bent on creating legislation to keep it that way. This is a very dangerous precedent that must be curbed at all costs. Watch your balls, gentlemen. Someone wants to cut them off.
Would you believe that their manifesto is to "giggle, pout, flaunt and coo their way to emancipation?" Leading this monstrosity is the ghastly and offensive concoction known as the Spice Girls. The calling sign of this frightening and displeasing performance is to flash long false eye lashes at anything in trousers and assume a "painless power," through male manipulation. Women are, of course, extremely adept at this kind of sport, just look what happened to Adam! We men are so weak and vulnerable when it comes to a bit of fluff. And don't they know it! I'm all in favour of the left- handed, black, lesbian, fat, hunchback, anarchist man-hater coming back to ultimate power.
At least we thought we knew where we stood.
I have absolutely no idea just why so many people in the more respectable restaurant trade fawn over the despicable and wholly reprehensible Michael-so-called-Winner, (known universally as 'Loser'). He is a fat, conceited, rude, honk-nosed slob, whose slimy, puffy, self-satisfied, ugly mug continues to stare at us from the pages of the Sunday Times every week as he annihilates yet another of his long-suffering hosts. In reality he knows even less about good food than he did about making movies, which was zilch with brass knobs on.
His column began to get rudely eccentric some time ago. Now it is purely obnoxious and I am determined to patronise every establishment he tries to pan.
A couple of months ago James Sherwood misguidedly invited Loser and spouse on a four-star cruise in the Aegean. Loser took great delight in completely fucking up the Sherwood staff, especially the wretched PR girl who had been assigned to look after him and "ensure a good write-up". Loser first demanded his own boat to go on shore; then, when he refused to travel with others sightseeing on a luxury bus, he demanded his own limo so he could come and go when he wanted. Among much other rude and exhibitionist bad behaviour he demanded meals be served to him exclusively in his room.
And then the bastard gave them a reluctant "two stars" for effort, said the food was indifferent, and didn't even write his host a thank you note.
More recently his tatty and vindictive little column reached new lows of belligerent ill manners when he called a restaurant, which he had panned horribly a year or two back, to book a table. Naturally the reception was cool but an unperturbed Loser demanded a window seat - all of which had been fully booked. He insisted on a window seat in what can only be called naked extortion and blackmail. As always, he dribbles the names of so-called famous personalities into the column (like Roger Moore. Sic), who he takes on these nocturnal forays. The first thing he did when taking his seat was demand that the orange juice for his Buck's Fizz must be freshly squeezed in the kitchens, and then set out to shamelessly demean the staff, especially the front-of-house manager into fawning submission.
Well, Scallywag is now the licensee of a pub (The Lord Nelson, AKA Capt'n Cutler's, at Stanhope Street, NW1 3EX) and although we are mainly known for the buxomness of our barmaids and the quality of our ales, and not, I am afraid, for our culinary arts, if ever the Loser dares to set foot in this establishment, he will be promptly, rudely and physically, evicted.
Asil Nadir, as I knew he would, has hired some of the world's best PR's to try and raise his profile. This means in my mind that he is crooked and wants to hoodwink everyone. Otherwise, if he was as innocent as he insists, he would be hiring the best lawyers instead and fighting his case properly in the courts. He claims he could not get a fair trial. At the time of his Polly Peck shenanigans, this may have been true, but I no longer believe him. He is now trying to bargain and the new government does not do him any good at all because he's got nothing at all on them and they couldn't give a damn anyway. He was a self-confessed briber of the old Tory Party - especially under Maggie - and was sure he had, like Al Fayed, purchased patronage. Fayed stayed to fight back, mainly with the same PR's Nadir is using. You cannot possibly ask Blair's government to give a toss about either of them. But, because of this, they would almost certainly get a fair trial if either of them were ever brought before the courts under the present legal hierarchy. It would be very much in Nadir's favour if he were to properly present his case and face the music. A couple of years in Ford Open Prison would probably do him the world of good.
Another proper little shit to have emerged recently, hanging around the election hoping to be noticed, was the poofy-puffy pot-boiling wordsmith Ken Follett, probably the most hypocritical and false of the Toothy Blah Blah "phoney socialists." The sheer extent of his hypocrisy is quite staggering. As a Bollinger Bolshevik he lives one of the most overt lives of naked luxury and his special bolt-hole is the £1,700-a-night Caribbean Jumpy Bay resort where he presumably sits supping his rum cocktails and ruminating about the unemployment problem back home. His ghastly provincial wife Barbara has actually become one of Blah Blah's 101 Damnations. The original euphoria experienced when the Terrapin Tories got so ignominiously ousted began to wane as soon as her victory was announced. If this is a typical example of "New Labour," God help us.
Porno king David Sullivan once had dealings with Scallywag. In fact, at one stage, very briefly, he owned it. It was his distribution company and his printers who got hammered by John Major when the PM began issuing writs like lead confetti. Sullivan very quickly washed his hands of us, even though he is never likely to get a knighthood for doing so. But even though Sullivan lives in a plastic mansion with neon signs saying "plebe" all over it, and his product - mass sex and soft porn - is an expansive confidence trick, I have a soft spot for the fat old, mother-loving sleazeball. I do so because, whatever else he is, he is not a hypocrite. My favourite story about him was when my old NoW mentor Michael Gabbert - another rogue - was invited to the "house" and offered the launch of Sunday Sport. Gabbert said: "I have a very good job with the BBC and I don't rate your chances with a sex-ad paper."
"Every man has his price," Sullivan said, which of course is entirely true, especially with a man like Gabbert. Sullivan insisted: "I've done my research and I am told you are the only journalist in London who could pull it off. So what do you want?" Gabbert genuinely didn't want the job and named a monstrously silly price with every built-in guarantee he could invent. "Done," said Sullivan. Gabbert went on: "I live in the West Country. I'll need a London flat and transport." Sullivan threw him a bunch of keys. One of them was for a mews house in Belgravia, the other for a brand new BMW parked outside. "Alright," agreed Gabbert, what do you want me to do?"
"I want you," said Sleazebag nonchalantly, "to find London's deepest garbage pit and I want you to go to the very bottom of it and work from there. There will be no pretensions. We are the very pits. The format will be sex, sleaze and sensationalism and then I want more sex and more sleaze. You can sit in the bath and make it all up for all I care. I want the most obscene tits in the world on every front page. Our readers will come from the prisons and the barracks. They will be virtually illiterate and every copy of Sunday Sport will be passed around the factory canteens as if it were gold. I don't care what the circulation is and I don't care if it loses money. When I've got the readers I want, I'll skin them alive with telephone ads offering every kind of soft pornography."
The two men shook hands and Sport was born. It currently has more readers than the Independent and if he ever did put it on the market, the going price would be around £100 million. Style is not the word, but I like his form.
The notorious Derek Laud who had to pull out of his constituency because of a drink driving conviction and who for a long time shared the "boys for questions" chicanery with Al Fayed- discredited Ian Greer, has found another client. Prince Michael of Kent, no less. The balding, poor boy, Prince of Chinless Wonders, virtually worthless and definitely talentless, has instructed Laud that he is "on the market" as a 'royal personality' for an average retainer of £60,000 a year. He is the Queen's first cousin and Buck House were not amused. "Rent-a-Royal" is considered to be highly vulgar, but I'm all for it. At least he is not costing us anything. If the lanky, wanky Duke has started hanging around the toilets with the likes of Derek Laud, he may well have hidden talents we have never dreamed about.
It is refreshing to see Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's Prime Minister, facing corruption and fraud charges. He was always a bad'n and while he was in unprecedented power there was never any hope of an accord on the Middle East. He rode to glory on the back of an anti-Palestinian backlash, and obviously paid for his campaign by rifling the till. Good riddance!
It is more than refreshing to see Eugene De Kock, the sadistic official serial murderer of South Africa in the dock answering for his crimes. De Kock ranks right in the middle of this century's most sinister and evil beings. The testimony of his vicious crimes was manifest and given in great detail by his former lieutenants. As always with truly grotesque sadists like this - torturing and murdering on license - his only defence is that he was "obeying orders". As he was the police chief, who gave him the orders, for, say, the time when he shot a defenceless man through the head because he didn't like his face? Did someone come out of the drapes and say: "De Kock, please shoot that man instantly?" This was by no means an incidental incident, but quite routine and when he was accused of it by his second-in-command, he could not even remember it.
If he was acting under orders he must immediately name the person or persons who gave him those orders, and they should also be brought to trial. He either had an all-in brief to "clean up the niggers by what ever means you like" in which case the person who gave him that order should be answerable for it, or he acted unilaterally and this defence is not feasible. But, right back to Nuremberg, I have always wanted to ask the leading question: "Who ordered you?" With Hitler there may have been a proper defence. With De Kock, I don't think so.
I was not at all surprised that it should be Noel Botham who should have been ungentlemanly and crass enough to reveal at the funeral of the late and wholly unlamented Hughie Green that the talentless old fart had sired the equally despicable Paula Yates. They were three of an unwholesome kind and deserved each other. It seems almost beyond belief that the smarmy wannabe TV "personality" should have bedded so many women, until you look at Paula and realise how ghastly his women must have been.
Botham and I go back a long way. We coincided at the News of the World where I was for a while an exposure artist. He was always big, loud-mouthed, incredibly conceited and I steered clear of him. I cannot say that he was not good at what he did, for he was a classic NoW operator and you have to be a highly professional shit to be one of those. We nearly coincided again on the National Enquirer in Florida, a Mafia laundering operation of which I was a temporary Associate Editor and to which he climbed to London Editor, a most lucrative post where he stayed for several years and became rather rich. Rich enough anyway to have bought the French House, one of the great bohemian, gay, 'character' pubs of Soho. That has most certainly made him and his female partner even richer.
Only recently I bumped into him in Gerry's Club, another denizen of underground debauchery, where I thought I would let bygones be bygones and offered him a drink. He asked for a "large gin and tonic - and make that a double" (clearly meaning a quadruple G and T). I bought him a half pint of tonic and he was so pissed he did not notice. Nor did he buy me one back.
I know why he did not. One year during the Fiesta in Pamplona, when all the lads met outside the Uhri hotel after the bullfight on July 6th, he decided to make a dramatic appearance. This particular evening is the only time when everyone in town meets up for the first and only time. You do see everyone again in various states of drunkenness, but the 6th is the sole time you will meet them all together. Most people drink beer outside in the street and these are the elite of San Fermin. They come from the four corners of the world to run with the bulls, watch the fights, or merely get drunk. There are also a lot of journalists, both from London and New York, but also the correspondents come up from Madrid. Botham had planned his entrance to this in fine detail. He had hired a white Silver Cloud and had driven down, with chauffeur, and planned to pull up spectacularly at ten o'clock outside the Uhri where everyone by then was slapping each other on the back in recognition. When the car pulled up and the crowd saw who was inside, there was a collective groan. This is the kind of crowd that is only impressed (in a muted way) once you have been seriously gored in the street. Dressed in a white suit and Panama, Noel presented himself as I slipped over and pissed on his car, whereupon, everyone else did too. As he went inside to get a drink, the parking police towed the Rolls away and at that Pamplona at least, no one saw him again.
It was a coincidence that on election day I was in a doctor's surgery and picked up an old issue of OK magazine in which Banks had written an article strongly advising readers to "Boycott the Bullfights". I respect his views but unfortunately they were completely ignorant of the subject. My argument is that if the Minister of Sport is to campaign vigorously against the corrida he should do so after he has at least properly studied his subject. If he does so and comes to the same conclusion, then he is, of course, most entitled to his views. But he should know what he is talking about. He normally does, and manages to tackle those issues he takes up in a most erudite and informed way.
Yet as the New Minister for Sport he appears to be setting himself up as the bullfighting watchdog who may well try and lead an international fight against this controversial sport. If he does so, then Scallywag will set himself up to fight him until he knows his subject thoroughly. There is simply too much to the whole concept of bullfighting which deserves more consideration than blind prejudice.
First of all, although I have been a keen aficionado for some thirty years and seen at least a thousand bulls killed in rings and probably at least twice as many again on television. I have never until now advocated anyone else attending a bullfight. I fully realise its alleged barbarism and over the years have witnessed much savage butchery. My association with bullfighting is a deeply personal affair and I equally deeply respect those who detest the whole concept of it. This said there IS a defence to the legitimate bullfight and, as always in the spirit of a Scallywag, it is up to us to debate unpopular issues.
First of all, Mr. Banks suggests tourists should boycott the bullfights. I agree wholeheartedly. There is absolutely no point in a casual tourist wandering in off the street and buying a ticket from a tout to witness nothing more than a grotesque circus fiasco. The shameful 'fights' put on by crooked impresarios specifically tailor-made for the tourists along the Costa del Sol deserve all the international vitriol they engender. The Plaza de Toros in Torremolinos, for example, is almost exclusively in existence so the charter flight cattle may visit an obligatory bullfight - so they may say, "well I went along and saw one, but I won't go again". The fights there are essentially held in a round tin shack. To appease the little birdies from Balham and the bank clerks from Bermondsey, they play phoney flamenco and have done away with the horses entirely. As the impresario assumes that this kind of tourist will not know what they are seeing and will almost certainly never come again, he provides young, immature and often faulty bulls which otherwise would go straight to the slaughterhouse as beef. In fact he probably acquired them direct from the abattoirs where they had been despatched from the ranches because in a proper fight they would bring shame on the breeder. No self-respecting bullfighter would ever fight in Torremolinos unless it was very early in the season and he was down on his luck
The corrida season has a stars system in which a young or apprentice matador may gain points with very little danger so that when the real season starts he can show he is "in demand". Also, the youngster will compromise to the industry by fighting in a no-hope ring to please the impresarios so that they may favour him when a proper apprentice, novillo, fight comes up in a big fiesta. He will trade, say, five fights in dodgy rings for the chance to fight just once in the plazas of Cordoba , Seville, or Valencia. Because the bull is so faulty, immature and has not been properly picked, the youth may play about with it and give the impression he is brave. These kind of fights are a travesty and the only way to stop them is for tourists to resolutely boycott them.
But if a visitor wishes to give the real corrida at least a fair appraisal he or she should consult a reasonable handbook to know a little of what is going on, and ideally, read Hemingway's Death in the Afternoon which is now heavily out of date and by no means definitive, but is an excellent introduction to what it is all about. They should then select a big city, preferably during a fiesta, and be prepared to pay up to £50 for a ringside seat in the sombra where at several stages they might be just a few feet away from the action and may judge for themselves whether the matador is a coward, a charlatan, or a truly courageous man who takes incredible risks. In the shade, the matador will bring the bull over, if he is confident, so that he fights directly under the president's box. In the box and the seats beneath it, all the critics, impresarios and real aficionados will be watching him like a hawk and if he cheats in any way at all (and it is easily detectable at close quarters) he will face the utmost retribution. There are many ways in which a man may feign bravery but it will not go unnoticed by those who understand the real nuances of a fight.
It is also perhaps wise to understand a little of the history, culture and psychology of this complex country. Spaniards do not see death as the Englishman might. He is steeped in a history of violence; dry, red hot dusty earth; bloodshed on many levels; and a deep Catholic faith which concentrates lavishly (after the Virgin Mary) on the blood bath of the crucifixion. A proper knowledge of Flamenco is optional but interesting. The "spirit " of Flamenco is closely linked to the psychology of the corrida - a cross between hardship and pride; tragedy and comedy; folk lore and fidelity. The two go hand in hand.
A big city fiesta and an expensive seat, of course, will not always guarantee the perfect fight. But at those prices, with a select and elite audience, an established fighter, and bulls from a known ranch, if it is not perfect it may be because of myriad reasons which will also be understood by an educated aficionado. Absolute perfection in any bullfight depends on so many aspects, even the weather, that only a trained eye can detect variants. The art of observing and 'experiencing' a good bullfight is to be able to watch the minutest detail intensely, without losing sight of the spectacle as a whole. If you are aware of the whole flow of the fight, you must also spot the personality on a bull's face, plus the supreme moment of just how close the man may allow himself to be to the bull. I liken it in some ways to a chess board in which the master player plans his next move in meticulous detail, but will also see the board as a whole as he does so.
A bull may have, or develop, for example, a weakness in one knee, almost exclusively to do with breeding, which means he has to be fought in a particular way. It may not have been obvious until that bull entered the ring. He may jab with a left or a right horn, or have defective eyesight in one eye or the other. He may be outrageously ferocious until he is picked and then may completely lose his bottle and be unfightable. A bull may use his head, or gait, or very movement, in a special way, a trained observer may find immense clues as to just what is going on in the bull's head. There might be a slight breeze - it does not take much - and the wind will cause the cape to flap around. If it flaps in the wrong direction and the bull is following it, then the matador exposes his abdomen to the horn and an almost certain goring.
The defects of the bull become obvious very quickly, it is the defects in the man which are often more difficult to detect. A bull's actions are pretty obvious and he is rarely devious, but a man may use every kind of ingenuity, even chicanery, in attempts to hoodwink his audience.
The crowds in the alto granaderia will only see a distant spectacle, however the bull is being fought. But if you are ringside, or even contra barrera, the second row in the sombra, you may even see the farts wrinkle the man's tight pants as he nearly shits himself with fear. You will hear him shouting to the picadors to stop savaging the bull with the lances, yet give a stage whisper to his ring servants that the creature must be punished further. You will see his fear or bravura at first hand and it will be unmistakable. You will also see whether the picador cheats or not - and I don't argue that they sometimes do - by placing the lance in the wrong location and injuring it rather than making it fightable. A decent pic will punish a bull just enough to take him to the next stage of the fight in a proper condition to be fought. There is nothing more sad or disillusioning to those who love the corrida than to see a bull being ruined by the pic.
One of the great mysteries of the corrida is the querencia and it causes more genuine dismay and misunderstanding than anything else in the "legitimate" bullfight. It is much misunderstood, even by many Spaniards, but never by a genuine aficionado. If, like myself, you have studied bulls on the ranch you get to know they are truly part of herd and are social animals, but they like their own space. As they get older and wiser they find pockets of the ranch which suit them and where they feel comfortable. It might be because it is close to where they were born, or because it has shade, or is near water, or because when they were calves they found more grass there than elsewhere. It might be because it was at that spot they fought off the opposition to become the leader of the herd, or it might simply be that when the breeze wafts in a certain direction, they can smell the cows in nearby fields. Whatever, when a bull has found its querencia even the gauchos will not go into its personal terrain. In a querencia a bull will only defend and from time to time the habit follows him into the ring. If he searches for and finds a querencia he will not charge anything, which is the main principle of the formal fight. He will stand there and wait until the man enters the area and then he will kill. In effect he becomes unfightable and, understanding this, the aficionado will forgive the matador if he merely despatches the bull as quickly and cleanly as he can, But to the layman this often looks merely savage butchery and I have witnessed many a brave bullfighter getting the full scorn of the crowd because they didn't understand.
If however, the bull does not suffer from any defects, but is truly perfect, noble and brave and charges as if he is on railway lines, and immediately turns back and charges again, then the man has no moral alternative than to respect his foe and despatch him properly and with honour. Then there will be a possibility of witnessing the real art and beauty of the corrida for if the man is as brave as the bull he will dice with death by constantly stretching the danger point of each pass until you are inwardly screaming: "Don't DO it. Don't get so close. You will not survive another pass like that". And if he has judged the bull absolutely correctly, and loves and respects it, then he will create an emotional passion in which the pass itself becomes an orgasm which is never quite expiated. You can step right into it and actually experience it. Lorca called it the silent electricity of art - when the current is transported from the creator to the witness. The art lives in the current.
It is in the stillness, not the movement or the spectacle, that the great emotion is found. A man who never moves his feet and slowly, so slowly, allows the cape to almost drift over the animal's back as it passes. It is in that moment of stillness that the truth rushes in and the real emotion is created. The still centre when everything is curiously motionless and animated.
But let us analyse Mr. Banks' words of wisdom:
"Have I ever been to a bullfighting? Never. Nor will I."
If you never go to a bullfight you will never be qualified to have a proper opinion on the subject. It is far too complex an event to rely on half-baked second-hand opinions from people who have also never been to one. It really is like trying to teach a primitive the nuances of cricket.
"Bulls aren't just lumps of meat on legs. Like all animals they are sentient beings with feelings and rights."
A good bull is most certainly not a lump of meat on legs. It is half a ton of painstakingly-bred brain, nerve and muscle. If he is lean. mean and hungry enough, he can turn on a penny. Apart from the shark, and mankind, he is the only creature alive that kills for pleasure. Sure he has feelings, most of them are rage, murder and naked ferocity. If he is well bred he also has a great sense of nobility and pride. He is also an inherently sexual beast who, denied the opposite sex, will often have gay relationships with the younger bulls and God forbid if another old louche tries to take his lover away. If the breeder is honourable, and most of them are, the bull has been fed constantly on good fodder, mainly grass, and never corn which fattens them up too fast; he has gone through various exacting tests to ensure his bravery and he has been brought to absolute peak condition before being released for the fight. He is, in that state, a formidable fighting machine and nothing daunts him.
"The trouble is, how many of us tourists know the real truth of what really goes on? For a start, don't even begin to think that the bull stands a sporting chance. Far from it."
It is true that the form of a proper bullfight loads the dice in the man's favour, there would not in all honesty be much of a point otherwise, but it always depends on the man. Before a formal, well-run fight in a proper corrida, a matador will have served a long and often agonising apprenticeship before he gets to the "real" bulls. He would not survive for more than a few minutes if he did not know exactly what he was doing. Like most sports, there are never two fights exactly the same and each bull is a personality in his own right. If he is a good bull he will never be dominated, whatever they do to him, he will just get angrier and fiercer and hopefully more brave. In the last formal fight I saw in Malaga, a newly appointed bullfighter watched as the brute tossed the horse right out of the ring. Hoping to impress the crowd, the youngster decided not to pick it any further. The bull had sensed triumph and blood and the next thing he tossed out of the ring was the man. He will never fight again. One slightly splintered horn tore and twisted through his abdomen, tearing his guts to pieces. As he fell, the other horn pierced his rectum and destroyed his manhood. It was his first and last moment of glory. It is absolutely ridiculous to suggest that the bullfight is not highly dangerous. It is only the competence and ability of the man which may defuse this danger, and if the man is any good at all, he will do all he can to increase the danger in order to create further emotion.
"The bulls are bred on special farms. More than 3000 are killed in the rings every year. so we are looking at a multi-million pound industry. There are some very fat cats indeed living off these bulls."
This is partially true, but completely misses the point. At any given time in Spain there are more than 120,000 fighting bulls in varying degrees of growth and maturity, probably as many more cows, stud bulls, and thousands of others which do not make the grade and are prematurely slaughtered for beef. Even the rejects have a far more sublime life than their counterparts in any other European country. The cows are left to roam free apart from the testing when they are a year or so old. The cow is a bitchy, brutal, dangerous and capricious beast that can put an unwary man on his undignified arse very easily. If they show the necessary courage, then they are left to their own devices until they are served. They then quite naturally bring up their bull calves until they are weaned and taken out of the nursery fields to grow up with the mature bulls. There is never any intensive veal production on a Spanish bull ranch.
Selected studs who have been tested for ultimate bravery, have the run of the ranch and will have nothing else to do in life but bask in the glories of dealing with his harem. He will live to a ripe old age and be at least a six times a week fornicator.
On top of this, an astonishing ten percent of the male working force of Spain are dependent on, or derive income from, bulls in one way or the other. In Andalucia and in areas such as Valencia (which is comparatively very rich in natural grasslands) entire communities are dependent on the ranches. During the festival of St Isidro in Madrid - an annual 45-day bullfighting extravaganza - some thousands of people are dependent on the ring for their livelihoods, The Spanish government has continued to resist banning bullfighting, not just because of the inherent cultural traditions, but because banning it would award Spain with a nightmare unemployment problem. This is apart from the fact that the beef industry would be bankrupt. Also, millions of acres of unspoilt ranch lands, untouched by any kind of pesticide and with many thousand-hectare fields dating back to medieval times, would immediately be open to intensive farming or industrial building sites. While much of Spain is still a rocky wilderness it is becoming a rich country and is much in need of new industrial space.
"When the bull is about two years old it is sold to the bullring. Having known only its green field and its own herd, it is suddenly put into dark, cramped conditions underneath the ring."
1. Very few bulls are killed at two years old. If they are they are supplied for apprentice fights, noviliadas. The bulls of, say, Domeque or Muira are likely to be at least three years old, probably four, and sometimes even five. Four years is the ideal age. The bull is fully mature and has not yet gone to fat. It is the very fact that until that moment they have never known anything but their habitat and their herd, that makes fighting bull breeding such a good alternative to normal beef raising. The fighting bull lives the life of Riley and is always more than adequately fed and watered. He is raised in exactly the opposite way of intensive farming and he lives up to three years longer than British steers who are often the subject of intensive farming systems and being fed on corn to fatten them up prematurely. If you ride among bulls on a ranch you wander in a sea of seemingly utter and un-varied contentment. If I had the choice between being force-fed for 18 months and then being brutally electrocuted in a slaughterhouse purely for my flesh - or of living richly and sublimely for four years, and then facing just fifteen minutes of organised agony, I am sure I know what I would choose. A one-year-old bovine is ten in human terms and a four year old a respectable forty. It is also a known fact, attested over centuries by uncountable experts, that, even though it cannot be argued the bull gets hurt and injured and is almost inevitably given a salutary and ritual execution, he almost always enters the ring in a mood of conflict. This is a mood in which he actually relishes battle and can draw upon centuries of natural in-born antagonism and bravura. A good fighting bull is pugnacious to the very last and he rarely backs down from a challenge.
2. When a bull has been selected for a fight he is loaded onto a truck and taken to the Plaza de Toros. The transport is custom- built because the breeder does not want to 'waste' a good bull by him getting agitated or, say, butting the sides of the truck and harming his horns. The average truck is infinitely superior to the cattle trains which take our own beef to the knacker's yard. At the plaza the bull is unloaded into a spacious pen with the other bulls and steers to calm him down. The pen is large and shaded and the bull is left there quietly to relieve any trauma which may have arisen on the journey. On the morning of the fight there is the apartado in which the bulls are weighed and selected for each fighter. I confess that, if there is any widespread corruption in bullfighting, this is where it may happen, for the matador's caudrillo may attempt bribes to get the right bulls for their masters. The apartado normally consists of the bull being moved through a narrow channel onto a weighing machine. The average weight of a mature bull at a formal fight is around five hundred kilos. After he is weighed and selected he moves through another channel back to the pens where the steers await him. About an hour before the fight he is drawn into the box from which he will be released into the plaza. Here he is kept in darkness to calm him. It does not do the corrida any good at all to have a neurotic bull on its hands. Or one who has met an un-mounted man before.
"On the morning of the fight, all sorts of things can and are done to the bull before it even gets to the ring. Sometimes petroleum jelly is put into its eyes to blur its vision. Often the horns are filed down to make them blunt and to confuse the bull who needs them as a cat does whiskers, to judge distance and space. The bull knows exactly where the tips of its horns are so that it can attack and defend itself. Sometimes the bull is also injected with drugs to make it disorientated."
Virtually all of the above statement is pure poppycock. There is, or has been, an element of crookedness in bullfighting, but these days it would never be tolerated at a formal fight. For example, an experienced independent government vet examines each bull carefully before a fight. Out of the last three thousand bulls to be killed in Seville, there was only one case where the vet had positive proof of foul play and a substitute bull was instantly provided.
To be fair, this cannot be said of the "village fights" which are far from formal and are normally nothing more than drunken orgies among the village lads. The real crookedness can come when an impresario provides a bull which has survived a previous village fight. As the beast has met and fought man before he is well aware of the intricacies of conflict and is absolutely unfightable. If the impresario is lucky, the bull will gore the kid(s) and he can collect the fat fees - and load up the bull to fight another day.
The simple fact is that in a proper fight it is in no one's real interest to interfere with a bull in any way at all. A good bull is expected to have all his faculties intact so that he can see well enough to follow the cape and charge a well set up and planned objective which culminates in a series of passes. A bull with blurred vision would be unstable and would be chasing every shadow. Very difficult to handle properly or with any dignity. Likewise, a disorientated bull will not charge on a railway line - the prerogative of a good fight. Shaving his horns disables and unbalances him and is entirely against the matador's interests. Drugs do the same thing. An "under-par" bull can become unmanageable and difficult. His very capriciousness - which the matador relies on to create the spectacle - will become sheer confused bloody-mindedness.
No matador likes to face horns that have been interfered with. He wants a bull to have clean, sharp, pointed horns which, if they enter him in a cornada, create a clean wound. Any kind of splinter or "bluntness", if it connects with soft human flesh, will cause havoc in a man's abdomen and is likely to make the cornada fatal. A matador wants a good brave bull which has all its faculties and merely wants to kill him. Also, in all the big plazas, the ring itself has a reputation and a bullfighter who allows, or orders, his bull to be touched will bring instant discredit to the ring. If it was ever detected in Seville, Granada, Valencia, Barcelona or Madrid, that bullfighter would be accused vehemently of insulting the dignity of the ring and would never fight there again unless he underwent a stringent apoligetica.
Anyone who takes bullfighting even vaguely seriously, and in those plazas nearly everyone does, a defective bull is spotted immediately and very loud objections are made to the President of the ring. Even if a bull has not been interfered with by humans in any way at all, if a defect shows up early, or the bull exhibits cowardice or uncertainty, the crowd may appeal to the President to have the bull removed from the ring. During the last San Isidro which I watched in its entirety on TV, there were very few fights where one bull or another was not dismissed. At one fight seven of the bulls were rejected by the President - to the undying shame of the impresario. Those that are dismissed get an immediate pellet to the brain and he dies ignominiously, without glory, nobility or grace. A bull which fights nobly and bravely is often lauded in the ring and a star system is awarded by the critics. To be top of the star system is to increase the value of your bulls very considerably indeed. It is not in the interests of a serious breeder for his bulls to display any kind of a defect. If you fight badli in these places, or the bull is defective, then the critics will pan both in the national press and the breeder and the matador's ratings will go down accordingly. This means serious money. If there is ever rampant corruption it is that the critics themselves sometimes demand large hand-outs to fudge a dishonest review. Even fighters as seemingly honourable as Ordonez regularly sent a brown envelope to the top Madrid critics in case he made a bloomer. Another point of corruption is that many impresarios are rampant homosexuals who demand sexual favours from the young aspirantes in return for the opportunity to fight. The apprentices are often so eager to face the bulls they will allow themselves to be buggered. This is a very shameful aspect of the fights which is simply not mentioned by those who respect the dignity of the ring.
There is a great deal of wheeling and dealing in the bullfight game but it is rarely to do with purposely disabling a bull. It is to do with the financial corruption which is manifest in many world sports.
"The crowds want to see the bull fierce and angry. So, before it enters the ring, it is prodded with spikes. Once in the ring with the chaos of the loud music and the roaring crowd to contend with, all the bull wants to do is escape. It will race around the ring in circles looking for an exit, but of course there isn't one."
Balderdash! Normally at a formal fight, especially in Seville and Madrid, the entry of a bull to the ring is executed in complete silence. Deep breaths may be taken, but the aficionados are far too intent on looking at size, detail, form and style to be shouting. There is no music in the formal fight until the matador has merited it because of a spectacular series of passes, always towards the end. As the bull comes from darkness into often strong sunlight it is true that he is momentarily dazed by light. It is also true that he quickly finds the ring is circular and this is a new experience for him, and must sometimes be confusing. But there is simply no point in sticking spikes into a good bull to antagonise him further. These two reasons make him angry enough, for bulls dislike being confused, and he races around the ring, often full of belligerence, looking for something to fight, and preferably to kill. Never think of a Spanish fighting bull as a pet kitten. He is a well-bred killer.
This is also an important preliminary and short period for the bullfighters and the aficionados for they can find out, say, which horn he may prefer; his speed and gait; just how keen he is to soar into the air with his deathly horns; or whether his legs are sound (interbreeding caused terrible havoc at one stage with the Muiras because for a long time Muira bulls had weak knees and would stumble a lot. This disadvantages not the bull but the bullfighter who should rely on a straight charge. All it does to the fight is make it look messy. Eduard Muira practically eliminated his entire stock and started again until now they are the perfect fighting machines they were in the 'good old days').
"First the picadors on horseback use long lances to try to sever the bull's neck so it can't hold up its head."
It is true that if a picador cheats he can seriously damage a bull, but it is generally a rare occurrence which is never forgiven in the formal fights. A bullfighter who continually allows his bulls to be ruined by the pics soon finds himself outside the inner circle and ostracised by the big plazas. The people simply are not prepared to pay good money to see a bull ruined in this way.
It is also true that this is the one area of a bullfight which remains entirely distasteful to the amateur or unknowing onlooker. But it does have a real and valid reason and meaning in the corrida. The first point of a picking is to test the bull's bravery. If he comes back for more he's a good bull. A good pic will know exactly where to place the lance and just how far the bull must be properly prepared for the next act. It IS essential at this stage to test the bull's resolve and tenacity to the full. It is also necessary to punish the bull somewhat, and this is to do with its eventual domination. It is the first real act which prepares the bull for execution because a matador must go over the horns to kill cleanly and the bull must charge with lowered head. If a bull is a coward he will shy away from the horse. If a bullfighter is honourable he will allow picking to go on only enough to prepare the bull for the next stage. The picador is picking nearly a hundred-weight of pure muscle. There is no question that it must hurt, but it is never designed to incapacitate the animal, merely to try and teach him some humility. Many bulls never allow themselves to become humble and will fight under the most extreme punishment, returning to the fray again and again until the crowd demands that his bravura should allow the fight to continue its normal course.
In an ordered fight a bull must be killed in under 15 minutes kr the fight goes irrefutably into his favour. After that period he will become wise and wary and consequently unfightable. A proper bullfight is all in preparation for the Moment of Truth. As such, although overtly cruel, some clever and modest picking is necessary and excusable. It is up to the matador's sense of honour to decide on just how modest that picking really is.
"Inevitably, the horses are often injured. It's said their vocal chords are often injured so they can't cry out and I've heard of horses being badly gored, even disembowelled, and sewn up and sent back to the ring."
In Hemingway's Death in the Afternoon there is adequate testimony as to the ghastly cruelty to horses in his heyday and, until the late thirties, they were often old nags who were patched up and re-sold by unscrupulous horse traders. Hemingway himself found this utterly distasteful and so should I. But after attending fights since the sixties, and knowing many matadors and bullfighting people, and becoming conversant with some of the real crimes of the game, I have never honestly heard of a horse's vocal cords being removed. Those days are long gone. Even Hemingway said that an unprotected horse - cruel though it was - was good for the bull because it gave him a positive taste of blood and made him braver. But one of the many, many bullfight reforms initiated since his day, have permanently banned this practise and these day a good pic horse is much sought after, highly valued and very well looked after. A good pic horse is provided by the Plaza de Toros and a picador must take what he's given. He demands a good steady mount which will be trained to stand his ground against the half ton of muscle which will assault him. The first real reform, actually in deference to the first British tourists after World War II, gave the horse blankets around his midriff. Now he is heavily padded all over so only his head and tail are still showing. The horse is blindfold to help keep him calm. The pads are such that it is virtually impossible to cause any kind of wound to a horse. It is true that sometimes the bull is so monstrously strong and aggressive he manages to knock the horse over. The horse itself is naturally upset, but at this stage the picador himself is invariably in very great danger because one of his legs is often pinned under the horse and he is literally a sitting target. The other fighters will immediately come over to try and draw the bull away, but I have seen pics gored severely a dozen or more times, mainly through the head. I have only seen one horse killed in the ring (at Salamanca during the fiesta) and it was because he was lifted up bodily and thrown right out of the ring. The injury came not from the bull but because it broke its leg and, like a racehorse, a vet quickly put him down. Fans and pundits of the corrida may be justified in pointing out that many more horses are injured and executed at Aintree during the Grand National than they ever are during San Isidro. To say nothing of the constant injuries sustained by the fox hunting steeds.
"Then the banderillos, on foot, jab yard-long barbed spikes into the bull's neck muscle, causing more blood loss and pain."
The placing of the banderillos, if it is done well, is by far the most moving part of a bullfight with the possible exception of the final passedoble and cape work. Ideally, the matador will place them himself and gains an extra special reputation for doing it gracefully. Flutes or pipes play poignantly and the ring is cleared of everyone but the man and the bull. Often the two opponents are on opposite sides of the ring. At that stage the bull sees the ring only in a general blur, for his eyesight is never good enough to see far. The man will stand on tip-toe and, as the flutes play, he begins to dance gently towards the bull - delicately and with great poise and grace. Some way across, the bull spots the man and immediately charges so that the two pass each other exactly in the middle of the Plaza. The bull will be charging straight with his head down waiting to connect and toss the man into the air. But without changing the rhythm of his step, the banderillo times it so that he meets the bull with a delicate and never ungainly side-step and escapes into the safety of space. Apart from the sheer calm, beauty and order of the spectacle itself, the reasons for placing the darts are two-fold. The actual harm to the bull (unless the banderillo really screws up and places the darts haphazardly in the wrong place due to last minute cowardice) is minimal. There has been more historical controversy about the "perfect" dart than anything else in the corrida, but modern barbs are designed only so that they do not fall out. The placing of the banderillos is not intended to harm the bull but to tease him. He has just come away from the horse which was tangible as a target. Now he charges another target and is suddenly facing thin air, this undoubtedly confuses him, but with most bulls confusion is registered as fierce and belligerent anger. If he is angry, a bull likes to hit what he sees. He will now go into the finale more determined than ever to hit anything that moves.
"Finally, this brave man, the matador, enters the ring and does a few supposedly artistic passes with his cape to taunt and tease the bull. This is bravery? The beast by now is badly injured, weakened by blood loss and exhausted."
If the matador confronts a bull at this stage which is badly injured then he has so far fought it badly, even disgracefully. It can only have been injured by excess picking which is deeply frowned upon. Yet this is the most exceptionally dangerous part of any fight for the man at least because the bull is a very quick learner and is becoming aware of the man's vulnerability. To save his own skin with his own dominant dignity and courage, the matador must judge the state of the animal and his own timing perfectly. While the bull is obviously not the same animal as the one which entered the ring, and while it is admittedly weaker and tireder, it is also infinitely wiser. And it is at this stage that he might enter the querencia. If he does not and is still noble and brave, he is by no means ruined and he will charge at will. The matador will test him out adroitly before going on to display his artistry and mastery. His artistry is based entirely on the dominance of man over a wild animal through skill, emotion and artistic ability. But the bull at this stage should be perfectly able to fight and more than willing to do so. If the matador begins to please the crowd they demand musica and the fight will begin to have a different flow and sensation. Many matadors have invented their own passes or updated often more dangerous versions of others. The irony of the last section of a fight is that the matador must place himself in the utmost danger to create emotion, yet just be good enough not to get caught. It is a very fine balance and only the true professional can properly achieve it. There is no point at all in a bull merely charging a red rag which is removed as soon as he has passed. The crowds, if this happens, will merely start eating their boccadillos and getting bored. There is nothing more desultory at this stage than the overwhelming sound of sandwiches being unwrapped. If the bullfighter is not cheating he will cite the bull onto his own body, using himself as the tempting target. He will remain utterly still and his feet will not move. Only his skill with the cape will finally redirect the bull from his abdomen so that he will turn, still ready and willing to fight again. In this way the matador can create a series of interlinking passes which are all inventive and can be very emotional - building up to a passionate crescendo which he creates himself through originality and inventiveness. A properly executed and inventive crescendo of this style is very like a piano concerto (say Rachmaninoff's 2nd) which builds on itself, going higher and higher into the clouds in a perfectly constructed form until the heavens actually appear to open. You can sit through a lot of mediocrity before the violins soar in the right way, but when it happens, and when you properly understand, appreciate and recognise it for the first time, then it( is probably the most significant mental orgasm you will ever experience and the sheer emotion can reduce you to a quivering wreck.
"The skill of the matador is to kill the bull with one thrust of his curved sword. It is supposed to go between the shoulder blades and straight into the heart. This seldom happens. Many matadors miss the heart and the bull endures stab after stab, hitting vital organs but not actually killing it."
I accept that in a bad fight the bull is badly picked and then the placing of the banderillos often becomes messy and is without grace or emotion. The matador, in a bad fight, savages the beast and murders him rather than executing him with honour. In a good fight the bull is picked and darted well and the matador has prepared the Toro perfectly for the final thrust. To do this he must level the bull properly with its head down and he must cite the bull to charge. No kill can be executed with a still and standing bull. The target is an inch round and is between the shoulder blades. To hit the target properly the bull's head must be lowered and the matador must go over the horns to get the level of the sword exactly on target. This is called the Moment of Truth because the bullfighter simply must not cheat. If he does so, it is a mess and whatever has gone on before, he will cut no ears on that day. It is permissible for the bullfighter to have up to three goes at this delicate operation - but only if he is being "straight" and not dodging the horns. Even the most properly prepared bull may lift its head at the last moment - thereby closing the small gap to the heart. A "bad" kill is if the matador fucks up and misses the hole, often hitting bone, in which case the sword may well penetrate the lung instead and the bull will die from asphyxiation. Alternatively, if the matador screws up, he will sever the spinal cord. This will kill it soon enough, but it is still messy and without emotion. There is nothing quite so disappointing, even disillusioning, as a good fight with a bad kill and nothing quite so exhilarating as a good fight with a perfect kill.
"But often the bull isn't dead. It's a sham. The crowd is ignorant of the matador's deceit. He has severed the spinal chord and now the creature, paralysed but possibly fully conscious, has its ears cut off for trophies. Then it is chained up and paraded around the ring before it is taken to be butchered for restaurants and the meat trade."
This statement is by far the most crassly ignorant of any observation Tony Banks has made so far. It shows he knows absolutely nothing about the corrida. 1. The crowd is most certainly not ignorant of a matador's deceit. If they detect even the slightest form of cheating he will be humiliated and vilified. I have seen hundreds of matador's trying to escape the cushions and boccadillos when they screwed up on a kill. 2. Sometimes, even when the sword is placed perfectly, a bull holds on grimly to his life and this is deeply respected by the crowds. A bull which will not give up, even in death. But ring servants, on the staff of the resident vet, must pronounce the bull irrefutably dead before the fight may officially come to an end. If the bull lingers, one of the servants may place a puntillo - a short, especially designed and very sharp knife into the top of the spinal chord so that the brain is cut off and the bull dies instantly. However well or badly the bull has been brought to this stage, no one wants to see him suffer any more. It is over. They want to despatch him. Even so, I have often seen a brave bull at this magnificently penultimate stage, get up suddenly and award the man with a severe goring. 3. Ears are only cut off if the bullfight has been perfect and the kill honest. In formal fights it has to be very perfect to gain a single ear. In the provinces two ears may be cut. But only when the bull has keeled over with his legs in the air and his eyes have become glazed with death. It has been known for a matador to have fought so bravely against such a brave bull, that he might be awarded two ears, the tail and even a hoof. Far more prestigious for him is to claim the testicles and if he has fought really well they will be prepared that night in his hotel and he will invite any important guests in town to celebrate with him by eating them. 4. The only bulls which are butchered specially for the restaurant and meat trade, are the ones who have been rejected by the crowd. Their death is quite ignominious. 5. Bulls are only paraded around the ring if they have been exceptionally brave, in which case they get an accolade from the crowd which will go on the season's records. Mostly, they are simply hitched up and hauled out to meet the butcher.
Lastly:
"And we are subsidising all this. The European Union gives Spanish bull-breeders £6 million a year and we contribute about £1 million of that. We, you and I, are subsidising a blood sport which would be illegal here."
Virtually the entire Spanish beef trade is based on fighting bulls executed at the corridas. Most of the rest of the European beef trade is subsidised by the EU in some way or another, including the British meat industry. Bullfighting is really just another way of growing and providing beef. The bull trade itself does not profit from the corrida itself, merely by providing beef. Very good beef at that. Beef carefully bred and matured in the wild by Europe's largest "open-free-range farming" methods. If you eat a hamburger in Toremolinos, or a juicy steak in Benalmadena, you are almost certainly eating a former fighting bull killed in the ring.
So, if you really don't want to be a right old hypocrite, keep to the Paellas or the cheese omelettes.
Consider it. If the government could create a system where, if the odds were really good enough, and the winnings consistently high enough, you could do away with taxation entirely by making gambling compulsory. Just guarantee at least 100 new millionaires a week, and thousands of newly rich also-rans, and you could well be not only in business, but creating a whole new "Feeling Good Factor" to really rub John Major's nose in it.
If everyone was obliged to spend half of their entire income on a carefully contrived gambling device, and there was a fifty percent pay out - with the other fifty per cent going to the government - the books would eventually come out in the black for everyone.
This is the most perfect conception for a proper and popular distribution of wealth. I estimate that by the year 2100 the entire population would be millionaires.
For heavens sake don't put Branson in charge of it. I could never stand Virgins!
I once had the temerity to ask Daniel Farson to write for Scallywag. We were in Gerry's Club in Soho and it was late in the day and the gins were flowing. We chatted for an hour or so and I found him erudite and charming. I had been warned, even by his many friends, that Daniel could be unsociable, aggressive, even violent when he had had too much, so I obviously caught him on a good day. It was before he published this book and we bumped into each other several more times, mostly in his Soho haunts of the French House or Colony Club, but until he wrote Never a Normal Man I did not realise just how we should have known each other all our lives.
Everything in the book was hauntingly familiar to me and in many ways we had run parallel lives. My stamping ground was Hampstead and his was Soho. We were both acquainted with the No Man's Land in between which is Fitzrovia. His retirement area was Devon, mine was Dorset. We both suffered from an incredible wander lust and often worked for the same newspapers and magazines, but not at the same time. The type of people we both knew in our youth (he is ten years older than me) migrated freely between the Bohemian arty-farty Hampstead, and the seedy, drunken, homosexual afternoon drinking clubs of Dean Street and environs. To this day if you drink in either, almost every face seems just a little familiar because nearly everyone was once nearly a somebody. If you scratch slightly beneath the surface you will find a poet, a writer, an artist, a former Vogue sub editor, a TV scriptwriter, a bit-time film actor, a ballet dancer or a thespian. Most of them drank too much, some of them were ageing gays; a lot of them had been well educated and had been born into a modest private income. They migrated and herded together in places like the Flask in Hampstead, and the French House in Dean Street.
What set Farson apart was that he was not only once a somebody, but he was a somebody in half a dozen ways, and several times over. He could have dined out for the rest of his life on the fact that he was a very, very good photographer for Picture Post. Picture Post simply didn't use photographs which weren't brilliant so if you worked for them, in England anyway, you were at the top of your profession. But Farson was also a well-known and industrious TV personality, author, journalist and publican. He leaves a legacy of nearly 20 well-written books, an archive of brilliant photographs, hundreds of anecdotes about a now by-gone age, and rather a lot of hangovers.
Until I read the book I hadn't realised that I had known Farson's old man, Negley, another brilliant writer in his day who spent most of his later life languishing in sanatoriums trying to get over his alcoholism. We had met at the Hotel Uhri after the corrida one night at the fiesta in Pamplona and launched ourselves into the Calle St Nicholas, otherwise known as the Street of a Thousand Bars. We drank to the bitter end of the street, and then back up again, arriving in the Plaza Castillo for a liquid breakfast of Bloody Mary's. Always a glutton for punishment when it came to booze, Negley became nourished by the pints of tomato juice and said: "Now I'm going to start drinking," and he was still at it when we met up again at Marcelliano's before that day's bullfight. I did not know exactly who he was at the time (in Pamplona you just don't ask) but I knew he was a somebody.
Marcelliano's was another of the bars where everyone looks vaguely familiar. You could transport it to Dean Street and not know the difference. There, of course, there were people desperately trying to look like somebody. There was always a bevy of Hemingways escorting Ava Gardener look-alikes, but a man like Negley never needed to pretend he was someone else. For Daniel he must have been a hard act to follow, but Farson remembers his father with deep affection.
But there is also an innate sadness to this book, as if somehow Daniel is expunging himself from a lifetime of some sort of guilt. This could be perplexing to some for Farson lived many lives in one and he was familiar with more interesting people, places and experiences, as well as jobs and talents, than almost all of his contemporaries put together. His guilt comes firstly from screwing up so many golden opportunities and I can sympathise. I've been there. Every time he was riding high in any of multiple trades, he blew it as if there was a built-in self-destruct mechanism which took over. A psychiatrist would have a ball game with him because it is as if he could never take that final plunge into ultimate stardom or fulfilment. Something held him back from success. The ultimate nearly man.
It could be the drink, or his overt homosexuality, but I don't think it is as simple as that. That is a cop out. There was something far deeper. Something almost socially masochistic. Down there somewhere is a nightmare from which he never fully woke up.
Yet his devil-may-care attitude is attractive to any Scallywag and he blames no one but himself. He is not maudlin about it, but delightfully self-effacing.
He could not have been Daniel Farson without the booze, which was the cornerstone of everything he did and everyone he knew. But what kind of Farson might he have been if he was not queer? For there is a lot of obvious self-loathing there. I know what kind of queer he was because if you were a war baby brought up in Hampstead, then many of your parents' best mates were gay, but it was camp gay not closet homosexual, And what if Daniel had been born into today's gay liberation situation in which white straight males are almost the outsiders?
Unfortunately, he wasn't. He was born in the age when homosexuality was not just frowned on by the rest of society, but was illegal. That tended to create very strong guilt complexes and was open to wide abuse. Farson was beaten up so many times he mentions it in passing as a fact of life. Many of his relationships were sad affairs which ended in tears. Yet this was all part of Farson the person and this book illustrates that admirably.
My only criticism is technical. I didn't like the book's construction. It was not an autobiography, so much as a motley collection of loosely linked anecdotes and recollections which enveloped each other but did not run to any real form. Despite this, for me, anyway, it was a riveting read.
I think the proper Farson story will only be told in full when Daniel is dead and buried, for surely he has more than earned in his varied and colourful life a definitive biography. Mark my words, one day it will be written.