When ITV invaded Crimea in the 1990s to film the Napoleonic drama series Sharpe, they were greeted with open arms by the former Soviet Red Army who, their eyes newly opened to capitalism, saw a willing (black) market. Jason Salkey, who played Rifleman Harris, has written a memoir of the series and says that when they filmed in Simferopol, known as Simplyawful by the actors, Ukrainian soldiers were eager to flog them uniforms, medals and military kit.
Tim Bentinck, for instance, picked up some night-vision goggles, which may be useful for spotting poachers in his day job as the patriarch of The Archers. Salkey says the actors bought so much gear the army colonel begged the Sharpe producers to ban it. “It wasn’t surplus,” he says. “The squaddies had left the barrack stores empty.”
The comedian and producer Mel Brooks is publishing his first memoir at the age of 95. All About Me hits the shelves in November. Jonny Geller, his literary agent, says that Brooks felt that now “was the right time to do it — mid-career”.
UNHAPPY RETURNS
The former arts minister Ed Vaizey feels sympathy for JK Rowling, who has been cancelled by The Guardian’s birthdays column. “The Guardian always has my birthday and The Times never does,” Vaizey huffs. “It’s always Jeff Rooker, Jeff Rooker, Jeff Rooker. Every year.” Vaizey may feel he is more worthy than the former Labour minister for Ag and Fish, but we only left him off in the past two years and still note his art critic mum’s birthday. When I point this out, Vaizey adds: “Jeff bloody Rooker.” Next year maybe.
KILLING ME SOFTLY
Conn Iggulden, the author of historical fiction, likes to road test ways of bumping off characters. For instance, he tells The Penguin Podcast that you can’t smother someone with a pillow. “It isn’t possible,” he says. “As long as you quietly breathe through the pillow, it’s completely useless as a murder device.” How does he know this? “I asked my wife if she would attempt to do that to me,” he says. “She was enormously enthusiastic.”
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It took Jane Garvey a while to get used to life after Woman’s Hour, which she presented for 13 years until the end of 2020. “For the whole of January and February I would find myself in the kitchen at ten to ten and suddenly think ‘S***! I’ve forgotten to go in. Why haven’t they rung me?” she says. “And then I’d realise I don’t work there any more.”
HOLY SEAT
We have just passed the 100th anniversary of an odd moment in the negotiations that led to the Anglo-Irish Treaty in December 1921. That summer, an Irishwoman in a shawl was seen loitering on Downing Street. David Lloyd George asked what she wanted and, on being told she’d like to see where the talks were being held, the prime minister invited her in. He showed her where Eamon de Valera, the Irish president, sat, at which she took out a bottle of holy water and wetted the chair. “May God guide him when he sits here,” she said. She then sprinkled Lloyd George’s chair. The PM asked why he was also blessed. “To keep the Devil away,” she said. These days the only dousing the Downing Street furniture gets is from Dilyn, Carrie Johnson’s slack-bladdered hound.
