AND YOU ARE-----?

Writing about 'Seyler Disease' the other day put me in mind of a conversation I had some years ago when I was working with the legendary black diva, Elisabeth Welch.

The star who in a sixty year career introduced theatre audiences on both sides of the Atlantic to many enduring songs including 'Charleston' (which launched the dance craze), 'Love for Sale' and 'Stormy Weather'.

John Gielgud once said of her: "You could hear a pin drop while she sang but when she finished, the thunder of applause could be heard in the street."

Towards the end of her life, Miss Welch appeared in a revue which I compiled for the BBC, entitled Hit the Heights, and I had the privilege of looking after her during rehearsals. This enabled me to have several long chats with an actress who had performed with and for the best.

She told me how, some years after her great triumphs in shows like Blackbirds, The New Yorkers, Nymph Errant, Glamorous Night, Tuppence Coloured, Oranges and Lemons and Penny Plain, she was asked by a director - who ought to have known better - to audition!

As she walked on stage, a voice from the darkened auditorium called out: "Miss Welsh?"

First mistake!

His second mistake was to ask: "What are you going to sing for us?"

With great dignity and an appropriate lack of modesty, Elisabeth Welch delivered one of the great put-downs of the theatre.

"Well," she replied, "perhaps, you'd like to hear the first number Cole Porter wrote for me!"

Superb!

And here is the immortal Miss Welch as 'A Goddess' in Derek Jarman's 1979 high-camp film version of Shakespeare's The Tempest, singing - appropriately - the song that became her theme tune...

WHO ARE YOU?

Reflecting on that recent birthday...

One of the anxieties about getting older is an increasingly tendency to suffer from 'Seyler's Disease': a condition which occurs when you are so old that no one in the business in which you notionally work - for me, writing and broadcasting - any longer knows who you are.

In my case it's so bad that I frequently dream that I am, in fact, dead but that no one's got around to burying me yet!

I've named this curious state of affairs (or stage of life) after ATHENE SEYLER, CBE, veteran actress of numerous plays, films and TV appearances and sometime President of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.

It is said that Miss Seyler (right) once arrived at the BBC for an interview and was collected from reception by a young secretary who was clearly unaware of the extent of the actress' career.

"So, Miss Seyler," she said, making conversation in the lift, "what else have you done?"

Athene Seyler looked at the child and replied in a vaguely puzzled tone: "Do you mean this morning?"

BY A NOSE

Being filmed for a DVD 'extra' the other day - and having been horrified by my resemblance to Quasimodo on my last such appearance - I asked the crew if they could film my 'best side'. Unfortunately, finding the 'best' side was easier said than done!

This embarrassing episode reminded me of a story I read in a recent obituary to David ('Wendy') Watkin, the legendary cinematographer of such films as Help!, Charge of the Light Brigade, The Devils, The Three Musketeers, Robin and Marian and Out of Africa.

Watkin was engaged to film Yentl starring (and directed by) Barbra Streisand. On meeting the star, Watkin daringly tapped Streisand on the Nose and commented: "I can see we're going to have a lot of trouble with THAT!"

Somehow, and rather surprisingly, he got away with it-- and more...

Later in the production - in the middle of a shot - Streisand suddenly yelled: "David, you're shooting me from my bad side!"

To which, Watkin calmly responded: "It's not your bad side, Barbra, it's your other side."

So you see, Barbra and I: two of a kind!

MORE POISON PEN-STROKES

Following yesterday's display of vitriol by Dorothy Parker, I thought I'd share with you a few more cyanide-scented sentiments and arsenic-flavoured accolades from Jennifer Higgie's The Little Book of Venom, worthy of being savoured.

A quite excellent nosegay of nastiness, this innocent-looking little collection is one in which musicians are murdered...

Bernard Levin on the music of Frederick Delius: "The musical equivalent of blancmange"

Oscar Wilde on Richard Wagner: "I like Wagner's music better than any other music. It is so loud that one can talk the whole time without people hearing what one says. That is a great advantage."

...politicians are pulverised...

Benjamin Disraeli on Robert Peel: "His smile is like the silver fittings on a coffin."

Aneurin Bevan on Clement Atlee: "He brings to the fierce struggle of politics the tepid enthusiasm of a lazy summer afternoon at a cricket match."

...historical figures are hammered...

Charles Dickens on Henry VIII: "The plain truth is that he was the most intolerable ruffian, a disgrace to human nature, and a blot of blood and grease upon the history of England."

George Bernard Shaw on Queen Victoria: "Nowadays, a parlour maid as ignorant as Queen Victoria was when she came to the throne would be classed as mentally defective."

...playwrights are poleaxed...

H G Wells on George Bernard Shaw: "An idiot child screaming in a hospital."

Queen Victoria on William Shakespeare's King Lear: "A strange, horrible business, but I suppose good enough for Shakespeare's day."

...divas are destroyed...

W B Yeats on Mrs Patrick Campbell: "An ego like a raging tooth."

George Bernard Shaw (again) on Isadora Duncan: "A woman whose face looked as if it had been made of sugar and someone had licked it."

...and authors are assassinated...

Lord Byron on John Keats: "A tadpole of the lakes."

Dame Edith Sitwell on Virginia Woolf: "Virginia Wolf's writings is no more than glamorous knitting. I believe she must have a pattern somewhere."

Finally, here's an all-purpose Arab curse that is seriously worth committing to memory for daily use in any stressful situation: "May your left ear wither and fall into your right pocket."


The Little Book of Venom: A Collection of Historical Insults, compiled by Jennifer Heggie in 1999, is published by Michael O'Mara Books Ltd.