Peter Tinniswood
The Brandon
family novels are genius. Peter Tinniswood captures the cadences and
absurdities of family life. Eating is essential to living, and it’s great
reading when an author gets food and shared meals right.
The Brigadier is a great invention. There can’t be a cricket
club, a golf club, or a bridge club without a member who appears to base their
world view on that of Tinniswood’s Brigadier. There can’t be too many parish
councils, village green preservation societies, and boards of school governors
not overloaded with them.
He lives with the lady wife, listens to the talking wireless,
longs for days of empire when people knew their place, and struggles with
modern media. He loves the game of cricket.
In The Brigadiers’ Brief Lives he summarises celebrities,
politicians, anyone in the public eye, from his (probably not so) idiosyncratic
perspective. The Brigadier has this to say:
On Mr Rupert Murdoch:
“I believe he is of
Australian origin.
But I do not hold that
against him.
After all, he is
always seen in public wearing long trousers.”
On Sir John Mills:
“I myself am delighted
that the Ink Monitor [Margaret Thatcher] has personally knighted him.
His mail order
catalogues are an absolute ‘boon’ to those of us who love in the country.
Unlike townies, we do
not have ‘on our doorstep’ departmental stores staffed by adenoidal, hectoring
women with big things on the front of their chests and selling everything from
digital toenail clippers to electronic snuff dispensers.”
On Mr E. W. Swanton:
“Many are the happy
hours we have spent in the garden of my home at Witney Scrotum ‘yarning’ about
his cricketing adventures both as writer and broadcaster…
How scurrilous are his
anecdotes of those years he spent as a producer of poetry among the pomaded nancy
On Prince Philip (after listing reasons why he’s past it and
should stand down, The Brigadeer suggests an alternative):
“Dear Lord, this
country is full of first-rate actors of ‘a certain age’ who would be only too
willing to take on the part.
I think immediately of
of Mr George Cole.
He would make a
splendid job of it.
I can just imagine him
standing up before the assembled peers and members of Parliament on that most
noble of state occasions and saying:
‘Ladies and Gents,
‘I am here to open
Parliament on my tod, owing to the simple fact that due to a cold in the hooter
Her Indoors can’t be here.
‘I thank you’”
On Mr Andrew Lloyd-Webber (in full):
“I detest people with
double-barrelled surnames.
This odious little
creature and his revolting cello are no exception.
He wrote a musical
about some woman who was married to the president of Argentina
I ask you.
What’s wrong with the
women of this country? Why go all the way to Argentina
What about raking up
the Ink Monitor at Number Ten?
‘Don’t cry for me,
Denis Thatcher.’”
On Andre Previn:
“Andrew has a rather
curious accent, which I suspect could well be American.
If this is indeed the
case, ‘the authorities’ should be informed immediately.
It is nothing short of
scandalous that a foreigner should be allowed to ‘wield the baton’ in front of
our great and noble English orchestras.
No wonder the Proms
are jammed full of music written by Huns, Frogs and Wops…
…I am not a prejudiced
man, but if I had my way, I should turf all foreigners out of the country,
confiscate their property and give them a sound and thorough thrashing with a Duncan
Fearnley cricket bat.”
We have our version at the cricket club. We have the
Grennie-dier.
On the Colchester tour, I
went out to umpire. The opponents’ captain marched over, and in full-on grumpy
schoolteacher mode said: “bails”. Just that. Maybe it was "bails?".
“No” I said, “I always walk like this.”
He didn’t think that remotely amusing. He continued all afternoon
in grumpy mode. Talking with the opposition after the game, one of their
better-humoured players apologised for the bloke’s rudeness and ill-temper. He
said: “he just doesn’t have a sense of humour”. To which our Grennie-dier
replied:
“Yes. Well. You see, every club’s got one.”
I experienced the sort of laughter that has you actually
doubled-over, having difficulty standing upright and unable to see for a while
because of the tears streaming down your face.
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