Frozen peas, fairy lamps and blazing stars

In a box somewhere I have a tape of Orson Welles losing his rag while having to repeat his lines in an advertisement for Findus frozen peas. It seems astonishing to think that late in life the great man stooped to such trivia. But he did and here it is. I didn't realise that the clip was well known until I read about it here.

That old tape also featured an outtake from an interview with Harold Wilson where he complains about a question regarding an appearance fee. I can't find that anywhere on the internet.

Both Wilson and Welles are eclipsed by this recent dummy-shedding performance from Christian Bale that seems to confirm everything we suspected about pampered actors. It has even been set to music.

But I prefer this compilation of what might occur if one ranter meets another.

One other clip on that old tape was the memorable recording of Lt. Commander Tommy Woodroffe's spectacular 1937 commentary from HMS Nelson on a review of the Royal Navy's fleet at Spithead. They don't make 'em like that anymore.

A sign of the Times - Lords reform

"The cure for admiring the House of Lords was to go and look at it," Walter Bagehot (1826-77)

My first visit to the House of Lords was in the early 1980s as a guest of Lord Kagan, the man whose factory made and supplied the famous Gannex raincoat to Harold Wilson when prime minister.

It was during this visit that I realised that the House was doubling as a magnificent Gentlemen’s club for a privileged few, including Kagan who, like Lord Archer at a later date, could not be stripped of his peerage for something as trivial as a stretch in prison. Kagan had served a jail term for stealing some batches of indigo dye.

Sharing a glass of port with Kagan and some of his cronies, I met Lord Saint Oswald, the fourth baron ( the family seat is Nostell Priory in Wakefield), who told me how he had been singled out to face a firing squad during the Spanish Civil War only to be reprieved at the last moment.

Another of Kagan’s pals, a Lord Morris (there are several and I’m not sure which one he was) showed me around the rest of the place. He pointed to some bound copies of the Times and asked my date of birth so he could look up the birth notice. It was inconceivable for this blue blood that my parents might have neglected this social convention in favour of a line in their local newspaper.

I know this is silly but I never forgot that episode and, when our first son was born, one of the first things I did was place a notice in the Times. If it was good enough for Lord Morris it was good enough for my lad.

All of this might explain why I greeted the vote in favour of a wholly elected second chamber with a sense of joy. The patronage and ostentatation is an anachronism that should have been done away with years ago.

The Lords are to discuss the proposal next week. I expect they'll be against it. The huffing and puffing and not "not done yet", "constitutional catastrophe", "end of our great democracy" rhetoric has already begun. I just hope the Government now has the stomach to go with the will of Parliament. There should be no reprieve this time.