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I used to get a lot of mileage out of sex (as a public speaker)
In the painful uncertainty surrounding everything these days, there is a lot of cancellation going on, and there have been a few moments, I admit, when I have been grateful for it.
Last week, for instance, I learnt that a fringe meeting to be held at the Conservative Party Conference, on the question of "Whither the Tory party?", or something of the sort, had been cancelled. This may well have been more because of lack of interest than the current international crisis, but, either way, it's off. As I was to have been one of the speakers, I was delighted and relieved: I have been wondering, ever since I was asked, what on earth made me agree to go. It must have been the usual shaming combination of vanity and weakness.
What is the siren call of public speaking? Why on earth does anyone do it? At least, why do I do it? I know that the delightful flattery of the invitation soon gives way to very nasty twinges of self-doubt, in my case at least.
I was rather relieved to discover that the writer Petronella Wyatt, witty and glamorous though she is and confident though she seems, is not impervious to these twinges. I met her just before she was about to give a speech last Tuesday at a Right-wing lunch in the Lanesborough. Although she didn't seem nervous, she did immediately agree that the way one lines oneself up for this kind of thing is very odd, considering that it is entirely optional.
What is worse is that, for some reason, I seem always to speak on rather depressing subjects. And it is entirely my own fault. On Friday, I had somehow set myself to answer the question, at a think-tank I find both admirable and alarming, of whether public service training renders people unfit for public service. At least I'd set myself up to ask the question, but it comes to the same thing. Important but depressing.
Petronella's speech, by contrast, was fun. She told jokes. People enjoyed it. She enjoyed it. But I defy even Petronella to inject some humour into the training of social workers. I am really beginning to think it is time to change my subjects.
Petronella claims that she has two speeches these days, one about being unhappy, which we got on Tuesday, and another about sex. Well, aspects of sex anyway. And that reminded me that there was a time when I used to give talks about nothing but sex. Well, aspects of sex anyway. Nice girls don't really talk about sex. Not as such. Even these days. They talk around it.
It's almost inexhaustible. Sex - as in gender - is a particularly useful term on the pages of The Daily Telegraph, where the word gender is used only in its grammatical sense. Then there's sex as in differences between the sexes and in attitudes to sex. Then there is sex as in sex wars, sex as in sexual freedom, sex as in abuse of - in advertising, or in patriarchal societies - and sex as in sexual identity.
All in all, I used to get a lot of mileage out of sex. As a public speaker, I mean. And it was so much more fun than talking about social services or teacher training. Perhaps I should go back to it. At least one cannot make terrible errors talking about sex or even about unhappiness - one's views are one's views and no awkward facts, or even errors, need ever intrude.
But with ideology in the social services, subjective though a lot of it is, and wildly unrealistic and doctrinaire though it appears, it is quite easy to make obvious, shaming mistakes. And oh, the humiliation. Oh, the withering remorse. We journalists are not as insensitive or even as insincere as our reckless vanity makes us seem.
I wonder how far wrong I could have gone with "Whither the Tory party?". It was to have taken place with some rather heavy-hitting young men, and I suppose that, if in doubt, I could have let them get on with it, in that show-off, young-man way, while sitting quietly on the platform and looking co-operative myself. I know absolutely nothing about party management and party funds, and I felt from the first, only moments after I had accepted the invitation, that this might prove a handicap.
What I had been planning to say was that, although the party itself might perhaps implode, as people seem to enjoy announcing, I don't think conservative ideas will wither and die, because most of them are right. Only the Conservative Party, and Conservative thinking, are based on an unsentimental and truthful view of human nature, and of the realities of the market, and on a commitment to freedom founded on a personal sense of responsibility and duty.
Other parties may have started to describe themselves pretty much like this, but they are deluding themselves and others. They are essentially statist and interventionist. Admittedly, there are some alarming Conservative tendencies towards authoritarianism, which I resent and fear: they have a long and resilient history in the party, and are hard to resist, but I do not think they are central to Conservatism.
No matter how glum or curtailed the party conference is, Conservative ideas will rise again, if only in some other form, because they are right. I have a rather naive idea, irrational and old-fashioned though it may be, that there is something death-defying about truth. So, too, there is something truly death-defying about humour. So in these serious times, I am now going to go away and try to think, for once, of something funny.
The Daily Telegraph | Saturday, September 29, 2001
