Monday
As 40,000 people move past the body of Benedict XVI at St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican, I find myself giving more thought to Barbara Walters, whose death at the weekend was announced almost simultaneously with that of the former pope. I have mixed feelings about Walters, who could be a terrible old reactionary in some of her interviews, but also held Donald Trump’s feet to the fire more comprehensively than anyone has managed in the 30 years since their encounter.
The two interviews to watch, for sheer range and entertainment, are that astonishing Trump interview from 1990, and another, even more startling interview from 10 years earlier, with Katharine Hepburn. In the case of Trump – who, one notes, was the spitting image of his peevish oldest son back then – Walters mauls him over wild claims made in his book about the size of his wealth. “You say I’m on the verge of bankruptcy, Barbara …” begins Trump, easing into some reflex weaseling. Walters isn’t having it. Slate-faced, blinking aggressively, Walters snaps back, “I spoke to your bankers”. When Trump counters with one of his meaningless fragments – “the deal I worked out is in the process” – Walters says flatly, “you have $3bn in debt. Let’s try to be accurate”. Shockingly to a modern audience, Trump looks momentarily floored. “Go ahead,” he says with something almost like meekness. How he must have hated her.
Walters’s imperiousness occasionally backfired, or as in the case of her encounter with Hepburn, was unseated by loftiness of an even headier altitude. “Is that why you wear pants?” says Walters, when Hepburn talks about earning her own money and living like a man. “No,” says Hepburn, patiently. “I just wear pants because they’re comfortable.”
“Do you ever wear a skirt?” persists the journalist.
“I have one,” replies the movie star.
“One?” says Walters, and opens her mouth in apparent preparation for a third follow-up question. Suddenly, Hepburn has had enough. “I’ll wear it to your funeral,” she snaps.
Tuesday
We’re working our way through the canon of 1980s kids’ movies and it’s bringing about some cultural whiplash. I load Goonies, the classic Spielberg-produced caper from 1985, and settle in to watch with my two freshly turned eight-year-olds. Goonies once had a PG rating but on Amazon at least, it is classified as suitable for 12 and over, an early heads-up that times have changed.
The first jaw-dropper is the fat jokes, as verboten in my children’s elementary school as firing up a cigarette. Then comes the swearing. Both suck in their breath and turn to me in amazement. “He said the s-h word!” By the time we get to the implied torture scene, in which Chunk’s hand is dangled above an open food processor, they both regard the 1980s as the last days of Rome while I strain to recall what shockers Gremlins, the Princess Bride and Beetlejuice will drop on them.
Wednesday
I allow myself a little generational flex at the memory of what shocked us as children in the mid-1980s and it wasn’t someone muttering the word “shit”. With the death of Fay Weldon this week, long-buried memories torpedo to the surface of a very particular Gen X horror: being trapped in front of the TV with one’s parents during the 1986 TV adaptation of Weldon’s novel, the Life and Loves of a She-Devil.
I love Weldon. I interviewed her in my early 20s and her crispness and lack of sentiment – “most careers are people engaged in doing something that means nothing to anybody”, she said with total accuracy – made her one of the best people I’ve ever encountered. But, oh my, that show. Am I misremembering? Can it really have been that horrifying? I vaguely recall scenes involving Patricia Hodge and Dennis Waterman, but it was obviously the sex scenes with Julie T Wallace that came flooding back this week with the slow-motion vividness of an accident. Heaving bosoms, slapping sounds and – watching as a 10-year-old flanked by both parents, I recall thinking death by any means would be a welcome release – an S&M scene, Weldon successfully traumatised my entire generation.
Thursday
I struggle with consistency where Prince Harry is concerned, flipping between deep sympathy, scepticism, and the conviction that 10 years hence he’ll be back in Gloucestershire with his rugby pals and this whole episode will appear as a dream. Among the most impressive feats of coverage this week, beyond this newspaper’s embargo-breaking excerpt from Spare, was the Mail’s overnight translation of the book from the bungled early release of the Spanish edition, and the prospect of this weekend’s rival Sunday night interviews: Tom Bradby, feverishly empathising with Harry on ITV, v Anderson Cooper’s take down via tedium on CBS. All of which leaves one looking ahead to the coronation with the anticipation of the White Lotus finale.
Friday
In the US, where I live, it’s almost impossible for children to drop all forms of maths until they hit college age, so the flap in England this week about making the subject compulsory to the age of 18 has yanked me back to a prior existence. I would’ve been furious with the proposal had I been at school. And the implied devaluation of all other subjects is revealing of the government’s philistinism. Still, there’s perhaps something to be said for a few extra years of forced learning to tackle lifelong maths and economics phobias, and the commensurate difficulty one can have, a long way down the track, in judging how much bullshit someone with slightly more exposure is serving you.
