I AM happy – nay, delighted – to set the record straight. You'll have read that before, often, from other columnists. Surprisingly perhaps, never from me. Barnaby Hawkes is alive.
Last week I said that he was dead, recently passed away. In start-spreading-the-news mode I soon had other chums of his commiserating along with me.
So distressing. Until the phone call. "Hello John. Barnaby Hawkes here!" One of those moments whe
n you feverishly look for the nearest hole in the ground and chuck yourself into it.
I knew for sure it wasn't Rory Bremner. Rory could never have done the voice, I knew it too well. "Barnaby," I started, "what can I say . . . ?"
He cut me short. "You don't need to print anything. Except, maybe, a couple of lines to reassure my daughter. She was amused initially. She thought her dad had departed without as much as a word in her ear. Say anything at all, as long as it's humorous."
Barnaby, who survived a year of chemo and radiotherapy, was the long-time maitre d' at the George Hotel's Chambertin restaurant.
"Smooth-tongued, ever gracious. Gone without a murmur," I wrote of him, "he well knew how to run a stylish room."
A Northumberland native, public school-educated, the flesh-and-blood Barnaby Hawkes was talking to me from his Leith home, enjoying his ongoing retirement.
"John, we're still the best of mates. You had me dead and buried but I'm very much alive and kicking and my sense of humour is not challenged. Gone without a murmur? I liked that. I'm buggered if I'm going without a murmur!"
Bottom line for your scarlet-faced columnist: how the hell did you come to bury the unfortunate fellow? Two sources I'd come to regard as impeccable, both local politicians, let me down badly.
As a confidante I am withholding their names. Be assured, they'll warrant a dishonourable mention in my book (working title, Now Is The Winter Of My Pen For Rent).
Afterwords . . . . . "You can't go on doing the same thing for ever" Terry Wogan on "quitting" Points of View after eight years and relinquishing the cushy number to Jeremy Vine. Why not, Terry? Isn't the same thing what you've been doing most of your TV life?
The full article contains 385 words and appears in Edinburgh Evening News newspaper.
