JOHN GULLIVER - On the Pope's UK visit - Peter Tatchell doesn't pull any punches

Published: 16 September 2010
by JOHN GULLIVER

Some things are best left in the past – others aren’t

IT was impossible to miss  Peter Tatchell on Tuesday evening – he stood out in his resplendent bright green shirt, soft drink in hand, at a reception at Sadler’s Wells theatre  held for the brilliant Alvin Ailey dance show.

Perhaps cruelly I asked him how he felt now about those “Bob Mellish” days.

I was referring to 1983 when Tatchell, on course for a parliamentary career, stood for Bob Mellish’s safe Labour seat in Bermondsey.

But his hopes of a victory were crushed by a rancorous smear campaign run by the tabloids suggesting he was a homosexual – a taboo lifestyle  in the 1980s. His Lib-Dem opponent, Simon Hughes, sniped from the sidelines, and grabbed the seat. He then rose higher and higher, while Tatchell’s career sank.

Well, did he still think of those days?

“That’s all forgotten now,” said Tatchell, obviously a saintly, forgiving man!

On Friday, Tatchell gave a talk at Camden Girls’ School on the Pope’s visit.

Viewers of his documentary on C4 on Tuesday would know he thinks the Pope has covered up child abuse crimes by Catholic priests in Europe and the US.

But I thought he probably went too far when he described how the Pope had “form” in covering up the past.

Surely, I asked him, the word “form” has a connotation of criminality – hadn’t he gone too far?

He pulled a face as if to say that is how he felt about the Pope.

Tatchell isn’t known nowadays to pull his punches.

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Oliver Cox just wanted to give some more

THE venue was fitting: Lauderdale House in Highgate was packed at the weekend by friends and family of the late, great architect and artist Oliver Cox.  

Those who came to honour his memory met in a building that he helped save for the public. 

Oliver died in the Spring and among those at the memorial were film director Ken Loach, the British Library’s head of maps Peter Barber, the New Journal’s music critic Sebastian Taylor, architect Leonard Mennasseh and artist Liam Hanley. 

Oliver had drawn up plans and pictures as well as lobbying for funds to save Lauderdale House for public in the 1970s.

The building had been devastated by a fire when it was under the ownership of the GLC and looked set to be sold off – until Oliver, backed by his wife Jean, a Labour councillor, helped run a campaign to safeguard its future. 

Among those at the memorial was Jamaican architect Peter Francis. 

Oliver and his wife Jean had a long relationship with the island, having helped build social housing there and also worked for many years on a project to rebuild the historic town of Port Royal. 

Peter spoke of Oliver’s continuing dedication to projects in the Caribbean, long after he was supposed to have retired. 

“Oliver got to work in earnest when he was meant to be slowing down – he gave 30 years of his retirement to helping people in Jamaica,” he told me.

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Libyan’s latest bookshop down England’s Lane

STAFF toasted a new independent bookshop last night (Wednesday) with the resounding message that, despite the internet, the book is far from dead. 

“A book is an intimate object you might hold for 30 hours several times in your life,” Graeme Estry, manager of England’s Lane Books, told me at the opening party for the Belsize Park shop. 

The new store is a sibling of West End Lane Books in West Hamp­stead and Queen’s Park Books. The shops are owned by the Libyan Fergiani family, whose association with book­sel­ling goes back  to the 1940s. Mohammed Fergiani, now 87, ran  a bookshop and publishing company in Tripoli before he moved to London in the 1970s because of repression by Gaddafi’s regime. 

He made money in real estate but his son Ghassan told me books were his real love –  and he revealed that the family were considering opening yet more independent bookshops in the area.

Rather than having a top-down ordering sys­tem, staff at the shops are given the freedom to buy in titles that interest them. “We know our stock,” said Graeme Estry. “That can’t be said for the big booksellers as they have such a high turnover of staff.”

The shop will host a series of events with writers, including readings by Gruffalo author Julia Donaldson on September 27 and Idler writer Tom Hod­gkinson on October 7.