Half a century ago this week, I left school in Scotland and travelled to Worcester College, Oxford for an interview to read politics, philosophy and economics. I can still picture the trio of scary dons who quizzed me: the grumpy political historian ‘Copper’ LeMay; the deeply obscure philosopher Michael Hinton; and Dick Smethurst, a jovial left-leaning economist, in and out of Downing Street in Harold Wilson’s years, later a popular provost of the college.

It was Smethurst who kicked off with ‘What makes you mad?’, to which I gave the 1972 equivalent of a full-woke answer about human injustice – though the truth, then and now, is that I’m rarely moved to anger; more often to quizzical regret, whether at financial folly, executive greed or state incompetence. Smethurst who three-and-a-half years later, in my last end-of-term appraisal in front of the then provost Lord Franks, summed me up as ‘uncomfortable with economic models but fluent at describing the world as it is…’. Fair comment. But I bridled at his next shot: ‘…and the sort of undergraduate who was supposed to have been abolished by the 1944 Education Act.’

He may have been referring to my presidency of the riotous college dining club. But I’m forever grateful to wise Oliver Franks – ex-Whitehall mandarin, Washington ambassador and City chairman – for defending me as ‘a valuable member of our community who has clearly enjoyed his time here’. I certainly had. More on college life in a moment.

Defending the City

Back to the interview. After a brief tussle on Hegelian synthesis – clearly in Hinton’s view far above my pay grade – it was over to Smethurst again for: ‘What do you want to do in life?’ To which I said: ‘I want to write for The Spectator.’

It has been the great joy of my life to have fulfilled that ambition and it occurred to me to look up what I had been reading to provoke it. Our financial columnist from October 1953 until his death, aged 85, in May 1979 was Nicholas Davenport – and I’m delighted to find that in the issue preceding the interview he offered a vigorous defence of the City against recent attacks by the BBC and left-leaning economists: ‘We all know that there are roguish people about who will abuse the freedom of a market… but we must not forget that in any sophisticated capitalist system the stock exchange is the essential hub… it provides the free capital market where the savings of the community are converted into the investment required for the growth of the economy… The City badly needs to be both better controlled and better understood; its economic importance… is simply not appreciated by the left.’ Hear hear. I might have written that myself.

Apostolic succession

Davenport was a disciple of Keynes, a bon viveur and (in his own phrase) a ‘City radical’. He was briefly followed in 1981 by a column from the buccaneering financier Tony Rudd, father of politician Amber and PR wizard Roland; then in June 1984 by Christopher Fildes’s peerless ‘City and Suburban’, which made more than a thousand appearances before the baton passed to me. ‘Any Other Business’ reached its 17th birthday in September.

I never met the effervescent Davenport but I’m sure I would have liked him – and something akin to an apostolic succession was achieved at The Spectator’s Doughty Street house in the early 2000s when Christopher and I lunched with Davenport’s elegant widow Olga – who as the actress Olga Edwardes had appeared with Alastair Sim in the classic 1951 film Scrooge, playing the wife of Scrooge’s nephew Fred.

If I’m still here in October, we will have covered seven decades between just three hands and a little extra help. My own judgments, jokes and City snippets often consciously echo my great predecessors. All I’ve added to the formula is the occasional restaurant tip.

It’s behind you!

More of those in the new year. Meanwhile, I’d like to have told you about my second Worcester entrance interview – but it never happened. In 2019 I applied for the post of provost, vacated by the Shakespearian scholar Sir Jonathan Bate after some turbulence in the governing body. I wasn’t joking and wasn’t unqualified, having done ten years as deputy chair of a bigger college elsewhere: I’m sure I knew more about governance and finance than the BBC apparatchiks and Guardianistas who habitually ease into Oxbridge head-of-house jobs.

My letter was politely acknowledged by acting provost ‘Red Kate’ Tunstall (she who tried to ban the saying of grace and championed the university campaign to topple Oriel’s Rhodes statue) with an indication that headhunters would be in touch. They weren’t, but when I heard a whisper that interviews were in progress I sent a jaunty email: ‘I’m in Oxford today, would you like me to pop round for a chat?’

Ah no, replied the headhunter, having first claimed my application had been mislaid. Then she came clean, explaining that my CV really didn’t match the governing body’s brief for shortlist candidates, which was overwhelmingly concerned with diversity, equality and inclusion. So no chance to improvise a full-woke update on human injustice, nor even to deliver my killer line: ‘Don’t you know I’m one of Yorkshire’s top amateur pantomime dames? How diverse and inclusive is that?’

I’ve just finished a run as Aunty Em in The Wizard of Oz and I can also say ‘Hear hear’ to Robert Gore-Langton’s tribute to the genre in arts. Kind, funny, earthy, cross-generational and gender-fluid without fuss, it’s a place where good defeats evil and all endings are happy: a perfect antidote to the miserabilist hypersensitivities of today. Staging pantomime is also a superb exercise in teamwork, ideal training for turbulent governing bodies. If they’d picked me for provost, I’d have made panto compulsory.

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