One of the finest examples of marketing idiocy in recent times was the great Hoover holiday giveaway of some six years ago, in which two free air tickets, to Europe or the United States, were promised to anyone who bought Hoover goods to the value of more than £100.
By the time the insane generosity of its offer finally dawned on the company, some two hundred and twenty thousand people had already taken it up. Many people got their flights, but others had to pursue their claims in court, and Hoover finally managed to wriggle out of its commitments by having its parent company sell it off. This is just the kind of subject to engage the interest and imagination of the former Times columnist Bernard Levin. He is comical about the people who rush to avail of such an offer, but is adamantly on their side: to him the issue is simply one of promises made and broken.
It is the large companies, and particularly banks ("Banks? Try cliffs" is the title of one piece) which so regularly attract his disdain and disgust. But in the Hoover case even Levin is unable to fit in the final bit of the jigsaw: "What did more than two hundred thousand people do with more than two hundred thousand unwanted Hoovers?"
Bernard Levin is, or was, something of an institution at the Times, where his column has appeared regularly for 26 years. These 41 articles, on subjects ranging from restaurant charges to the Holocaust, juvenile crime to the joys of Shakespeare, the state of London Bridge to obscure book collection, make up his ninth and final published collection.
They are for the most part entertaining, quirky, amusing and highly individual. The great joy of Levin is in his curiosity - almost childlike at times, his basic good cheer and, I suppose, his rightness on so many issues, both trivial and weighty.
He no doubt recognises that he is a throwback to a more stately age - one is never quite sure to what extent the florid style is self-mockery - but he can still trenchantly confront what he sees as the horrors of today's age, be it mindless juvenile crime, greed or - a favourite topic - neighbour ly obstinacy: he thinks the man who said good fences make good neighbours may have "meant that stout fences are useful for hitting the neighbours over the head".
The florid style adverted to above is most obvious in Levin's quaint vocabulary. He is often "enchanted". He is sometimes "astonished". He regularly confronts "wickedness". I have not come across any "dastardly" deeds but may simply have overlooked them.
But - fie! Why complain if the fellow entertains? And entertain Levin usually does. He is at his best not on issues but on people - decent people, damned people, infuriating people and obstinate people (". . .we must, however grudgingly, admire that tiresome nuisance called Charles de Gaulle".) And he knows it's not much use trying to change human nature: "One of these days, I shall write a book called How to Give In Gracefully, but it will be a tremendous flop."
But just don't expect to see Levin's points being made too early in these 1,500-word articles. He often indulges himself. Writing about The Scream, he says, after a page and a half of introduction: "But I mustn't wander any more: I must now discuss the theft of Norway's greatest picture." He is, however, in possession of some useful truths, e.g. his rule that says the smaller the quantity of power, the greater the yearning to exercise it. (Think traffic wardens, planning officials. . .) And he has a kind of wisdom too. In telling the tale of an unfortunate man who lost his civil service job but went on pretending to his wife that he was still employed, leaving the house daily until the day he finally burned himself to death, Levin notes that in his case pride went after the fall (the loss of his job): "If that is pride - and it is - let us pray, and pray fiercely, for humility."
Brendan Glacken is an Irish Times staff journalist
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