BAKEWELL AND PINTER

Ooh ouch yaroo!

I didn't half fancy that Joan Bakewell.

I didn't see this interview - them sitting there with ciggies blazing, love it - but if I'd known then they were having it off even as she sat there with her skirt up to her wazoo, I'd've grabbed a cab down to Wood Lane and sloshed him one as he came out. Right in the silences.

And if I'd known he was bonking that Stanton hag even as he had the divine Joan keeping the sheets warm back home ... I'd not have read another play of his again. Sniff.

Actually, I don't know that the affaires did run concurrently, but I do like the poignant passage about:

"Mrs Stanton did not specify when the affair ended, and when asked if it continued after Pinter met his second wife, Lady Antonia Fraser, she said: "It was softened. Ours was a great, dear friendship and that went on for a long time.

She said they had remained in contact in recent years.

Although Mrs Stanton said Lady Antonia knew about the relationship – and had even once met her – the news is likely to come as a surprise to the surviving relations of Miss Merchant, and also to Dame Joan.

The television presenter described the "turbulent passion" of her seven-year affair with Pinter in her autobiography, saying she was "desolate" when she stopped hearing from him and had hoped for "some intangible happiness" with the author.

The disclosure of Pinter’s simultaneous affair with Mrs Stanton now suggests the intensity of Dame Joan’s feelings might not have been entirely reciprocated by Pinter."

Don't you adore the bit about hoping for 'some intangible happiness' and the suggestion that the intensity of Dame Joan’s feelings possibly 'not being entirely reciprocated by Pinter.'

God that Stanton woman is a horror.

I can only assume she was luminous in bed and everywhere else they got it on.