Bivalves, crustaceans and the future of public service broadcasting

For historians tracking the current animus between the Daily Mail and the BBC, I offer this para from columnist Simon Heffer's tribute to his friend Lord McAlpine, published earlier in the week, about the time in the mid-70s when McAlpine was a Tory party treasurer and Chris Patten, BBC chairman, was Director of the Conservative Research Department.

He fell out with Chris Patten early on, suspecting his loyalties, and making a judgment about Patten’s character that he never reversed. He took a low view of him because of the greedy way in which he had seen Patten vacuum up the oysters at the lavish parties McAlpine used to give at party conferences — and said that Patten’s subsequent conduct bore out his view.

It's interesting how Heffer's memory has evolved - the oysters, as recalled previously in 2012, were at a lunch a deux. 

....there were personal as well as political differences between the men. In McAlpine’s 1997 memoirs Once A Jolly Bagman, he recalls asking Patten to lunch at The Dorchester hotel shortly after becoming treasurer. ‘I can remember him tucking into a plate of oysters,’ he wrote, ‘his blond forelock falling forward, hiding both his face and the oyster that he was eating.’ 

McAlpine found this significant. ‘You can always tell the character of a man when he eats oysters, and I marked Patten down as greedy.’  

Bruce Anderson, in his McAlpine tribute in the Telegraph, reveals others may have been greedy but were clearly forgiven.

Every year, Alistair would give late-night parties at the party conference. Tables would strain under the weight of lobsters, langoustines and oysters. Gordon Reece could not have drunk all the fizz: Alistair still had plenty left. Alexander Hesketh and Nicholas Soames would try to break the world crustacean-eating record that they had set the previous year. Denis Thatcher would usually be there, on scotch rather than champagne, discoursing on favourite topics such as sporting links with South Africa and crime in south London: somehow, he thought that there was a connection.