Diary: Live shoot in the Old Kent Road

FACT AND fiction are increasingly interwoven these days, and sometimes worryingly so. Last week, armed police surrounded a house in south London where neighbours had spotted a gang of black youths with sub-machine guns taking up menacing positions in a publisher's back garden. It was a major alert at the police stations in Lewisham and the Old Kent Road, and marksmen quickly took up their positions.

If this was Texas, the Diary dreads to think what might have happened. As it was, the police realised who the youths were before any shots were fired: they were 'models' being photographed for the cover of a new 'yardie'-style novel, Moss Side Massive, due to be published by The X Press, a black publishing house, in October. The sub-machine guns, I'm told, were plastic replicas.

Steve Pope, co-publisher of The X Press, yesterday relived the ordeal. 'It was just one of those things, really. No offence had taken place. But obviously no one wants to waste police time.'

Bobby Joseph, 19, one of the youths involved, seemed more agitated by his experience. 'One moment we were in the back garden, next thing there are cops everywhere,' he said. 'Afterwards we saw the funny side, but at the time it wasn't much of a joke. You never know how things could have turned out. We might have all been blown away.'

FOLLOWING yesterday's news that some beers are to be watered down as a consequence of a change in excise duty, I am reminded of a ditty Norman Willis used to sing when addressing his comrades at the Trades Union Congress:

I'm the man the very fat man, that waters the workers' beer.

Yes, I'm the man the very fat man, that waters the workers' beer.

What do I care if it makes them ill, or it costs them terribly dear?

I've a car, a yacht and an aeroplane, and I waters the workers' beer.

TEARS OF A CLOWN

We all know how litigious Robert Maxwell could be, but I don't think we have even yet appreciated the deviousness of the man. According to Ian Hislop in the current issue of the Spectator, Maxwell won his libel action against Private Eye not because of the strength of his defence, but because of his powerful performance in the witness box.

The tide began to turn in Maxwell's favour after his barrister drew attention to the magazine's Lookalike series (his client had been compared to one of the Kray twins.) The barrister also remarked on the coupling of the Duke of Edinburgh with Adolf Eichmann, a comparison that had Maxwell crying uncontrollably into his large handkerchief.

'A solemn hush descended on the court,' writes Hislop, while pointing out that the Private Eye solicitor was a bit more cynical. 'Maxwell takes out onion', he scribbled on his notepad. The jury was not cynical: Maxwell's performance, according to Hislop, had a great impact on its members.

'I even felt mildly guilty myself. I was therefore greatly relieved this week to meet Lord Spens, the former Guinness defendant, who told me at a lunch that he had spent the evening with Maxwell on that very day seven years ago. When Spens had asked him about the tears in the court, Maxwell had roared with laughter, pointed to himself, and shouted, 'Forget Rada]' '

NOTICE displayed in a decorator's shop in Rayners Lane, west London: 'Our prices remain fixed until England win at either football or cricket or camels learn to ice skate.'

STIRLING SERVICES

It is unusual for the Diary to write about local government - and here's why. In Scotland, the Conservatives who run Stirling District Council have spent pounds 20,000 on a new corporate identity, replacing a logo introduced by Labour in 1984 that featured Robert the Bruce and Stirling Castle.

The new image has five figures representing different services. One has a rubbish bin for a torso, while there is also a shovel-shaped arm and a broomstick leg. How incredibly romantic.

SPEEDY work by the artificial sweetener manufacturer, Canderel, whose new advertising campaign shows a picture of Terry Venables, chief executive of Tottenham Hotspur football club, with the caption 'Had Enough of Sugar?' - a reference to his chairman and High Court opponent, Alan of that name.

A DAY LIKE THIS

8 June 1940 Chips Channon writes in his diary: 'Every night Night Wardens are on duty in shifts at the Foreign Office. Last night, as they were searching the innumerable rooms and poking every sofa, they reached the Secretary of State's room, the long one overlooking the Park, and someone jabbed the sofa, and was startled by a feminine scream. The surprised warden flashed his torch, and found a couple reclining 'in flagrante delicto'. 'What are you doing?' he asked somewhat superfluously, as it was quite evident. The culprits were a young typist and a young man in the cypher department. Surely such a thing has never happened in that room before - or perhaps I am wrong?'