27 August 1980

Sommaire

• Anna Karenina

  25, Good legs, likes TV and Chinese Food

  par Alan Coren
• Poles apart

  Jonathan Sale has an exclusive interview with the Polish Prime Minister

  par Jonathan Sale
• On the house

  It is a source of surprise to me, and I suspect to a lot of others, how this country is simultaneously sinking into a slough of poverty and is full of people who are, apparently, endlessly rich. I don't mean the very wealthy people who drive around in Rolls Royces and have small chateaux in southern France, but the kind of chaps whose pockets appear to be filled with wads off 20 notes as thick as paperback novels.

  par Simon Hoggart
• Transatlantic cables

  The news from New York is that Senator Edward M. Kennedy is, as we had always thought, the real President of the United States. His only mistake these past twelve months has been to deign to seek occupancy of the White House, rather than continuing to run the country ex-officio from the deck of his yacht off Hyannisport, Massachusetts.

  par Anthony Holden
• Burning! with Righteousness

  CH**F S*pt. X of the M*tr*p*l*t*n P*l*c*, who asks for his head to be wrapped in a blanket like that to prevent mobbing by insulted cigarette lovers, has
  stated that in twenty-seven years of fighting crime he's never met a criminal who smoked a pipe.

  par Basil Boothroyd
• More lost operas

  What is known about Wallawasta is very little, which is not surprising, as he was three feet tall. Wallawasta is known to have been unusually pale because of his diminutive size. The scientific reason is that the sun never reached him. By the time it reached all the way down to where he was, he had moved. In 1842 he met the future Mrs Wallawasta, and in 1843, when she bent over, she finally met him. Their life together, one may assume, was a series of ups and downs. Wallawasta wrote only one opera, as, after his first was performed, he was closed down by the Board of Health. In later life he found employment as a Monk. Monk Wallawasta he was called, and until the cops caught up with him, he and his mob made a bundle.

  par Victor Borge
• The Phoney war

  At last it's here-the knee-length telephone kiosk. You may have a job to find one, because it's only an experiment and there's not an awful lot of it about. It's being used simply to see if the British public behaves itself better with its lower half exposed.

  par Kenneth Robinson