Hugo Williams’ weekly columns in the TLS were written between 1988 and 1994. He published a selection in 1995 under the title Freelancing, Adventures of a Poet.
They read like blogs. He shifts from appearing on This Is Your Life, when his brother Simon was the subject, to teaching Creative Writing, going to Literary Festivals, introspecting on his condition and so on. He goes to Eton to address the Praed Society, named after OE, Winthrop Mackworth Praed, an obscure poet these days, or maybe I’m exposing a Black Hole in my education. Shelley would have been a better choice but the authorities at Eton disapproved of his avowed atheism. Williams admires Paul Muldoon’s poetry, especially Cuba, written at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis. I looked it up and like it too.
In her white muslin evening dress.
‘Who the hell do you think you are
Running out to dances in next to nothing?
As though we hadn’t enough bother
With the world at war, if not at an end.’
My father was pounding the breakfast-table.‘Those Yankees were touch and go as it was—
If you’d heard Patton in Armagh—
But this Kennedy’s nearly an Irishman
So he’s not much better than ourselves.
And him with only to say the word.
If you’ve got anything on your mind
Maybe you should make your peace with God.’I could hear May from beyond the curtain.
‘Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.
I told a lie once, I was disobedient once.
And, Father, a boy touched me once.’
‘Tell me, child. Was this touch immodest?
Did he touch your breasts, for example?’
‘He brushed against me, Father. Very gently.’
To lower the tone, here’s how Hugo was introduced on TIYL:
“I heard my pre-recorded voice saying Hey, Pancho! Fetch de horses! and the presenter saying: The Cisco Kid of years ago, of course your brother.”
It was an unhealthy addiction watching Eamonn Andrews putting on the Blarney with his victim squirming miserably.