Belfast Festival
. . .when invited to go to Belfast, I had no qualms. Once you've done one festival, I thought, you've done them all. I was wrong. Going by plane to Ireland is a slightly different experience. The amount of time spent in the sky is about the same as when you visit Scotland but the number of hours occupied by wandering round the airport is greater.
I was meet by an organizer and taken into the city by a circuitous route. The driver explained that it was prettier than the more direct route. I dutifully admired the scenery but I knew that what she meant was that on this route we were less likely to be questioned.
The organizers of the festival were very concerned that I should be treated well. Even so, once in Belfast, there was hardly time to eat. Every moment until my first performance was taken up with interviews. The press was not hostile but the questions it put to me were less bland than they had been in Edinburgh. I was asked if it worried me that people might come to see me out of mere curiosity. In fact that is the reason why I am watched by audiences anywhere - to see how anyone so wicked can still move and speak - but I replied that the spirit in which the public arrived was less crucial than its mood when it left.
My audience on my first evening consisted almost entirely of women. They were very attentive but were made uneasy by almost everything I said - even though I remembered not to mention You-Know-Who or the pope. When someone complained that she couldn't possible do any of the things I recommended because she had to hurry home to cook a meal for her husband and three sons, I said, 'Leave them.' The whole room gasped.
I was meet by an organizer and taken into the city by a circuitous route. The driver explained that it was prettier than the more direct route. I dutifully admired the scenery but I knew that what she meant was that on this route we were less likely to be questioned.
The organizers of the festival were very concerned that I should be treated well. Even so, once in Belfast, there was hardly time to eat. Every moment until my first performance was taken up with interviews. The press was not hostile but the questions it put to me were less bland than they had been in Edinburgh. I was asked if it worried me that people might come to see me out of mere curiosity. In fact that is the reason why I am watched by audiences anywhere - to see how anyone so wicked can still move and speak - but I replied that the spirit in which the public arrived was less crucial than its mood when it left.
My audience on my first evening consisted almost entirely of women. They were very attentive but were made uneasy by almost everything I said - even though I remembered not to mention You-Know-Who or the pope. When someone complained that she couldn't possible do any of the things I recommended because she had to hurry home to cook a meal for her husband and three sons, I said, 'Leave them.' The whole room gasped.