Is Scargill the one to save the British apple? apple farmers

MY FRIEND Ken has been bemoaning the fate of Britain's apple farmers. Six thousand acres of orchards have been grubbed out this year, and the Cox has all but disappeared from southern England.

This is sad, but I can't help feeling a sense of irony that this group of true blue Tories should see their livelihoods destroyed and their communities shattered by the same government that they supported so vigorously a decade ago when it strove to destroy the livelihoods and smash the communities of the coal miners. I remember having a furious row then with a Sussex apple grower who thought the troops should be sent in against the miners and that Arthur Scargill should be put on trial for treason.

His orchards are now grubbed out and his workers on the dole. If the apple growers want to fight back they should go cap in hand to Mr Scargill who, being a man of immense integrity, would doubtless forgive them for their past loyalties and be able to give them advice and support on how to fight a government for whom the accountants' ledgers mean everything and human lives and traditions mean nothing.

ABOUT a year ago I was asked to appear on Desert Island Discs and I politely declined as I thought myself too young and uninteresting. Most of my friends scoffed at my act of bogus humility and my mother was distraught that I had passed up the only opportunity to appear on a programme she actually approved of. So when I was recently asked again I said yes. Having heard Hugh Grant on last week's programme, I am beginning to regret my decision.

I like Hugh Grant. He's a very funny and charming chap, but when Sue Lawley tried to make his extremely safe and normal middle- class life sound like the stuff of legend, the effect was ridiculous: "Then in 1968, Hugh, you went to school."

"That's right, Sue, um, sort of prep school. Quite fun really."

"In 1982, Hugh, you got an agent."

"Yup, um, although I did not have an Equity card so I had to play trees in rep for a bit."

"That must have been terribly frustrating for you?"

"Um, no it was quite fun really."

You get the picture? The poor chap even chose "Va Pensiero" as one of his eight records. I have a vivid picture of thousands of little desert islands with a guest from each programme sitting on each and the poor old Hebrew slaves wailing away from every single gramophone in the archipelago.

My life has been as dull and uneventful as Hugh's. How I long to be one of those feisty 92-year-old women who make the best guests, and all seem to have been brought up by strict governesses, learning four languages by the age of 12, eloping to France at 18 to take a string of famous painters as lovers, before being recruited by the British Secret Service in the war and spirited to occupied Europe to organise resistance movements, being captured, tortured and escaping, becoming pioneer doctors after the war, widowed in the Sixties, and spending the last 30 years founding a string of hospices. But I am not. Perhaps I will lie: "You were born in 1961, Harry, the son of a local government officer."

"No, actually Sue, I was the son of a British diplomat, posted in Cuba at the time. I remember when I was two weeks old my mother took me to the seaside at the Bay of Pigs , and while I was having my bottle we noticed these chaps invading. Remarkable really."

"In the summer of 1966, you spent a week's holiday in Devon. What was the weather like?"

"Fine, Sue, as it was at the World Cup final, where I was England mascot. I remember Bobby Moore holding the cup aloft and then giving it to Geoff Hurst and holding me up to present me to the crowd. Remarkable really."

"In 1973, you went to a Catholic boarding school."

"Yup, in Chile, where I became head of the student union just before the Pinochet coup, during which I was arrested but organised an escape from Santiago stadium in which several hundred of us got away. Remarkable really."

Hmm, I think I'm getting the hang of this. Perhaps I will enjoy the programme after all.