“Beds Under the Reds”
(Academia and espionage make strange bedfellows. But of course so did Oscar Wilde. And the spirit of Wilde would seem to have been one of the guiding influences during those heady, seamy years of varsity shortly before the last war - years when, as we are now only too aware, the enemy began to infiltrate British seats of learning in a most literal manner. ERIC PODE OF CROYDON takes a look back at what went wrong in our failure to counter the Soviet thrust.)
Quentin “Whoopsy” Rampton: Rugby and showers afterwards. Descended from a long line of sailors, usually on Sunday afternoons. Was the first man to reduce dandruff to its present size. His plan to introduce homosexuality as a safe contraceptive for men never caught on.
Quentin "Whoopsy" Rampton recalls those early carefree days spent punting and picknicking by the Cam with wistful nostalgia: "They were undoubtedly the happiest days of one's life. The very idea, though, that Vladimirovich Sovietspy- or Jerry as he become known to me - might be a Russian was at the time unthinkable. He was so frightfully charming . . . gave me lifts to college in his tank, let me try on his fur hat at weekends, that sort of thing."
But beneath the surface a deadly game was being played. In 1934 Sovietspy met William Celery Purse, a second-year embroidery student and the son of three high-ranking brigadiers: auspicious military connections which were strengthened further by an uncle in the navy, Rear Admirer Sir Horatio Purse. After a deep personal relationship lasting close on seven and a half minutes Sovietspy claimed he had photos of Purse winning medals at ice-skating. For Purse, this was the end. His reputation in tatters, he was forced to tell all he knew about British Intelligence.
Again, Rampton claims he had still not begun to suspect. "How was one to know? He was such a frail, sensitive man. He used to catch potato blight from packets of crisps. No, I would never have believed him capable of such outrages."
I put it to Dr Rampton that he was arguably the most outrageous old fairy in the history of Creation.
"Well, yes."
As a leading poove of that period, therefore, what leaks did he know about?
"Well of course we all knew that Guy Rogerson was handing the Russians the Red Army... who until that time were working on the bacon counter at Sainsbury's. And we later discovered that Jocelyn Beddowes was secretly passing them East Germany. He used to smuggle it over a lump at a time inside copies of Bertrand Russell."
Shocking revelations indeed. And were there any others, who even to this day have not yet been exposed?
"Well there was one other colleague who was working as an agent - I believe he entered journalism and became an editor. His name was
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from “Best-seller! : The Life and Death of Eric Pode of Croydon” by Andrew Marshall and David Renwick (1981)
A parody newspaper article from a book collecting many of the best sketches from the late 1970s radio comedy programme “The Burkiss Way”. The programme was a blend of pinpoint accurate media parodies, surrealism and self-referential metafictional conceits, and expertly deployed hoary old gags. Eric Pode of Croydon was a recurring, ghastly, incompetent character, and it is his exploits on which the book is hung. “The Burkiss Way” is regularly repeated on Radio 7 in the UK and well worth a listen.
Anyway, here it’s a parody of the fellow-travelling 1930s and Oxbridge educated gay spies. I don’t think it would disgrace Woody Allen in the pages of the New Yorker, with its sex jokes, and forays into silliness. The sudden ending is a deliberate joke, not a scanning error. I think it captures the various ways that the public thinks that upper-class university types have of indulging homoeroticism, which would only be confirmed by the production of “Brideshead Revisited” a year or two later. The picture they use for Rampton is of W.H.Auden. Who was gay, Oxbridge educated, knocking about in the 1930s, of fellow-travelling lefty inclinations, and even a friend of Burgess and Maclean. “Whoopsy” captures nicely those university-type nicknames, while being blatant about homosexuality. Obligatory mention of Wilde? Check. The ice skater might seem a deliberately silly interjection, but probably refers to John Curry, the 1976 British Olympic skating champion, who had been outed about the time of his victory.
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