The Stage

A party of one

Published Tuesday 24 August 2010 at 10:43

While Harvey might be struggling to recollect what he was doing a couple of decades ago, Sunday Telegraph theatre critic Tim Walker appears to be struggling to recall what he has been getting up to in the far more recent past.

Walker, as well as writing reviews for the Sunday Telegraph, is also the Mandrake columnist for the paper’s daily edition.

Unfortunately, he doesn’t seem to have come to terms with this and keeps referring to himself in the third person, occasionally quoting “The critic of the Sunday Telegraph” in his Mandrake columns. Rather confusingly, the critic of the Sunday Telegraph is, of course, Walker.

Not that Tabard would want to make assumptions about another diarist’s mental state, but we hope he doesn’t chance upon a copy of Malignant Self Love by Dr Sam Vaknin (a well-thumbed book in Tabard’s library), in which Vaknin posits that: “The narcissist often talks to himself in third person singular. He feels that it lends objectivity to his thoughts, making them appear to be emanating from an external source. The narcissist’s self-esteem is so low that, to be trusted, he has to disguise himself, to hide himself from himself. It is the narcissist’s pernicious and all-pervasive art of un-being.”

Oh dear. Of course, Tabard would never think of doing such a thing.