There is a problem in reading this memoir now before we have seen the film that it is primarily concerned

There is a problem in reading this memoir now, before we have seen the film that it is primarily concerned with. Simon Birch, the recent, ill-regarded film inspired by Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany, is not even mentioned - suggesting a depth of feeling on Irving's part that he is not ready to plumb. This was scripting a film based on his novel The Cider House Rules, directed by Lasse Hallstrom after three earlier helmsmen fell by the wayside (in one case, literally). THE TITLE of this slender volume is something of a misnomer.

Although the novelist John Irving has seen a fair number of his books turned into scripts and slightly fewer made into films, he skims over his earlier adventures - an unproduced script from his debut novel Setting Free the Bears, the well-known, if compromised, movie versions of The World According to Garp and The Hotel New Hampshire - to concentrate almost exclusively on his most recent experience. Last week Frank Dobson reluctantly said that if the unthinkable happened, he would have to support Ken. So, just imagine: Ken's victory celebrations, the socialist calypso ringing from the South Bank, and Dobbo shimmying along like the bastard offspring of Bill Maynard and Boris Yeltsin.Could life in London get any better?. Vast billboards proclaiming "Not a GM crop from Ruislip to Hainault"; Billy Bragg will take up residence in an outdoor installation, belting out Woody Guthrie songs backed by visiting Caribbeans.My own hope is that Ken Livingstone gets the Labour nomination. Successful asylum-seekers wearing Union Jack turbans would sell chicken tikka masala - with half rice, half chips. All official literature would contain both English and rhyming slang translations (a bit like Wales or Belgium).As for Ken, whichever banner he marches under, the cultural agenda would surely be a welcome return to the halcyon days of the mid-Eighties. No - even the stranger-than-fiction pot-pourri of hubris, sentimentalism and bumbling inanity offered by Jeffrey Archer would be preferable.Under Archcreep, London would be twinned with New York - "because, just like them, we are the capital of the world!" Airships in the shape of black cabs would hover over the Thames.

There are few more yawn-inducing capital stereotypes than the football bore; the drawbacks of reciprocal municipal arrangements with AC Milan and an annual "wear your kit to work" day hardly need mentioning. "I shall twin London with Eccles, on account of their exceedingly good cakes!"Well, he is from up there, somewhere, anyway.Tea dances at the Wigmore Hall and weekly tug-of-war contests would inevitably follow.Tony Banks's possible re-entry threatens a cultural boredom that would be utterly stifling. In keeping with her image of sour-faced self-righteousness, Glenda Jackson (which no number of appearances on Have I Got News for You will rectify) would no doubt twin London with Grozny. Frank Dobson, meanwhile, would be well advised to go for something altogether more cuddly, turning to his advantage the fact that he looks like one of those faux town-criers they now have at Heathrow and the smaller home counties market towns "Oyez, oyez!" he should cry.

Perhaps he'll give them a grant-in-aid for funky gear?In truth, all the aspirant candidates must be sweating cobs over their cultural platforms. And, maybe in preparation for Ken's decisive entry into the race, Jeffrey Archer has staged a pre-emptive claim to cultural frippery to go with the mayoralty, creating a heartwarming picture of a London in which black women dress far better than they used to, you know. The right-on-sister days of politically relevant street carnivals and squabbles about rates- funded pop concerts are long gone. Or are they? One thing that the cat-fight over the post of London's mayor has done is to return a lot of tomfoolery to the political stage. No one has yet promised availability of a recording studio on production of an under- 16 travelcard, or guaranteed space on the city's buses for struggling stand-up comedians (and what's wrong with that?), but things may be about to change. The outlines of a battle over London's culture - surely to be pronounced "kow-chaa" - are faintly discernible. The simple presence of Ken Livingstone is one factor; he is as firmly wedded to the politics of twin towns and same-sex urban lidos as to his Keynesian principles. When it concludes late next year, however, there may be one; the Treasury could turn out to be a heavy loser indeed..

LET'S FACE it, it's been a long time since British local government was associated with matters of culture. Ever since Mrs Thatcher's cruel abolition of England's metropolitan authorities, we have certainly been deprived of anything approaching political colour. It would take much to put right.Professor Kennedy stressed at the start of the inquiry that it would be non-adversarial, and that there would be no winners or losers. It is now an adult ward (paediatric cardiac surgery has been moved to the Bristol Children's Hospital under a new surgeon, where its success rate is among the best in the country).