How many more ‘best kept secrets’ can there possibly be? I ask this question because wherever I go, best kept secrets keep raining down on me.
The streets are awash with them. In the past week, I’ve read that Nelson Mandela’s personal chef is the family’s best kept secret, that Portugal is Europe’s best kept secret and that the Museum Of Archaeology is Cambridge’s best kept secret.
‘Is Jessica Chastain Hollywood’s best kept secret?’ asked the BBC entertainment and arts correspondent Tim Masters. It is a question with no sensible answer. If I had already heard of Jessica Chastain, then that would prove she wasn’t any sort of secret, best kept or otherwise.
On the other hand, if I had never heard of her (which, incidentally, I hadn’t), then the BBC’s revelation that she does, in fact, exist would mean her existence is no longer secret.
The latest issue of The Oldie magazine contains an advertisement for a new book called The Hidden Prince, subtitled Royal Scotland’s Best Kept Secret. It turns out the author is using the term ‘best kept secret’ in its new sense of ‘hoary old chestnut, repeated over and over again for the past 100 years’.
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The blurb’s author then performs a little somersault: ‘Although this tale is not a new one, in fact, there was a film made on [sic] the story.’
In other words, the tale of the late Queen Victoria and the equally late John Brown might be more accurately described as Royal Scotland’s Very Worst Kept Secret.
Two other best kept secrets I have spotted recently are ‘Sex: Ghana’s best kept secret’ (The Observer) and ‘Uruguay: South America’s best kept secret’ (BBC Travel).
What do they mean? Presumably, sex is not all that much of a secret to most of the 24 million people who live in Ghana. In turn, most of the three million Uruguayans must have a pretty good idea of where they live.
Never sluffish in leaping on the back of any passing cliche, Jeffrey Archer announced on his website in April that he had ‘just returned from Majorca, having completed the third draft of book three of the Clifton Chronicles, which will be titled Best Kept Secret’.
Last Friday, he informed his fans that: ‘After writing from 6-8am yesterday (the latest draft of Best Kept Secret), I donned a blazer and MCC tie and headed for The Oval to enjoy a magnificent day’s cricket.’
It pains me to have to break the bad news to Lord Archer, but the title Best Kept Secret is not itself a Best Kept Secret.
Jeffrey Archer, who has already published numerous books, likes to inform his fans of his daily activities such as 'headed for The Oval to enjoy a magnificent day¿s cricket'In fact, quite the opposite: it has been employed by at least 14 other novelists in the past few years, so that the best kept secret list now includes: Best Kept Secret by Amy Hatvany (2011), Best Kept Secrets by Sandra Brown (2001), The Best Kept Secret by Mary De Laszlo (2004), The Best Kept Secret by Kimberla Lawson Roby (2006), The Best Kept Secret by Emily Rodda (1989), Best Kept Secret by Ellen McKinney (2006), Best Kept Secret by Scott Bridges (2011), The Best Kept Secrets by Charles Wright (1997), The Best Kept Secret by Otto Skinner (1996), Best Kept Secrets by Pat Krause (1988), Best Kept Secret by Sandra Casey-Martus and Carla Mancari (2010) and Best Kept Secret by Claude A. Peters (2004).
While we’re about it, next month also sees the publication of Best Kept Secret by Elsa Joseph, which follows the publication of Best Kept Secrets by Jennifer Bacia earlier this year.
This means that with Lord Archer’s Best Kept Secret coming out in March of next year, it is now possible for a keen reader to read a novel called Best Kept Secret once a month until October 2013 without ever having to read the same novel twice.
Having exhausted this seam, the reader might then tackle an endless procession of other titles in which Best Kept Secret puts in an appearance, like Jams, Pickles And Chutneys: Best Kept Secrets Of The Women’s Institute, Britain’s Best Kept Secret: Ultra’s Base At Bletchley Park, The World’s Best-Kept Beauty Secrets, The Path To Success: Famous DJs’ Best Kept Secrets, and so on and so on.
At the same time, he might listen to albums called Best Kept Secret by, among others, Sheena Easton (1983), Slum Village (2000), Lamb (2005), Jennifer Paige (2008), Jerry Douglas (2005) and Leona Lewis (2009). Yes, the secret is out: these days, the best kept secret is one that everybody has already heard.
