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Spectator, The, Feb 20, 1999 by Mather, Victoria

In the wake of Louise Sullivan, Victoria Mather asks what has become of the old- fashioned English nanny

ONCE upon a time there was a cosy nursery, a twinkling fire in the grate, boiled eggs and soldiers for tea and a crackly, starched lap to climb on to for a bedtime story. It was a safe world with secure boundaries: the trundle-trundle of the Silver Cross pram to Kensington Gardens, the drip-drip of fundamental wisdom. `The biggest doors open to the littlest keys', `Yes, thank you', and `If you please', and the solid comfort of an ample bosom: `There now, ducky, it's all right, Nanny's here.'

Whatever happened to the old-fashioned nanny? Nowadays the slips of inconsequential, whey-faced girls who call themselves nannies seem to do little else but shake their charges to death. The Louise Woodward case became the grim evocation, for the middle classes, of trying to have it all; now Louise Sullivan has walked free from a court because she was mentally frail. It gives you some idea of the tumultuous emotion surrounding child-minding that both these cases have attracted such enormous controversy. Once nanny knew best; now the hand that rocks the cradle is wearing blue Chanel nail-varnish and clutching the keys to a BMW in order to roar off to the disco.

The scenario of a modern mother is as follows: Mummy is a television presenter, Daddy is a banker, they have an adorable baby daughter, a son on the way, a glorious house in the beating heart of Chelsea, go to St Tropez for a month in the summer, perhaps Barbados or the Maldives for Christmas, and yet they cannot get a nanny. 'I have interviewed every nanny in London, or rather they have interviewed me,' says Emma Forbes. 'I promise them that I will be out during the day - if only they'd take the job I could actually go back to work - and that I won't interfere with their social life. I thought St Tropez and the travelling was rather jolly but so far I've seen one girl who said, "Oh no, been there, done that, I don't care if it's firstclass and five-star, I just don't do family holidays." There was a second who said she couldn't possibly come to St Tropez at that time because it was her birthday, and another who thought Christmas in the Caribbean would bore her as her parents already owned an island there.'

Emma Forbes and her elder sister Sarah Standing had an old-fashioned nanny. Mary Malcolm, now aged 75, was with the Verulams for decades, no doubt telling the present earl to save his breath to cool his porridge and only leaving because she felt she needed a change as the youngest child was by then aged 20. She then went to Bryan Forbes and his wife, the actress Nanette Newman, and remained with them until Sarah was 14. It is a tribute to Miss Malcolm's exemplary nursery and sterling example that Sarah, a mother of three, now says, `If the old-fashioned nanny existed it would be the most fantastic thing in the world.'

The problem is that being a nanny is now a career, not a vocation. Thus it involves career moves. Knightsbridge is not enough; modern nanny wants to take Manhattan too. Modern nanny also wants your life. Emma Forbes's first nanny, highly qualified, turned round one day and said she was off to study to become a television presenter. Then there was the nanny who would only take the job with a PR guru and his wife provided they bought an equivalent house for her in their Belgravia mews. Get real. No nanny wants to live-in these days. They've got a life while you do the baby-sitting. `You have to say, "Do you think you could possibly baby-sit eight weeks from Friday? I know it's incredibly short notice,"' says Forbes. `Actually, modem nanny now likes to have Friday off in order to drive to her house in the country.'

Then there's the car factor: not just whether or not you are offering modem nanny a car with the job, but what sort of car is it? What colour? Does it have fuelinjection? And air-conditioning? It is at this moment that you wonder whether you are interviewing someone to look after your children - your most precious possessions in the world - or a racing driver. Certainly modem nanny won't double up as chauffeur because she is much too busy driving herself to tea with other nannies in Wandsworth. The children are hurled into a soggy garden covered with dog mess from the owner's spaniel (`It's so good for the children to grow up with animals') while the nannies, respectively called Claire, Jeannie and Michelle, discuss their love lives. The going rate for this neglect is 240 to 350 per week, clear. That means after tax, national insurance and the whole nine yards. I do not think that anyone interviewed for a position in, say, Schroder's, N.M. Rothschild or the Bank of England asks for his or her wage 'clear', preferably with a top-up in cash, free holidays and without any obligation to work weekends. To which the sharp answer, of course, should be, `We're not at home to Mr Rude.' Tatler magazine, once the old-fashioned nannies' bible for pictures of their charges as debutantes, has investigated `Why that 20-year-old in your spare bedroom is the new spoilt brat', citing the 50 ways to hold on to your nanny including, `If she decides to entertain at home, you and your husband should slip away early to bed so that she has the run of the drawingroom,' and, `If your nanny gives that side of smoked salmon, which you were saving for a dinner party, to her friends, be pleased that she has found food that she enjoys.'