Above: from left, Lifeguard chief Paul Maskell, winner of the all comers race Richard Hime and Highgate Lifebuoys chairman Vic Hallums. Left, Jonathan Bindman snapped last year after his swim

AN ominous air of civil disobedience hung over the shivering swimmers after they had finished the Christmas Day swim in the Men’s Pond on Hampstead Heath.
Fortified with mulled wine, some of the swimmers couldn’t help talking about what tactics to use to keep the threatened ponds open and free from the plundering Corporation of London.
Civil disobedience? I caught the word from a source that didn’t entirely surprise me – Jonathan Bindman, the son of the well-known human rights lawyer, Geoffrey Bindman.
Jonathan, a regular for the Christmas swim, built up his strength for the pond, I suspect, from his holidays as a child on a small island by Walton-on-Thames where the family kept a summer den.
However, he had to be content with third place – although some spectators believed he’d managed to nick the silver medal.
But the topic uppermost in his mind was the future of the ponds.
“If they put in turnstiles or gates, I’ll be here with my wire cutters,” he warned .
“And I’ll be here next Christmas, with my wire cutters. I’m prepared to practise civil disobedience – I’ll swim here no matter what. It’s our right, and they can’t take it away from us.”
Of course, it wasn’t all talk of barricades and revolution among the scores of swimmers – who included the acotr Roger Lloyd Pakc – and the cheering crowd at the annual swim where the water temperature was five degrees celsius.
The actual races themselves were close affairs. While the men’s race was won by the former lifeguard Richard Hime, Natasha Cenderowicz, who lives in Dartmouth Park, came first for the women. Natasha described herself as a refugee from the nearby Lido closed in September. She is loving her exile to the ponds except for one small problem.
“I lost my watch in the race as I turned to come back,” she told me.
But this was not the first timepiece to sink to the bottom.
“Last week I was swimming in the Ladies Pond and exactly the same thing happened. If they fall off in the Lido you can always retrieve them – but here? Perhaps I’ll ask a lifeguard to do some snorkelling for me.”

Rhys is cooking up some laughs

Playing the role of the comic genius Peter Cook in a forthcoming TV documentary has had a profound long term haunting effect on the actor Rhys Ifans.
He reveals that tonight’s (Thursday’s) Channel 4 documentary about Cook and Dudley Moore, Not Only…But Always, some of it shot in Hampstead, has caused him heartache when he thinks about his madcap hero.
“I get upset when I bring him to mind,” says Rhys. “It’s strange, it’s like I’ve lost a friend, without ever knowing him. I felt an affinity with him – we’re both tall, like a drink and spent much of our respective careers trying to make people laugh.”
Rhys admits that he even visited Cook’s grave and won’t accept the popular theory that Cook played second fiddle to Dudley Moore in their hit TV series Not Only...But Also. “I find that idea abhorrent,” he declares.
“It’s absolute rubbish. Peter Cook remained a great comedian to his dying day. Hollywood, where Dudley forged a career, means nothing by comparison.”
Cook’s widow, Lin, who still lives in Perrin’s Walk, Hampstead, also approved the documentary. “Whatever anyone else says about my performance, as long as his widow is happy, I feel I’ve done the project justice,” Rhys told me. And Cookites will be pleased to hear that his legacy lives on in the patch he made his home. Friends and family of the comedian are gathering next Thursday (January 6) at Hampstead Parish Church in Church Walk to watch a play of Twelfth Night to raise funds for the charitable foundation set up in his name – and no doubt raise the odd belly laugh, too.

Rhona’s in the swim

HER comedy sets are based on a somewhat exasperated comment on modern living – but nothing seems to have riled Belsize Park comic Rhona Cameron (pictured) quite as much as plans to close the Heath Ponds.
I caught up with her last week at a Christmas party thrown for her football team, Camden Town, and she said she is ready to announce World War III over any threats to the Ladies Pond.
She swims there regularly in the summer – ‘but not in the winter. I may be Scottish but I’m not mad’ – and says she is furious that any one should want to rob her of her favourite bathing spot.
She said: “It’s a symptom of this wretched world we are living in,” she said.
“The ponds are part of our natural heritage and any attempt to rob us of that must be fought viciously.”

Jane versus the Blair machine

JANE Roberts, leader of Camden Council seems to be in disharmony with her masters in Westminster.
In an internal newsletter to her colleagues in the Camden branches of the Labour Party, Cllr Roberts takes exception to the views of newly promoted home secretary Charles Clarke.
Dame Jane, who won her honour “for services to local government” takes exception to Mr Clarke’s view that councils should concentrate on ‘community advocacy’ and butt out of delivering services.
She sees this thread running through council housing and education services. In the new Five Year plan for schools, local authorities will become a “champion” for parents and pupils but “emphatically not service delivery”.
She notes, rather tartly perhaps, that “ministers’ distaste for councils as service providers stems, I’m sure, from the pretty dim view they have of councils’ performance, perhaps dating back to their own experience as councillors in the 1980s”.
The new home secretary, fact fans may remember, was a councillor in the notoriously poorly-run borough of Hackney.
I hear Jane Robert’s angst over over the Tony Blair project is shared by many leading comrades, including finance chief John Mills. Is this one of the reasons why he has decided to leave the Town Hall at the next local elections?