The Varnished Untruth

by Stephenson, Pamela

  I remember being absolutely bewildered, terrified, frantic and desperate during that season, and I’m not even sure how I survived it. Especially without Billy being around. I remember looking down at the street from my office window on the 17th floor and thinking, ‘I understand why stressed Manhattan executives often decide to jump.’

  You became . . . suicidal?

  I thought about it. But Daisy always grounded me. I had to stay strong for her. I decided that the only way I could survive – professionally – was to find a niche for myself into which no one else could fit. That niche turned out to be rock parodies. I took on Madonna, Cyndi Lauper, Billy Idol – thankfully, my efforts were so well received I remember the co-producer saying to me, ‘So, you gonna put another nail in rock ’n’ roll’s coffin again this week?’

  I created a toothy, unintelligible British character with red hair and buck teeth that Americans found hilarious because it supported their impression of weird Britishness, and I played a huge range of American characters, from Lauren Bacall to Nancy Reagan, but the process of the show always seemed unwieldy and terrifyingly haphazard. There was really no time to learn lines – most people read them off cue cards on the night – which seemed amateurish to me. How I missed having a decent rehearsal period – not to mention the far superior BBC makeup and costume department!

  I even managed to do some of my more outrageous material on American television, such as a series of sketches wearing giant, moving breasts . . .

  Breasts yet again . . . ?

  I know, I know, but these were funny. In the first sketch, I spoke directly to the camera and introduced the men of America to my chest, pointing out the various features. Since this was American television, I had to refer to my nipples as the ‘twiddly bits on the end’; although Billy Crystal, in the same episode, was allowed to say ‘nipples’ in his opening monologue. Different rules for boys and girls? Ahhh! (I spent a considerable amount of time negotiating with the censors at various points during that run.) But, anyway, in that first sketch I introduced my body and attested to my normality but soon, my left fake breast began to move up and down. People shrieked. Then it started jiggling fast and, eventually, it took control of me, whirling me round and finally flipping me right over my desk. It was a nice piece of physical comedy that was well received and lead to follow-up sketches. In fact, I was shocked to learn that, many years later, Britney Spears did something very similar when she hosted the show – probably wearing my ‘moving tit contraption’ that I’d left behind in the wardrobe department (you can see her bit on YouTube). Or perhaps hers were digitally animated, which sadly wasn’t an option in my day!

  Pamela I’m sorry to be so . . . Freudian, but I can’t help pointing out that breasts – the shape, size, deflation, humour and baring of them – is an omnipresent theme in your life. Put that together with your deeply troubling mother issues and, well, you know where I’m going with this . . . ?

  Once again, doctor, your brilliance astounds me. If breasts represent my relationship with my mother, my SNL tits sketch was a dynamic re-enactment of maternal control. OMG – what about that time I held a seance with them? Was I unconsciously harbouring thoughts of matricide?

  Probably . . .

  Oh man. And I made such a big deal of it when Billy had his nipples pierced on Father’s Day!

  Saturday Night Live became a hit show again, and that was gratifying for everyone who worked on it. But it was shockingly stressful and, as a new mother, my focus really had to be on Daisy and the rest of my family. I lived between Rockefeller Plaza and my small apartment on 71st Street. Billy commuted between London and New York, and Jamie and Cara flew out whenever school breaks allowed it. Everyone was relieved when the season ended and we settled back to life in London.

  Amy was born in July 1986, and Scarlett turned up two years later. It was a happy time. To my surprise, I discovered that I really loved being a mum. It was as if I now had the opportunity to be the kind of mother I would have wanted for myself.

  Billy and I enjoyed entertaining and loved getting together with pals, first at the Fish Factory, then in Bray, and finally in Winkfield, after we moved out of London. It was good to have a place where the kids had more room to roam around the garden. We painted the walls in mad colours and filled the place with rock ’n’ roll art. We had front gates designed to look like the Sydney Harbour Bridge, and the walls of our dining room were painted to resemble the grassy stripes of a freshly mowed lawn. We even had a bed with a built-in alarm clock that triggered small aeroplanes zooming round it to the tune of ‘Those Magnificent Men’. Oh yes, we were a zany duo.

  But it was lovely to be able to spy a fox out of our bedroom window and have picnics on the lawn. Once novelist Kathy Lette turned up and we all had high tea dressed up in crazy frocks I’d worn for various performing events – frothy ball gowns in funky prints, marrying leopard with tartan and lace. Strangely enough, that look recently came into fashion, but back then it was an affront. It appealed to the fashion disaster in me.

  When it comes to appropriate dressing, I so rarely get it right. My excuse is, I never gleaned a sense of style early on. Or rather, the sense of style I acquired in the Australian ‘sticks’ was decidedly drip-dry. I remember the first time I received an outfit that I really liked. It was not one of my mother’s pretty home-made creations that matched my sisters’, but something I actually chose. It was a mauve-and-white gingham check skirt-and-blouse ensemble with a little frill around the arm hole. I was given a white cardigan to match, and I simply could not believe I’d been allowed to have pearly white shoes with a tiny high heel. I must have been just fourteen. This outfit was for some special occasion – I can’t remember what, but it was probably a school or church fellowship outing, or possibly a football match. I remember that the night before I was so excited I couldn’t sleep. I had hung the outfit on my door with the shoes lying beneath it, so I could gaze at it from my bed.

  We didn’t have money for nice clothes then but, as soon as I began to earn my own money – first at the Boronia Park petrol garage on Saturday mornings and eventually in the restaurants, bars and nightclubs in town – I began to invest a large portion of my earnings on acquiring pretty things to wear. It was cheap, high-street stuff but I noticed it gave me confidence. Many years later, when I met Joanna Lumley on the set of The New Avengers, she and I began chatting about clothing. ‘I often buy ordinary, cheap clothes,’ she said, ‘saying to myself, “I know I can make that look good.”’ This really impressed me. Now I realize she knew a lot about fashion because she’d been a model, and she could recognize high-street items that were barely discernible from designer clothes and put them together so they looked chic. But, at the time, I was mystified. ‘What does that mean?’ I wondered. ‘Isn’t it enough just to buy something off the peg in High Street Kensington and wear it? How would you go about doing something special to it to make it “look good”?’

  Frankly, I don’t think I’ll ever figure out how to be chic. I do buy some designer clothes and I love many of the fashion gods, but somehow there’s always something missing. Various stylists have tried to mould me but I’m pretty much a lost cause. And I’ve made some truly memorable fashion faux pas – like the time I wore that gorgeous Zandra Rhodes creation back to front. Zandra had been so kind to lend me the frock; I had no idea I’d worn it incorrectly until years later. And she never chided me.

  Probably my worst costume error was when Sarah Ferguson invited me to a big dance before her wedding. ‘Wear your best frock,’ she said. But what did that mean? I had not been raised as a woman who attended fancy dinner-dances, and I had no idea that everyone would be dressed to the nines in long ball gowns. I had just given birth to our second daughter, Amy, so my body was dreadfully lumpy at the time. I finally threw on a short, baggy cocktail dress and took off with Billy for Elton John’s house. We had planned to meet him and his then-wife Renata and travel together to the dance, then stay the night at their house. Ren
ata opened the door in the most exquisite, flouncy ball gown, with her hair elaborately coiffed and perfect make-up. She was carrying a kind of spring flower basket that matched her dress, and I just gaped at her. ‘Come in!’ she said, looking me up and down in absolute horror. Out of extreme kindness, she tactfully tried to persuade me to change into one of her spare ball dresses, but I was too embarrassed to accept. Elton shot out of the car ahead of us when we arrived – I suppose he wisely did not want to be seen with such a fashion disaster. I was shocked to see how the women were turned out: absolutely stunningly gowned and dripping with incredible, real jewellery. I tried to make the best of it but I was mortified. No one spoke much to me, and the next day there were nasty pieces in the paper – diary quotes from ‘unnamed sources’ who said I was the worst-dressed woman in the room. Correct.

  You still have a lot of feelings about that, don’t you? Your ‘outsider’ issues were really at core, weren’t they? A painful reawakening . . .

  Mmm. Then there was Sarah’s wedding, and I absolutely cringe when I see photos of myself that day. My outfit wasn’t that bad for the eighties – black and white silk print frock and white jacket – but my hair! I was having a bad hair day – no, an entire bad hair decade! And so my ‘chic’ outfit was topped by a spiky, white-blonde bouffant with a black-and-white fascinator perched on top. What is WRONG with me? That day was pretty stressful for a nursing mum. We ran in to take our places in Westminster Abbey while our car circled with nanny and Amy in the back. But the ceremony was so long I had to sneak out, leaking breast milk all over my dress, and try to find them. And there was such a huge crowd that we got stuck trying to drive home; I remember trying to breastfeed while Billy, who had been spotted by fans, drew even more attention to us. See, we’d run into Jackie Stewart who’d eyed him in his suit and said, ‘Today, your street cred goes out the window!’ So, in the car, Billy waved to the crowds like the Queen and leaned out, shouting – in his idea of an upper-class accent – ‘Get back to your fucking work!’

  It’s amazing I was ever invited back to a Royal do, but apparently I was kind of forgiven – or maybe just pitied. Subsequently, I did try – but rarely managed – to get it right. I remember once wearing an impossibly tight fishtail dress, attempting to negotiate a staircase with Princess Diana clucking sympathetically beside me: ‘Yes it’s sooo difficult to walk downstairs in that style . . .’ Oh yes, and at that do I made the mistake of asking Billy to fetch my powder compact from my evening purse. He was away for ages, so I went back to check on him and to my horror caught him looking through every evening purse lying on a Palace sofa! It was perfectly innocent – he simply couldn’t remember which was mine – but anyone else observing him might have thought he was up to no good. An absolute deus ex machina moment. Another time I wore a Vivienne Westwood ball dress with a large train that was equally difficult to manage. That was also a post-baby moment and I had tried to whittle down my waist with a cruel corset undergarment which was so tight it made me feel faint. In fact, halfway through the evening I had to remove it and dump it in one of the Queen’s wastepaper baskets. God knows how our illustrious hosts ever put up with me; it really speaks volumes about their kindness and tolerance.

  The final coup de grâce came when Billy and I were in Scotland and we were invited to visit Balmoral. This was just after Billy had appeared in Mrs Brown, and the Duke of Edinburgh was going to take him to see where John Brown had lived and worked. I remember being on the phone to Prince Andrew when he was setting up arrangements for our coming to tea. ‘What are we supposed to wear?’ I asked gingerly. To my horror, I heard Andrew relay my question to his mother. ‘She wants to know what to wear,’ he laughed. ‘Ordinary!’ said a ridiculously familiar voice. I had no problem with deciding what to wear on Sarah’s hen night, however. I had discovered a few days earlier that Prince Andrew and a few of his cronies – including Billy – were gathering for a stag dinner, but that nothing had been planned for Sarah. ‘Let’s do something!’ I insisted. ‘I’ll take care of it!’ I hired some police women’s uniforms from Berman’s and Nathan’s under a pseudonym, threw a few of my stage wigs and spectacles in the back of my Range Rover, and took off to meet the ‘girls’ – Sarah, Princess Diana, Renata John and Julia Dodd-Noble. We all dressed in the uniforms – well, except for Julia, who was to play a ‘tart’ we were arresting. I was worried about our going out in public like that, and tried to get Diana and Sarah to wear the wigs I’d brought to avoid recognition, but Diana resisted. Sarah wore the wig I normally wore as Mrs Runcie, the wife of the then-Archbishop of Canterbury. In the spirit of having a girls’ lark we escaped the protection police and piled uncomfortably into my Range Rover, with Diana squeezed into the baby seat.

  Just as I was about to pull away from the kerb, a large, angry man reached into the car and put an arresting hand on my steering wheel. It was one of the Royal policeman, who told me in no uncertain terms that I was doing something I shouldn’t. At that point I realized that, as the driver, I was responsible for the safety of the future Queen and her sister-in-law to be, and I’d better not screw up. We negotiated terms. I drove carefully and slowly, and the police followed. Eventually, we piled into the back of a police van and made our way to Berkeley Square. Diana jumped out and began directing traffic (yes, a considerable amount of champagne had been imbibed at this point). We then ducked into Annabel’s nightclub in Berkeley Square, where a bunch of Daily Mail journalists were having a party. Ironically, they didn’t recognize us, but the manager of the club thought we were a bunch of strip-o-gram girls and tried to chuck us out. We raced off to Buckingham Palace. Poor Sarah got stuck trying to climb through a barrier and we had to pull her out. Then Diana and Sarah started taunting the guards on duty by dangling their world-famous engagement rings (Diana’s was diamond and sapphire, Sarah’s a large ruby) under their noses and chanting, ‘Guess who we are!’ Good times. I suppose we were just like any other British gals out on a hen night, with, well, a couple of rather important differences.

  The drama increased when Prince Andrew came racing towards the Palace gates in his Jaguar. We continued to play policewomen – well, we tried to be calm and authoritative and refuse him entry – but Diana was so excited she kept laughing and bouncing up and down. Finally he realized something was up and roared off in the other direction. ‘You know how I knew?’ he said later. ‘I recognized Diana’s jump.’

  The next day all hell broke loose because the papers got wind of it. They had no pictures, but they just montaged some anyway. Diana was hauled on the carpet to explain things to her mother-in-law, but apparently it was considered . . . amusing. Well, it was. It was a thoroughly splendid wheeze.

  I’ve had a lot of fun over the years with my pal Sarah. When our children were young they used to play together. In fact, Sarah and I were in the Portland Hospital together having Scarlett and Beatrice, so they’re the same age. Sarah was always kind enough to invite us to her kids’ birthday parties and they usually had a theme. One year it was Dragons and Urchins, and the idea was that the kids’ mothers or nannies should be the dragons and the children were to come dressed as scruffy Oliver Twist types. Martine was – and still is – our beloved helper. An endlessly kind and highly talented woman from the Scottish island of Islay, she joined our family when Amy was a baby, and has now worked for us for twenty-six years. ‘I was very surprised when I met you,’ she said to me recently. ‘I had just seen you on the Bob Monkhouse Show, and I was expecting a very different person.’ ‘One who set fire to things, perhaps?’ I teased her. ‘No,’ she blushed, ‘you were a very dedicated mother . . . Although you did wear a lot of crazy jewellery.’

  Martine has always managed to design and make highly creative costumes for our children for various events, and for this particular birthday party she made some adorable urchin outfits for them, and hired a bright red furry dragon suit for herself, with a separate headdress. But unfortunately, that headdress completely covered her head and restricted her
vision. This dragon suit also had large floppy feet that made it difficult for her to walk but, entering into the spirit of the event, she did her best to move in it.

  We arrived a little late. The police instructed us to park the car in a paddock at the bottom of the large hilly garden. We struggled out of the car. I had the three girls with me because Martine was so restricted in trying to walk in her dragon suit. We could see that a lot of people were gathered at the top of the hill and, as we got nearer, we realized that the judging of the fancy dress competition had already started. Worst of all, the judge of the dragon competition was Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth herself. She was standing in the middle of a parading circle of dragons, staring down at Martine looking very displeased. Martine, of course, could barely see, so she was oblivious to this. But everyone was now waiting for her, including the Queen. I was horrified, but utterly helpless to prevent the unfolding events.

  The monarch of our realm spoke to a policeman, who immediately raised his megaphone and called to Martine. ‘Would the red dragon climbing the hill please hurry up and make her way immediately to the circle!’ But Martine didn’t hear this. She was oblivious to all the attention that was now focused on her. There she was, just taking her time and struggling with her enormous dragon feet. I had lagged behind with Daisy and Amy. I called to Martine but the headdress covered her ears and she couldn’t hear. Now everyone had stopped what they were doing and were watching Martine clomp her way up the hill. I was in two minds about whether to pretend I wasn’t with her. She eventually got to the top, quite exhausted, and joined the circle. I had the sense that people were aghast at her apparent lack of interest in joining her Majesty’s pleasure. And the Queen had had enough. She marched over to Martine and knocked twice on her papier mâché headdress. ‘Who’s in there?’ she inquired curtly. Martine flung her arms up in an annoyed fashion. ‘Och, for Pete’s sake!’ she wrestled off her headdress and found herself face to face with our Gracious Leader. ‘Aggghhh!’ she screamed in terror. It could not have been worse. ‘Did you really have to scream?’ I chided her afterwards. ‘Well,’ she protested, ‘I mean, she’s on all the stamps . . .’