Johnny Cigarini

by John Cigarini

  “The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.”

  – St. Augustine

  1997 was the year after I retired. For tax reasons, I was only allowed to stay in the States for fifty days and the UK for ninety, so I had to travel. I started with Cuba and, wadda’ya know, my old company BFCS were doing a shoot! Out of the 196 countries to start my travels, I picked the one where my company was working. The first I knew of it was when I walked into the lobby of the Hotel Nacional and saw all my old chums from the camera department lining up to check in. They looked at me nonplussed, thinking I was part of the production team. It was very nice for me, as for the first time ever I didn’t need to look after the clients. I could just eat with the crew after they’d been out slaving, while I had been walking the streets and chatting up the locals.

  BFCS had hired a Cuban lady to be the local fixer. She was paid $40 a day – a considerable sum for her, because her husband, the top reconstructive surgeon in Cuba, was only on $16 a month. I became very friendly with both of them and saw them even after the BFCS crew had gone. I loved having them over for dinner at the Hotel Nacional (the only place in Havana that served meat) and enjoyed watching how much they lathered in the fine dining. They were uncomplaining about his small salary. Their point of view was simple: everything was provided for them – the house, the car and food stamps. As the story tends to often go, it wasn’t a perfect socialist system, and the food stamps were of no use when the shops ran out of provisions – often after only a few days each month. I didn’t realise the world was such a small place, but then in Havana, I ran into more old chums from London and LA. It was getting ridiculous.

  Ex-Formula 1 driver Rupert Keegan and his elder brother Jeremy had been invited out to Cuba for a sponsored go-kart race. In LA, they lived down the road from me in Benedict Canyon and they had wild parties every weekend. I didn’t want to get back into that Henrietta stuff, so I always gave them a miss. But we saw a lot of each other, as Jeremy was a partner with actor Jack Nicholson and Don Henley of the Eagles in a very popular bar called the Monkey Bar that was always full of girls. Unbeknownst to most of us, it turned out later that one of the girls, Heidi Fleiss, was running a high-class call girl racket, with most of the other girls (aspiring actresses) I knew from the place. She became known around town and the media as the Hollywood Madam. After the scandal broke she kept going to the bar, and not surprisingly the clientele of famous actors and rock stars stopped going, killing the business.

  One night I went with the Keegan boys to a stag party in Hollywood. I got so stoned that night the lesbian hookers who had been hired in for us to all goggle over were, to me, the most beautiful things in the world. I didn’t think it could get better… but one of the girls left, and a girl from the audience took over the show. That was Hollywood.

  With Rupert and Jeremy in Havana was another friend we knew from LA, Kevin Cogan. He had been an Indy car driver until he had his accident at the ’91 Indy 500. He only just survived. Jeremy Keegan, unfortunately, did not and was killed a couple of years ago in a car accident in Malindi, Kenya.

  “Cigarini!” Next, I found myself on Harbour Island in the Bahamas, but I wasn’t the only one who had found myself! I had arrived at Pip’s, a hotel of private bungalows, by golf buggy, the only transportation on the island… “Cigarini! What are you doing here?” It was Ann Jones, wife of Mick Jones, the leader and owner of the band Foreigner, and previously of that great sixties band Spooky Tooth. I had known Ann since she was Ann Dexter-Jones, even before she had married Laurence Ronson – brother of the rich and famous English businessman Gerald Ronson. Ann and Laurence’s son Mark Ronson is the successful English DJ, musician and producer of Amy Winehouse’s albums. Ann was not staying at Pip’s (the bungalows), she was staying down the road with Jane Wenner, founder of Rolling Stone magazine and ex-wife of the publisher Jann Wenner. Ann Jones is a big-time socialite, which I am allowed to say, as these are my terrible name-dropping memoirs.

  There was an illustrious crowd staying at Pip’s: Anna Wintour, editor of American Vogue, Elle McPherson and her husband, French financier Arpad Busson. I had met Elle previously when she was going out with my friend Tim Jeffries, so I hung out a lot with her at Pip’s. We had dinner together most nights and that makes me a legend, right? Charles Finch was there, too. I knew him from LA and he was part of a rather cliquey British set that revolved around the offspring of famous British actors, like Charles’s father, Peter Finch, John Huston, and Irish hell raiser Richard Harris. Harris married the beautiful American model and actress Ann Turkel. I worked with her once before they got together, and she said a very flattering thing to me: “You, Cigarini, are the best looking man in London”, but I would never mention that in my autobiography. Hey… she said it… not me. Charles Finch was at Pip’s with Julian Metcalfe, the owner of Pret a Manger.

  Rifat Ozbek was there, too – a well-known English fashion designer who I had previously met in London through mutual friends. He was with the gay actor Rupert Everett, which is now worth a short story as I had an amusing first encounter with Rupert. You know how you only ever get one chance to make a first impression? He had only just arrived and I hadn’t yet met him. (Everybody at Pip’s got to know each other; it was like an English country house party.) I was walking down the steps to the beach and looking down at the ground to watch my footing, when a large lizard ran across my path. Thinking I was alone, I said out loud to the lizard, in my best impersonation of Kenneth Williams, “Oooh, you’re a big boy!” I looked up and there was Rupert Everett, taking in the sun with his shirt off. He heard me and he saw me; he did not, however, see the lizard. He obviously didn’t fancy me, because he ignored me all week. Shite, that was embarrassing.

  I also had two interesting encounters in the sea at Pip’s. I was swimming one day and out of the water popped David Jacobs, like I had just entered the territory of a predatory sea mammal. David was a legend in British broadcasting and was the father of one of my best friends, Joanna. He was staying on another island and had come over to Pip’s for a spot of lunch. He was with a nice man called David Profumo, who was the son of John Profumo – the man who had resigned from government over the Profumo Affair with Christine Keeler.

  My other encounter in the sea was with an actual predatory sea mammal. I was swimming in the sea while the others were running along the beach and pointing to the water. The water was not deep, only waist high in fact, but there was glare from the sun on the water and I couldn’t see what they were pointing at. I only saw the big shark after it had swum right past me, inches away. Apparently, it was only a nursing shark, which is harmless, but a shark’s a shark as far as I’m concerned. I could now add great white to my baboon list of killer mammals that I’ve come face to face with. I know, it wasn’t actually a great white, but when you’re seventy, you learn how to make yourself sound better than you actually are.

  The sand on Harbour Island is pink from the coral. Down the beach from Pip’s was a hotel called the Pink Sands, owned by Chris Blackwell – former owner of Island Records. Chris came from the Crosse & Blackwell family and had been brought up in Jamaica. Through that connection, he had introduced reggae to the Western world. He had particular success with Bob Marley. Island Records was also the record label for the huge Irish band U2. Chris sold the company for something like £400 million and passed a great deal of his fortune around his mates. When I heard of that, I thought of Lord Beaumont and how half of this life of mine is owed to a man who I’ll never meet or get to thank.

  Chris had a beautiful black Jamaican girl called Esther Anderson living with him. Apart from being very pretty, Esther is a talented filmmaker, photographer and actress. I had known her for years. She too went out with Peter Biziou, my friend who had shared the pretty French girl. I bumped into Esther once on the King’s Road when she was with Bob Marley, one of her best friends. She introduced us, but when I went to give her the normal kiss on the cheek, she recoiled. I saw her ag
ain, alone, a few days later, and commented on how she had been rather ‘cool’ the last time we met. She explained it all to me, in that unique and wonderful Jamaican accent of hers, “Bob don’t like me kiss white boys anymore.”

  It was the summer of 1997, Paul McCartney was knighted and Madonna starred in the great Evita. I went to see a fabulous film called Kama Sutra in my local cinema in Salisbury, and that made me go east… again. This time to India, which had been a long time calling.

  I first came to India for a short holiday in the eighties, and like anyone that goes, you promise yourself you’ll return. Even if you stay for six months, you still only scratch the surface… India is diverse.

  My first stop was Kerala, South India, to check in with my friend Davina Phillips at her hotel the Lagoona Davina. When you hit India, it hits you: the heat, the culture, the cocktail of exhaust fumes and essential oils. I’m sure she would agree that my time there was a bit disorganised, but like Davina pointed out, you’re meant to be a mess when you go to India… so you can find yourself!

  I worked my way through Kerala and her backwaters – the thatched huts, the tropical wild of the deep South India where trillions of snakes and creepers lived – and I entered into the tea-growing foothills of a game park. While I was there, elephants trashed the lodge’s garden and I learnt how to eat classic thali from a banana leaf with my hands. I stayed in a fine hotel in the centre of the Kerala canals and would wake to the sounds of pelicans, parrots and the great hornbill. I shared the hotel with very large and affluent Indians visiting from Bombay (Mumbai), which was a first for me as many of the Indians are very thin but for a potbelly of rice and roti – especially the women breaking stones into gravel by the side of the road, or wet cloth onto large rocks. Strangely, many looked like models, with undernourished yet beautiful brown faces. I took a boat trip on the canals and sat in a low chair as my guide with shining deep brown skin steered the boat, in his white lungi, bandaged head and black sandals.

  Throughout India, I mostly travelled on the cheap and that was the key there; you don’t need to spend much money, especially if you want to soak up the real India. Hide in private resorts for honeymooners and you’ll miss it all. My hotel in Cochin was on a point in the harbour and I had a room with a wonderful view of the bay to watch the Keralan fisherman call to one another while tugging at long nets and being circled high by the great birds. The area of town across the bay, known as Old Cochin, plays host to the merchants selling spices, oils and dry fish. You definitely feel transported, and you know you have been when the sight of something Western like a brand or a chain immediately feels wrong, and as if it is something you don’t wish to look at. The smells of Cochin must have changed little from the old days, when it was the centre of the spice trade to England. In India, they say that “anything is possible”, like the synagogue I stumbled upon, dating from the sixteenth century when some pioneering Jewish families had travelled down the west coast of India from the Middle East to settle. With no consideration whatsoever, the Queen of England decided to visit the synagogue while I was there, and some MI5 security officers woke me up at 5am to grill me about why I was in Cochin. I told them I was here to find myself… but I had been looking everywhere and couldn’t find a damn thing. They weren’t amused.

  I travelled through India all the way to Nepal. I took trains, planes and buses. They say you haven’t travelled in India until you take a train, so I took an overnight one. There is something about travelling, about actually physically moving, that seems to clean the mind. I guess something happens when you cross borders. I was beginning to feel lighter, life was beginning to feel easier, and as I looked around at all the beaming smiles of all the locals, I felt happier – the happiest I had felt in a long time, in fact. My train took me through different states and each state played host to a different culture, a different language and different foods. I watched it all change out of my window: the miles of virgin farmland, the rice fields, the men on bicycles carrying goods in baskets. I woke up and I was in the Rajasthan. Women picked their way through fields in their saris, the emerald greens and sunshine yellows so vibrant in the landscape – so real, so India. It was morning and children on the train were giggling and playful. One wanted to know my name, but when I tried to tell him, he just laughed and ran away. I couldn’t help but burst into a great long smile. Everyone here just seemed so happy.

  I found myself in Pushkar, a Rajasthani commune for hippies, backpackers and tourists. As I was getting down at the station, I quickly learnt from an Indian man why there were so many tourists here in Pushkar.

  “Now is camel fair,” he told me. “Beautiful and best time for desert peoples. We loving camel.” He helped me flag a cab and welcomed me to ‘his’ Pushkar. En route to my hotel, it became apparent why it was the “best time for desert peoples”: Pushkar now played host to half a million horses and camels, all in town to celebrate and rejoice in the power of the desert sands. Rajasthani folk music was played on drums with hands, and again, apart from the odd backpacker, I had been transported. At the time, there was not a cloud in the sky, just blue, the deep red of the sun, the yellow of the sand dune. I was led into the desert where tribal warriors were dressed in white, tight shirts, billowing trousers, red and black turbans and fantastic moustaches, each of the man warriors being followed by many wives, all wearing their most colourful and vibrant of saris.

  All the hotels in Pushkar were booked out, but one hotel had tents on its roof, and as I had tackled the night train, I was ready for more adventure. I hit the tents and fell asleep under the trillions of stars that covered the black desert sky like white powder clusters. All night, I could hear the deep beating rhythm of the Rajasthani drums being played out of the town and into the navy night sky of North India.

  Jaipur: the pink city, population of three million, the desert lands of the Rajasthan. Famous for its ceramics, marble statues, gems and jewellers, forts and monuments, temples and gardens, magic and a kite festival. It had big roads, hardly any cows and was home to some of the world’s finest Indian restaurants. I went to Shekawati, where all the havelis (palaces) are painted with murals. It is located north of Jaipur, and visitors can stay in hill fort hotels, run by the descendants of the former rulers. They were tall, proud and magnificently built men, and you could see their ancestors’ warrior blood still lived inside them. The prosperous early merchants on the spice route across the Rajasthani desert built the painted havelis of Shekawati. Their descendants now control most of the large conglomerates in India, and are based in Bombay and Delhi, but they retain the painted havelis as a family heritage. I suppose nothing changes and it happens all over the world: the rulers, the royal bloodlines, it all stays in the family.

  The pink city: where street kids line railway tracks and old women sell onions on the side of the road. It is also home to the greatest opulence I have ever experienced, even in England. Some of the palaces, like the Wind Palace, are extraordinarily ornate. It is where the Maharaja kept his harem. The windows are designed so the concubines could see out, but not be seen by the people in the street below. I bought and shipped a container full of Jaipur pink sandstone, cut into 60cm slabs, to put around my pool back in Wiltshire. It looked wonderful, alongside the 10,000 four-inch cobalt blue tiles that I had bought in Thailand, for the inside of the pool. When I swam in it, I thought only of Asia.

  In Jodhpur, all the buildings are painted blue. From the magnificent Mehrangarh Fort, there is a wonderful view over the whole blue town. Like each and every place in India, it is uniquely different from anywhere else. India was becoming intricately more diverse, the more I saw of it. All the languages and all of the idols and all of the sights. I was beginning to consider it one of God’s truly great countries – jungles, deserts, lakes, mountains, cities, beaches – and it was changing, being mowed down by industry and software companies. On the train, I thought about the miles of virgin farmland and I became sad. It was to be replaced with motorways and business, an
d I didn’t want it to. I wanted it to stay like it was, like real India.

  There was no opulence like in Udaipur. I booked a room in the Lake Palace, but when I got there they had no record of my reservation, so they put me in the Maharaja’s Suite. All the walls were painted, mainly with portraits of old warriors and the ancestors. Whilst sitting in the bath, I could practically put my fingers in the water of the lake. It was not bad at all.

  Jaisalmer is what they call The Golden City, and my favourite part of Rajasthan. It is built out of dry stone with no cement on a ridge of yellow sandstone that rises out of the desert, like a lost city that archaeologists have found after centuries of digging. Its havelis have great stone windows that are carved like lace, and there is the most wonderful Jain temple, lined with fine works of stone carvings. The Jain nuns are a particular sect of spiritual devotees. They wander the streets of India carefully avoiding any acts of violence from town to town, arriving in villages barefoot without even a rupee and still treading lightly, so as not to kill any plant or bug life. Some people consider that life quite harsh, like the tearing out of their own hair, but they see it as the route to the almighty and a beautiful thing – not a painful thing. The temple is near the Pakistan border and the military airport had only been opened up to commercial flights the week I went there. Prior to air travel, it was a three-day journey by bus and I may not have bothered. I would have missed something special, like learning about the Jain people.

  I went with a photographer friend, Robyn Beeche, and a Hindu lady friend of hers on a pilgrimage to the source of the sacred Yamuna River, high in the Himalayas. There is nothing quite like the Himalayas – totally and utterly silent. So still and quiet, in fact, that even whispers can be heard around town. It was a powerful place, with bent-over Buddhist monks hobbling up hills and through little lanes. I knew I had been transported once again, to a special place: the Himalayas, the crown shakra. The trip required driving for days up a precipitous mountain road, then climbing on foot for three days up a stony path on a cliff edge. Many other pilgrims were making the journey, from all colours and all religions, just to find the source of the river – the lifeblood of mother earth.