Early on in my spell on Look!, I created a novel, I Knew Daisy Smuten, written along with my friends on the paper, partly as a bonding exercise for the new Look! department.
In the novel, Daisy was a photographer who has suddenly got engaged to Prince Charles and everyone wanted to know who she was. I had an unofficial staff meeting, for the whole paper, or at least my friends, the ones I considered were half-decent writers. I gave them all some brief biog information about Daisy, which they would have to stick to, then asked for volunteers. Hands up who would like to sleep with her? I also asked who would like to write about having been in her class at school, had married her, had been her boss, had been her accountant, anything really, as long as they had known her at some stage in her life and could throw some insight on her.
They each then wrote their memories of the Daisy Smuten each of them had known, and I knocked the book into shape, tried to give it a narrative and consistency.
The name Daisy Smuten was an anagram of Sunday Times. We even sold the film rights. It was the first time in print in a book for Jilly and most of the other contributors.
It was thanks to my friend Tony Godwin, still then the editorial boss at Weidenfeld and Nicolson, that we got it commissioned. He did like unusual, new and daft ideas. When it was all finished, and everyone at the publishers liked it, he persuaded George Weidenfeld to hold a Daisy Smuten launch party – at George’s private house. He must have been potty. I invited all the contributors, and their partners, friends in publishing, friends in newspapers, assorted hacks, plus there were dozens of uninvited gatecrashers.
It was the most chaotic, drunken, awful yet incredible party. A lot of George’s carpets and furniture got wrecked and a valuable painting disappeared – later recovered.
For about a year, it was still being talked about in Bloomsbury. That was how we used to describe the publishing world, just as the newspaper world was known as Fleet Street. George never gave a party like that again in his own house.
During the 1970s, I came back several times to the paper, at Harry’s request, when he had a problem, or a new idea, such as editing a new section called Scene. That was not such fun. It was an attempt to bring all the vaguely environmental columns and features together, including Travel, but it had no real focal point, or a proper team, unlike the Look! pages. It didn’t last long. In a way Harry was too forward thinking, creating environment pages before the general public was really ready for them.
In 1975 I was asked by Harry to return once again, this time to edit the Sunday Times Magazine.
After that slow start, with Mrs Woodcock binning the first edition, it had quickly become successful, rich, powerful, attracting the best photographers and star writers. The staff, especially the art department, were a law unto themselves, able to operate as a separate entity, get away with stuff that normal reporters and departments on the main paper could never do, spending fortunes on stories – and on parties. Harry himself was worried it was becoming too much of a separate empire.
The Mag, at the time I joined, was fortunate in having separate and rather sumptuous offices at the top of the Sunday Times building in 200 Gray’s Inn Road, with access to a roof garden and private suite. This had originally been created by Roy Thomson when he bought Kemsley newspapers in 1959. He had even built his own lift, to take him up to his penthouse. But then he had changed his plans and it was hardly ever used. So the Mag had taken it over. It was great for parties and entertainments. It was also good fun to be able to go up to the Magazine editor’s office in my private lift.
But I didn’t really enjoy my two years editing the mag. I never got on with the art department who resented me arriving from the paper and they hated the changes that Harry wanted me to make.
One of the things Harry wanted done was to open up the end of the Mag. Readers were moaning that the last twenty or so pages were all adverts. I therefore had to find some sort of regular editorial to fill the inside back page. On the opposite page we could charge double advertising rates.
I was looking for a self-contained, one-page column, with a simple photo, of general interest to all readers. First of all I tried a series called Home Town in which we took well-known people back to their birthplace. I took Eric Morecambe to Morecambe and Ted Heath to Broadstairs. But it quickly got too time-consuming. Then I started a column called Sacred Cows in which writers could praise or rubbish. It got too samey.
I then had a much simpler idea – ‘A Life in the Day’. I had used the title, reversing the order of the old cliché, A Day in the Life, and a similar format in a column I had written when editing Palatinate, the Durham student newspaper. It had been the first column I ever wrote, so a big event in my life. Twenty years later, I pinched the title from myself. The Beatles, with their 1967 song, ‘A Day in the Life’, stuck to the original cliché. The idea was that inside everyone’s day, and life, there is another life, the trivial, mundane, routine stuff, such as when they get up, how they decide what clothes to wear, what they have for breakfast.
I mentioned the idea at a Magazine staff meeting, with all the assistant editors, and they all groaned, saying it was corny, pathetic and would be boring. At random, I picked on the chief sub, called Patrick, and asked him about his day. When I asked him how he decided what to wear, his answer amazed everyone. As far as we all had been aware, Patrick wore the same dull suit every day to work. But in his reply, he explained that before getting dressed, he always consulted his diary. In it he recorded what he wore every day. He aimed to have on a different shirt and a different tie every day for a month. No one had ever noticed. We were so surprised we all agreed the series was worth a try.
‘A Life in the Day’ is still going strong – having appeared every week in the Mag since 1975, the longest-running column in the Sunday Times. Perhaps in any paper. I like to think I will be remembered for that.
When there was no specific editing job required by Harry, in my six months back on the pay roll, I amused myself by calling myself chief feature writer again, a title I had formerly had, and interviewing famous people.
One of the famous people I did after our year abroad was Noël Coward. He was not promoting a play or a show, which is usually the case. When they are promoting something, there is usually a PR there as well and you have to keep asking about the film, play or book as if you care. In 1969 I had noticed that Coward’s seventieth birthday was coming up. I wrote to him, persuaded him to give an interview – the only one he decided to give.
I got invited to his home in Switzerland, and was naturally thrilled. Getting into people’s homes always provides the best copy. I booked into a hotel near his house, the Montreux Palace hotel, and had checked in and was ready to go up to Coward’s house, when a call came from his assistant Cole Leslie. Originally his name was Leslie Cole, but Coward had made him change it.
Cole Leslie was ringing to say that The Master – which was how he referred to him – was cancelling dinner. The Master was not well. I thought oh bugger, all this way. However Cole Leslie assured me I could come the next night instead. But it meant I then had twenty-four hours to put in, stuck in this posh but empty hotel – empty because it was out of season.
Next morning, hanging around the reception desk, I realised there was a wing of the hotel where permanent guests stayed. I managed to read upside down the names of some of the residents – and noticed one was called V. Nabokov. Could it be him?
I memorised his room number, went back to my room, and I dialled him. I asked if he was Vladimir Nabokov. At first he would not admit it. Instead he cross-examined me, suspecting I was not really from the Sunday Times, which was what I had told him. He asked if I knew Alan Brien, who had a column in the paper at the time. I said I did know Alan, in fact he lived in the next street and his daughter Jane Brien was a friend of my daughter Caitlin’s.
It was interesting that he was a Sunday Times reader, or at least had heard of one of our columnists. He agreed to meet me in an hour in a certain ca
fé in town, where he was going for his morning coffee – on condition that I did not write anything about meeting him.
After the first coffee, we walked round the town, went in various bars and cafés and he told me gossip about local people, shopkeepers and butchers whom he suspected were having affairs. He would not talk about himself, or what he was working on, but he was interested in me, when I told him about my books and life at the Sunday Times.
I didn’t even make notes afterwards, back in my hotel room. I should have done, while all his chat was still fresh in my mind.
That evening, I got a taxi up to Château Coward. As I arrived and was shown in, there was some argument going on between Coward and Cole Leslie. One of them had farted but was denying it, blaming the other. Cole was ordered to get an air freshener. He started spraying the room which sent Coward into hysterics. ‘It now smells like a fucking Turkish brothel in here!’
Coward swore all the time, usually the f word, though of course we never used such language in a newspaper. Nor did I mention the farting. But I did describe how there had been a smell of fresh paint when I arrived and Cole Leslie had been sent to get a deodorant, with a lot of cursing from Coward.
Over dinner, Coward was full of stories, amusing incidents that had happened to him, people he had met. We got on to the Beatles and he was very caustic, pretending he did not know their names, referring to John McCartney and Paul Lennon.
He told a story about going to see them perform in Rome. Afterwards, he decided he would go backstage, so a message was sent to their dressing room that Mr Noël Coward would like to meet the Beatles. The message came back saying that the Beatles did not want to meet him. He was so furious he marched into their dressing room and berated them.
‘If you are a star, you have to behave like one. I always have. I believe in good manners.’
I then got on to one of his hobbies. In New York and in London, he was apparently in the habit of going into a hospital to watch operations. In each place, he had a friendly surgeon who let him know when anything interesting was happening. He had recently seen a hysterectomy, an ovariectomy, a birth and death.
I found this weird and horrific, but fascinating, and felt it gave an unusual insight into his real character. But I must have appeared too interested, or too appalled, wanting to know too many details, how he had reacted. He suddenly changed the subject, realising he had given too much away.
After coffee and brandy, and stuffing my face with food and wine – he was very hospitable, though he ate very little himself – I apologised for having stayed too long, and asked perhaps too many personal questions.
‘Not at all, dear boy. I am fascinated by the subject.’
Which made a good ending to my interview. I wrote it up at length, about 5,000 words, and it made the front page of the Review section.
Another person I wrote about, in 1970, was Christy Brown. The connection came through Margaret. He had been her pen pal for over six years, without ever her meeting him. He had a written a book called My Left Foot sixteen years earlier, in 1954, which sold very few copies. He was published by Secker and Warburg, Margaret’s publisher. He had seen her photo in their catalogue one day and asked her editor if he could write to her. Margaret agreed, as she loved writing to people, just as much as she hated meeting people. His letters to her were wonderful, even more so because he was typing them with just the toes of one foot. That was the only part of his anatomy he had any control over.
Christy was one of twenty-two siblings, living in Dublin, and was born with cerebral palsy. He rubbished his first book, saying he had done it to get published, knowing people would like a heart-rending book about a happy cripple. For the last sixteen years he had been working on the book he really wanted to write, Down All the Days.
In 1970 he had at last got it accepted. Foreign publishers were bidding for it and he was coming to London, desperate to meet Margaret. He pleaded with her in his letters, but she refused. I said I would like to meet him. It might make a piece for the paper.
I went to a lodging house in Shepherd’s Bush, full of Irishmen. His condition was worse than I expected. One of his brothers was carrying him around the crowded room while another poured Guinness down his throat. He implored me to let him meet Margaret, going on and on, so I agreed to take him home in my car, saying it would have to be a very quick visit. He got bundled into my car along with a nephew Joe who would act as interpreter, as it was almost impossible to work out what Christy was saying.
In the car I told him I had recently met Nabokov.
‘Nabokov’s tragedy is too much language and not enough feeling,’ replied Christy. His words came out as a series of grunts, but were translated for me by Joe, who had no idea what it meant.
When we got home, and Joe carried him into our house, I introduced him to Margaret who had been sitting reading. They talked for a bit, after a fashion, and then Christy was sick. The noise and commotion woke up Jake, aged four, who came downstairs and stared in fascination at this shaking, slavering body.
Christy didn’t stay long. Joe and I soon bundled him back in my car and we took him back to Shepherd’s Bush.
Margaret never forgave me. I remember driving back home on my own across London, knowing I was going to be for it. She was in bed, her back turned to me, refusing to speak. Next day she was still furious. Had she not specifically told me on no account to bring him home? I knew full well she wanted their relationship to be on paper, not face to face, which was nothing to do with his condition, but how she wanted it with everyone.
I did a long piece about Christy for the Sunday Times. Down All the Days became a massive international seller, making him £70,000, enough to buy his own house in Dublin. And then later, he got married. Christy never saw the film of My Left Foot, as he died eight years before it was released.
I still have all the letters he wrote to Margaret, typed with that one toe, as well as some letters to me. They are so full of life and fun, wit and wisdom, exuberance and erudition. I wish I could write letters as well as Christy Brown did.
12
FOOTBALL MANIA
I was there at Wembley on Saturday, 30 July 1966, and have my ticket as well as my programme to prove it. My seat cost £5, one of the best in the house. Probably cost you £2,000 today. I got it through my friend James Bredin, now dead, who was the boss of Border TV, a thriving, thrusting little regional ITV station, now also deceased. So it goes.
Oh, it was so exciting, even though the game passed in a flash. I was never aware of the Soviet linesman allowing Geoff Hurst’s second goal, nor the Germans going mad, but it didn’t matter anyway as Geoff then got a third. Did we call him Geoff in 1966? Seems overly familiar. Perhaps we all shouted: ‘Come on Mr Hurst’, or ‘Please hit the ball, sir’.
But we were all so carried away we were not thinking normally that day, or the next, or that year, or the next, or that decade, or the next. There was pride, of course, the first time we’d ever won the World Cup, but also allied with smugness and superiority. Had we not invented the game? Had we not taught these foreign Johnnies all they knew? It was only our right, our entitlement.
Naturally, we thought that was it. No need to worry about these funny foreign ways any more, with their strange formations, silly defences, strange tactics. When I first heard of catenaccio, I really did think it was some sort of Italian frothy coffee.
I went home that summer Saturday in 1966, glowing with pride, thinking that it was just the beginning. We’d go on to win loads of World Cups, dominate world football, show them how to do it. I now can’t see it happening again. Not in my lifetime. What’s left of it.
I was cheering on England that day, even though all my childhood was spent cheering on Scotland, sitting nervously with my ears glued to the radio, willing Scotland on to win. But it was football I loved, the game itself, playing it most of all, and then watching it.
I loved the years when I played football every Sunday morning on the Heath, calling
ourselves Dartmouth Park United, a group of doddering dads, hardly able to run, but I played till I was fifty, despite a cartilage operation, which was really silly.
When I first came to London, I started looking for a local team to support. Obviously getting to Carlisle United’s home games was going to be hard from now on, living 300 miles away. We were equidistant from Arsenal and from Spurs, but in 1960, Spurs was the more glamorous team, winning things, going places. I threw my devotion in their direction, covered them in kisses, and have continued, all these decades later.
For a few games, I took Margaret. In the early sixties, the crowds at White Hart Lane were enormous, with patient and well-behaved queues all down the High Road, as you mainly paid at the turnstiles. When it said House Full, she would want to give up. I would say, let’s go round the Paxton End, there might be a turnstile still open. She would say don’t be stupid, House Full clearly means the ground is full. I would say, just let’s try.
This was a good example of our different characters. I rarely take no for an answer, am not put off by refusals, ignore no-entry signs, maintaining they are for other people, not for me. I am always convinced there will be a way, will be a chance, or that something might turn up.
Margaret, logically, was right. Signs are there for a reason. So you are wasting your time and energy ignoring them. But almost always at Spurs, we did get in. There was usually a turnstile still open.
Despite her forthright and strong and immediate opinions on almost any subject, Margaret was extremely law-abiding, unlike me. She accepted it when experts, doctors, lawyers, teachers, said or advised something. I suspect almost all experts. I always think their wisdom is little better than the rest of us, they are on autopilot, equally likely to say the opposite to the next person. And deep down, most of them don’t really care. Listen to their knowledge, such as it is, but you don’t have to always obey everything they say. In the end, we are all on our own, responsible for our decisions.
A Life in the Day Page 13