Keith Moon Stole My Lipstick

by Judith Wills

  Julie Webb came to work at Fab as a feature writer doing pop, and for some reason decided to take me under her wing. I still don’t know why, as she had plenty of contacts, plenty of friends and guys always after her, and though she lived in Watford, she knew her way around London, the club scene and the media. She had the savvy of Trish and the looks of Simone, but no way was this girl after me in that way. How did I know? Well, easy – she liked men.

  What I gave to Julie in return, I have no idea unless it was a well-deserved sense of superiority, but the fact is that she began inviting me for lunch, out for a drink – and after a few weeks of this I woke up one morning and realised that I HAD A FRIEND. Boy, it felt good. I hadn’t realised quite how lonely I’d been. And just as importantly, her own fab self-confidence began rubbing off on me.

  Julie initiated me into the delights of shopping in the lunch ‘hour’ which often stretched a bit into two or three. As the shops around Ludgate Circus and Fleet Street were sparse, mostly off-licences for the Fleet Street imbibers, and Carnaby Street was beginning to feel a bit naff, she took me to Kensington.

  Isn’t it strange how you do things that seem quite ordinary, normal, nothing to think about later that day, and years later you think WOW, I really did that. I bought stuff at the old Biba shop on the north side of High Street Kensington. You’d shove your way in past beautiful young women making their way out, Biba bags laden, and there was this fantastic, low-lit, full to brimming shop with clothes in colours never seen before – dusty pinks, plums, dove greys, lots of feather boas, floppy hats, velvet, felt. And the boots – knee-length suede to die for. This was heaven. And the make-up. Again, dusty, smudgy, deep colours. And the music …

  The assistants were all gorgeous and beautifully dressed – this was the first shop I had ever been in where you felt jealous of the staff and slightly intimidated by their attitude. It really was the first time I’d been surrounded by cool on that level.

  Another place we used to go was the old first Laura Ashley shop just round the corner from South Ken tube station. We often used to borrow clothes from there for fashion or beauty photo sessions and I remember going there with the photographer Roger Brown and picking piles of what I considered quite trendy tiny-floral pattern cotton dresses, floor-length with gathered waists and lace around the collars and neckline. What we fancied buying we got at huge discount – within months Laura Ashley was huge and within a year, had gone global.

  By late summer 1968, I’d been at Fab over a year, and thanks mostly to Julie my social life had at last begun to exist. I hardly ever saw the inside of my bedsit in Avonmore Road, except to sleep and recuperate.

  Nigel Hunter became a mate. Nigel had worked on the ‘legitimate’ side of the music press for several years but had been made redundant when something folded. Using his many contacts in the media and music world, one of whom was Unity Hall, he finally landed freelance work doing concert and record reviews – and writing a column for Fab. Undaunted by the fact that he was heading for 40, Nigel incongruously wrote the fictional diary of a teenage boy called Ross, managing to garner a large following of Ross-loving Fab readers over the next year or two.

  Divorced as he was, he began squiring me, in the most gentlemanly fashion, to various press parties and fab events all over the capital. We were never ‘an item’, and so for the first time in my life I had a great non-threatening, non-sexual, friendship with a hetero man AND a great non-threatening, non-sexual friendship with a hetero woman.

  Weekends were often still a quiet time for me. I’d sometimes head to Buckingham to visit my mother, and very occasionally I would go to Littlemore in Oxford to see my dad, where he lived with his new wife, Audrey – but those visits came to a halt when I realised I was causing a rift between them. I was in bed one morning when I heard her give him a list of things that were wrong with me, from the appalling length of my skirts (too short) and hair (too long), to my false eyelashes, my panstick make-up and my taste in music. She was an ex-schoolteacher and more of a Betty Hale (the assistant editor) type than a Judy Wills type, for sure. So I left dad and her in peace for a few years until my skirts grew longer and she could take me along to bingo with them without any embarrassment.

  Nigel lived only ten minutes’ walk from me in a flat off the Holland Park Road so at weekends, when work jaunts were thin on the ground, we would meet up and have a meal or a drink. Sometimes we’d go to visit friends of his in the home counties, or get together for Sunday lunch with his mates like Rodney Burbeck, who was editor of Music Business Weekly, in pubs in Kensington or the West End. Then I’d have a quiet Sunday evening at the bedsit in preparation for the round of drinking thrashes in the week ahead.

  I truly believe that press parties were the major cause of my almost-downfall and almost-sacking at Fab not long afterwards. God, there were so many of them – you could go to a pre-lunch drinks party for a new record label, a lunch launch for a new theatre show or pop band, a 6 p.m. film screening with free champagne throughout, and around 8 p.m., there would always be a band playing at some club such as the Marquee who would want Nigel, or Julie, along to get a review. Even when I was still a secretary and not a writer, no one ever minded if gatecrashers arrived, and often, anyway, the invites were for two people.

  It is the truth to say that a lot of the music press (mainly composed of young male chancers) would literally have starved and been teetotal but for these thrashes. You could have easily eaten and drunk well all week on these freebies. And I can admit that I don’t remember ever cooking for myself at the Avonmore Road bedsit – perhaps I’d make a sandwich or heat up a can of Heinz Tomato Soup but that was it. After two years living on my own I still could cook nothing except fish pie with hard-boiled egg – for some very peculiar reason, the only dish my mother ever taught me.

  Towards the end of my first year at Fleetway, just as I was beginning to feel relaxed and comfortable with my work, the team at the magazine, my surroundings and my ability to handle myself, editor Unity announced that she was leaving to work on the News of the World. I was horrified. I had found her easy to work for; once you got over her quite stern expression she was a pussycat. She’d also taken to writing trashy novels in office time, which she used to get me to type out clean for her, so we had a nice reciprocal thing going – she let me do what I wanted as long as I kept on typing.

  Worse! Ass Ed was getting the job. Ass Ed was the formidable assistant editor, Betty, who had spent the past months staring disapprovingly across the corridor at me from the open door of her office which looked directly onto me at Ed’s Sec desk. She had undoubtedly witnessed, and probably made notes about, every one of my mistakes and indiscretions, late arrivals, long disappearances, and drunken returns after lunch.

  We were diametrically opposed kinds of people. I was 19 or so, she was about 40. I had long ironed hair and miniskirts, she had short permed hair and tailored suits from Austin Reed. I wore tons of make up, she didn’t wear much. I was late into the office more than was good, she was never late. I drank scotch and coke, or cider, every day; she drank wait wain (as she pronounced white wine) occasionally, with food. I lived in a tacky bedsit in West London; she lived in Radlett, Hertfordshire – spiritual home of the middle-aged and what would now be called Middle England.

  I liked boys and flirting. Betty was married to Eric, her long-standing husband who disapproved, I believe, of the frivolous nature of Fab, its staff, its readers and its whole raison d’être. Well if he didn’t he always looked as if he did. He was a fair bit older than her, with glasses, suits, grey hair. As you can imagine, he, too, disapproved of me, or always looked as if he did. What Betty was actually doing working for Fab, no-one was ever too sure. But there she was.

  So to know she was going to be editor put fear into me, as well it might. Things were going to change around here – if she didn’t say it, she might as well have done.

  About the time Betty was promoted, I seemed to be appearing in the papers but was not a hu
ge way down the road to my ambition of being a writer. I would do tiny bits for the news page and I was responsible for the Readers Write section (the letters page), and also gave Betty a couple of rather strange Patience Strong rip-off poems I’d written. She decided to use them as captions to go with large dreamy photos of a couple of celebrities. I think the first words I ever had published in Fab were a short, corny poem to accompany a fey picture of Donovan, Britain’s answer to Bob Dylan. Not sure what the Fab readers made of that but I expect my mother liked it. Apart from that, my writing career wasn’t exactly taking off.

  Amazingly, not long after Betty was promoted to editor, she promoted me to beauty editor. It was only later that I found out why, but that’s another story.

  Now beauty editor may not sound like much to you – but it was a start.

  four

  Something Groovy and Good

  1969

  Lulu’s tied for first at the Eurovision song contest with ‘Boom Bang-a-Bang’ and she’s married Maurice Gibb. Midnight Cowboy wins best film at the Oscars. Nixon’s president. The Beatles are all but finished. Paul McCartney’s married Linda, John’s married Yoko, George has been busted, and Jim Morrison of The Doors has been arrested for being drunk. Drunk?

  Being a beauty editor turned out to be incredibly boring most of the time. Meeting cosmetic company PRs, writing about ten different shades of lipstick. To perk the job up a little I got readers involved, doing some of the first ‘before and after’ makeovers you are ever likely to have seen. When I could, I also got small-time female celebs involved. Lesley Ann Down, who had just been voted face of the year or similar, agreed to a session then didn’t turn up. Kiki Dee agreed to it then rang me to say she wasn’t confident about her looks and didn’t know what to do about her hair, which she hated. In other words, she could have done with some hair and make up advice, but couldn’t cope with the trauma. I kind of understood that.

  For an occasional scive, Roger Brown or one of the other photographers and I would go off on a location shoot. These were sometimes quite amusing. I would try to persuade some C- or D-list actress or pop singer to be our location model. Liza Goddard, who found huge fame shortly afterwards on TV in Take Three Girls, agreed to one of these. We picked her up from her bedsit in North London somewhere and she was incredibly charming in a loudish, poshish way. Poor girl didn’t realise what we had lined up for her – a day posing in a lake (yes, in the lake, not near it, or on it) in Surrey somewhere and she never forgave me. It was much colder than I’d realised. By the end of the day she was inwardly spitting fire and dripping freezing algae-ridden pond/pong water and trying not to show either.

  Not long after, I bumped into her in the bar at Rules restaurant in Covent Garden and she pretended she didn’t remember me but she did, oh she did. I could tell by the slight panic on her face that what she didn’t want was me regaling her new influential companions with the story of the day that she was so desperate for publicity that she waded waist-deep for hours through stinking hypothermia-inducing water. I can’t actually remember the point of the photo, can’t see what it had to do with beauty but there you are. Perhaps I just wanted to be cruel, and/or prove to myself that I at last had a bit of clout. Those were the first of the days when fashion and beauty editors would go off and photograph a model up a pyramid in Egypt just because you could, even though the skirt or the blusher you’d gone to photograph didn’t even show.

  Using diversionary tactics like this I just managed to keep the boredom under control. Tagging along with Julie Webb to music press parties at lunchtimes and in the evenings helped, as did frequent visits to the Hoop and Grapes where there were always a few Daily Express or Mirror hacks to be found, a photographer or two and various other members of the staff of Fab, notably John Fearn and all the members of the art department including Tom, whose real name was Brian.

  One evening I found myself (I say ‘found myself’ because half the time there was no real intention on my part of doing what I did, it just kind of happened) at a private party held by the film actor Richard Harris, at his central London home. The place was packed with famous faces, famous bodies too, and drink. His wife (soon to be ex-wife) Elizabeth was there, and his young son, Damian, no doubt unable to sleep for the noise, arrived in our midst towards the end of the evening. But Harris, whose movie A Man Called Horse had just been released, was a fabulous host; the place was wonderful, I felt like I was finally in with the ‘in crowd’ and I thoroughly enjoyed myself.

  I was also thoroughly enjoying stringing a few guys along, having finally more or less got the hang of having a chat and a laugh with the opposite sex in a fairly normal, non-offputting way, with only occasional lapses if someone was really fab. One night I went out with three – one for drinks after work, another took me out from my bedsit for a meal and when I got rid of him, another came round to take me to a club. Can’t remember who any of them were but I do remember recounting this story with great glee to Julie, my sister, my mother and any other female who would listen. God knows why, it wasn’t really something to be proud of but it was such a huge novelty to realise that at last guys were beginning to queue up. After years in the man wilderness it was quite heady and, obviously, had gone to my head.

  Being friends with Julie was definitely a good thing, man-wise. She was slim and sexy looking with a good bust, big brown eyes, an excellent way with make-up and long hair (or sometimes hairpieces) that changed shade every couple of months. We both always wore miniskirts or hotpants with boots and as we both worked on teen mags it was easy to work out why would-be pop stars, DJs, and various other celeb hangers on and media people would be interested. Julie could talk to everyone and never seemed crippled with shyness, as I still was from time to time.

  Noel Edmonds, who, after a spell at Luxy, had just got his big break on Radio 1, would arrive at the Hoop and Grapes to buy us a drink. It was Julie he fancied, not me, but I didn’t care because in those days he wore a bright fake tan, coiffed long locks that looked highlighted even if they weren’t and just loved himself, really. Nothing’s changed. So for me, who couldn’t stand overconfident men who fancied themselves, that just wouldn’t do.

  Dave Cash, who, with Kenny Everett, was another DJ on the way up, liked to drive me around London in his open-top car, which I thought at the time was an E-type Jag. Now I know different (you’ll find out how if you get to the end), but anyway it was a Very Posh Car. His favourite port of call was the swish Dunhill shop in the West End, where he would buy fancy cigars and lighters. I wouldn’t go in because I found the entrance too intimidating. He was a great bloke, but we didn’t really click, so that eventually petered out and we never actually went on a real evening date.

  Around this time, Fleetway Publications and Radio Luxembourg decided that Luxy and Fab should join forces, and suddenly Fabulous became Fab 208, the official magazine of the ‘station of the stars’.

  After that we were inundated with Luxy DJs when they were in town (they spent most of their time holed up in Luxembourg, of course). One day in the spring of 1969, a tall, slim, blonde-on-blonde boy arrived in reception, looking like a gangly sixth former. You just had to speak to him and he blushed bright red. Turned out he was only 18 and had just got off the plane from the wilds of Canada (well, Vancouver, actually) where he lived. I could immediately see why he had earned the nickname ‘Kid’ – it was David Jensen who somehow overcame his crippling shyness and, after a stint of several years at 208, went on to become one of the most popular radio DJs ever.

  That day, we walked together to the tube station and said goodbye. Somehow he had ‘got’ to me – for the first time, aged 19, I felt a bit motherly towards a guy who wasn’t a singer or actor. And I also had an unfamiliar and rather disquieting sensation of butterflies in my stomach. Anyway, when the Kid had gone I had this feeling that it would be very nice to see him again. I think I recognised in him a male version of me – another feel the fear and do it anyway fan, except he must have felt more
fear than me as he’d come all the way from British Columbia whereas I’d caught the coach up the A40 from Oxford.

  Around this time, all manner of pop people would arrive in the office, often with no warning. I can’t quite see One Direction arriving at Heat magazine unannounced today, but in those days that’s what everyone – even quite big stars – did. Most of the writers on Fab all shared one large office so whoever came in, we all had to put up with it – but more often than not, the visitors were no annoyance but the best part of the day.

  One afternoon when I hadn’t been at Fab long, I was sitting smoking a fag, drinking a coffee and feeling slightly bored with doing the books for the freelance payments (the part of my secretarial duties that I hated the most and used to put off until irate freelancers would ring up demanding to know where their money was) when a rather pale, sickly looking young boy with mousy, straggly hair appeared in the room accompanied by an older, more together-looking guy who was obviously his manager.

  The boy was very thin, quite small and when he smiled at me, a nervous little smile, I noticed that his teeth were very strange and his eyes seemed to be mismatched. They’d come to plug him as a singer. I thought, well if this boy makes it as a pop star, I will be extremely amazed.

  Anyway we all got chatting, the manager, Ken Pitt, persuaded us to put the vinyl on our record player (I believe it was a song called ‘Love You Till Tuesday’) and the boy perked up at the sound of his single. Yes, it wasn’t bad, it was a funky ballad – we danced around the office and the little boy joined in. When it finished we all had a drink, more chat, and after half an hour or so, they left.

  ‘Who was that?’ I asked – having as usual missed out on the introductions.

  ‘David Bowie? New boy from Kent?’ says Julie.

  ‘Well I wonder where he got him from … he’s not going to go far is he? He’s just not star material,’ says I, and that was the first of quite a long line of miscalculations on my part about the career prospects of a variety of stars. I was certainly no Mystic Meg.