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.
But honestly, you would never have thought …
Towards the end of my first year at Fab, the pop group of the moment – The Herd – were given the job of ‘editing’ the magazine one week so they spent quite a lot of time in the offices. I’ve still got an old issue of Fab, the cover of which is a series of twelve photos of The Herd ‘editing’ the magazine, and in one, I am there with Sue the office junior and Gary Taylor, one of the band members. The Herd’s lead singer was 16-year-old Peter Frampton, ‘The Face of ’68’, who soon left them to form a more legitimate band, Humble Pie, with Steve Marriott, ex-Small Faces.
By 1969 I had two out of a maximum of three official warnings about lateness in the mornings, lateness of copy etc. Betty and I had a meeting at which she laid on the line that if I had one more warning I was out, so I promised to improve.
I tried up to a point to comply but eventually skipped off work for the day with a monumental hangover. That evening I was at 35 Avonmore Road when Mrs Filipinski shouted up the two flights of stairs to me.
‘There’s a phone call for you’.
So I crawled down the stairs to the hall phone and before I had even got it to my ear I could hear high-pitched ranting of which I could make out bits along the lines of: ‘… been today … you’re not ill … how dare you … last chance … let me down … copy always late … you always late …’.
It was Betty. The first and last time she ever phoned me at home, it was that serious.
As I didn’t dare put the phone down on her I stood there half listening to it all until she had finished – and by the time she had finished, I was actually crying. What she said had upset me because I knew that it was all correct; that I had let her down in a big way. I wasn’t so much crying for the loss of the job but because it was my own fault. It sounds stupid but until she actually told me to my face how bad I was being, I hadn’t realised. In those moments I felt my early youth ending and second-stage youth beginning.
She ended the conversation with a curt, ‘Come in and see me in the morning.’ This, you recall, after I’d already used up all my warnings so I knew I was out.
Next day I pulled myself together to go in and face her in the office where I had taken so much crap dictation in the past.
Realising I would have to go a long, long way to find another job that held so much scope for fun and amusement, and realising that turning up at 10 a.m. and working for about five hours a day in between freebies of various kinds was a small price to pay, I felt crushed. I really, really didn’t want to lose this job.
‘Do you know why I gave you the job of beauty editor?’ she began.
‘Er, no.’
‘It was because you were the worst secretary I have ever had,’ she began. There was a long pause. I stared at the floor. My legs felt like jelly and I wanted to go to the loo – I had never had the sack before, well it was my first job so I suppose that was why, but I had never been in trouble before like this. At school I had been a goodie goodie, hated being told off. This reminded me of being in the headmaster’s office and being given the only detention I ever got, but much worse.
‘I didn’t want you as my secretary any more. So I decided to give you a chance as beauty editor.’
Ah! Truth will out! And I had thought it was because of my natural and wonderful writing talent.
‘And while your copy as beauty editor is good, your behaviour in all other respects, particularly your lateness in the mornings and your lateness of delivering copy, has been more than poor.
‘I believe that you are now behaving like you are because you find being a beauty editor boring,’ she continued. How right she was. Was it so obvious? This was her cue to say the ‘sack’ word.
‘And so I am going to give you one last chance on this magazine.’
WHAT?
‘I am going to give you a job as a part-time feature writer as well as your beauty. You have three months to prove to me that you can be a responsible member of staff here. Right, off you go.’
WOW, double WOW! Job saved and an end to bloody beauty in sight. From that day on, I had a great deal of respect for, and gratitude towards, Betty and I don’t believe I ever let her down again. I began taking some responsibility for myself and my work and began suggesting features and turning into a Proper Person. I was never going to be a Betty Hale clone but I could at last see things from her point of view and as she’d given me so many chances I didn’t want to let her down.
As it turned out, I continued doing a few beauty features for quite a while longer, right up until 1971. But at last I could do some ‘proper’ writing and interview some celebs.
And so not long afterwards, John Fearn, who’d been promoted to Ass Ed, told me who my first celeb interview was to be: Jim Dale. Jim had been, and still was, a huge hit in the Carry On films and was trying to make his name in other roles and in theatre and music. I still today have a recording of Jim’s with his own spectacular version of Des O Connor’s ‘Dick a Dum Dum’ on it. Now that must be worth a few pennies.
Anyway I was delighted that my breaking-in was to be with Jim, whose on-screen jovial-chap persona led me to assume that he would be just as nice in real life, so as I made my way to his home I wasn’t as nervous as I might have been.
I was to get to his house in the Pembridge Villas area of Notting Hill to interview him on 23 July 1969. I went there on the tube clutching my A–Z, found his street and was just about to turn into the entrance to his very large semi-detached house when behind me I heard a big engine roaring up the road. I stepped back as the cause of this row veered wildly into the short driveway of Jim’s front garden and then proceeded to continue across towards the front steps and crashed into three large dustbins. Steaming, the pristine Jaguar came to a halt amidst the most tremendous din of metal bins and lids rolling and flying and careering everywhere. And out of the driving seat leapt Jim Dale. Grinning wildly but sheepishly. ‘You must be Judy – sorry about that. I didn’t want to be late …’.
Despite the fact that he must have been worried about what damage he’d done to the car (and I am sure there was some) gentleman Jim gave me the most easy time for my first interview. He must have seen I was inexperienced and I’ve been so grateful to him ever since, and of course madly in love with him because you can’t beat a combination of charm, self-effacement, good looks and intelligence coupled with – as I had witnessed first hand – a dash of recklessness in a man. He was sex on legs … who’d have thought it? Pity he was yet another married man – way out of my league though, married or not.
I got back to the office, floating at the amazing delight at having spent an hour or two talking person to person with a real celeb, and began writing up the piece straight away, beginning, of course, with Jim’s spectacular entrance. It made the perfect opening and if the feature wasn’t called Carry on Crashing then it should have been.
However I soon found that turning an interview into a coherent feature wasn’t quite as easy as I had presumed, and that one-pager took me days of pencil sucking and agony until I considered it good enough to hand in. The feature appeared a few weeks later and I don’t think I’ve ever been as proud of anything connected with work, before or after. It had been fun to get my picture in the papers and magazines – but to get your name at the bottom of an article – now that was truly Fab.
Luckily, my writing speed gradually increased with my output but I can still picture myself in that Avonmore Road bedsit, with my old picnic table set up and an ancient portable typewriter on it with some A4 paper and carbon – honing my silly little pieces for Fab as if they were literature, late into the night.
Here’s how it went:
ONE: Transcribe and type up all the shorthand notes (never anything less than traumatic – you will recall that my shorthand was the first thing to go under pressure, and my early interviews were all done using just shorthand. It wasn’t until later that we were all advised to buy portable tape recorders).
TWO: Take the paper out of the typewriter and cut out all the quotes individually with my nail scissors.
THREE: Lay the quotes all out on the bed, then put a new piece of paper in the typewriter and type out a rough order to the feature in one-line ideas, with big spaces between each. Get paper out of typewriter.
FOUR: Slot the quotes into the various most likely places they might go within the feature, then when happy, sellotape them in place.
FIVE: With yet another piece of paper in the typewriter, type the whole thing out as draft copy, then remove it and go through it with a pen, making any final adjustments.
SIX: Type it all out clean.
It was a long time before I felt confident to write up an interview without this technique, and the worst scenario was if I ran out of sellotape after the shops were shut.
In later years, when I worked for a while as a freelance writer doing day shifts at the Daily Mail, turning out 1,000 word features on subjects I knew little about, from scratch, in an hour, including getting people on the phone for quotes, I would look back at my actual ‘cut and paste’ period and smile.
My features were very rarely returned to me to rewrite or do any work on, but it was laborious long hours after midnight rather than natural talent, I fear, that helped them into print for the first year or so.
I’m 14. I’m at school. It’s Careers Day – when we all troop, in alphabetical order, in to see the careers master to discuss What we Want to Be When we Grow Up. This is, in theory, so that we can match our choice of O levels to our aspirations.
My turn. All I want to do is be a journalist. A writer. On a magazine.
‘DO you know what you want to do, Judith?’
‘Yes – I want to be a journalist. On a magazine.’
Silence for a few seconds. Probably doesn’t help that my name begins with W, he’s no doubt had a dreadful and long day by now.
‘Well, I really don’t think you’re going to be able to do that. That’s more the kind of career for a man. There’s not much scope for you in that direction.’
‘Oh, but …’
‘Why not think about being a typist? Here …’
He hands me a small sheaf of info on how to be a typist or a secretary and what opportunities there are in the factories around Oxfordshire for this great career, and I’m dismissed.
And I’m not crushed by him. My fight-back mechanism comes in. I am even more determined to be a journalist now. There’s nothing better than someone telling you you can’t do something; it makes you ten times more determined. You just have to go and do it to prove them wrong.
So I have to thank that careers guy almost as much as my sister, Unity and Betty – the three people who helped me along in more positive ways. He helped me by default – but it doesn’t matter where you get your motivation from, as long as you get it.
Around this time we left the offices in New Fleetway and made the short move to much more dingy Old Fleetway next door. I began sharing an office with Georgina Mells who had arrived at Fab straight from Cardiff University and reminded me heavily of myself when I first got to Fleetway, in that she wasn’t cool, hip or gorgeous to look at. But she was much more intellectual and much more self-possessed than I had been – and much, much more posh. It seemed like she’d turned the wrong way out of the lift by mistake and should really have been working at Country Life.
Like me, she soon learnt how to alter her appearance via miniskirts, make-up and a bit of a diet to morph into a real Fab person, and she quickly launched herself into the life of a budding Fab writer – sharing beauty and other duties with me – with all the trappings, and we began a friendship and shared adventure that lasted several years.
Around this time Julie was promoted to chief writer on Rave magazine, which although it was only down the corridor could have been miles away. It was a slightly more serious, ‘in-depth’ magazine, a monthly, and Julie began spending more time with the writers on the New Musical Express – for whom she eventually ended up working – leaving us poor little pop mag people behind except when she would come down and tell us all about who she’d met.
She was very possessive about her stars. She would preface their names with the word ‘my’, as in ‘My Status Quo’, ‘My Showaddywaddy,’ ‘My Neil Diamond’, ‘My Slade’… but Georgina and I fought back when Edison Lighthouse came along in 1970. They had one massive hit called ‘Love Grows Where My Rosemary Grows’. Sweet boys – Georgina fancied George who I believe was the drummer, while I liked the tall blonde lead singer whose name was Ray Dorey. Julie had eyes for Ray too and when she began calling the band ‘My Edison Lighthouse’ I felt panic and fear.
She scored points off me when they were supposed to meet up with me at a pub for an interview and they all arrived minus blonde boy. She had detained him with a promise of a bigger interview and photo in Rave. I was near tears relating this to Georgina, who took pity on me and plotted a new interview a couple of weeks later on another pretext. We both went along and blonde boy was there in all his gorgeousness, as was George. After the interview Georgina, who had a grand flat in a mansion block in West Hampstead bought for her by her parents, invited the whole band back to her place for tea.
Thus it was that we and Edison Lighthouse, who had been at number one for several weeks by this time and on Top of the Pops every week too, took the Northern Line in the rush hour. One or two commuters may have recognised them but luckily most teenyboppers would have been back home after school doing their homework. It just wouldn’t have happened with a number one band of today, who, so I’m told, usually arrive with PRs, managers, stylists and hangers on, and would think you were completely bonkers if you suggested they get on the tube and pop over for a cuppa at your place.
Back at Georgina’s pad we made them cheese sandwiches, gave them tea and played a few tunes on her hi-fi. It didn’t work out well for me and the blonde one – it was yet another case of him being quiet and shy, and me being too overcome to do anything but watch as, replete with Hovis and Tetleys, he disappeared off back down the underground to wherever he lived. I believe Georgina had a bit more luck with George but, reticent for once, she didn’t divulge too many details.
We shared the beauty features and interviews more or less randomly – pop, TV, films – and often both turned up together if we felt like it.
Occasionally other perks came along – and it was at the grand old age of 20 that I had my first flight in a plane. A freebie had come in for Heather Kirby, who was still the fashion editor, and she decided to let me have it – a trip to visit a factory in Northern Ireland. (You can see why she let me have it.)
Well, okay, it wasn’t the most interesting of actual visits but I can vividly remember the huge excitement of travelling to Heathrow, boarding the little plane, being given a window seat and watching spellbound as we took off and headed up into the clouds. It rained non-stop during my few hours at a plant somewhere to the west of Belfast in the middle of Irish nowhere, but I didn’t care … at last I had been off the land or sea for the first time in my life, I had been in the air. I had looked down on the land from an aeroplane. I felt great, I felt free. And I hadn’t even paid for it!
For a so-called glamorous pop magazine, Fab didn’t have its fair share of male talent working in the office. There was John, the little letters page boy, but he was about 17 and looked it. Phil from the art department was quite nice to look at but stroppy. John Fearn was a smashing guy but with his bowtie and glasses, he always reminded me of the old TV star, Harry Worth. But most of the staff were female.
So one day when a new sub-editor arrived, and he was tall and slim and definitely under 30, most of us were quite thrilled, especially Betty, who had obviously employed him as much for his testosterone as his ability to spot typos. His name was Richard, and she was so enthused that she devoted a large part of that week’s Ed’s Letter to his arrival.
Unfortunately, his sharp sub’s eye didn’t extend to that first Ed’s Letter. When the issue was published, Betty’s missive read something like, ‘This is a great week – we have something new up here. Six foot of dark, handsome dick…’.
‘Dick’, whose actual name was Richard Girling, never did quite live that one down. He was an unassuming, quite intense young man from Hertfordshire and we had a mild flirtation for a few weeks which culminated in me heading to St Albans with him one evening for a walk around the historic sights (he was that kind of a guy). But I didn’t really fancy him that much and when I found out that he had a girlfriend in Hertfordshire whose name was Rose, that was the end of that.
By now I had met Gordon Coxhill, a young writer on the NME. He took a fancy to me and for a year or more pursued me quite hard. Sadly although he was a lovely guy, I didn’t fancy him in the slightest. So I spent the year trying to juggle being nice enough to him so that he would invite me along on some of the (much higher-class) freebies that came his way, courtesy of the country’s most respected music journal with a circulation of over 250,000 (and proudly described on its cover as a ‘newspaper’), but not so nice that he got the ‘wrong idea’ – the phrase used in those days for a guy who thought you wanted sex when you didn’t.
I would sometimes accompany him to interview stars – there was the occasion when we went to Blackpool to ‘do’ Cilla Black and The Walker Brothers – then attended a posh dinner with Cilla after her show. At the time both acts were huge and it was always fun to observe the stars off-duty, and after a few drinks. Even if journalists were present, if it was a private occasion everything that was said was always off the record, and this rule was never broken. Cilla liked to act the star even when she was off-duty and visibly riled if she wasn’t the centre of attention at all times, but she had a great sense of fun and some fantastic tales.
The next morning, still in Blackpool, Gordon and I took a trip to the top of the Blackpool Tower, where I bought a postcard and sent it to my mum, posting it in the postbox that was provided up there. When I got back to London a day or two later, my mother rang Avonmore Road in a panic.
‘Is it true?’ she said.
‘Is what true?’ I asked her, mystified.
‘Well I just got this postcard from you, saying you got married to Gordon Coxhill in Blackpool!’
‘Oh’ I said, ‘That. No, Mum, of course I didn’t. Sorry, only joking.’
Truth was, I had no recollection at all of having written that on the postcard.
Must have started on the Scotch and cokes early that day …
It was Gordon who accompanied me to Hal Carter’s baby Warren’s christening too, in July 1969. The photo of that day shows me, Gordon, Jimmy Campbell, Billy Fury and Judith Hall, whom he had married in May 1969, along with Hal and Sam. The relationships between us all were complicated. There was Gordon, who fancied me but I didn’t fancy him; Jimmy, who might have fancied me a bit for a few minutes but certainly didn’t now, but I still fancied him; and Billy, who had never fancied me and who I had fancied for years but had given up fancying through necessity. And there were Hal and Sam, the stars of the day with their baby, who knew little of all this (I hope), both of whom were lovely people whose friendship I valued with or without the added bonus of Hal’s ever-growing stable of handsome singers.
Every other day there seemed to be a film screening at one of the private viewing rooms belonging to the big film companies of the day – most of these, such as 20th Century Fox, MGM and Paramount, were in or around Wardour Street, Soho. I hit upon the idea of getting a celeb to come along with me to a screening to review the films for the magazine, and the first film this worked with was Midnight Cowboy, relased in the UK in early 1970.
At the time the actor John Alderton was big news – he had been starring in the TV comedy series about a secondary school, Please Sir, which was top of the ratings and adored by Fab readers, of course because of the subject matter and the large coterie of young actors and actresses in the show.
To my amazement, he agreed to come along to the evening screening. Then a day or two later his agent rang and asked if John could bring somebody with him. I fixed this, wondering why he would want to bring someone else.
I’d arranged to meet him outside the screening in the West End and when he arrived, with a young lady at his side, things began to click. It was none other than Penny Spencer, the young actress who played one of the lead pupils in the series, the sexy young miniskirted girl who always flirted with ‘Sir’.
They sat more interested in watching each other than the movie and at the end Alderton asked if I could ring him the next day to get his comments on the film – he could hardly wait to get rid of me. I watched as they walked away down the street, hand in hand.
Of course, John was married to the actress Pauline Collins (still is, I believe) – the two of them were one of the most famous showbiz couples of the time. I never said or wrote a word about John’s friendship with Penny. It was none of my business. And maybe it was all totally innocent anyway … but I rang him next day to get the quotes and, as I had suspected, I didn’t get a great deal out of him. I invented most of his review – and he certainly never complained.
In December of 1969 I was invited to my first film premiere – which included a pass to the official private reception and after-show party. This was The Magic Christian, a film starring Ringo Starr, who was trying to find a niche for himself in the post-Beatle world, and Peter Sellers. As Sellers was as-close-as-this to Princess Margaret at the time, although I didn’t know that then, it was hardly surprising that she and Anthony Armstrong-Jones, Lord Snowdon, were the guests of honour.
Luckily the premiere was just down the road from my bedsit, at the Odeon on Kensington High Street. But even so, wearing a new black velvet dress, chosen for me by Julie Webb from a small boutique near Ludgate Circus (Julie also had to lend me the money to pay for it, £16, a lot of money in those days) and my high heels, I wasn’t going to walk there. Oh, no.
The film company sent a limo for me and thus it was that I walked up the red carpet, heart pounding, with all the spectators going, ‘Who’s she? Who’s she?’ – in my mind at least. A few flashbulbs did pop and for an evening I lived the life of a real film star, enjoying every second.
Well, the film was rubbish but that didn’t really matter.
By the end of 1969 I was getting to do more and more show business interviews as Betty’s faith in my writing and interviewing abilities grew.
The best interviews were when you had to go to people’s houses, as it was much more fun than impersonal hotels. I visited Mark Lester, star of Oliver!, at his home in Richmond, went to Yorkshire to meet Dave Bradley, star of the bird movie Kes, and Rodney Bewes – star of The likely Lads on TV, whom I found delightful, funny and unassuming – at his house in Fulham, and later at the BBC rehearsal rooms in West London. I wrote up this piece in the form of a letter to Rodney, and a few weeks later received a note from his mother, thanking me for the feature and saying how much she had enjoyed it. Sweet – another thing that would be unlikely to happen today.
Other good places to meet stars were the London pubs – things always got interesting after a drink or two. The pub (often the Coach and Horses in Greek Street) was always the meeting place when you were seeing Status Quo (Francis Rossi still owes me a fiver) or Rick Wakeman. And sometimes we went to film or TV sets, which again was good because you never quite knew what would happen – or who you would see.
One of my early visits to a set was to Pinewood Studios to interview Michael York, making what turned out to be pretty much a turkey of a movie called Zeppelin, along with a raft of ‘English’ actors including Anton Diffring, Marius Goring and Rupert Davies. While I waited on the studio floor for York to finish being lit for a scene during a thunderstorm, I was aware of someone beside me watching the proceedings – and almost fell over when I realised it was Bette Davis, the Hollywood veteran with the piercing eyes. And now she was staring at me.
This was the person described by Marilyn Monroe as ‘a mean old broad’, and her fellow actress on All About Eve Celeste Holm said of her, ‘she was rude … so constantly rude.’.
When you’ve grown up watching a true legend of the screen in the movies and on the TV – one of your own mother’s ultimate screen icons – and when you suspect that they are probably ferocious in real life, it is quite unnerving to find yourself, with no prior knowledge or warning, standing in front of that person, not least when that person is giving you her trademark brand of bug-eyed stare.
Someone – probably the film PR – came to my rescue and did the introductions and much to my amazement Davis, who would have been in her early 60s, didn’t eat me or turn me to stone but was very pleasant. She was one of the few actors I ever interviewed who showed any interest in someone other than herself, and was not only willing to talk to me but almost anxious to keep me chatting, was the feeling I got. Why, I’m not sure.
Anyway, I came away with more interesting words from Bette Davis than I got from Michael York, that was for certain. She had unconventional looks, but had real charm, if a bit too intensely dished out. I had only once before been gazed at in quite such an intimate way by a woman – my friend Trish back at the office who turned out to be gay. So what of her reputation as rude and mean? I have no idea – but Celeste Holm’s remark that perhaps Davis’s rudeness ‘was to do with sex’ might have been near the mark.
I did wonder what on earth she was doing there as she wasn’t in that particular movie. She had made a film recently at Pinewood, called Connecting Rooms (another turkey – Pinewood was quite good at those at the time, it seems) so perhaps she was back to do retakes or something.
Another set I visited, in December ‘69, was Coronation Street in Manchester, where I interviewed Neville Buswell who, at the time, was playing Deirdre’s partner. He was rather boring but the whole day was very fab – round every corner you’d bump into one of those so-familiar faces. I was invited into Ken Barlow’s dressing room, where Ken was in residence, and happily gave me intricate details of his life and times to the point where I really, really, wanted to run away.
I also watched the filming of an episode. I marvelled at how hard the cast worked and how they all seemed to get it right in virtually one take. But Neville soon put me right on the reason why – if they didn’t do scenes in a take, the day’s work would run over and they could be arriving home at midnight, have to learn their lines and be back at work at the crack of dawn next day. So anyone who messed up got a right rollocking from the other cast members, and if they did it too often, calling for expensive overtime for the crew, they’d get the sack. At least that’s what Neville told me.
A different journey to Manchester around the same time involved a lunch date with one of the most famous young men in the UK – George Best. George had ‘written’ a column for Fab for some time (in fact submitted by his then manager whose name was, I believe, Ken Brown). He was the first footballer ever to get the teenyboppers excited that way and no footballer since, not even David Beckham, has had the same effect, en masse, on girls.
The manager decided – perhaps to ensure that the column continued for another year – to invite Betty up to Manchester and, knowing that the one thing that kept George happy was the female form (especially if under 25, dressed in hotpants or a miniskirt and with long hair) asked her to bring along someone suitable. That person was me.
Not being a great football fan – and at the time having other things on my mind – I boarded the train to Manchester with her feeling not at all excited. Yes, I had clocked George on the TV but I had mainly noted that he had weedy, bandy legs, and was obviously quite short. Betty worried much of the way up that George would, in fact, not turn up at all – he always had a reputation for being unreliable.
We were to meet at the Piccadilly Hotel. And indeed he did turn up, trailing in respectful and shy manner behind Ken, almost like a toddler hiding behind his mother’s skirts – something I knew a lot about.
And that was how he was, for most of our lunch. My own powers of thought and speech virtually deserted me as Ken and Betty chatted about nothing much (she was no football buff, either). After a few minutes enquiring about his new architect-designed home in Cheshire and getting just one-word answers, I racked my head to try to think of something, anything, to say to George Best that would interest him, open him up, make him laugh … but no, it was a bit like trying to get a can of sardines open – in the end you give up and find something better to eat. I amused myself by looking around the dining room and noticing that virtually everybody in there was trying hard to pretend they weren’t looking at us.
It was only after downing several beers and a few chasers that George suddenly found his tongue and his sense of humour but sadly this was at the end of the lunch. I don’t think George meant to be rude or sullen – I think he really was painfully shy with strangers and we just brought out the worst in each other – and he probably had a hangover as well. Perhaps he would have chatted me up if Betty and Ken hadn’t been there – but I don’t think so. Maybe if I’d worn a blonde wig it would have been different but I really didn’t care.
At the end of the lunch he shook my hand and said goodbye and as he did so I suddenly realised what it was about him that made so many women fall at his feet or into his bed. For the first time during lunch he looked me straight in the face. And I felt my knees buckle slightly … he had the most amazing pair of ice blue eyes I have ever seen in my life – they looked at me, with a slight hint of come-on, and, too late, I thought WOW! I wish I’d tried a bit harder ….
Well, perhaps not really. He wasn’t my type nor I his but I’ve never forgotten those eyes and the magic there. He was a superb looking young man in the flesh, he really was – from the head up, at least. The legs may have been great with a football but they never did turn me on.
In late 1969 most of my work was still beauty and the film and TV world, but on 14 December I popped round to the Marquee to see Love Affair, a young band of boys who had just one huge hit, ‘Everlasting Love’. They were no great shakes on stage, but I loved the atmosphere in the old Marquee in Wardour Street – smoky, crowded, cool, hip, lots of acquaintances around. I felt that what I really wanted to do was more music and less of the actors and screenings. They were okay to a point, but actors, by and large, were self-important bores. And I wanted to feel the beat, and be a real part of the music scene, full time.
So, after my most eventful year in London yet, at Christmas, I caught the coach from Victoria station down to Aylesbury, changing on to the bus for the last few miles to Buckingham, where my Mum and Gran would be waiting for me, to spend a quiet and, frankly, deadly dull few days, just the three of us – apart from a flying visit from Gordon Coxhill at some stage over the holiday which didn’t do a great deal to cheer me up. Although I wouldn’t have wanted to be on my own at Christmas I found the days in Gran’s tiny parlour, watching The Good Old Days and the like on the black and white TV stultifyingly boring. I couldn’t wait to get back on the bus and back to London; 1970, I felt, was going to be great. As it turned out, I was quite wrong.