106

A Party:

Westbourne Suite, Royal Lancaster Hotel

Lancaster Terrace, Bayswater, London W2

21 December 1967

On 8 December 1967, the elaborately neurotic comic actor Kenneth Williams picks up his fountain pen and, in his perfect italic script, writes an enraged letter to a friend. ‘Do you know those Beatles gave a private party recently at the new Royal Lancaster Hotel and their manager rang and asked if I would go along and compere their cabaret? – have you ever heard such impudence. Just cos you do it on the Telly don’t mean you are available for functions does it? – the nerve of it.’

Keystone Features/Stringer

In fact, the party in question, to celebrate the completion of filming the Magical Mystery Tour, is not due to be held until 21 December, five days before its television transmission on Boxing Day.

Echoing the pantomime nature of Magical Mystery Tour, the party has a fancy-dress theme. Paul and Jane Asher come as a Pearly King and Queen, Derek Taylor as Adolf Hitler, Alistair Taylor as a matador, Tony Bramwell as a court jester, and Peter Brown as King Louis XIV, while George Martin and his wife Judy come as Prince Philip and Queen Elizabeth II. As though to emphasise their differences, John comes as a teddy boy, while Cynthia is a Regency lady in bonnet, crinoline and bows. She immediately feels overdressed, ‘like the lady on the Quality Street tin’.

The party happens to coincide with one of John’s brief reconciliations with his ne’er-do-well father, Fred, who dresses, appropriately enough, as ‘My Old Man’s a Dustman’. Earlier in the day Fred paid a real dustman £5 to swap clothes with him. Pete Shotton can’t bear to be in his vicinity: ‘He literally reeked of garbage, and all the other partygoers did their utmost to keep him at a safe distance.’

Even allowing for the bizarre freemasonry of showbiz, an unexpected guest is the portly comic actor Robert Morley, who arrives as Father Christmas. ‘He was really sweating,’ observes one guest. ‘Perhaps it was a fault in the hotel’s air conditioning, but he looked so uncomfortable, I couldn’t believe he was doing it. I felt that perhaps his agent made him.’

Dinner is followed by a screening of Magical Mystery Tour. John sits at a table with his smelly father and Fred’s young fiancée Pauline, dressed, just as appropriately, as a schoolgirl. At the same table are Cilla Black, dressed as a labourer, and her husband Bobby, as a nun.

There is a hiatus between the end of dinner and the beginning of the screening. ‘Come on, John – do a number while we’re waiting!’ suggests Lulu, who is dressed as Shirley Temple, in white ankle-socks, carrying a giant lollipop, with her hair in ringlets, topped off with a bow.

‘Not bloody likely,’ replies John. ‘How about you, Fred?’

This is a mistake. Alistair Taylor, who has organised the party, notes that Fred is ‘pissed out of his head’. Consequently, when Fred leaps onto the stage he falls flat on his face.

After the screening the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band take to the stage, and everybody starts to dance. John has always hated dancing, but is enticed onto the floor by the alluring sight of Pattie Harrison, who has come as a belly-dancer. Cynthia is the gooseberry, ‘left sitting primly and stiffly, very much out in the cold’. Pete Shotton, dressed, like John, as a teddy boy, looks on as an unpleasant scene develops: ‘Though Pattie had, undeniably, made herself especially desirable as a scantily clad belly-dancer, neither Cyn nor George were the least bit amused by John’s open flirtation with her.’ Upset by what is happening, Lulu, still clutching her giant lollipop, gives John a good telling-off.

At last Cynthia is asked to dance by Billy J. Kramer, who is dressed, by happy coincidence, as a Regency soldier. ‘We made a lovely couple,’ she recalls, ‘until we tried to jive instead of waltz.’ Catching her foot on her dress, Cynthia falls over, ‘masses of material billowing out like a huge lavender balloon around my crumpled body’.

When John glances over in her direction, Cynthia catches his eye. ‘His looks on that occasion were not of love or admiration, but pure embarrassment. I was letting him down yet again.’