Brown - Hello Goodbye Hello: A Circle of 101 Remarkable Meetings

Other books by Craig Brown

The Lost Diaries

The Agreeable World of Wallace Arnold

Rear Columns

A Year Inside: Parliamentary Sketches

The Private Eye Book of Craig Brown Parodies

Hug Me While I Weep for I Weep for the World: The Lonely Struggles of

Bel Littlejohn

The Craig Brown Omnibus

1966 and All That

Fame, Sex, Money, Power: A Beginners Guide

This Is Craig Brown

The Little Book of Chaos

The Marsh Marlowe Letters

Imaginary Friends: Collected Parodies 20002004

The Hounding of John Thomas

Craig Browns Greatest Hits

Welcome to My Worlds!: The Dread Decades of Wallace Arnold

The Tony Years

Thank you for purchasing this Simon & Schuster eBook.

Sign up for our newsletter and receive special offers, access to bonus content, and info on the latest new releases and other great eBooks from Simon & Schuster.

or visit us online to sign up at
eBookNews.SimonandSchuster.com

For Mosh and Don

Tossed upon ocean waters,

Two wooden logs meet;

Soon a wave will part them,

And never again will they touch.

Just so are we; our meetings

Are momentary, my child.

Another force directs us,

So blame no fault of man.

Ga Di Madgulkar

We have as many personalities

as there are people who know us.

William James

The earth keeps turning round and gets nowhere.

The moment is the only thing that counts.

Jean Cocteau

When Arthur Miller shook my hand I could only think

that this was the hand that had once cupped

the breasts of Marilyn Monroe.

Barry Humphries

CONTENTS

George Brown (19141985) was the Deputy Leader of the British Labour Party from 1960 to 1970. He is now chiefly remembered for his prodigious consumption of alcohol, which led to frequent mishaps, often at major diplomatic events. At the end of a banquet laid on by the Belgian government in his honour in 1967, Brown stood in the doorway, barring his fellow guests from exiting. He then bellowed at the top of his voice that, while the British army were busy defending Europe, the Belgian army were making merry in the brothels of Brussels. He was Foreign Secretary at the time.

Sarah Miles (1941 ) went straight from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts to star opposite Laurence Olivier in Term of Trial (1962) and Dirk Bogarde in The Servant (1963). Sarah Miles was originally typed as slut materiala husky, wide-eyed nymphet writes David Thomson in The New Biographical Dictionary of Film . But in The Servant ... she shattered the stereotype and thrust sexual appetite into British films. Her two volumes of autobiography reveal further sexual dalliances with, among others, Steven Spielberg, Robert Mitchum, and James Fox. Often regarded as unconventional, she drinks regular doses of her own urine, apparently for health reasons.

As an aspirant actor, Terence Stamp (1939 ) shared a flat with Michael Caine. Their names became synonymous with London in the Swinging Sixties. Stamp first rose to fame opposite Peter Ustinov in Billy Budd (1962) and then starred in seminal Sixties movies such as The Collector (1965), Modesty Blaise (1966), and Far from the Madding Crowd (1967). More recently, he has appeared in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace (1999), Bowfinger (1999), and as the transsexual Bernadette in The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994). He now owns a company that produces food for those with dairy and wheat allergies.

When Terence Stamp was the most fashionable man in London, Edward Heath (19162005), a frosty bachelor, was possibly the least. Heaths period as Prime Minister (197074) was particularly troubled. He exhibited a talent for the piano but none for sociability. Once, after dinner at the White House, President Nixon pointed to the grand piano and suggested they play a duet. Heath simply shrugged his shoulders, said nothing, and walked on. He never recovered from Margaret Thatcher seizing leadership of the Conservative Party and spent the rest of his life nursing grievances against her. His nickname was The Incredible Sulk.

Walter Sickert (18601942) was a prolific painter, particularly gifted at conveying the thrill of the Victorian music hall. He also specialized in drab interiors, invariably populated by gloomy couples. The more our art is serious, the more it will tend to avoid the drawing-room and stick to the kitchen, he once said. A friend of Oscar Wilde and Rodin, he remains far more celebrated in Britain than in America, where he is perhaps best known as the unlucky man identified by the excitable crime novelist Patricia Cornwell, for no comprehensible reason, as having been the serial killer Jack the Ripper.

The political career of Tom Driberg (19051976) was wholly reliant on the discretion of the press. A Labour MP, he was also a promiscuous homosexual, regularly picking up young men in public lavatories. He was suspected by many of his friends and enemies of being a Russian spy, though this was never satisfactorily proved either way. He was an inveterate and unapologetic social snob. My dear Richard, he once complained to the editor of the satirical magazine Private Eye , I am astonished that you dont appear to know the correct way to refer to the younger daughter of a Marquess.

George Galloway (1954 ) was expelled from the Labour Party in 2003 after describing the government as Tony Blairs lie machine and calling on British troops in Iraq to refuse to obey orders. He remains on the extreme left: in 2008, he described the disappearance of the Soviet Union as the biggest catastrophe of my life. He combines radical politics and fiery rhetoric with a touch of showbiz: in 2010, he was reported to have completed a musical about the singer Dusty Springfield. The Times once noted his gift of the Glasgow gab, love of the stage and inexhaustible fund of self-belief.

In the UK, Michael Barrymore (1952 ) is the living embodiment of the showbiz fall from grace. During the 1980s and 1990s he was the highest-earning family entertainer in Britain. In 1993, he topped the bill of the Royal Variety Show, singing Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow? The answer, when it finally came, was a definite no: following a series of mishaps, including the discovery of a male corpse in his swimming pool, Barrymores television career came to an end. After his car hit a kerb in November 2011, he was convicted of possession of cocaine and fined $1,240.

George Lazenby (1939 ) and Simon Dee (19352009) were pioneering sufferers from the same diseaseexcelebrititisthat now afflicts Michael Barrymore. At the start of 1970, both men were superstars, one the new James Bond, the other British televisions most popular chat-show host. By the end of that year, undone by hubris, they had both passed into oblivion. Eerily, their downfalls coincided with their first joint TV appearance. By 1974, Dee was being described in court, as living the life of a vagrant. Lazenby still insists he enjoyed his time as Bond. Too bad I couldnt act, but it was fun.

Michael Ramsey (19031988) was the 100th Archbishop of Canterbury, succeeding his old headmaster, Geoffrey Fisher (18871972) to an office dating back over 1400 years to St. Augustine in 597. The Archbishop of Canterbury is the leader of the Church of England, and is appointed by the Prime Minister. Fisher was headmasterly and conventional. Ramsey, on the other hand, was eccentric and anti-Establishment. He was once overheard repeating I hate the Church of England to himself, over and over again. By way of explanation, he replied, Oh, but its true. I do hate the Church of England. Indeed I do.