Julian Clary - A Young Man’s Passage

Contents

For Nicholas Reader

With thanks to:

Peter and Brenda Clary, Tess Greenwood, Doreen Howarth, Nicholas Reader, Linda Savage, Michael Hurll, Geoff Posner, Addison Cresswell, Nina Retallick, Merryl Futerman, Paul Merton, Kirsty Lloyd-Jones, Mandy Ward, Erin Boag, Paul OGrady, Philip Herbert, Hector Ktorides, Andrew Goodfellow, Jane Janovic, Penelope Taylor, Barb Jungr, J. Friend, Sue Holsten, David McGillivray, Richard Nelson, Chris Stagg, Michael Ferri, Rupert Hine, Jeannette Obstoj, Janet Sate, Erika Poole, Mikos, Peter Mountain, Steve McNicholas.

Some names in the book have been changed.

Lyrics from Some Day Ill Find You (Private Lives): Copyright The Estate of Nol Coward, reproduced by kind permission of Methuen Publishing Ltd.

Extract from Human Affection by Stevie Smith: Copyright The Estate of James MacGibbon, reproduced by kind permission.

Extract from Chase Me Up Farndale Avenue, Sil Vous Plat! by David McGillivray and Walter Zerlin Jnr: Copyright David McGillivray and the Estate of Walter Zerlin Jnr, reproduced by kind permission.

Extract from Paris Was Yesterday by Janet Flanner: Copyright Virago Press, an imprint of Time Warner Book Group UK, reproduced by kind permission.

A Young Mans Passage is Julians telling of his own rise and fall as Britains most famous, uncompromising queen. After a happy suburban upbringing, only briefly ruffled by the brutality of the monks at his school, Julian packed his bags for the bright lights of London. He soon developed a taste for shameless performanceand men. It wasnt long before he, along with his co-star Fanny the Wonder Dog, had become The Joan Collins Fan Club and the big time was just a mince away. Fame became a mixed bag for Julian: while revelling in the rollercoaster highs, he increasingly suffered the compromises of celebrity. After the pain of losing his lover Julians life began to spiral out of controland the rest, as they say, is fistory.

Mother, I love you so.

Said the child, I love you more than I know.

She laid her head on her mothers arm,

And the love between them kept them warm.

H UMAN A FFECTION BY S TEVIE S MITH

WHENEVER FRIENDS ANNOUNCE a pregnancy, I feel a sense of bereavement, and by the time theyve finished the sentence theyve begun to disappear, as if walking backwards into the mist.

I know why. I feel displaced. As a bachelor of a certain age, one wants ones friends forever available for evenings of white wine and general bonding. Boyfriends and girlfriends are unlikely to be welcomed into the fold. I dont want to know about their nesting or their breeding. I am the star of the show. All eyes and all attention must be upon me.

When youre the host to such gross narcissistic tendencies, its not easy to pretend youre interested in a world before your time. How on earth did they manage? I shake my head in sorrow, but perk up when I consider my parents and the generations before them, the chance meetings, the fateful couplings, the mysterious but unstoppable life force, genetic combinations and cellular activity that culminated in what I modestly refer to as me.

I feel a connection, more imagined than real, with my great-grandfather, Michael McDonald, who came to London from Nenagh in Ireland in the 1880s, with his two brothers Dan and Tom. Escaping from hunger, poverty and famine, the whole family was bailing out. Three other brothers went to America and were never heard of again. I always like to think they went on to create the McDonalds burger chain, says Tess, Michaels only surviving daughter, aged 92. Michael and his brothers, meanwhile, opened a grocers store in Brentford High Street, west London. Dan minded the shop while Michael and Tom took the horse and cart around the posh streets of Notting Hill to sell their wares.

Around that time, in my wistful imagination like a heroine in a Thomas Hardy novel, Louisa Watts set forth from her home on a farm in Chipping Norton to work as a housemaid in Brentford. Louisa had a fine singing voice and had joined the Catholic Church some years before because they had the best choir in Oxfordshire. It might be that Louisas mistress fancied an omelette for her tea one day and sent her maid to the grocers, where Michael, as he handed over the symbols of fertility, caught Louisas eye.

Their son, Hector, was my maternal grandfather. My paternal grandfather, John Clary, worked in a tobacco factory and met my grandmother, Elizabeth, in a pub. Perhaps she was drinking a snowball at the time, but there is no official record.

But lets talk about me.

It was surprisingly one morning, and thats as far as Im prepared to go, said my mother when I asked about my conception. I already knew the deed was done at Clacton-on-Sea, and working backwards from May 1959, when I was born, I could see it was evidently during a late summer break at Auntie Flossies bungalow. Now I knew the time of day!

I was 44, and I wanted to know. How was I... ?

I had always assumed, it being the 1950s and all, that the miracle of life occurred after dark with the lights off, but no. Morning. Brazen as you please. Anyone could have walked in. Where were my sisters? Frances and Beverley would have been three and one at the time. Had Auntie Flossie taken them down to the beach to give my parents some time alone? How thrilling to think of my parents overcome by passion, intoxicated by the sea air, writhing and cavorting in the kitchen as the morning sun filtered through the net curtains.

I really wanted to know the details of that particular sexual act but as always my mother knew what my game was, and her thats as far as Im prepared to go had rather put me in my place.

The truth is my mother always knew within hours if she was pregnant. This being her third such experience, she was in no doubt. A vague nausea and a tenderness in the nipple region.

Somewhat chagrined at the prospect of bottling her own potential for a few more years as another life took over, but simultaneously overcome with those glorious, earthy feelings only hormones and heterosexual liaisons can produce, she soon got used to the idea of another child.

The blood pressure that had escalated during her previous pregnancies was now a serious problem. At eight months, a routine visit to her GP brought bad news. She would have to go to hospital at once. She refused. Frances and Beverley were so small. They needed her. If she had to go home, the doctor told her, then she must stay in bed and do nothing. It was vital for the well-being of the baby. She cried. Quite stressful, I should imagine. The next day there was a knock at the door. It was Auntie Flossie. Four foot nine and 62 years old, all the way from Clacton.

Ive come for your girls, she said, and so she did. My mothers confinement, released from the responsibilities of motherhood, continued as prescribed. She stayed in bed, nursing the foetus within. She watched a lot of boxing matches on the television.

MY MOTHER HAD met my father six years earlier when they both worked for the Met Office in Dunstable, near Luton. (Fifty years later theyre both still prone to glancing up at the sky and announcing to bemused visitors: Cumulonimbus coming in from the west, I see.) They were both 18 and away from home for the first time. My father had a motorbike. One thing led to another. You can quite understand it. Shotgun Boogie and Frank Sinatra were all the rage. They didnt mean any harm, your honour.

Office life was some kind of big open-plan arrangement full of lots of young people who were good at geography. My mother made a name for herself by refusing to sit on a seat if it was still warm from the previous occupant. Apparently she would stand over the offending chair and fan it with a cotton handkerchief to encourage the cooling process. My father, with his film-star looks and easy-going manner, was quite a catch. No doubt they were all sniffing around each other like dogs on a council estate. Soon Peter and Brenda were an item.