Lesley-Ann Jones - Tumbling Dice

TUMBLING DICE

BECAUSE JOURNALISTS ARE HUMAN TOO

BY LESLEY-ANN JONES,

SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF

BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY:

THE DEFINITIVE BIOGRAPHY OF

FREDDIE MERCURY

FOREWORD BY PHILIP NORMAN,

INTERNATIONALLY ACCLAIMED BIOGRAPHER OF THE BEATLES, THE ROLLING STONES, ELTON JOHN & ERIC CLAPTON

ON THE RUN WITH MICHAEL JACKSON

TERRORISING BOWIE

BREAKING THE LAW WITH A ROLLING STONE

SPARRING WITH SINATRA

REHAB WITH STEVIE NICKS

DOUBLE-CROSSED BY GARY GLITTER

HANGING WITH RAQUEL WELCH

GETTING PREGNANT WITH JOAN COLLINS

FISHING WITH MARCO PIERRE WHITE

FLYING WITH HUGH GRANT

FIGHTING WITH RICHARD GERE

FINDING PRINCESS DIANAS SECRET LOVER

MOTHERING WITH MADONNA

ALSO BY LESLEY-ANN JONES

Bohemian Rhapsody: The Definitive Biography of Freddie Mercury

Hero: David Bowie

Ride a White Swan: The Lives and Death of Marc Bolan

Naomi: The Rise and Rise of the Girl from Nowhere

Imagine, a novel

With Gray Jolliffe: Excuses, Excuses

With Robin Eggar & Phil The Collector Swern: the Sony Rock Review

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING ABOUT TUMBLING DICE

Brilliant, unputdownable, a tour de force. The best book about celebrities that I have ever read. I wish Id written it.

Simon Napier-Bell, rock manager, the Yardbirds,

Marc Bolan, Wham!, Sinead OConnor, George Michael.

LAJ has always shone her light brilliantly, if sometimes too accurately, on others. She now turns it articulately and entertainingly onto herself a scoop!

Sir Tim Rice, author & Academy Award-winning lyricist,

Jesus Christ Superstar, Evita, Chess, The Lion King

Hilarious, revealing, shocking and hugely enjoyable account of the wild, weird world of celebrity and even wilder, weirder world of tabloid journalism.

Piers Morgan, TV presenter, journalist and former Editor,

News of the World, Daily Mirror, mailonline, Mail on Sunday

Lesley-Ann was both the glamour and the guts of rock journalism. No one got closer to the story, nor nearer to the core of a crazy time. She was there and she was all there.

Robert Elms, broadcaster, BBC Radio London

This is a book Id have expected to hate. I despise celebrity journalism, have minimal interest in celebrities, page past the celeb sections of newspapers, and have never even looked at Hello! magazine. But, boy oh boy, Tumbling Dice is sensational! The stories are amazing and the storyteller, Lesley-Ann Jones, brings such intelligence, self-knowledge and honesty to a life recollected, that by the second page of the introduction, I was hooked.

Matthew Parris, The Times columnist, broadcaster and former politician

It was almost impossible to be at a gig, party reception or other rock-related shindig from the late 70s, 80s and beyond without seeing Lesley-Ann. She was everywhere, and seemed to know everyone, from rock stars to hotel doormen. I remember once, at the infamous Sunset Marquis hotel in Hollywood, wondering if LAJ was in town, only to have her suddenly appear from behind a large potted palm at breakfast. LAJ lived, loved and breathed rocknroll, and brought the extraordinary stories she uncovered, and was often a part of, to Fleet Street with the skill and confidence of a true insider. Smart, tireless, indefatigable but always with a mavericks smile on her face, Lesley-Ann Jones might be the closest to a rocknroll legend that newspapers have ever produced.

Martin Townsend, former Editor, Sunday Express

Searing, raw, vivid, compelling! This is as real and as outrageous as memoirs get. Jones's account of celebrity journalism, Fleet Street during its heyday and some of the biggest scandals of the age is 100% accurate, and all too true. I know: I was there. I worked with her. The way in which the author sets these explosive revelations against her own sometimes devastating private life is shocking and heart-breaking. Do yourself a favour and read this book: all human life is here.

Stuart White, former US Editor, News of the World, and

best-selling author of Death Game and Kiss of the Angel.

Lesley-Ann Jones has long been regarded as the doyenne of showbiz writing and reporting. For three decades she has moved in the social circles of the megastars of the modern music era, from Bowie and Boy George to Mercury and Fleetwood Mac. LAJ spent days and nights, weeks and months with these people, witnessing cultural history in the making. She maintained such a stunning presence, you could easily believe she was a rock-chick herself. No other journalist has ever been more immersed in the industrys explosive kaleidoscope. No one got closer. No one saw more.

Mike Parry, broadcaster and former Fleet Street executive

CONTENTS

FOREWORD BY PHILIP NORMAN

We members of the strange literary minority known as rock biographers tend not to socialise with each other like authors of detective stories or science-fiction. For me, the chief deterrent is the lamentable standard of most rock biographising; if ever I were to meet Peter Guralnick or Paul Morley, whatever charm they may possess would be neutralised by the thought of their dreary presences in print. Consequently, almost the only fellow professional I ever see or want to is Lesley-Ann Jones.

I first became aware of LAJ, as she signs herself, with the insightful first biography of Freddie Mercury she published in 1997. Ive since got to know her at the reunions of old rock stars and the music writers who once chronicled them nicknamed the Scribblers, Pluckers, Thumpers and Squawkers lunch which take place twice-yearly at a riverside pub in Barnes. Entertaining though these gatherings are, the attendees are predominantly male and grey-haired. LAJ adds a welcome touch of glamour and an even more welcome one of naughtiness.

Ive always rather envied those for whom newspapers were a family tradition rather than (as in my own case) a refuge for an otherwise unemployable misfit. LAJ comes from fine old Fleet Street stock: her father, Ken Jones, was a highly esteemed sportswriter for the Daily and Sunday Mirror and The Independent; as she fondly writes, one of an intrepid band of men who crashed around the country and across the world on a relentless mission to bring the stench of the prize fight, the elegance of the test match, the frenzy of football to the breakfast table. But here the traditional nepotism did not apply: it was only after a colourful start in radio and the music industry that she found her own way to the Street of Shame and took up Britains last legal bloodsport, otherwise known as celebrity journalism.

She was blooded in the late 1980s, an era when British celebrity sleaze and tabloid amorality reached an unsurpassed high water-mark, notching up an impressive series of exclusives with contemporary splash-hogs such as Boy George, Madonna and Whitney Houston. While as adept at getting her foot in the door as any of her rivals, she had an ability to make friends with her quarry through natural empathy, intelligence, humour and that winning air of naughtiness which often led to personal entanglement in the stories she covered. Tumbling Dice reprises hilarious examples such the Bill Wyman-Mandy Smith marriage, the unmasking of Gary Glitter as the first national treasure-turned serial paedophile, and Hugh Grants moment of madness (that quintessential 80s phrase!) with an LA prostitute named Divine, which showed the floppiness of his hair didnt extend to other regions.

Its worth noting that the cruelty of mad-dog tabloids to celebrities was nothing compared with their brutality towards their own staff. LAJ came in for more than her share, thanks to her refusal to write lies to fit a pre-determined headline. In those hot-metal days, now so rose-tinted, bullying was still thought to be something that went on only among schoolkids and sexual harassment deemed a male prerogative, both in the newsroom and on assignments. You know were going to fuck, dont you? was the opening gambit of one celebrity chef she interviewed an objective he sought to advance by being horrible to her young daughter, whom shed brought with her. The reader will admire the professionalism with which she resists an urge to give him a swift kick in the goujons.