One of the radio stations I often was on was 710-AM, KMPC, which then was owned by the one-time cowboy film star Gene Autry. It long had been carrying the games of the Angels—Autry also owned that Major League Baseball team—and the Los Angeles Rams, but it was a station geared mostly to music.
I guess I had made a favorable impression with the KMPC management because it offered me a job when the station was set to change its format and become the first twenty-four-hour sports talk outlet in LA.
I was set to become a co-host with an outspoken local radio voice, Joe McDonnell, and we were going to work the midday shift, followed in drive time by Jim Lampley, the HBO fight announcer.
I actually was looking forward to the opportunity, not only for the increased visibility it would bring me in the LA media market, but also for the increased financial benefits.
But the week before our show was to debut, KMPC management suddenly decided to replace me as McDonnell’s partner with the former Los Angeles Raider star tight end Todd Christensen.
“I hold the distinction of being the first person ever fired in radio before even going on the air,” I had told Barbieri and Kramer.
Which, of course, was not true.
In the many years I would go on to be active in radio, I’d see a lot of people offered jobs—only for the offers to be withdrawn at the last moment for various reasons, most of them nonsensical.
“Don’t be too down…You still have your job with the newspaper, which is your real job,” said Barbieri, a former fight publicist for Aileen Eaton at the old Olympic Auditorium in downtown Los Angeles who also had once served as an aide-de-camp for the Hall of Fame football coach George Allen, who long had been a close friend of mine.
“Working two jobs takes too much time anyway,” said Kramer, a Runyonesque character and lifelong ticket scalper known by the sobriquet “Donnie No Win” for his peerless knack for making unsuccessful sporting wagers.
Then Kramer, given to mindless pronouncements, said, “Why don’t you go fly to London to cool off ?”
For once, Donnie No Win made sense.
Why not? I thought to myself.
“For the first time in your life, Kramer, you said something that isn’t outlandish,” I responded, even though what Donnie No Win said was typically outlandish. “Good idea. I think I am going to take your advice and go to London later this afternoon. Why not? I’ve never been there even though I’ve visited Europe many times. I think I could use a week off to clear my head. I know there will be no problem from the paper getting the time off since I have a lot of vacation time saved up. And I already have a round-trip ticket.”
“How’s that?’” wondered Barbieri.
“I have one of those buddy passes, a non-revenue ticket in which I only have to pay for the tax, which is usually less than $200,” I replied. “Airline employees get them, and mine came from a friend who works for Delta. The guy’s allotted sixteen a year, and I always wind up buying five or six for travel in this country and abroad. And I always kept one in hand in case I want to fly somewhere quickly like I’m now going to do today.”
I checked my watch. It was 1:30 p.m. Van Barbieri gave me a puzzled look.
“You’re kidding, aren’t you…You’re really not going to go to London today?” he said.
“Yeah, I am,” I said.
And within four hours on that fateful Tuesday in early April, I was on a Virgin Atlantic flight to London and even wound up being seated in business class because the buddy pass allowed for such an upgrade (Delta Airlines had a co-share with VA in those days).
I checked into the Park Lane Hilton across from Hyde Park late the following morning, and the first couple of days I visited the Tower of London, Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, Madame Tussauds, Harrods and a lot of pubs. I also went on jogs at Hyde Park and Regent Park and found myself wildly amused by the salacious London tabloids.
On my third day in the city, I noted an item in one of the sports sections that a former Long Beach State receiver, Sean Foster, was a member of the London Monarchs. The Monarchs were in the World League of American Football, which now is extinct but then had teams in several major European cities and was being subsidized by the National Football League.
I already had become slightly bored and figured I’d mix in some work—Foster would make for a nice Long Beach story—on a day I had nothing planned until the evening. I reached a person in the Monarchs’ public relations office, found out the team trained at the Crystal Palace Athletic Fitness Center and had the fellow set up an interview for me with Foster at 1:00 p.m. I had no idea how to get to Crystal Palace, but the PR guy told me what train to take, and I made it there without any trouble.
After the session with Sean Foster had ended, I trudged back to the railway station to return to the hotel. I was set to be picked up at 6:00 p.m. by the prominent boxing and track writer of the London Sun, Colin Hart, who was going to drive me to his home for dinner.
And now I was seated next to this young lady who had just asked me the reason for my being at this south London location at three o’clock on a Friday afternoon.
“I just got finished interviewing an American football player who went to college in the city where I work,” I finally responded.
She nodded, and we continued to talk about various trivial matters until our train arrived, whereupon we both got on the same carriage and sat in seats across the aisle from each other.
We resumed our conversation as the train made a couple of stops, and then, as it slowed for Streatham Hill, she said, “Well, it was nice talking to you, but I’ll be getting off here.”
“Oh yes, nice talking to you also,” I said.
We both looked at each other warmly, and then she started to rise.
And strangely, I felt like rising also and accompanying her off the train. But that was absurd because I didn’t even know her name, and anyway, she couldn’t have been more than twenty-two or twenty-three (I’d find out later she was twenty-five); and anyway, I was too old at forty-eight; and anyway, I’d be back in LA in a couple days; and anyway, for a pleasant change, I hadn’t been seeking any female companionship on this trip and had been determined to keep it that way.
But my instincts took over, and suddenly, I found myself saying, “Gosh, I don’t even know your name.”
“Gillian,” she answered.
“I’m Doug,” I said.
The train was braking to a stop, but I didn’t want to stop my interaction with Gillian, and I simply said, “Listen, I’m going to be here in London until Tuesday. Maybe we can get together for lunch or dinner.”
“Sure.”
“Can I have your phone number?”
“Sure.”
The train came to a stop, and I hurriedly pulled out my pen and notepad as she gave me the number.
“I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“OK.”
We shook hands softly, she disembarked and I figured it would be the final time I’d see Gillian.
I was wrong.
Chapter 2
I had an enjoyable time that evening with Colin Hart and his wife, Cindy. She cooked a superb dinner that featured boiled beef, and Hart, a Fleet Street veteran I had come across many times in Las Vegas at major title fights, proved to be a superb raconteur.
But what made that evening even more pleasurable was the unexpected experience I had earlier in the day at the Crystal Palace train station. I told Colin and his wife about it, and I remember Colin saying to me, “Looks like you met your future wife.” We all laughed at such a ridiculous statement.
I knew nothing about Gillian except that she had flawlessly textured fingers and worked for the NHS and resided in Streatham Hill and came from some place called Hartlepool. Yet I found myself that night thinking about our unlikely meeting and wondering, even hoping, we’d meet again over the weekend.
I called Gillian late the next morning and asked her to have dinner with me that evening.
“Oh, I
can’t because I’m going to a friend’s birthday party tonight,” she said.
I figured such a response was her gentle way of letting me know she wasn’t interested in getting together and that she had simply been courteous the previous day when she had given me her phone number without hesitation.
But just as I was set to quickly end the conversation to spare her, as well as myself, any further discomfort, I heard her say, “But I’m free on Sunday.”
I was startled. Maybe she really did have a birthday party to attend. Maybe she wasn’t brushing me off.
“Sure, anytime would do,” I responded quickly.
“I’ll meet you in front of the National Gallery at Trafalgar Square. Would 10:00 a.m. be all right?”
“Certainly.”
After going on a lengthy run at Hyde Park, traipsing around Piccadilly Circus, visiting a couple of pubs and taking a leisurely afternoon nap, I had an early dinner that Saturday evening at a Chinese restaurant and went to sleep by 11:00 p.m. so I’d be well rested for whatever was on the agenda Sunday.
Not that I was even certain Gillian would actually show up to meet me at the National Gallery. I had been single long enough to know the vexing capriciousness of these types of first-time dates and that being stood up was always a distinct possibility.
So when the phone rang in my hotel room at eight o’clock that Sunday morning and I heard Gillian’s voice at the other end when I answered it, I figured she was calling to tell me she was canceling for one illegitimate reason or another.
“I’m sorry, Douglas,” she began, and I knew what was coming next. “But I can’t be there at 10:00 a.m. I didn’t get home from the birthday party until three o’clock in the morning…”
My heart sank. The gleeful anticipation I had felt since meeting Gillian had instantly disappeared and been replaced by disappointment.
But then, to my surprise, I could hear her saying, “I just woke up. Do you mind if we push it back to twelve o’clock?”
“No problem at all,” I said coolly in an attempt to disguise my relief. “I’ll be there at noon in front of the National Gallery. Looking forward to it.”
I hung up, sighed deeply and shrieked in ecstasy, “Yeah, baby!’”
Unbelievable!
This young lady I didn’t even know calls to apologize for coming late when I figured she was calling to tell me she wasn’t even coming.
I arrived at Trafalgar Square at 11:15 a.m., and naturally, it was drizzling. I walked slowly around the crowded area gazing vacantly at the Nelson Column and statues of other dead English war heroes and began thinking about the absurdity of the situation.
Here I was, on an impulsive whim, in a foreign country thousands of miles away from home waiting for a young woman I had known for barely an hour. What would we do for the remainder of the day? Why did I arrive forty-five minutes early? Would she still even show up?
Noon came, and there was no Gillian. Ten minutes passed and still no sign of her. I began to get slightly agitated. Remember, those were the pre-cellphone days when plausible explanations for tardiness could not easily be communicated.
But then, at around 12:15 p.m., I spotted her walking briskly across the square toward the National Gallery and hurriedly went over to meet her.
“Oh, I’m so sorry I’m late…the train was delayed,” she said.
“No problem whatsoever…We already know about train delays,” I said, as I clasped her right hand gently and looked into her expressive brown eyes that I found unusually captivating.
I noticed once again that her face was unmarred by makeup and also noticed that her lips were full and that she had a perfectly formed chin below teeth that were in need of braces, which she would be fitted with shortly after we got married.
There was no flash allure about Gillian, but I realized as I surveyed her for the first time in a more discerning manner that she was one of those women whose lack of name-brand apparel and upscale accoutrements and garish cosmetic enhancements belied a natural beauty oftentimes not easily detected by casual observance.
There was a momentary silence after our opening greeting before she said, “I’ll show you a few places around London. Do you mind starting off visiting the National Gallery? Do you like art?”
“Yes, that would be great, and I love art,” I said, even though I was fibbing and knew nothing about it.
And so we spent the next couple hours roaming through the maze of rooms at the National Gallery, and Gillian astounded me with her knowledge as we viewed some of the 2,300 works that hung on its walls.
The first painter who caught my attention that afternoon was John Constable, whom I’d never heard of before entering the National Gallery. I found myself being drawn to his evocative paintings, including the Hay Wain, which I later would learn was his most acclaimed one.
“Who is this Constable?” I asked Gillian, and she told me he was a Suffolk romantic artist known for his landscape renditions.
As we strolled the premises, I’d ask her similar questions about men with surnames like Turner, Botticelli, Bruegel, Caravaggio, Poussin, Vermeer, Titian, Reynolds, Degas, Renoir, Chardin, Delacroix, Rubens, Ingres and others whose work caught my attention.
I previously had been to only two other European museums—the Louvre in Paris and the Alte Pinakothek in Munich—and had walked briskly through both with a bored indifference.
But not this time, as we paused at paintings we found interesting, with Gillian providing insightful commentary. I always point to that day as being the one I was seized by an epiphany that resulted in my becoming a passionate devotee of art. During the next decade, I would wind up buying more than one hundred books on the subject, stocking my home with countless prints I would have framed and visiting many of Europe’s most renowned museums.
After departing the National Gallery, we had lunch at a nearby café, and my inquisitive nature resulted in my pressing Gillian about her cultural tastes and background.
I found out that she enjoyed attending plays and films, relished the literary offerings of Shakespeare, Auden, Kundera and Murdoch and, of course, liked art.
I found out she grew up in Dalton-Piercy, a small township (population ninety) three miles from Hartlepool, had an older brother and sister and was a rebellious teenager who had been a poor student until a derogatory comment from one of her instructors altered her life.
I found out she had a close relationship with her parents and that her father had been a manager in an engineering firm and that her mother had been a business studies instructor.
I found out she graduated from the University of Newcastle with a degree in physiotherapy and that she went to work at the oldest hospital in London, St. Bartholomew’s—the Barts—at age twenty-one.
I later would find out a lot more about Gillian from both her and her sister, Katharine Elliott, and what she told me that day was a mere threadbare glimpse of the fascinating maturation she underwent in her late teens and the struggles she faced in her early days in London.
We must have walked at least ten miles that first day together, amid the ceaseless stream of double-decker red buses and black taxicabs that clogged the thoroughfares. As we headed to Greenwich, which is almost six miles from central London, Gillian turned out to be a stellar tour guide, as she kept pointing out historic sites along the way.
It was during this period I found myself warming to her thick accent with its strong enunciation on heavy consonant words that often were indecipherable. I would find out it was sort of a hybrid Teeside-Geordie dialect, although I later would discover that you risk being verbally accosted if you dare tell people from Hartlepool that they sound like a Geordie, which is what the good burghers of Newcastle are called.
As we navigated the streets, I suddenly found myself having to stifle the urge to hold Gillian’s hand. She still hadn’t given me an indication that this was anything more than a platonic engagement in which she was simply being kind to a foreigner with no knowledge of the grea
t city.
As the afternoon grew late and darkness neared, I braced myself for her farewell and figured we’d go on with our lives without further contact. But I was surprised when this soft-spoken lady with a sweet disposition said, “Would you like to see where I live?”
“Yes, for sure,” I said, barely able to contain my excitement. “And then we’ll have dinner.”
“That would be nice,” she responded, and suddenly I began viewing her differently. Why would she invite me to see her living quarters and then agree to have dinner with me if she had no interest in me?
It turned out Gillian resided in a second-floor, two-bedroom walk-up at 85 Salford Road in the south London district of Sreatham Hill that she shared with a male roommate—she owned 50 percent of it—in an ethnically diverse neighborhood. It was small but comfortable and had a front room with a couch and desk in it.
We stayed there about fifteen minutes and then walked to a nearby Italian restaurant that was crowded. We sat at the bar for the next three hours, during which we ate and drank and never stopped talking.
Although there were moments when I could have used an interpreter to translate what Gillian was saying—I swear I only understood her half the time that night—I found her severe accent to be enchanting. I never tired of listening to Gillian throughout our relationship, and it turned out she felt the same way about me.
I don’t know for sure how many screwdrivers I consumed that evening, but I know it was enough to keep me chatting excitedly away, not only with Gillian, but also with the bartenders, waitresses, busboys, customers and owner of the restaurant. Gabbing with strangers in such an environment long had become a playful habit of mine.
Fortunately, Gillian always found such antics entertaining since she said English men were notoriously reticent and that none came even faintly close to being as outgoing and friendly as I was in public venues.
I must have had three drinks after dinner—she had actually been pacing herself and turned to water after two glasses of wine—and remember asking her if she had ever before been out with an American.
Between the Bylines Page 2
