Under Cover

by Jeremy Robson

  ‘Would you and your wife like to come to the wedding?’ Joan asked as we finalised the text. Well, we weren’t going to say no to that invitation! Held at Claridge’s, the wedding seemed to us like a scene from Dynasty: there were silver chairs for the guests in the candle-lit room where the ceremony took place; enormous vases of lilac and lilies everywhere; the tables in the dining room were given the names of flowers instead of numbers, and stylishly draped with purple velvet and set with white napkins tied with lavender ribbons – everything in harmony with the lilac colour scheme.

  As we waited expectantly for the bride to appear, I looked around at the other guests – so many famous faces among them, including Shirley Bassey (who later sang for Joan, unaccompanied), Roger Moore, Ruby Wax, Terry O’Neill, and Cilla Black (in a long black dress slit to the thigh, as I couldn’t help noticing when the dancing started!). Then the oh-so-glamorous bride entered, and what an entrance she made, wearing a close-fitting, off-the-shoulder lilac silk dress, and carrying a bouquet of lily of the valley and freesias. Percy wore a tartan of the Monaghan clan (his mother, Bridget Monaghan, was the daughter of a Glasgow railway worker). At the drinks reception after the ceremony, we all drank far too much champagne while waiting for the photos to be taken. It was one of the few occasions Carole and I have had our pictures in OK! magazine, which was covering the wedding exclusively.

  Tireless Joan might have danced all night, yet in the following weeks she still had plenty of energy left to promote Star Quality, and we were happy to ride the wave of the wedding publicity. We launched the book with a champagne reception at the Players’ Theatre, where I remember Miriam Margolyes shouting out to Joan as she entered, ‘You look fucking marvellous!’, Joan responding to the compliment good-humouredly if not in kind. Coincidentally, I had faxed Miriam not long before to ask if she would like to write a book. ‘No, I would not,’ she had scribbled fiercely at the top of my missive, returning it almost before it had reached her. At the launch of Joan’s book, she relented a little, saying that if I introduced her to Alan Coren, whom she greatly admired, we might have lunch and talk about it. As part of our promotion I took Joan and Alan as our guests to the British Book Awards (‘The Nibbies’), where they both made speeches and presented awards. Later, Miriam came up to Joan, and I introduced her to Alan, but I never claimed my lunch nor did we ever do a book together.

  As well as all the signings, literary lunches and media appearances we arranged for Joan, there was a Foyles lunch at Grosvenor House in her honour, shared with Denis Healey. When told that his co-honouree was Joan Collins, Healey jokingly asked whether a bedroom had been reserved for them. He really should have been Prime Minister!

  Always classy and stylish, Joan Collins was exciting to publish. Her launch parties were always memorable.

  After Star Quality came Joan’s Way, her tips on looking and feeling good: a lavish, full-colour, large-format book, with many of the photos specially taken at her request by Brian Aris, some at Grayshott Hall, the lovely health farm near Guildford then owned by my friend Tony Stalbow’s company. (Maureen Lipman had once opened a new wing there and talked in her speech about the shag on the floor, referring – naturally! – to the thick carpet rather than any activity that might have taken place on it.) There was no OK! magazine to help underwrite the cost, but fortunately the Daily Mail came up with a life-saving offer backed by TV advertising, and then an American publisher came on board, so we were home and dry. The only other book of that kind we had done was with Twiggy some years earlier, and that too had been a costly exercise, though watching her smile and pose for the camera so naturally was an experience, and every photo turned out a beauty. For her shoot we’d had to call in on loan whole outfits – dresses, coats, shoes and accessories. I hadn’t known you could do this, but I was learning fast.

  Now I think about it, there were two other full-colour books on our list – sex manuals by Anne Hooper and Phillip Hodson – but for those no clothes were required. Joan, I hasten to add, brought her own clothes to her shoots, every bit as stylish as any we might have borrowed… or bought.

  Robson Books published one more book with Joan, a racy novel called Misfortune’s Daughter, but then I became involved with the Quarto Group and we moved even further away from fiction. Not surprisingly, Joan has gone on writing and I was amused to see that, lively as ever, she still knows how to command a headline: responding on the television show Loose Women to the question ‘Name three things that have kept your marriage with Percy strong,’ her reply was, ‘Sex, sex, sex.’ Messrs Hooper and Hodson would have approved.

  As a tailpiece, I should add that my Dynasty obsession led me to publish two other stars of that infectious saga – Diahann Carroll, who was at the time engaged to David Frost, and Kate O’Mara, the feisty Kate once changing for a ‘do’ in my office while I averted my eyes (won’t I ever learn?). I remember the Daily Mail paying a goodly sum for her frank and powerful story.

  * * *

  It was Jonathan Lloyd, too, who brought us one of the jewels in our crown. I had gone to see him in his office in the summer of 2011 when he asked me whether I’d like to publish Peter Brookes. Since the first thing I looked at when I opened The Times every morning was Peter’s political cartoon, and like a great many other people I considered him a genius, Jonathan got an immediate ‘Yes’, a deal was done, and a close publishing relationship – and friendship – was born. We’ve now published four collections of Peter’s dazzling cartoons and plan more. Generous in many respects, after his book launches held at the prestigious Chris Beetles Gallery, in tandem with an exhibition of his originals, Peter generally invites us to join him for dinner with his delightful wife Angela (a highly skilled printmaker and herself a considerable artist) and a small circle of friends or family. On one occasion I forgot my glasses and Peter lent me his so I could read the menu. Later, perhaps spurred by the excellent wine, I found myself trying to imagine what the world looked like as seen through Peter’s creative lenses, and wrote a short poem. It certainly surprised him and when he said he was chuffed, so was I! Those were the days before Trump’s hair and Theresa May’s shoes and necklace took centre stage, when David Cameron, flanked by his old Etonian cronies, was Prime Minister. Here’s how ‘The Cartoonist’s Glasses’ begins:

  Borrowing his glasses to read the menu

  I thought I’d get my own Private View,

  that they’d reveal a flashlight world

  of bloody tyrants and feckless politicians

  where a pop-eyed prime minister and his

  fellow schoolboy toffs held comic sway…

  but all I saw was the dish of the day.

  So, as well as his books and his friendship, Peter gave me a poem… and a fabulous cartoon, included in the plate section to show the colour.

  * * *

  As I have recounted, Harry Secombe sent us a remarkable bestselling author, but when, a couple of years later, he mentioned that the actress Alexandra Bastedo, who was touring with him in Mr Pickwick, was looking for a publisher, I was puzzled. I’d seen her at a Telegraph drinks party only a couple of months earlier, where she was telling a circle of admiring men about the animal rescue farm she had started and the book she’d written about it. She had a publisher already (I asked!) and I thought, ‘Lucky them’, the combination of animals and a beautiful actress seeming to me to be a heady one, as visions of Brigitte Bardot swam before my eyes. Unlike that iconic actress, Alexandra’s looks had held up wonderfully since she’d starred at the age of twenty in the cult TV series The Champions. That was before she had become romantically linked with Omar Sharif. From what Harry told me, something had gone wrong with her book deal and she now had a manuscript ready to publish and no publisher. He’d suggested that she should contact me.

  Her book was good and Alexandra lively and full of ideas about promoting it. She was married to the writer and theatre director Patrick Garland, who seemed extremely indulgent of the animals that took up more and more room in
their seventeenth-century farmhouse near Chichester, an ever-expanding menagerie of rescued donkeys, cats, dogs, hens, ferrets, turkeys, chipmunks and fish. She brought her ferrets to the office to meet our reps, and released them, laughing, much to the consternation of the males among them. She certainly knew how to keep men on their toes!

  There was always a gratifying turnout for the launches she gave at the farm, while Patrick looked on wryly from the side. In her book, Beware Dobermans, Donkeys and Ducks, she recounted her early film and television career, but one story she didn’t tell, which she confided to me, concerned a weekend she’d spent in Paris with Omar Sharif, Peter Sellers and Peter’s girlfriend. Waking late and finding no Sharif, Alexandra had dressed and gone down to breakfast, where she bumped into Sellers, alone and looking for his girlfriend. It transpired that she had gone off with Sharif, so the two of them were left to go for a stroll together along the Seine… at least, that’s what Alexandra told me they did. I wonder whether Peter would have included that story in the book he never wrote, and what his ending would have been!

  Another beautiful star of a cult TV series who was very involved with animals was Stefanie Powers, co-star with Robert Wagner of Hart to Hart, though the animals she favoured were the more dangerous, endangered species of east Africa. She had become passionate about them through the great love of her life, the actor William Holden, after whose death she established the William Holden Wildlife Foundation. Her career in film and theatre and on television has been a rich and varied one, with appearances alongside many of Hollywood’s most illustrious stars and roles that have included that of the sexy secret agent April Dancer in the TV series The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. In between promoting her book, One from the Hart, we enjoyed hearing her sing in cabaret and listening to the talks she gave about her business and philanthropic ventures. An enterprising and versatile woman, Stefanie was also great fun, and although I generally try to keep authors separate so that each gets maximum attention, I invited her to one of our most unusual book launches. This was an awayday with champagne and fine food on the Orient Express at the invitation of James Sherwood, who had written an account of how he’d bought the old rolling stock and revived the train. His collaborator was the financial journalist Ivan Fallon, and the book had come to me through Vivienne Schuster at Curtis Brown, every bit as special an agent as The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. Naturally, both Viv and Ivan were on the train that day. The lavish party stretched the full length of the train, with guests eating and drinking at tables set on either side of the carriages. We were lucky enough to share a table with Christopher Foyle and his charming wife, and Stefanie, sharing with Tom Conti and his wife Kara, seemed to greatly enjoy being in such an Agatha Christie-esque setting. Not many of us got off the train standing upright that day.

  It’s odd that Stefanie should find herself on our list alongside the Man from U.N.C.L.E, the elegant, intellectual Robert Vaughn, and while we entertained them both it wasn’t at the same time – though that would have been interesting, given their involvement with both U.N.C.L.E. and politics. Stefanie had campaigned for Robert Kennedy, and Vaughn, a long-time Democrat activist, was the first actor to take a public stand against the Vietnam War, and went on to write on political subjects. What I discovered from publishing them was the extraordinary cult following they and their respective TV series inspired. I should have been prepared, given that at the height of his series, Vaughn had been forced to put up an electric fence around his home to keep out the hordes of young girls who gathered there. And I should have remembered, too, the personal story told to me by Marilyn Warnick, then books editor of the Mail on Sunday, who jumped the queue to buy serial rights in Robert’s book. At the age of eighteen, she told me, she’d been in a children’s hospital in Pennsylvania for spinal surgery, which required a long period of recuperation. Because she was older than the other patients, she’d been given a private room behind the nurses’ station, with a television set. Her favourite nurse – who was in her thirties – would do the ward round then come and sit with her and watch The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Said Marilyn, ‘I’ve never forgotten her saying about Vaughn: “That man can put his slippers under my bed any time.”’

  However, I hadn’t realised the strength of Robert’s following, so when we took him for a signing at Waterstones in Piccadilly, I was amazed (though he certainly wasn’t) to see coachloads of fans waiting for him, all wearing Man from U.N.C.L.E. T-shirts, and a queue stretching along Piccadilly. The last time I saw Robert was as I was crossing Lambeth Bridge, and there, to my astonishment, he was, filming a scene for the British TV series Hustle, in which he played a suave conman.

  The mention of Piccadilly brings back embarrassing memories of another American film star, Ernest Borgnine – or, at least, of Tova, his much younger wife (his fifth). We had signed his succinctly titled autobiography (I Don’t Want to Set the World on Fire, I Just Want to Keep My Nuts Warm) and several months before we were due to launch it, she contacted me to say she would be in London the following week, staying at the Ritz, and suggesting we meet there to discuss promotion. It was a Saturday and I’d been out earlier driving my granddaughter around, and without giving my appearance much thought had thrown on a polo-neck sweater under a blazer, going straight on to the Ritz once I’d dropped her off.

  When I strolled into the hotel, an elegant, attractive woman slipped past me, dressed to the nines and bedecked with jewellery. I asked at the desk for Mrs Borgnine and was told she had just gone into the bar and was expecting me. That vision had evidently been her. ‘But, sir,’ the concierge continued as I moved to follow her, ‘I’m afraid you need a shirt and tie to go into the bar. We can lend you both, and you can change in there.’ He pointed to the gentlemen’s toilet. I hesitated, trying to decide whether to do a bunk or swallow my pride, but in the end crept into the gents with the shirt and rather drab tie under my arm. Mrs B had clearly been informed, and when I finally joined her, feeling like a schoolboy, I didn’t exactly knock her off her feet – or even the bar stool. Near to, her diamonds were dazzling – perhaps not quite as big as the Ritz, but close. I apologised and explained why I was late, she smiled, and we both pretended it hadn’t happened, but I could feel her disapproval in the air. Still, she had excellent contacts and was there to help, which she did, pointing out that her husband, to whom she had been married for thirty-five years, was ninety-two and should not be overburdened with too many engagements. Mrs Borgnine herself appeared frequently on the QVC shopping channel, where she sold her own cosmetics and perfumes, and was a regular at the Ritz whenever she was in London. Consequently, she managed to get us a ‘very special rate’ at the hotel for her husband, and arranged for him to go on QVC with her and sell his book, which was quite a coup. She also arranged for the Ritz to host an exclusive dinner with Mr Borgnine as guest of honour, to which the hotel would invite their special clients.

  Borgnine himself was a delight, chatting easily to fans, many of whom arrived with film posters, photos and other memorabilia for him to sign along with the book. There was a full house at the British Film Institute screening of Marty, the film for which he’d won an Oscar, and he was interviewed on stage. But somehow, although Mrs Borgnine smiled and was friendly, and though I was always careful to wear a shirt and tie, I don’t think I ever redeemed myself from that first encounter. And we never did receive an invitation to the Ritz dinner.

  26

  IN THE PINK

  One of the strangest people to come our publishing way was an unusually tall, waxwork-like man with thinning dyed hair called John M. East. A figure from an earlier era, he claimed to have been brought up by Max Miller, the Cheeky Chappie himself, and probably was. In fact, he wrote Miller’s biography for us, drawing on a lot of personal material. As well as having been a broadcaster, East was involved in public relations in some mysterious way and appeared to have contacts with various influential and often wealthy people, one of whom was David Sullivan, at that time owner of the Daily Sport and Sunday Spo
rt, and currently joint chairman with David Gold of West Ham Football Club. East was, in a way, a Mr Fixit, always saying he must interest Sullivan in our company, but I couldn’t imagine anything more unlikely. However, he did introduce us to Ralph Gold, David’s brother and partner (who had written a rags-to-riches account of their early days in business), and as a result we did get to sell our football titles through Birmingham FC, the club both brothers were then involved with.

  Just as improbably, East came into the office one day to say Barbara Cartland would like us to publish her. He then reached for the phone, dialled, and a few seconds later passed me the receiver and said, ‘Here’s Dame Barbara now, speak to her.’ For such moments you have to be prepared, and I certainly wasn’t. What on earth does one say to a woman like that, so removed from one’s own world, an almost fictional character? Somehow, as on so many other strange occasions in my life, I stammered my way through, and the next thing I knew Carole and I were driving John East to Camfield Place, the Cartland mansion near Hatfield, to join the family for Sunday lunch.

  An apparition in pink – pinker than any of the photos I’d ever seen of her – Dame Barbara was waiting in the sitting room, full of the memoir she wanted to write for us. I felt that any moment she would lie back on her chaise longue and start dictating it, as she had so many romantic novels over the years, but we were called in for lunch before she could get under way. Luckily we weren’t placed next to her, nor was I called on to make a speech as some others were, including her son Ian McCorquodale – apparently it was a Cartland family custom. John East, too, was quickly on his feet, eloquently thanking his hostess for her hospitality. As the coffee was served, Carole made a discreet exit and went in search of the loo. At the top of the wide, plush-carpeted staircase she took a wrong turn and found herself in a lavish dressing room with half-open cupboards on either side. Naturally, she couldn’t resist peeping into them, to be faced with dozens of full-length dresses, most of them pink. Fearing that someone might catch her, she beat a hasty retreat, finding the bathroom she’d been looking for on the way down and returning to the table mightily relieved in several respects.