An Education

by Lynn Barber

  When the article appeared I sent a copy to Bob Guccione and Joe Brooks rang and said, ‘He says he'll kill you if you ever set foot in New York. He didn't like what you said about Kathy.’ I took this threat sufficiently seriously to feel a little tremor of anxiety on all my subsequent trips to New York, and when Graydon Carter of Vanity Fair tried to persuade me to move there in the mid-1990s, a fear of running into Bob and Kathy was one (albeit a very minor one) of many considerations that convinced me to say no.

  But of course I've followed the Penthouse story at second hand, from the press and from gossip from other Penthouse ex-employees. Having worked for Penthouse is rather like having been to an obscure but colourful prep school subsequently closed by scandal – once you meet someone with whom you have this past in common you can talk of nothing else. Thus I learned that Bob finally married Kathy in 1988, and that she had a boob job around then (someone told me that she looked ‘like a skeleton with a lilo strapped to her chest’). She was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1995 and given only six weeks to live, but she fought it off with a controversial new drug and finally died, during surgery, in 1997. By then the Penthouse empire was crumbling – partly because the magazine was undercut by internet porn but also because Bob lost about $100 million in his failed attempts to build the Atlantic City casino and the nuclear cold fusion plant (at one point he was supporting eighty-two scientists in San Diego) and because in 1992 he had to borrow $80 million to pay his tax bill. Sadly, he had also fallen out with his sons Bob Jnr and Tony and refused to see them, even when he was diagnosed with throat cancer. Bob also made the bad decision to take Penthouse downmarket in response to internet porn – by the late 1990s it was showing penetration and even ‘water sports’.

  In a desperate last play to appease his creditors, Bob sold his art collection in Sotheby's in 2002 but, whereas it had been valued at $59 million just two years earlier, it fetched only $19 million. It wasn't enough: the Penthouse empire was declared bankrupt in 2003, and Bob was evicted from his mansion the next year. By this time he had advanced throat cancer and was being fed by a tube to his stomach. He looked awful in the last photos I saw. I'm not sure where he lives or what he does now. I remember him with affection and deep gratitude for giving me my entrée to journalism.

  Fleet Street

  Our first daughter, Rosie, was born in 1975 and our second, Theo, in 1978, and I didn't go back to work till 1981 so I served my stretch as a stay-at-home mother. I did it with reasonably good grace, I hope, though I still go cold at the words ‘playgroup duty’ or, worse still, ‘papier mâché’. Luckily Finsbury Park at that time was absolutely seething with saintly mothers who would ring and say they planned to spend the afternoon making papier mâché masks and would my daughters like to join in? Would they just! The problem came when I had to offer some equivalent treat. Luckily I soon discovered that the biggest treat you could give these middle-class Finsbury Park children was to plonk them in front of the telly, because they weren't allowed to watch telly at home. There was as much puritanism around television in those days (the early Eighties) as there is around, say, recycling or food additives now. But David could say, and often did say, with the authority born of his media-studies research, that it was positively good for children to watch television. The consequence was that our daughters, who were allowed to watch as much television as they liked, rarely bothered to, while their friends sat glued to our box.

  The only writing I did during these playgroup years was a hefty tome called The Heyday of Natural History about the effect of Darwinism on popular Victorian natural history books. It seems completely mad in retrospect but my thinking was that it would be easier, with children, to write an historical book based on library research than to flit around doing freelance journalism. Boy, was I wrong! The book got excellent reviews, and still counts as my calling card with people like Sir David Attenborough, but I bitterly regret doing it. It was five years' hard work, for almost no money, and proved what any of my Oxford tutors could have told me – that I had no natural vocation for scholarship. The saddest outcome was that, before I wrote Heyday, I used to love reading Victorian natural history books and searching for them in second-hand bookshops, but afterwards I could hardly bear to look at them, even the real beauties like Philip Gosse's Tenby.

  It was dear old Harry Fieldhouse who got me back into journalism. He had left Penthouse and I'd lost track of him. But apparently he was working at the Telegraph Magazine and told the editor that I was an expert on natural history (ha!) and therefore the right person to interview the Nobel Prize-winning ethologist Konrad Lorenz in Vienna. The commission came completely out of the blue (I didn't know then that Harry was behind it); I hadn't done any journalism for years and in fact had never interviewed a heavyweight scientist like Lorenz, but of course I was thrilled to go to Vienna. I worried beforehand that Lorenz would be too dry a subject, but he proved to be an extraordinarily charming, cultured, fascinating man, and I remember lying in my Viennese hotel room thinking, ‘This is amazing – I am being paid to meet someone I would kill to meet anyway.’ Until then, I hadn't had any particular ambition, but suddenly at thirty-six I knew what I wanted to do – interviewing, and lots more of it.

  Soon afterwards, Harry Fieldhouse got in touch and said he was working for the new Sunday Express colour supplement and would I like to join? Would I? I was dying to get back to work after six years of Finsbury Park domesticity and by now we were desperate for money. Also it meant that I would at last be working in Fleet Street, though I didn't realise then that I would be witnessing its dying days. I loved watching the flatbed trucks bringing great rolls of newsprint from Scandinavia, and unloading them down chutes into the bowels of the Express building, aka the Black Lubyanka. I loved the feeling of being part of an industry, of having some connection with the lumberjacks who felled the trees, the paper millers who turned them into newsprint, the lorry drivers who drove them across the Continent, the printers who – sometimes, when they weren't on strike – printed the pages. The back stairs of the Black Lubyanka were thickly coated with ink from the printers' hands and you could hear, and even feel, the great shuddering roar in the late afternoon when the presses started to roll.

  And of course I loved going through the famous art deco lobby to collect my expenses in ‘the bank in the sky’. Such fabulous expenses too! The first time I ever filled out an expenses form, the deputy editor told me it was ‘pathetic’. What did I mean travelling second class on the train or, worse still, by tube – didn't I know that NUJ regulations meant we were only allowed first-class train travel and taxis? And those terrible cheap restaurants I frequented! It was against all his principles to approve a lunch bill for only £6. He passed me a stack of blank restaurant receipts and told me to try harder next time. In those days, it was completely normal for journalists to ask for half a dozen receipts every time they paid a restaurant bill. And if you were going on a trip abroad, you went up to the bank in the sky for an advance of £300 or £500 with no explanation at all.

  Altogether, the Sunday Express was by miles the most fun of anywhere I've ever worked and I made some very good friends there. We'd roll up about ten-thirty or eleven, open our mail, discuss what we'd done the night before, read the newspapers (for some reason we all had to read all the papers every day), but the really important business of the morning was making arrangements for lunch. If one of us was ‘entertaining a contact’ we'd go to a grand restaurant like the Savoy Grill or Rules; otherwise we'd go to the nearby Italian, Capitelli's, or to Joe Allen in Covent Garden, or to the unbelievably seedy City Golf Club where the food was terrible but you got the very best and latest Fleet Street gossip. There were three-bottle, four-bottle, six-bottle lunches and it was a poor lunch indeed that finished before four o'clock. Occasionally, we'd all have to ‘help’ our wine writer, Oz Clarke, with a wine tasting, which meant the office would be awash with bottles for days. I was supposed to take notes of Oz's comments but after the first few bottles I
could never read my own handwriting. Insofar as I did any work, I tended to do it at home before I left for the office.

  My first job at the Sunday Express was writing the weekly ‘back of the book’ celebrity interview called ‘Things I Wish I'd Known at 18’. It was one of those one-page single-quote formats, like the Sunday Times's ‘Life in the Day of’, where you cobbled all the quotes together to make a continuous narrative. I wasn't crazy about the format or the subject – everyone said they wished they'd learned more languages and kept up the piano – but I found that just asking people what they were like at eighteen, on the cusp of adulthood, was often quite revealing. And it was good practice in dealing with celebrities, so that I got over the usual beginner's problem of being star-struck. Of course I was always ‘thrilled’ to meet them, but not so thrilled that I forgot to ask questions. But the really good discipline was learning how to vary the pieces every week when the format was so tight. It taught me always to listen for the differences between people rather than the similarities, and to cherish their idiosyncrasies of speech.

  I had a memorably enjoyable interview with Sir Ralph Richardson, though he was most peculiar on the phone beforehand. (Incidentally, in those days, you could often find famous people's phone numbers in Who's Who or even in the London phone book. You didn't have to go through a million PRs as you do today.) Sir Ralph readily agreed to do the interview but then said, ‘And what will you pay me?’ I said, shocked, ‘Oh no, we don't pay for interviews.’ He said, ‘Don't you get paid, my dear?’ I said, oh yes, I did. ‘But I thought you said it was all in my own words?’ Er… yes. I was beginning, rather belatedly, to see the difficulty. ‘Tell you what,’ he continued, ‘I'll write it myself and then you can pay me. But I don't want a cheque, I want a case of wine from Berry Bros. and Rudd. Tell them it's for me – they know what I like. Now when do you want to come and interview me?’ I put the phone down deeply puzzled, but when I told my editor he just laughed and said oh yes, and presumably sent the wine because Sir Ralph welcomed me warmly when I arrived. He talked so seamlessly and entertainingly, he easily earned his case of wine.

  The most embarrassing interview I ever did was with Robert Robinson, who was ubiquitous as a radio and television quiz-master at the time. I took a taxi to his smart house in Chelsea and – as often in those days – I had chewing gum in my mouth and dumped it in the taxi ashtray when I got out. Mrs Robinson let me in, introduced me to her husband, but we were still standing in the hall when the doorbell rang. Robert Robinson opened the door, and an irate taxi driver slammed my lump of chewing gum into his hand, screaming ‘Filthy habit!’ The man turned on his heel to go, but then he did a double-take and spun back again – he had suddenly recognised Robert Robinson from the telly. His manner changed instantaneously from pit bull to poodle. ‘So sorry, sir,’ he whined. ‘If I'd known it was you…’ Then, fatally, he tried to retrieve the chewing gum from Robinson's palm, but the gum was stuck and the more the cabbie tried to grab it, the more it stretched between their two hands, until finally, stretched to breaking point, it sank in coils on the exquisite carpet. Mrs Robinson gave a little wail and looked as if she might cry. I stood dumbstruck, too embarrassed even to apologise. The interview never really recovered.

  I also had a weirdly embarrassing encounter with Alan Whicker. He lived on Jersey and kindly invited me to lunch at his house. He was a bit stiff, I thought, but perfectly courteous and we proceeded through lunch. He was talking about being eighteen during the war, and how strange it was, boys pretending to be men, far away from home, and how quickly all your values changed. I asked – because it seemed apropos – whether he'd ever been to prostitutes, and without saying a word, he slammed his napkin down on the table and stalked out of the room. I sat there for about five minutes wondering what to do. Then he stalked back in again, holding a piece of paper, and read from it, like a barrister reading from a brief: ‘I put it to you, Miss Barber, that you used to work for Penthouse magazine and are the author of a book entitled How to Improve Your Man in Bed.’ ‘That's right,’ I said amiably, wondering what was coming next. Did he want a signed copy or something? We both stared at each other, baffled. Then he went out again, came back, picked up his napkin and resumed the meal. I think, in retrospect, he thought this was the great moment of truth when he dragged the skeleton out of my closet and exposed me as the shameful pornographer I was. But in fact my skeleton had never been closeted – everyone who knew me knew I worked for Penthouse and wrote sex books. But I didn't feel I could repeat the question about whether he ever went to prostitutes!

  (Incidentally, asking men whether they've ever been to prostitutes – or, similarly, whether they've ever had a homosexual encounter – is one of those Russian roulette questions where you have no idea beforehand what reaction you will get. I always work on the basis that people shouldn't be offended by a question– after all, they only have to say ‘No, never’ – but unfortunately some people, obviously including Whicker, seem to regard a question as tantamount to an accusation. I still think it's worth asking, though, because the reaction itself is informative.)

  After I'd been working at the Sunday Express magazine for about a year, under Charles Wintour, we were told we were getting a new editor – Ron ‘Badger’ Hall, who had just been sacked from the Sunday Times magazine. (Private Eye had christened him Badger because he walked like a badger, with inturned toes.) Now as it happened I knew Ron Hall from way, way back, because he'd been a friend of Simon's friend Danny and I'd met him sometimes at Bedford Square. He'd also propositioned me once or twice, but I hoped he'd forgotten that. In fact I hoped he'd forgotten he'd ever met me. But apparently he hadn't because almost on his first day at the Sunday Express he whisked me off to lunch at the Zanzibar and said, ‘I know you're wonderfully indiscreet – give me the lowdown on all your colleagues’ – which of course I merrily did.

  He said he thought I could write longer articles than just the ‘Things I Wish’ format and he said the first one he wanted me to do was a cover story on Auchtermuchty. Huh? What is Auchtermuchty? ‘Don't you read John Junor's column?’ he snapped. John Junor was the editor of the Sunday Express and wrote a column in which, I learned, he frequently referred to Auchtermuchty. It was a small town he passed through on his way to the Royal and Ancient Golf Club at St Andrew's but for some mysterious reason he had appointed it his personal Brigadoon, and often wrote tongue-in-cheek panegyrics to the Elders of the Kirk of Auchtermuchty.

  My article, it turned out, was intended as a diplomatic olive branch. Up till now, Junor had never spoken to anyone on the magazine. The Express management had insisted that the Sunday Express must have a magazine, to compete with its rivals, but Junor flatly refused to acknowledge its existence. Ron Hall was hoping that if I wrote a lavish encomium to Auchtermuchty, John Junor would be so flattered that good relations would ensue. In particular, Ron insisted, I must persuade the Elders of the Kirk of Auchtermuchty to pose for a group photograph. He would then have it blown up and framed and would present it to Junor as a token of their new friendship, much like Chairman Mao's gift of giant pandas to President Nixon in 1972.

  I'm not sure I realised what an enormous diplomatic responsibility was resting on my shoulders. All I knew was that I had to write a great long article about an obscure Scottish town. Ron said it would be easy: I would park myself in the pub and chat to the inhabitants and interesting stories would inevitably emerge. That, he said, was how real journalists operated. Well, ha bloody ha. I got to Auchtermuchty and went into the pub at lunchtime and everyone reeled back in horror, never having seen a woman in the pub before. And when I say ‘everyone’ I mean the half-dozen decrepit alcoholics who constituted its entire clientele. I was branded the Scarlet Woman within ten minutes of my arrival in Auchtermuchty and word travelled fast in that uptight little town. When, later that afternoon, I went to the school gate thinking I could chat to mothers collecting their children, they ostentatiously turned their backs on me – they knew I was that
English hussy who'd been seen entering the pub.

  By the end of the day I had spoken to precisely no one and rang Ron in despair, quoting one of his own favourite lines, ‘If at first you don't succeed, give up.’ Normally he would have laughed, but he was terrifyingly firm. ‘You have got to write this article, Lynn, and you must stay in Auchtermuchty as long as it takes. There is no job for you here without it.’ I almost abandoned my career in journalism on the spot. But gradually over the days – it felt like years – I managed to strike up conversations here and there and finally assembled the Elders of the Kirk of Auchtermuchty for their group photo. It did the trick. John Junor was flattered, Ron Hall was delighted, my job was safe. But that week in Auchtermuchty was the longest, hardest, most gruel-ling assignment of my life, and when, in later years, I sometimes fell among foreign correspondents reminiscing about all the wars and horrors they had seen, I would add my plaintive twopennyworth: ‘I never went to Afghanistan, Iraq or Kosovo, but I did once spend a week in Auchtermuchty…’

  After my Auchtermuchty triumph, I was given bigger and better stories to write, and all was going swimmingly till I suffered a slipped disc that put me in hospital for months and left me permanently lame. The last interview I did before going into hospital was with the Sixties pop singer Sandie Shaw, over lunch at the Neal Street restaurant in Covent Garden. She arrived an hour late, with a boyfriend whose name she never divulged, and everything about her infuriated me. She said she didn't really do lunch, and started ordering off-menu, a leaf of this and a dab of that. She answered all my questions with sulky yes/no answers or snorts of boredom. By this time I was in a lot of pain from my slipped disc and I suddenly exploded, ‘I've had enough of this. I don't want to be here any more than you do. I'm going into hospital for an operation tomorrow and I don't give a toss about your poxy little career. Just eat your lettuce leaf and go home.’ She immediately transformed into a quite different person. Oozing sympathy and concern, she asked about my operation and said forcefully, ‘You must not let them operate on your spine. It is what connects your brain to the Earth. I will chant for you. I will get my group to chant for you. Here is the chant you must learn.’ Then, in the middle of the Neal Street restaurant, she went into a long na-na-gong routine (apparently her chant was the same as Lynne Franks's, i.e. Edina's in Ab Fab), deftly snatched the bill, paid it, and put me in a taxi home. Somehow she also got my phone number because she rang David a few days later when I was in hospital and told him she was chanting for me every day. She tried to teach him the chant but he said it didn't accord with his faith (atheism, like mine, but he didn't tell her that) and she said of course she respected different beliefs. Anyway, she proved to be very kind when it mattered, though a bit too mad for my taste.