by Judith Wills
What we had to do was sit at his feet screaming while the pics were taken, to illustrate the idea that he was the latest heartthrob. ‘Enge’ was a complete flirt and obviously in his element but he wasn’t my type, nor me his. I believe that one of the girls who was eventually edited out of the published photo, ended up being the lucky one, or it was certainly shaping up that way when I left the session. The photo was published on the front cover of the Sunday Mirror and my mum was, I think, quite impressed even though her beloved daughter looked absolutely ridiculous.
Around this time I went to a press party for Billy Fury, up at Larry Parnes’ apartment on the Cromwell Road in South Kensington. I believe it was Fury’s engagement party (to Judith Hall) but I could be wrong. Larry had been Billy’s manager for years, while Hal Carter was, at first, his road manager, then later he took on Billy’s proper personal management. At this party was a guy called Bertie Green, who was about 60, and owned a nightclub in Mayfair.
‘You must be a model,’ he said disingenuously.
‘No’ I said but went on to explain that I had done modelling for free as a sideline.
‘Well you should be paid … why don’t you come along to my office and we’ll talk about it … I could get you plenty of modelling work. I could make you famous like Twiggy.’
Did I fancy myself as a model? It sounded like fun and glamour and money, and I fancied seeing what it was like to be famous. I spent a couple of days and nights wondering if I should give up my ‘career’ on Fab; agonising, in fact – it seemed like a tough decision at the time. Eventually I decided to just go with the flow and see what happened and off I raced to this guy’s club by Berkeley Square after work one day, full of hope and ambition; it never crossing my mind to wonder how a night club owner could get me top work as a photographic model.
The club was in darkness but, as instructed, I let myself in a large windowless side door and down some stairs where Green stood, cigar in hand, fat belly (nothing else at this stage) protruding from his trousers. I realised I didn’t like him, one bit, but I still followed him into his office. There seemed to be no one about at all except him but, I reasoned, it was early for clubs – not yet 7 p.m.
‘So you want to do modelling. What kind of modelling do you want to do, Judy?’ Green asked.
‘Err – in the magazines I suppose. I don’t know. What sort of modelling do you think I should do?’
‘I think we should take some photos and then decide. Just leave it all to me. Look, here’s a contract. You just have to sign it and I will be your manager and do the deals for you. I will make you a star. You could earn thousands of pounds a year.’ To someone on less than £10 a week, that sounded rather cool.
Handing me a sheet or two of typed A4 paper he poured himself a brandy. I glanced at the paper and after a few moments the door opened and a dark-haired girl came in, dressed in sequinned bra and G-string. She was probably about 22.
‘This is Simone. She is one of my dancers here. I think you two will get on,’ said Green. To which I didn’t know what I was expected to say, so I said nothing.
‘I would like it if you two would get on. You do like girls don’t you, Judy?’
‘Well yes of course,’ I said. ‘I do like girls.’
You have to remember this was 1968 and I hardly knew that lesbians existed, least of all lipstick lesbians. My lesbian experience to date had been discussing some butch tweed-trouser-wearing women in a pub once with my sister and trying to work out why, if they didn’t like blokes, they all wanted to be blokes.
So I thought Green meant, did I like girls. As friends. Full stop.
Simone shimmied her way towards me, put her arms around me and made to give me a snog. At which point I found a dexterity of foot unknown to me since winning the girls’ under-12 80yd dash at Witney Grammar School in 1961, untangled myself and scarpered still holding the contract.
I shook all the way home and told no one. I vowed never to speak to Bertie Green again, but next day the phone rang at Fab.
‘Bertie here, dear – you were late for an appointment were you, last night?’ he said sarcastically. I couldn’t think what to say. ‘You weren’t upset, were you?’ he continued.
‘Er – no, no.’
‘Well that’s good. You said you liked girls, but maybe you don’t. You don’t need to worry. You just be honest with Bertie. You come back to the club tonight and we’ll be alright this time, okay?’
‘Okay.’
So I went back – no Simone, good.
Bertie’s willy hanging out – not so good.
This time he asked me to pleasure him as he stood there, in the centre of his office floor. ‘There is no-one here today, Judy, except me. And I have locked the door.’ His voice was menacing. I could hardly believe that my recently acquired lovely, poppy, light life full of fun and good dreams had evaporated in a second because of this man.
OK, I was probably not going to get killed. It was only a willy. And he wasn’t going to rape me with it, that much was obvious, he just wanted what would now be called a blowjob. It seemed easiest to just get on with it, which is what I did. Not how I would have liked my fellatio career to begin, but there you are, one can’t always make these choices.
And it didn’t take long once I put my mouth to it. Not my mind – my mind was away somewhere else where the sun was out and The Herd were playing in the background. Keep him even tempered and get out of here. Which he was and I did. I didn’t even cry – once he unlocked the door, I just wanted to breathe the London air, get far away and pretend it had never happened. I would not let him spoil my life, I would not.
By now, of course, I realised that my modelling career wasn’t going to take off via this route at least – but Mr Green didn’t give up easily. He began making what would now be called nuisance phone calls to me at the office. Luckily I hadn’t given him my home address, never having filled out the contract he had shown me. Every day I would dread the phone ringing – him asking me to go round and see him, me making excuses, not wanting to say ‘sod off you dirty old man’ in case it angered him more.
Ring ring. ‘Bertie here, my dear. Will you come round today? We can be good for each other.’
Never having been very quick-witted verbally I found it hard to think of excuses that would sound convincing enough, but I soon made sure to think some up every day just in case he rang.
He would always sign off by saying, ‘Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone’ – thus planting in my mind the idea that of course if I didn’t comply he WOULD tell. By now I was imagining that he had a gang of heavies to send round to get me and/or to make sure I never worked in this town again. (I’d probably been watching too many Westerns and gangster movies on TV.)
I’m not sure how far from the truth my imaginings were, but I felt trapped, stupid, dirty and indignant all at once. I didn’t feel I could tell anyone about it because I felt it was all my own fault for being naïve. I felt ashamed, and guilty.
After a couple of weeks and a last sleepless night wondering how to get myself out of what seemed an impossible situation, I made a decision about what I would do next time he rang. When he did, I was so frightened my voice wobbled and shook and my hand was shaking so much I dropped the receiver. I had written down on a piece of paper my ‘script’ and I read it out to him, word for word.
‘Look, Mr Green. It has been very kind of you to take an interest in me and to try to help me in my career, but I have decided I don’t want to be a model. It’s not for me. I want to be a journalist. I also have a new boyfriend who would prefer I don’t come to see you again so I would very much appreciate it if you would not ring me any more.’
‘Oh, I see, my love, I see. Well I think you’re being very silly. I think you will regret it. Let me know if you change your mind.’
He disappeared, I put the phone down, ran to the toilets and threw up.
At the best of times, I was not very good on the phone – yet another of my secretarial at
tributes that didn’t really work well for me. People would call and I couldn’t hear what they said their names were, so I’d buzz through to Unity and say:
‘There’s a phone call for you.’
‘Who is it, dear?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Well didn’t they say?’
‘Yes, but I couldn’t hear.’
‘Well why didn’t you ask them again?’
‘I did but I still couldn’t hear and I didn’t like to ask any more. Can’t you just speak to them?’
So she would. If she was out or unavailable, people whose names I couldn’t hear would leave messages for her to ring them, so Lord knows how many calls from superstars or agents with scoops she missed because of me.
And after that Green conversation, I didn’t answer the phone at all for two weeks in case it was him ringing back. Every time it rang I would go to the loo. Eventually I began answering it again but if the voice at the other end sounded at all like him I’d put the phone down. One day after I’d slammed the phone down in just such a panic, it rang again and this guy said, ‘WAIT WOMAN! Why did you just put the phone down on me? It’s Owen. Why on earth Unity employed you I’ll never know …’
So Green nearly cost me my job but I never did hear from him again. I think he just decided I wasn’t worth the bother – there must have been plenty more girls who would give him what he wanted in return for promises of modelling or dancing work. I somehow felt I’d had a hugely lucky escape – and couldn’t wait to erase the worst memories of those few weeks from my mind. I’d escaped from a poor man’s casting couch, and I would never make that mistake again, never.
And of course my wonderful modelling future was no more. Not that I cared. I realised that models have a short shelf life whereas hacks can go on a long, long time – and, from what I know about it, they can have much more fun – certainly if they are showbiz hacks, anyway.
My sister was shortly to leave Honey and Fleetway, where all the excitement and shallow living was getting too much for her, and move to the quieter, more earnest backwaters of the Oxfam organisation, but towards the end of my first year I would still sometimes wander through the maze of corridors and meet her at Honey to pop over to the Hoop and Grapes for a half of cider at lunchtime – which, over a period of months, transmogrified into several scotch and cokes, the trendy drink of the era.
One day as I hovered outside Ann’s office waiting for her to finish talking to the editor, Audrey Slaughter, I heard the voice first – very very loud and very very cockney with almost a hint of Lloyd Grossman to it (though of course he hadn’t been invented in those days).
I couldn’t help but turn around to see from where this noise came. I first saw the mini-mouse legs – extremely long, extremely thin and very shapeless – beneath the hem of a miniskirt, striding towards me. The legs and the skirt were the only ‘mini’ things about this very giant of a person. My gaze went up – and up, and up – to find in a most shocking, revelatory, fascinating way, one of the most unattractive top halves I’d ever seen in my life. Short, mousy flat lank and greasy hair, large what looked like NHS specs and the most ginormous set of front teeth you ever did see. I couldn’t find one speck of beauty in all of it but what amazed me most was the cutting edge teen fashion she wore, as if Twiggy would give up the ghost and go and work in Woolworths immediately if this person were to happen to want to take her place; as if to say ‘Look at me – aren’t I the best thing you’ve ever seen! Aren’t I fab!’
She had the confidence of a female Robert Maxwell (the boss of the huge Mirror organisation) and the same kind of ‘look at me’ aura. I saw him once at the Daily Mirror building in Holborn, sweeping through reception to his private lift. Truly larger than life in every way so that you shuddered slightly as he walked past, were glad he’d gone but feeling the empty space left behind. Horrifying – but kind of fantastic. The original shock and awe.
Maxwell’s female clone walked on by … and my sister came from her office.
I pointed down the corridor at the disappearing back of the giant.
‘Do you know who that is?’
‘Oh, yes, she works on Petticoat (Honey’s sister magazine for teens). I think she’s in the fashion department. Her name’s Janet Street-Porter.’
A completely wonderful example of how to get on in life with the sheer strength of your own self-belief. An asset that, it appears, has in the intervening years, never deserted her. Not that I’m saying she wasn’t brilliantly clever and supremely talented as well – no doubt she was. Either way, though I saw her around a lot I was never to become a friend. In fact, I don’t think she ever said one word directly to me, once, ever. And soon Janet left us mere mortals all behind on her path to greater, deserved things.
Many years later I shared a first-class carriage from Yorkshire to London with her, no one else in the compartment at all. And she still didn’t speak to me. Nor I to her, so I can’t really complain. I did think about saying, ‘Oy, you – I remember you when you worked on Petticoat magazine!’ But she had an invisible ‘do not disturb’ sign around her neck and I couldn’t really think where the conversation would lead anyway, so silence ruled for two hours and remembering the voice, it was probably just as well.
My Yorkshire rambling friend ‘fat Mick’ worshipped the ground she walked on in later years – and, as president of the Ramblers Association for some long time, walked on a lot of ground she did. I’ve recently become a real fan of Janet because of her TV walking programmes and her superb opinionated journalism. And she’s grown into her looks, no doubt about it. You see – I’m a fan again. I’d give anything to be her friend …
Anyway, back at Fleetway and a few drinks later in the pub, Janet was temporarily forgotten. It could well have been that day that I had a few too many ciders/scotches and fell down in the lift on the way back up to Honey. Ann had to pick me up and get me out in full view of her colleagues, and I sometimes wonder if her main reason for leaving Honey was to get away from me. If so, it was a wise decision as very many drunken performances by me in and around the office would follow in the next year or two. In those days, drinking too much was considered quite glamorous and, on Fleet Street, a badge of honour, not a sign of impending alcoholism.
And all this time, I was still searching and hoping for a best friend.
One girl who worked on another of the ‘teen’ magazines – Valentine, I think – in the same building seemed to want to be just that. Trish began visiting my office every day and I found her very friendly and easy to get on with. Down to earth, nothing special to look at with shoulder length mousey-coloured hair and little make-up, but attractive enough and great company. She made me feel good. We began sharing a lunch together sometimes in the Fleetway canteen – a dark and miserable place in the bowels of the building – and she would occasionally go for a quick drink after work before making her way on the buses down to where she lived with her parents in South London. Trish seemed very wordly wise although she was only a year or so older than me.
I was highly flattered and touched when one day she arrived at my desk bearing a gift – a little dolphin brooch in blue. It was very pretty.
‘I wonder,’ she said, ‘If you’d like to come down home with me one evening and have something to eat?’
Well that sounded just great to me who hadn’t seen the inside of anyone’s house as a guest in what seemed like forever. So after work one day we took the long journey down to her place via various buses.
Once outside my familiar territory I found myself getting tongue tied with her and strangely apprehensive. But she plugged away and kept the chat going and eventually we arrived at her house, which was all in darkness.
‘Oh sorry, forgot to tell you – my parents are away!’ she explained brightly, letting us in. The idea of food seemed to have been forgotten as Trish put on the gas heater in their sitting room and invited me to sit on a cushion next to it. She then sat in front of me, unzipped my suede boots
and took them off. At this point I began to feel seriously, uncomfortably, that all was not what it seemed but I couldn’t work out what the problem was.
She put on some music and got us some alcohol. And there I sat, getting hotter and hotter and hotter and realising with complete dismay that my feet were smelly. And gradually she moved her cushion closer and closer and closer. And I moved my feet further and further away from her but the smell still pervaded the air in the room.
And then she invited me to take my top off ‘As you must be very hot …’
Now while I knew all about gay men, up until that point I had had little experience of lesbians apart from Simone, the lipstick lesbian, and the butch tweedy women in the pub. But even in my naivety I realised with horrible clarity that Trish was making a move on me. And I didn’t like it one bit.
I have no idea what I said to her but within seconds I was up, boots back on, coat on, and off out of that door like a longdog. I have no idea how I got home, I don’t remember. Why had it taken me so long to suss it out? Well I just had so wanted a friend, a proper friend.
Trish stopped coming round to the office after that and another potential friendship had melted away. Why was life so damned complicated? What was wrong with me?
Over the months I slowly enjoyed a kind of metamorphosis from country bumpkin into slightly more of a Fab person both outwardly and inwardly. As my hair grew very long, I began straightening it using my ironing board and iron (I would crouch over the board, spread my hair on it and iron it until I could smell burning). I also began to enjoy shopping. Not least, because, at last, my prayers had been answered. I had begun to relax a bit into my London life, had given up worrying about my friendless (and boyfriendless) state, and so I had found a friend. Or, to be more truthful, she found me.
