Keith Moon Stole My Lipstick

by Judith Wills

  The next morning, still in Blackpool, Gordon and I took a trip to the top of the Blackpool Tower, where I bought a postcard and sent it to my mum, posting it in the postbox that was provided up there. When I got back to London a day or two later, my mother rang Avonmore Road in a panic.

  ‘Is it true?’ she said.

  ‘Is what true?’ I asked her, mystified.

  ‘Well I just got this postcard from you, saying you got married to Gordon Coxhill in Blackpool!’

  ‘Oh’ I said, ‘That. No, Mum, of course I didn’t. Sorry, only joking.’

  Truth was, I had no recollection at all of having written that on the postcard.

  Must have started on the Scotch and cokes early that day …

  It was Gordon who accompanied me to Hal Carter’s baby Warren’s christening too, in July 1969. The photo of that day shows me, Gordon, Jimmy Campbell, Billy Fury and Judith Hall, whom he had married in May 1969, along with Hal and Sam. The relationships between us all were complicated. There was Gordon, who fancied me but I didn’t fancy him; Jimmy, who might have fancied me a bit for a few minutes but certainly didn’t now, but I still fancied him; and Billy, who had never fancied me and who I had fancied for years but had given up fancying through necessity. And there were Hal and Sam, the stars of the day with their baby, who knew little of all this (I hope), both of whom were lovely people whose friendship I valued with or without the added bonus of Hal’s ever-growing stable of handsome singers.

  Every other day there seemed to be a film screening at one of the private viewing rooms belonging to the big film companies of the day – most of these, such as 20th Century Fox, MGM and Paramount, were in or around Wardour Street, Soho. I hit upon the idea of getting a celeb to come along with me to a screening to review the films for the magazine, and the first film this worked with was Midnight Cowboy, relased in the UK in early 1970.

  At the time the actor John Alderton was big news – he had been starring in the TV comedy series about a secondary school, Please Sir, which was top of the ratings and adored by Fab readers, of course because of the subject matter and the large coterie of young actors and actresses in the show.

  To my amazement, he agreed to come along to the evening screening. Then a day or two later his agent rang and asked if John could bring somebody with him. I fixed this, wondering why he would want to bring someone else.

  I’d arranged to meet him outside the screening in the West End and when he arrived, with a young lady at his side, things began to click. It was none other than Penny Spencer, the young actress who played one of the lead pupils in the series, the sexy young miniskirted girl who always flirted with ‘Sir’.

  They sat more interested in watching each other than the movie and at the end Alderton asked if I could ring him the next day to get his comments on the film – he could hardly wait to get rid of me. I watched as they walked away down the street, hand in hand.

  Of course, John was married to the actress Pauline Collins (still is, I believe) – the two of them were one of the most famous showbiz couples of the time. I never said or wrote a word about John’s friendship with Penny. It was none of my business. And maybe it was all totally innocent anyway … but I rang him next day to get the quotes and, as I had suspected, I didn’t get a great deal out of him. I invented most of his review – and he certainly never complained.

  In December of 1969 I was invited to my first film premiere – which included a pass to the official private reception and after-show party. This was The Magic Christian, a film starring Ringo Starr, who was trying to find a niche for himself in the post-Beatle world, and Peter Sellers. As Sellers was as-close-as-this to Princess Margaret at the time, although I didn’t know that then, it was hardly surprising that she and Anthony Armstrong-Jones, Lord Snowdon, were the guests of honour.

  Luckily the premiere was just down the road from my bedsit, at the Odeon on Kensington High Street. But even so, wearing a new black velvet dress, chosen for me by Julie Webb from a small boutique near Ludgate Circus (Julie also had to lend me the money to pay for it, £16, a lot of money in those days) and my high heels, I wasn’t going to walk there. Oh, no.

  The film company sent a limo for me and thus it was that I walked up the red carpet, heart pounding, with all the spectators going, ‘Who’s she? Who’s she?’ – in my mind at least. A few flashbulbs did pop and for an evening I lived the life of a real film star, enjoying every second.

  Well, the film was rubbish but that didn’t really matter.

  By the end of 1969 I was getting to do more and more show business interviews as Betty’s faith in my writing and interviewing abilities grew.

  The best interviews were when you had to go to people’s houses, as it was much more fun than impersonal hotels. I visited Mark Lester, star of Oliver!, at his home in Richmond, went to Yorkshire to meet Dave Bradley, star of the bird movie Kes, and Rodney Bewes – star of The likely Lads on TV, whom I found delightful, funny and unassuming – at his house in Fulham, and later at the BBC rehearsal rooms in West London. I wrote up this piece in the form of a letter to Rodney, and a few weeks later received a note from his mother, thanking me for the feature and saying how much she had enjoyed it. Sweet – another thing that would be unlikely to happen today.

  Other good places to meet stars were the London pubs – things always got interesting after a drink or two. The pub (often the Coach and Horses in Greek Street) was always the meeting place when you were seeing Status Quo (Francis Rossi still owes me a fiver) or Rick Wakeman. And sometimes we went to film or TV sets, which again was good because you never quite knew what would happen – or who you would see.

  One of my early visits to a set was to Pinewood Studios to interview Michael York, making what turned out to be pretty much a turkey of a movie called Zeppelin, along with a raft of ‘English’ actors including Anton Diffring, Marius Goring and Rupert Davies. While I waited on the studio floor for York to finish being lit for a scene during a thunderstorm, I was aware of someone beside me watching the proceedings – and almost fell over when I realised it was Bette Davis, the Hollywood veteran with the piercing eyes. And now she was staring at me.

  This was the person described by Marilyn Monroe as ‘a mean old broad’, and her fellow actress on All About Eve Celeste Holm said of her, ‘she was rude … so constantly rude.’.

  When you’ve grown up watching a true legend of the screen in the movies and on the TV – one of your own mother’s ultimate screen icons – and when you suspect that they are probably ferocious in real life, it is quite unnerving to find yourself, with no prior knowledge or warning, standing in front of that person, not least when that person is giving you her trademark brand of bug-eyed stare.

  Someone – probably the film PR – came to my rescue and did the introductions and much to my amazement Davis, who would have been in her early 60s, didn’t eat me or turn me to stone but was very pleasant. She was one of the few actors I ever interviewed who showed any interest in someone other than herself, and was not only willing to talk to me but almost anxious to keep me chatting, was the feeling I got. Why, I’m not sure.

  Anyway, I came away with more interesting words from Bette Davis than I got from Michael York, that was for certain. She had unconventional looks, but had real charm, if a bit too intensely dished out. I had only once before been gazed at in quite such an intimate way by a woman – my friend Trish back at the office who turned out to be gay. So what of her reputation as rude and mean? I have no idea – but Celeste Holm’s remark that perhaps Davis’s rudeness ‘was to do with sex’ might have been near the mark.

  I did wonder what on earth she was doing there as she wasn’t in that particular movie. She had made a film recently at Pinewood, called Connecting Rooms (another turkey – Pinewood was quite good at those at the time, it seems) so perhaps she was back to do retakes or something.

  Another set I visited, in December ‘69, was Coronation Street in Manchester, where I interviewed Neville Buswell who, at th
e time, was playing Deirdre’s partner. He was rather boring but the whole day was very fab – round every corner you’d bump into one of those so-familiar faces. I was invited into Ken Barlow’s dressing room, where Ken was in residence, and happily gave me intricate details of his life and times to the point where I really, really, wanted to run away.

  I also watched the filming of an episode. I marvelled at how hard the cast worked and how they all seemed to get it right in virtually one take. But Neville soon put me right on the reason why – if they didn’t do scenes in a take, the day’s work would run over and they could be arriving home at midnight, have to learn their lines and be back at work at the crack of dawn next day. So anyone who messed up got a right rollocking from the other cast members, and if they did it too often, calling for expensive overtime for the crew, they’d get the sack. At least that’s what Neville told me.

  A different journey to Manchester around the same time involved a lunch date with one of the most famous young men in the UK – George Best. George had ‘written’ a column for Fab for some time (in fact submitted by his then manager whose name was, I believe, Ken Brown). He was the first footballer ever to get the teenyboppers excited that way and no footballer since, not even David Beckham, has had the same effect, en masse, on girls.

  The manager decided – perhaps to ensure that the column continued for another year – to invite Betty up to Manchester and, knowing that the one thing that kept George happy was the female form (especially if under 25, dressed in hotpants or a miniskirt and with long hair) asked her to bring along someone suitable. That person was me.

  Not being a great football fan – and at the time having other things on my mind – I boarded the train to Manchester with her feeling not at all excited. Yes, I had clocked George on the TV but I had mainly noted that he had weedy, bandy legs, and was obviously quite short. Betty worried much of the way up that George would, in fact, not turn up at all – he always had a reputation for being unreliable.

  We were to meet at the Piccadilly Hotel. And indeed he did turn up, trailing in respectful and shy manner behind Ken, almost like a toddler hiding behind his mother’s skirts – something I knew a lot about.

  And that was how he was, for most of our lunch. My own powers of thought and speech virtually deserted me as Ken and Betty chatted about nothing much (she was no football buff, either). After a few minutes enquiring about his new architect-designed home in Cheshire and getting just one-word answers, I racked my head to try to think of something, anything, to say to George Best that would interest him, open him up, make him laugh … but no, it was a bit like trying to get a can of sardines open – in the end you give up and find something better to eat. I amused myself by looking around the dining room and noticing that virtually everybody in there was trying hard to pretend they weren’t looking at us.

  It was only after downing several beers and a few chasers that George suddenly found his tongue and his sense of humour but sadly this was at the end of the lunch. I don’t think George meant to be rude or sullen – I think he really was painfully shy with strangers and we just brought out the worst in each other – and he probably had a hangover as well. Perhaps he would have chatted me up if Betty and Ken hadn’t been there – but I don’t think so. Maybe if I’d worn a blonde wig it would have been different but I really didn’t care.

  At the end of the lunch he shook my hand and said goodbye and as he did so I suddenly realised what it was about him that made so many women fall at his feet or into his bed. For the first time during lunch he looked me straight in the face. And I felt my knees buckle slightly … he had the most amazing pair of ice blue eyes I have ever seen in my life – they looked at me, with a slight hint of come-on, and, too late, I thought WOW! I wish I’d tried a bit harder ….

  Well, perhaps not really. He wasn’t my type nor I his but I’ve never forgotten those eyes and the magic there. He was a superb looking young man in the flesh, he really was – from the head up, at least. The legs may have been great with a football but they never did turn me on.

  In late 1969 most of my work was still beauty and the film and TV world, but on 14 December I popped round to the Marquee to see Love Affair, a young band of boys who had just one huge hit, ‘Everlasting Love’. They were no great shakes on stage, but I loved the atmosphere in the old Marquee in Wardour Street – smoky, crowded, cool, hip, lots of acquaintances around. I felt that what I really wanted to do was more music and less of the actors and screenings. They were okay to a point, but actors, by and large, were self-important bores. And I wanted to feel the beat, and be a real part of the music scene, full time.

  So, after my most eventful year in London yet, at Christmas, I caught the coach from Victoria station down to Aylesbury, changing on to the bus for the last few miles to Buckingham, where my Mum and Gran would be waiting for me, to spend a quiet and, frankly, deadly dull few days, just the three of us – apart from a flying visit from Gordon Coxhill at some stage over the holiday which didn’t do a great deal to cheer me up. Although I wouldn’t have wanted to be on my own at Christmas I found the days in Gran’s tiny parlour, watching The Good Old Days and the like on the black and white TV stultifyingly boring. I couldn’t wait to get back on the bus and back to London; 1970, I felt, was going to be great. As it turned out, I was quite wrong.

  five

  Some Things Are Meant to Be

  1970

  Women’s libbers ruin the Miss World contest. Germaine Greer publishes The Female Eunuch. Anne Nightingale becomes the first women DJ on BBC Radio 1. Janis Joplin is dead. The Beatles formally announce they’ve split.

  Because Fab was now Fab 208, the writers made regular trips to Luxembourg with a photographer to get stories on all the DJs and the wonderful life they were supposed to be having out there.

  In truth, the guys were bored rigid most of the time as there were few clubs, few expats and basically not a lot to do. So when we turned up it always cheered them up. There was Tony Prince, Paul Burnett, Bob Stewart, Dave Christian and of course, David ‘Kid’ Jensen who had quietly turned himself into one of the most popular of the DJs with the listeners.

  They worked out of studios in the Villa Louvigny, an ugly building complete with tower, surrounded by parkland on the edge of Luxembourg town and I can vividly recall my first visit there. As our car, driven by Tony Prince, drew up outside the so-familiar building (from the many photos of it I had seen over the years) I felt that awed, pit-of-the-stomach feeling again, a huge excitement to be here, at 208 at last. Once inside the studios on the second floor, sitting quietly listening to Tony do a show, thinking about the millions of listeners, I once more had that ‘what a great job this is’ feeling. Someone was paying me to live out all the dreams I ever had as a child.

  I have been given a small transistor radio for my birthday. What you do is, you go to bed quite early unless it’s Dr Kildare night. Then you tune into medium wave 208 and spend the next couple of hours trying to keep the station in tune while you listen, enthralled, to those big, booming cheerful voices coming from Europe, introducing track after track of wondrous new music – Beatles! Stones! Acts from America – Roy Orbison, Elvis, Neil Sedaka, Ricky Nelson, The Everlys. 208 is quite the most glamorous thing ever.

  The worst bits are the adverts. Sometimes you wonder if you can even put up with Horace Batchelor and finding out how to spell K E Y N S H A M, Bristol, one more time – but you do. And then just when Billy Fury comes on, the station fades and you want to throw the transistor across the room because you’ve missed most of it by the time the sound comes through again.

  You have to listen out for mum coming upstairs and later on Veronica, Mrs Hill’s daughter, will come to bed and you definitely have to turn off the trannie or she’ll shout at you and rip the covers off your bed.

  Because Radio Luxembourg listening was somehow illicit, fraught with danger, and hard to actually hear because of the crackling and hissing, it made it even more fantastic. It was like a se
cret world that I, and hundreds of thousands of other teenagers in the early ‘60s, shared.

  Remember Radio 1 didn’t start until 1967, while the offshore pirate stations such as Caroline, which had started up in 1964, mostly had reception too poor for landlocked places like Oxfordshire. Also, they avoided broadcasting during the evening out of respect for 208. So throughout my early teens – if you had a trannie and you had a bed, you had 208 to transport you to a more exciting life, and, much of the time, that was all you had.

  Alan Freeman, David Jacobs, Jimmy Young, Jimmy Savile, these were the original icons on our little radios – mostly pre-recording their shows from the London headquarters at 38 Hertford Street – not that we teens knew that at the time. Out in Luxembourg in the early ’70s, the next influx of boys often did DJ stints at the largest local nightclub to pass the time and earn a bit of extra money. They also quite often had formal lunches and receptions with visiting bigwigs and dignitaries from all over Europe.

  It was at one such lunch on my first visit to Luxembourg, in April 1970, via the Luxy headquarters in Brussels, that I was seated next to Kid Jensen. It had been a good year or so since I’d seen him up at the office when he first arrived in London. We’d spoken on the phone a few times when I needed to interview him for a few words of copy, but he was still shy so we hardly exchanged more than a few words during the lunch.

  However I did have the feeling that he liked me and I had had a couple of glasses of wine, so the devil took over towards the end of the meal and as he turned away from me to talk to someone else, I whipped his as-yet untouched dessert away and swapped it for my empty plate. When he turned back his face was a picture – all men love puddings.

  ‘Where’s my dessert?’

  ‘You ate it, Kid.’

  ‘I did?’