I Read the News Today, Oh Boy

by Paul Howard

  •

  Nicki was making a poor fist of gaining her mother-in-law’s approval. That summer, when they went to France to break the news of her pregnancy to Oonagh, Tara had taken her to a popular local strip club called Chez Ghislaine. She got talking to one of the male strippers, a Moroccan named Daud Monseur, who was rather sweet on her. Some people, including Tara, wondered if the feeling was mutual. That autumn at Luggala, whether as an ill-judged joke, or the result of too much alcohol, Nicki made the mistake of telling Oonagh that Daud had asked her to run away with him.

  ‘They were standing in the drawing room,’ Garech remembered, ‘when she told my mother that she’d had a choice between marrying, on the one hand, this incredibly good-looking stripper who used to put fresh cream on his nipples as part of his act but who didn’t have any money, and, on the other hand, Tara, with his soppy, wet face – that was the expression she used – who just so happened to be very rich. And she’d decided to stay with Tara. My mother never forgave her for saying that. I know she disapproved at the beginning, but she knew that Tara loved Nicki and she’d accepted her into the family. But from the moment Nicki said that to her, my mother was finished with her.’

  They can’t have been aware of the hazards waiting on the road ahead. But as London began to move into full swing, Tara and Nicki were suddenly faced with the imperative of growing up fast while everyone around them was determined not to grow up at all.

  9: SPEED

  Newly married and now with a seven-week-old baby to care for, Tara and Nicki had two priorities as Christmas approached and the decade gathered momentum. The first was to find somewhere to live; the second to find a nanny to look after little Dorian.

  Tara was now an adult, with a wife and child to support. The Guinness trustees loosened the purse strings, allowing Tara and Nicki to give up their life of squatting with friends and living off the soup in the SKR.

  They had already identified a smart little mews that was available to rent, at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac, amid the white-stucco Georgian terraces of Belgravia. Just before Christmas, the Guinness trustees approved the rent and Tara collected the keys.

  Then, during Christmas at Luggala, they spoke to Mary Fanning, a sixteen-year-old girl from the nearby village of Roundwood who occasionally worked in the kitchen of the house. They offered her a job in London as Dorian’s nanny and she accepted. Tara filled the mews with furniture: beds, a table and chairs, a sofa, a cot, and a large Magnavox black-and-white television set for the living room. If he happened to be watching it on the evening of 1 January 1964, he may have seen the very first episode of Top of the Pops – the BBC’s answer to ITV’s own Ready Steady Go! – featuring, live in studio, The Dave Clark Five performing ‘Glad All Over’. There was also a video for The Rolling Stones’ first top-twenty single, ‘I Wanna Be Your Man’, a gift from The Beatles, whose own celebrity was about to go stratospheric.

  The British Beat sound, once written off as a musical flash in the pan, would soon become a certified cultural phenomenon. In the first week of February 1964, ‘I Wanna Hold Your Hand’ reached number one in the American charts. One week later, a record television audience of 73 million Americans – two-fifths of the population – watched The Beatles perform on the Ed Sullivan Show, the horn blow that announced the British Invasion. Their sharp suits, moptop haircuts and smiling vivacity sent the audience into a screaming frenzy – and with it, it seemed, an entire nation, who could at last give up mourning their murdered president. In the first six months of 1964, Beatlemania covered America like a contagion. One week, in April 1964, they held the top five positions in the US chart. Their success opened the country to other Beat acts, including Dusty Springfield, Gerry and The Pacemakers, Peter and Gordon, The Animals, Billy J. Kramer, Manfred Mann, Petula Clark, Freddie and The Dreamers, Herman’s Hermits, The Dave Clark Five, The Troggs and, eventually, The Rolling Stones.

  When The Beatles returned home on 22 February 1964, an estimated ten thousand fans were waiting at London Airport to claim them back. Truly, it was the return of England as the most hip and happening place in the world. For decades, the exchange of new cultural ideas between the United States and Britain had run one way only. Now, the current had been reversed by a generation of young musicians who were doing something so revolutionary they could hardly believe it themselves: repackaging rock and roll and selling it back to the country that invented it.

  Suddenly, everything that was British, from its music to its cars, and from its clothes to its stars of stage and screen, became the epitome of cool. And so much of what was exciting about Britain was emanating from the same corner of its capital city, where The Beatles had chosen to make their home: Paul McCartney in the attic of his girlfriend Jane Asher’s family home on Wimpole Street, Marylebone; John Lennon, his wife Cynthia and baby son Julian in a flat in Emperor’s Gate, Kensington; and George Harrison and Ringo Starr, the band’s two singletons, in a bachelor pad in William Mews, near Knightsbridge.

  There may never have been a more exciting time to be young in London and Tara and Nicki weren’t about to settle into a life of quiet domesticity. While Mary Fanning stayed at home minding the baby, they slipped back into their old routine of partying and clubbing that had been interrupted by Nicki’s pregnancy. ‘I barely saw them,’ Mary remembered. ‘I was just looking after the baby. I didn’t go outdoors much in London. But they knew how to enjoy themselves. There was plenty of life in them.’

  And life, or at least the social aspect of it, began to revolve around a nightclub called the Ad Lib, the hippest of London hotspots, four storeys above the Prince Charles Cinema, close to Leicester Square. It was opened in December 1963 by two brothers, Al and Bob Burnett, and was enjoying its moment as an exciting social crossroads where members of the old aristocracy, like Tara, could rub elbows with the new nobility of pop stars, actors, fashion designers, photographers, models, artists, hairdressers and anyone who was anyone in this vibrant new city that suddenly seemed to belong to its youth.

  The decor was tasteful – oak-panelled and fur-lined walls, coloured lights set into the ceiling, crystal chandeliers, low stools and tables and floor-to-ceiling windows that stared out across Piccadilly, Soho and Mayfair. The music wasn’t British Invasion pop, but something more grown-up: black American R&B and soul, either Motown or its Memphis rival, Stax: The Supremes, Marvin Gaye, Otis Redding, Booker T and The MGs. Friday and Saturday nights at the Ad Lib were a snapshot of a city that had changed beyond recognition: it was hip, youthful, meritocratic, classless London under one roof, with flashing lights and The Four Tops singing, ‘Baby I Need Your Loving’.

  If you could wheedle your way past the door staff, you were shown to a tiny lift, which took you to the fourth floor then opened to reveal the swingingest of Swinging London scenes. On any given night, you might see Terence Stamp catching up with his old housemate, Michael Caine; David Bailey and Jean Shrimpton twisting on the envelope-sized dance floor; Julie Christie admiring Mary Quant’s new bob cut; or John Lennon and Paul McCartney, like a pair of latter-day Francis Drakes, home from conquering new worlds, and sharing their experiences with Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, who would soon be making the same crossing to America.

  Tara and Nicki always seemed to be at the centre of the coolest crowd in the Ad Lib, Tara in one of John Stephen’s tailored suits with a brocade tie and cufflinks in aquamarine, his signature colour, and Nicki in a jersey dress and knee-high boots. ‘I wouldn’t say it was a mutual, made-in-heaven arrangement,’ Michael Rainey remembered of them, ‘but they complemented each other very well in a social sense. Couples are a very strong element in society and it’s not very often you get a good couple, who just fitted together in terms of their looks and their dress and their style.’

  Swinging London was, if nothing else, a spontaneous outbreak of good feeling among the city’s youth and Tara found himself in the right place to become an icon of his time, a man of taste, style and sensitivity. ‘He didn’t court
attention,’ Martin Wilkinson remembered. ‘People were just attracted to him and I put that down to the wonderful certainty he had about himself. He had that elusive quality of complete and utter self-possession and people are drawn to that. But he didn’t show off. He was very cool. He had a sort of smile. He could be very, very charming. And he was exceptionally kind. People just loved being around him.’

  The Ad Lib was where you could watch Britain’s once-sacred class structure being shaken like a snow globe: Chelsea bohemians, dolly birds, musicians, models, chinless aristos, actors, criminals, photographers, the occasional Kennedy, and sometimes – it was rumoured – even Princess Margaret, all caught in the same happy, social maelstrom. People from vastly different backgrounds, who would have found nothing in common to talk about a generation earlier, were meeting on equal terms: high life, low life and everything in between. Quite often, it was Tara making the introductions.

  ‘He was absolutely central to it,’ remembered Jane Ormsby-Gore, the eldest daughter of the family that always seemed to be at the heart of everything that was happening in Swinging London. ‘We were meeting people from different walks of life, but we needed somebody in the middle saying, “Oh, so-and-so, have you met such-and-such?” And that was what Tara did – much like his mother, who was also involved in breaking down social barriers, because she was more interested in what people did and what they had to say than who their parents were or where they came from.

  ‘And that was what Tara brought to the scene. He had this very light way of being interested and curious, but at the same time remaining cool. He spent his whole life around highly educated, clever people, so nobody ever fazed him.’

  It was probably inevitable that, in the great social switchyard of the Ad Lib, Tara Browne and Paul McCartney would meet. One had a ravenous curiosity about the world; the other, the assured air of a man who had seen and done it all. ‘Paul McCartney liked being around people he thought he could learn something from,’ said Nicholas Gormanston. ‘I think he would have been absolutely fascinated by Tara’s accent and his appearance, whereas John Lennon, who moved in different social circles to Paul, was a much more contrary creature – he either liked you or he didn’t. I don’t know if Tara was John’s cup of tea. But in those days, the early days of The Beatles, Paul was living with Jane Asher and he was always looking to find things that he could adopt. And someone like Tara – and Nicki as well – would have interested him. They were a very good-looking couple, very approachable, laughed a lot and seemed totally open to every new experience. And I suspect he thought that some of this might rub off on him.’

  Tara first met Paul’s younger brother, Mike, a member of an aspiring comedy musical hall act called The Scaffold. They fell into conversation as two strangers admiring one another’s clothes. ‘I first knew him as just a guy on the scene,’ Mike remembered. ‘A young, good-looking guy. Long, blond hair. Thin. Velvet suits. Very Sixties. Very fashion-conscious. Sort of a Roddy Llewellyn type character. Posh, but then not at all pretentious. We hit it off straight away. People like Tara were different to the usual aristocratic types, because they were Irish money, like Oscar Wilde, which is a whole different world. There wasn’t the same snobbery that came with it. Ireland was cooler.’

  Mike, who used the stage name McGear, introduced him to Paul and they found no end of things to talk about: clothes, cars, music, girls. From that moment on, whenever they were in the Ad Lib, they looked for each other. Tara took Paul and Mike into his circle of high-born friends. For two young brothers raised in Liverpool, all this running with the Debrett’s set was truly revolutionary stuff.

  ‘Before the 1960s,’ said Mike, ‘if you were from anywhere north of London, there was a certain class of person who instantly looked down on you. It was, “Oh, he’s just from Liverpool,” or, “He’s just from Glasgow,” or, “He’s just from Newcastle.” You’d be in company and they’d hear your accent and it wasn’t hatred, it was worse than hatred. It was like you suddenly weren’t there. They would just smile politely and let you finish your conversation – because they were raised as gentlemen – and then it’d be, “Jolly good!” and, “Off you go!” You were no use to them. You were nothing.

  ‘In the Sixties, that all changed, mainly because of The Beatles. We’re suddenly at these posh parties in London, where people would welcome you by saying, “Hello, I’m Peregrine. How lovely to meet you. Jolly good! Come and meet Siegfried!” It was suddenly a different world. They’d ask where you were from and you’d say, “Liverpool!” and they’d try to pronounce it in a Liverpool accent, but they always sounded like Brummies. That’s how alien we were to them. But being working class and from the north became not only cool, it was practically imperative. Because we were suddenly the power and the glory. We had all the money. We had all the birds around us.’

  Tara and Nicki’s house in Eaton Row became the centre of an after-hours scene. When the Ad Lib stopped serving and disgorged its regulars into the London night, those in the know would hail a black cab and tell the driver to take them to Tara and Nicki’s place, where they could drink rum and Coca-Cola, maybe smoke some grass, and listen to Bob Dylan’s ‘The Times They Are A-Changin’’ until morning broke over Belgravia.

  Tara had bought a state-of-the-art music system that was powerful enough to wake the neighbourhood and often did. ‘Quad 303 amplification,’ Glen Kidston remembered. ‘It was absolutely cutting edge. No one else had anything like it in their house.’

  You never knew who you’d see back in the house, thumbing through Tara’s vinyl collection, flaked out on a bean bag under a cloud of exotic-smelling smoke, or scarfing down a bowl of cornflakes or a plate of scrambled eggs, the only food anyone ever remembered seeing in Eaton Row. The house became a regular part of the scene. There were rich young men with trust funds, titles and hyphenated surnames, and musicians who were suddenly earning more in a year than their parents had earned in a lifetime. Young Lords and Ladies. An Ormsby-Gore or two. Paul McCartney and Jane Asher. Sir Mark Palmer and Viscount Gormanston. And Patrick Kerr, the former cruise ship dance instructor, who demonstrated the latest moves for viewers of Ready Steady Go!.

  Tara had his mother’s gift for hospitality. He topped up glasses, passed around cigarettes and made sure everyone had a good time – friends, casual acquaintances and hangers-on alike. People drifted in and out of Tara’s life, but the McCartneys were always around whenever they happened to be in London. They’d never met anyone like him before – this strange and well-spoken man-child, who was innocent in some ways, yet impossibly sophisticated for someone who had just turned nineteen.

  One night, in March 1964, Tara took Mike to a French restaurant in Little Venice, which was so upmarket that the menu didn’t carry prices. Tara had just heard some sad news from home. Brendan Behan, who had enlivened so many of his childhood Christmases, had died in Dublin’s Meath Hospital as a result of his chronic drinking and neglect of his diabetes. He was only forty-one. Tara was deeply saddened by his death. Over dinner, he told Mike some of his Brendan stories, then at the end decided to see him off with a toast.

  ‘He ordered a brandy,’ Mike remembered. ‘He said, “Michael, will you have a brandy?” He always called me Michael – in his posh voice. I said, “Brandy? I don’t fucking drink brandy, you soft sod,” because, you know, I’m Liverpool working class. So his brandy arrives and he starts swilling it around in the glass. I said, “What the fuck are you doing? Just drink the thing!” and he said, “I’m releasing the flavour, Michael. This is what we do – we’ve been doing it for centuries.” Then, eventually, he stops swilling it and he says, “Michael, you must taste this brandy!” and I said, “Okay, only for you, you smooth-talking bastard.” So I took a sip – my first ever sip of brandy – and he was right. It was one of the nicest drinks I’d ever tasted. I suppose that’s what the friendship was about.’

  It was about discovery.

  •

  Tara’s reputation as a daredevil driver had
spread far and wide. Back home, in the hills of County Wicklow, his death-or-glory antics behind the wheel had turned him into a kind of famous outlaw figure, according to Monsignor Tom Stack, who was then the parish priest in the nearby village of Glendalough. ‘People used to say, “Be careful driving over the bridge to Annamoe. Tara Browne might be coming over it!”’

  Around April 1964, Tara began to harbour serious ambitions of becoming a full-time racing car driver. He and Nicki had recently driven a Mini across the continent to Sicily, where Nicholas Gormanston was studying art and was hosting an exhibition of his work. While he was there, Tara drove the route of the famous Targa Florio, the oldest car race in the world, which was held every year on the notoriously unsafe mountain roads near Palermo. The course, comprising more than ninety miles of needle-sharp corners on roads that were often slicked with hoarfrost, held no fear for him.

  ‘He drove it,’ Nicholas remembered, ‘with me in the passenger seat next to him, absolutely terrified. There were sharp bends and then sheer drops to the sides and donkeys walked across the road in front of us. I really didn’t think we were going to survive it. But he had a driver’s instincts. He was extraordinary behind the wheel of a car.’

  He also pushed his luck to the limit and beyond. Once, Nicki remembered, while they were in Ireland for the weekend, he knocked a policeman off his bike. ‘We were going to Bray,’ she said, ‘and he skidded coming up to a red light, trying to stop in time, and he hit this Garda, who then fell off his bike. Tara said, “I’m awfully sorry,” and the Garda, who was incredibly polite, just said, “Not to worry – my fault entirely,” and let him go on his way – no licence or anything.’

  He went through cars at a quicker rate than even Miguel. ‘Oonagh was worried about the way he drove,’ Nicki remembered. ‘She’d say to me, “Nicki, you must tell him to slow down.” Then she’d go out and buy him a Porsche or something.’