Halfway To Hollywood: Diaries 1980-1988 (Volume Two) (105 page)

Will Camp knew everyone in the political world. In one of his obituaries in 2002 he was described as ‘Writer and corporate and political adviser’. In 1999, Richard Faulkner was made a Labour peer, Baron Faulkner of Worcester.

The Greater London Council, London’s administrative body since 1965, the year I came to live in the capital.

A piece written in the style of Captain W E Johns, about Biggles, Algy and Ginger trying to get tickets for a Bruce Springsteen concert.
³
An academic lecture on slapstick comedy.

Direct Broadcast Satellite. Satellite TV was not yet available in private homes.

An 11-part German series directed and co-written by Edgar Reitz, which follows the fortunes of a family in a Rhineland village from 1919 to 1982. There were two further series in the 1990’s and the 2000’s.

Martin is a comedy entrepreneur and party-giver, now living in the USA. He had worked on some of the Amnesty shows and was a friend of Lindsay Anderson.

Rachel Roberts won a BAFTA for her performance in
This Sporting Life
, directed by Lindsay Anderson in 1963. Married to Rex Harrison from 1962 to 1971, she died in 1980.
²
A Japanese film, released in 1984. Directed and co-scripted by Sogo Ishii.

The guest-house on the corner of Pier Avenue and North Parade where my parents and I stayed on our summer holidays from 1959 to 1964, and on which ‘Tregarron’ in
East of Ipswich
was based.

Maradona’s disputed first goal, in which he appeared to put the ball in the net with his hand, was the first of two he scored for Argentina in the quarter-finals to put England out of the Mexico World Cup 2-1.

Released in 1986, it was directed by Jim Abrahams and David Zucker and starred Bette Midler and Danny de Vito.

Shirley Russell, costume designer, ex-wife of film director Ken. She designed costumes for most of his hits, including
Women in Love
,
Tommy
and
The Boy Friend
.

Rupert Murdoch, with the support of the Thatcher government, had moved production of his newspapers (
The Times
,
The Sunday Times
, the
Sun
) out to custom-built non-unionised premises in Wapping. After a vicious dispute lasting almost a year the power of the print unions was broken in the same way that union power in the mining industry had been broken two years previously.

Edward Rawle-Hicks, John Wagland, Oona Kirsch and Pippa Hinchley were the four main younger-generation actors in
East of Ipswich
.

Prominent Features was the name of our new Python-based film production company. A name dreamt up, as I remember it, by Alison Davies at the Python office.

The announcement that Lawrence Walsh was to be appointed as a special independent counsel marked the latest step in the murky Iran-Contra affair, the biggest scandal of Reagan’s presidency. The US was accused of illegally selling arms to Iran in order to raise funds to help anti-Communist ‘Contras’ overthrow Nicaragua’s left-wing Sandinista government.

The Tonight Show
, an American institution, had been hosted by Johnny Carson since 1962. This particular night he handed it over to a comedian called Jay Leno. Six years later, when Carson retired, Leno took over
The Tonight Show
full-time.

American singer, born Sidney Liebowitz, best known for duets with wife, Eydie Gormé.

Archer had been accused by two newspapers of paying hush-up money to a prostitute called Monica Coghlan, with whom the
Daily Star
alleged he had had ‘relations’. Archer successfully sued the
Star
, and though he was cleared of charges, the scandal forced him to resign as Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party. He was found guilty of perjury in 2001.

Howard Heeley was the Headmaster of my prep school in Sheffield. Boys about to leave the school, mostly aged 12 or 13, were required to attend one of his ‘sex talks’ which took place in his study and involved desk items, such as paper-clips and ink-pots, as props. Most of us came away deeply confused.

Encouraged by Colin Webb at Pavilion Books, I’d written text for a collection of vintage British railway posters. It was published in 1987 under the title
Happy Holidays
. It was one of the most enjoyable things I ever did.

The book was
In the Name of Love
, published in 1979, and later described in the
Guardian
(for whom Jill Tweedie wrote her columns) as ‘a dazzling set of observations about love, sex, men and women’.

In short, we were caught in a variation of the many employer versus union struggles of the 80’s. LWT were taking on an in-house, unionised labour force.

Director of Programmes at London Weekend Television since 1982. He left to join the BBC as Deputy Director General in 1987.

A World Apart
. It won the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 1987 and BAFTA Best Screenplay in 1988. The ‘nicest man in the world’ was played by Jeroen Krabbé.

Tony Stratton-Smith, a successful indie music manager, started Charisma Records, for whom most of the Python albums were made, along with those of Genesis and John Betjeman. He also helped finance
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
. Tony owned a racehorse called Monty Python, somewhat less successful than the comedy group of the same name.

A touching and at times very funny Swedish film, directed by Lasse Hallstrom and released in 1985.

Released in August 1986, it was directed by Eugene Corr and starred Annabeth Gish, Jon Voight, JoBeth Williams and Ellen Barkin.

The Conservatives won with a majority of 102. It was Margaret Thatcher’s third consecutive victory. Labour, whose share of the vote increased by 1%, was led by Neil Kinnock.

1976 movie, directed by Arthur Penn and starring Marlon Brando, Jack Nicholson and Randy Quaid.

He and his wife Carys were long-time friends of the family.

Sepha Wood is one of Angela’s closest friends from Sheffield days.

Princess Diana’s brother. He became 9th Earl Spencer after his father’s death in 1992.

Directed by Claude Berri and starring Gérard Depardieu, Yves Montand and Daniel Auteuil.

Among other things, he’d produced
Mona Lisa
for HandMade, co-produced Terry Gilliam’s
Brazil
, been associate producer on
Made in Britain
, David Leland’s powerful TV series about the state of modern education, and location manager on Gilliam’s
Time Bandits
.

Press agent and manager whose clients included John Cassavetes and Jack Kerouac. In 1986 he co-produced the film
84 Charing Cross Road
with Anthony Hopkins and Anne Bancroft.

Frontliners was a pioneering self-help organisation for HIV/AIDS sufferers. It was disbanded in 1991 following fraud and nepotism investigations by the Charity Commissioners.

Clem came up with the original idea of the television series
Around the World in 80 Days
and asked for me as presenter, after Alan Whicker and Clive James declined. I later learned that journalist Miles Kington and Noel Edmonds had also been offered the job by the BBC.

This, Robert Hewison’s fifth book, was
The Heritage Industry
, published by Methuen, with illustrations by Chris Orr and photos by Allan Titmuss. It argued that ‘instead of manufacturing goods, we are manufacturing
heritage
, a commodity which nobody seems able to define’. As it happens, I have read it and it holds up very well.

Chris Guest, Jamie Lee Curtis’ husband. Actor, writer, musician –
This is Spinal Tap
(1984), and later director too –
Best in Show
(2000),
A Mighty Wind
(2003) and others. In 1996 he inherited his father’s title and became 5th Baron Haden-Guest.

Eberts, a Canadian film financier and producer, was, with David Puttnam, the founder of Goldcrest, the most successful British film production company of the 1980’s. They made the successful
Chariots of Fire
,
The Killing Fields
and
Local Hero
, and the less successful
Revolution
and
The Mission
. Eberts left Goldcrest and set up another British-based film company, Allied Filmmakers, in 1985.

A fire which began in uncleared rubbish at the bottom of a wooden escalator left 31 dead and 60 injured.

Robert was the business manager of the Belfast Festival.

He had just joined Channel 4 as the new Chief Executive.

Peter had produced ‘The Secret Policeman’s Ball’, the first of the Amnesty fund-raising concerts back in 1976. He had also proposed me (successfully) for Fellowship of the Royal Geographical Society.

Seven-part BBC TV adaptation of Olivia Manning’s novels set in Bucharest at the time of the Second World War. Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson starred. Alan Bennett played Lord Pinkrose.

A play by Peter Shaffer, who also wrote
Equus
. Maggie Smith won a Tony for Best Actress in 1990 for her role as Lettice Douffet.

In November 1974 bombs exploded in two Birmingham pubs: 21 people were killed and 182 injured. The Provisional IRA were blamed and in 1975 six Irishmen were found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment. After a campaign led by the MP Chris Mullin, their sentences were overthrown by the Court of Appeal. In 1991, after spending sixteen years in prison the ‘Birmingham Six’ were declared innocent and released.

Dino Vercotti and his brother (played by myself and Terry Jones) were two hopeless Italian Mafiosi who appeared in Monty Python offering ‘protection’ to the British Army (played by Graham Chapman).

Best known, probably, for her performance in
Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore
(1974), she is a prolific stage and screen actor and the first woman President of American Actors’ Equity.

He was one of the most successful and experienced of BBC documentary producer/directors. He had created the
Forty Minutes
format, which won him two BAFTA Awards for Best Documentary series. Rather than take a job as Executive in charge of BBC1 documentaries, he had opted to go out on the road.
80 Days
was his first job as a freelance.

This was from his second wife Barbara.

Island Pictures had released
A Private Function
in America.

Along with Charlie Crichton (
The Lavender Hill Mob
), Mackendrick had directed some of the classic Ealing comedies of the 1950’s and early ’60s including
The Ladykillers
and
The Man in the White Suit
. Since emigrating to Hollywood he had made, among others,
The Sweet Smell of Success
with Burt Lancaster. He died in 1993.

Frank Oz, puppeteer, actor, director, created and voiced many of the famous Muppets before moving on to direct feature films, including
Dark Crystal
and
The Little Shop of Horrors
(1986).

A play by Billy Roche. One of his Wexford Trilogy.

Mike Medavoy was the co-founder of Orion Pictures Corporation.

Elena Salvoni, legendary maîtresse d’, at Bianchi’s and then L’Escargot in Soho, and now at

L’Etoile in Charlotte Street. In 2005 she celebrated 60 years in the business.

A collection of stories and legends about King Arthur was collated by Sir Thomas Malory under the title
Le Morte D’Arthur
and published by William Caxton in 1485. An earlier version known as the Winchester Manuscript was discovered in Winchester College Library in 1934. It’s now in the British Library.

And it was to be changed again to
Dirty Rotten Scoundrels
.

Reiner had directed
Princess Bride
and
Stand by Me
but was perhaps best known for directing, and appearing as the director, in the seminally wonderful
This is Spinal Tap
.

Tom Jacobson was a producer and John Hughes a writer, producer and director (
National Lampoon’s Vacation
, 1983,
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
, 1986,
Planes and Trains and Automobiles
with Steve Martin, 1987). They had sent me a script to consider called ‘Larry Meister Late for Life’. It was, as far as I know, never made.

Kensington House in Shepherd’s Bush was the hub of the dynamic BBC Documentary Features output. It’s now been turned into a chic hotel called K West.

I had worked with Don on
Saturday Night Live
in the 1970’s. His best-loved character was Father Guido Sarducci, a Vatican spokesman. In 1977 he produced a very funny book of fake letters by a creation of his called Lazlo Toth, and their genuine replies from politicians and others in authority.
The Lazlo Letters
were the inspiration (unacknowledged) for
The Henry Root Letters
by William Donaldson, published in the UK in 1980.