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Post by I on Jun 20, 2011 11:17:45 GMT
I knew Dunkley in the early 1970s, Marcus. He was the DJ at the Roundhouse and one of my favourite DJs of the time.
Observer
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Post by Benj52 on Jun 20, 2011 13:13:44 GMT
Did you come across this bloke in your London travels, Penny?:
William Donaldson
Willie Donaldson's alter ego was a Right-wing nutcase and wet fish merchant from Elm Park Mansions, SW10, who specialised in writing brash, outrageous and frequently abusive letters to eminent public figures, enclosing a one pound note. Donaldson's genius was to write letters that appeared absurd to the public but not to those to whom they were addressed. The recipients duly replied, often unaware that the joke was on them.
Root chastised the Archbishop of Canterbury for failing to thank him for the five pounds he had donated towards roof repairs; suggested to Margaret Thatcher (who kept the enclosed one pound) that Mary Whitehouse should be made Home Secretary; sympathised with the Queen about the "problems" she was having with Princess Anne ("My Doreen, 19, is completely off the rails too, so I know what it's like"); and told the Thorpe trial judge, Sir Joseph Cantley: "You tipped the jury the right way and some of your jokes were first class! Well done! You never looked to me like the sort of man who'd send an old Etonian to the pokey", a communication which brought a visit from the police, investigating allegations of attempted bribery.
He volunteered to run sundry failing football clubs; to visit the Chief Constable of Manchester with his newly formed-group The Ordinary Folk Against The Rising Tide of Filth in Our Society Situation (TOFATRFLOSS); asked Angela Rippon to send him a photograph of Anna Ford and enquired of the Tory Party director of finance the going rate for a peerage. He wrote to the late Sir James Goldsmith urging the elimination of "scroungers, perverts, Dutch pessary salesmen and Polly Toynbee". "Dear Mr Root", Goldsmith replied, "Thank you for your letter which I appreciated enormously."
Some recipients were puzzled, some furious, and some swallowed the hoax, hook, line and sinker. Nicholas Scott MP answered Root's letters about his love life, claiming that all was well between himself and his wife. The Foreign Office replied to Root's enquiries as to whether Mrs Root might be assaulted by "local Pedros" on holiday in Ibiza, informing him that "the activities to which you refer are indeed apt to occur in most popular tourist centres". When he told Sir David McNee, then Police Commissioner at Scotland Yard, that it was "better that 10 innocent men be convicted than that one guilty man goes free", he was told: "Your kind comments are appreciated."
Mrs Thatcher's first priority, Root informed general Zia-al Haq of Pakistan, was "the immediate restoration of the death penalty". The General thanked the sender for his "very pertinent views" and enclosed a photograph for Mrs Root. A letter in which Root informed Esther Rantzen that she was "a fat idiot" and her television show "a disgrace", received a reply assuring him that "hearing from viewers like yourself is a tremendous morale boost for all of us".
Journalists were the most gullible of all. Not one refused the invitation to contribute some choice item of rubbish to the Henry Root Anthology of Great Modern British Prose. In a letter to Nigel Dempsey [sic], the Daily Mail's diarist was softened up by the assurance that "some folk deride sycophantic gossip about one's social superiors as a lot of snobbish nonsense, but I am not of their number".
He had an unerring eye for the approach which would rankle most with his recipients. Writing to Harriet Harman, then of "The National Council for so-called Civil Liberties", he began: "I saw you on television the other night… Why should an attractive lass like you want to confuse her pretty little head with complicated matters of politics, jurisprudence, sociology and the so-called rights of man? Leave such considerations to us men, that's my advice to you. A pretty girl like you should have settled down by now with a husband and a couple of kiddies." If she must work, he continued, she should consider a career such as "that of model, actress, ballroom dancing instructor or newsreader", before enclosing a pound for her to buy a pretty dress and urging the future MP to get in touch with "my friend Lord Delfont".
Compiled and published in 1980, The Henry Root Letters became the number one best seller that year. Although Donaldson kept his name off the volume - the author's identity and even the copyright notice were ascribed to Root - Donaldson's cover was blown when it was noticed that Root's address and Donaldson's were the same. Donaldson/Root's torment of his victims was often lovingly prolonged and Donaldson readily accepted there was something unpleasant and dishonourable about the whole operation. It was claimed that one of his more redeeming features was that while he hated pomposity and hypocrisy in others, he disliked himself even more.
This might have been so, had he not enjoyed hating himself so much: "The salient features about me are laziness, self-indulgence and sex addiction," he confessed, in his characteristic melancholy drawl. "I'm genuinely shocked by my own behaviour."
Charles William Donaldson, the son of a Scottish-born shipping magnate, was born on January 4 1935 at Sunningdale, Berkshire, where he grew up, surrounded by servants, in a 30-roomed mansion. He was fond of his father, but disliked his snobbish, bullying mother and never forgave her for firing the family's faithful chauffeur after she discovered that he voted Socialist.
Donaldson was educated at Winchester, where he discovered that he had lost the contest for the title of stupidest boy in the school when his competitor, an Earl, was advised to "try Eton" after just one term. He then concentrated on perfecting his skills as an eccentric nuisance, wearing his straw hat at a facetious angle, conducting sexual experiments with other boys behind the squash courts and instigating "positive" bullying - by boys of the prefects.
When he was called up for National Service in the Navy, Donaldson's mother rang up the First Sea Lord and told him that her son was about to do the season - "affianced to Isabelle Giscard d'Estaing, the future President of France's sister" - and was not ready. "The First Sea Lord realised that he had met his match and suggested that I pitched up when it suited," Donaldson recalled. He served as an officer in submarines then went up to Magdalene College, Cambridge, to read English.
During National Service, Donaldson had come under the influence of the writer Julian Mitchell, who introduced him to theatre and ballet and suggested he edit a literary magazine, Gemini. Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath were among his contributors. On graduation, Donaldson joined Ogilvie and Mather, but resigned two days later after being asked to write a commercial for Ovaltine.
Donaldson's father had died, an alcoholic, in 1957, leaving him £175,000, a fortune in those days (his mother had died in a motor accident two years earlier). After leaving advertising, he bought a theatrical company - "in order to audition actresses" - and became an impresario.
He first came to prominence in 1961 as the London producer of Beyond the Fringe, which brought together Peter Cook, Alan Bennett and Jonathan Miller. He was also the first promoter to arrange a Bob Dylan concert at a time when the singer was barely known in Britain. "He [Dylan] was sitting in my office one day when I came back from lunch," Donaldson recalled. "I couldn't get rid of the f***er."
Other successes included The Bedsitting Room and An Evening of British Rubbish. But four years of success were followed by a string of failures, beginning with the aptly named Knights of Catastrophe (1965), a doomed attempt to revive British music hall. From then on it was all downhill.
Donaldson was sued for blasphemy by the dowager Lady Birdwood for a show in which God joins forces with Satan to punish Pope Alexander VI. In 1966 the Daily Sketch carried a report which read: "Vanished producer leaves entire cast in Liverpool. Sole clue to his whereabouts a note reading 'Have gone to London for money! Back tonight! Don't worry! We have a hit on our hands!' ". He remained on the Equity blacklist for many years afterwards.
By the late 1960s, Donaldson was losing so much money he had to sell the family house in Berkshire; in 1970 he went into voluntary liquidation. He did not, though, divide up his life by reference to his fluctuating fortunes, but rather to his wives and lovers; and more often than not, it was his personal life that won him headlines.
His first marriage, in 1957, was to Sonia Avory, the daughter of tennis champion Ted Avory. But Donaldson had never been attracted to the "squashy, pink-faced tennis type", and he regretted the marriage even before he had walked down the aisle. On honeymoon he read pornography wrapped in the cover of Kingsley Amis's Lucky Jim.
By the time his only son was born in 1959, he had begun an affair with Jeffrey Bernard's actress wife, Jackie. When, two years later, they agreed to elope, Donaldson hurried home to tell his wife and left with his pyjamas in a suitcase. Three days later Jackie rang to tell him that they were "ships that pass in the night" and that the deal was off.
After a six-month affair with a dancer who had appeared in Summer Holiday, he spent two years with the actress Sarah Miles. He moved into her flat but when she went off to make a film in Ireland, he invited a "page three model" round, who left her shoes behind. When Sarah Miles found them, she kicked Donaldson out. Later, she wrote a memoir in which she described Donaldson "adjusting his cufflinks" as he seduced her.
The following years were a blur of starlets and minor celebrities, including the American singer Carly Simon, whom Donaldson jilted when she was preparing to come to Britain to marry him.
In 1968 he married another actress, Claire Gordon, whom he had auditioned for Lady de Winter, a nude role in his production of The Three Musketeers. She introduced him to cannabis and they held wild orgies, with call girls, naked DJs and two-way mirrors. In 1970 a headline read "Cannabis case impresario fined. When cautioned the accused asked the arresting officer 'Haven't I seen you at one of my pot parties?' "
In 1992 Claire Gordon revealed the "Randy secrets of the real Mrs Root" to a tabloid, describing how her husband sent pornographic pictures of her to contact magazines in exchange for a plug for her fitness video.
In 1971 Donaldson fled wife and creditors and left for Ibiza, where he spent his last £2,000 on a glass-bottomed boat, hoping to make money out of tourists. By the end of the season, he had no money left and had to sell the boat for £250. He returned to London when he heard that a former girlfriend had gone on the game, moved in to her Chelsea brothel as a "ponce" and used his experiences as the basis for his first book, Both the Ladies and the Gentlemen (1975).
The book prospered modestly and Donaldson was astonished to find himself being taken seriously as a writer. Kenneth Tynan compared Donaldson's prose to PG Wodehouse and bought the rights to the book, hoping (in vain) to turn it into a musical. One day, a friend in America sent Donaldson a book called The Lazlo Letters, the published correspondence between a character calling himself "Lazlo Toth" and the likes of LB Johnson and Richard Nixon.
By the time Henry Root put pen to paper, Donaldson was living with his former secretary, Cherry Hatrick. They married after she told him that he had behaved so badly that they would have to get married if he wanted to continue living with her. The marriage lasted six months before she walked out.
Donaldson made a good deal of money from Henry Root, and there were Root sequels (including Root into Europe (1992) and Henry Root's World of Knowledge (1982), a television series and a column in The Independent, in which Donaldson chronicled the bad behaviour of his friends.
In the mid-1980s, Donaldson moved back to Ibiza where he became infatuated with Melanie Soszynski, who in 1986 was charged, along with the Marquess of Blandford and others, with supplying cocaine. After the trial (at which she was acquitted) Donaldson sent her to a clinic in Weston-super-Mare, where the doctor told her: "I can help you, but I don't think I can help Mr Donaldson."
When Melanie Soszynski dumped him, Donaldson wrote Is This Allowed? (1987), inspired by their life together. In 1986 there was a stint as Talbot Church, friend of the royals and the author of a book about Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson entitled 101 Things you didn't know about the Royal Lovebirds.
In 1994 Donaldson went bankrupt for a second or possibly third time, after failing to open several years' worth of tax demands. When rung by The Daily Telegraph's Peterborough column to ask how had managed to run through the Root takings in such a short period, he candidly admitted that he had "been an idiot". (Though he put it more bluntly: "I've been a complete c***.")
His books kept him in the limelight. In The Heart Felt Letters (1998) under the pseudonym "Liz Reed" of Heartfelt productions (company motto: "a tragedy aired is a tragedy shared") Donaldson pitched proposals for television shows to Dawn Airey at Channel 5, including such gems as Topless Gladiators, with the former Judge Pickles acting as arbitrator; succeeded in involving the Dean of St Paul's in a Princess Diana "Compassion video" (featuring Esther Rantzen and a group of grieving mothers reciting prayers over footage of catastrophes), and offered James Boyle at Radio 4 a game show with "in the hot seat a celeb, who in spite of mega achievements, is thought by everyone to be a total pillock. Jeffrey Archer, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Janet Street-Porter… "
Brewer's Rogues, Villains and Eccentrics (2002) was a series of pen portraits of "Roguish Britons Through the Ages"; I'm Leaving You Simon, You Disgust Me (2003) was a collection of modish clichés and dinner party vacuities. Both books were dotted with vendettas pursued through masterpieces of cross-referencing, for example "Jesus, believing oneself to be having carnal relations with. See Edinburgh, Prince Philip, Duke of". Magnus Magnusson, Sandi Toksvig, Mariella Frostrup and Sven-Goran Eriksson were all referenced under "See Eskimos working in the United Kingdom".
This was an expansion of a joke which had begun in Henry Root's World of Knowledge, when, under the entry for call girls, he had written: "Surely we don't have to be reminded yet again that Jack Profumo copulated with a tart, deceived his wife - the lovely and gracious Valerie Hobson - endangered the security of the state and lied to the House of Commons? The poor man has paid his debt to society and should now be left in peace. See: Profumo, John; Keeler, Christine; Rice-Davies, Mandy; Ward, Stephen; Denning, Lord." The paragraph was repeated verbatim under each of those entries.
Other books included The English Way of Doing Things (1984); Great Disasters of the Stage (1984); (The balloons in the black bag) Nicknames only (1985); The big one, the black one, the fat one and the other one: my life in showbiz (1992); and From Winchester to This (1998).
Donaldson painted himself as a sordid sexual obsessive indifferent to the misery he heaped upon others: "My life is f***ed up - I've used people, and on the whole I haven't had a good time. I say to young people 'steady on, or you'll end up like me'." In his sixties he claimed to have been in thrall to a prostitute, used crack, and taken the date rape drug Rohypnol recreationally: "The trouble is, it wipes your memory. You have to video yourself to appreciate just what a good time you had."
Published June 27 2005
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Post by steverice on Jun 20, 2011 13:45:34 GMT
I bought Henry roots letters
"Here's a pound..let's go"
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Post by I on Jun 20, 2011 16:11:52 GMT
Never heard of him, Benny boy. I don't tend to read right wing literature.
Observer
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Post by steverice on Jun 20, 2011 18:59:02 GMT
Never heard of him, Benny boy. I don't tend to read right wing literature. Observer It's a big stretch to call waht he wrote literature...more like the type of book you read on a plane |
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Post by Benj52 on Jun 21, 2011 9:11:11 GMT
No, I guess not, Penny.
This piece of the DT obit caught my eye though, did it yours?:
In 1968 he married another actress, Claire Gordon, whom he had auditioned for Lady de Winter, a nude role in his production of The Three Musketeers. She introduced him to cannabis and they held wild orgies, with call girls, naked DJs and two-way mirrors. In 1970 a headline read "Cannabis case impresario fined. When cautioned the accused asked the arresting officer 'Haven't I seen you at one of my pot parties?' "
Did you, have any wild orgies under the influence, back in the day, (or even in 1967)?? Sounds like fun.
Or was this restricted to these right-wing types?
My only experience of these kind of things was with mescaline in 1984.
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Post by consciouspilot on Jun 23, 2011 19:50:55 GMT
Rather strangely, a friend of mine was at Andy Dunkley's funeral: sitting behind members of the Blockheads and DJ Scratchy.
Pilot
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