How Macca and Linda gate-crashed our hols (and conceived their first baby)
From Noel Coward’s dark obsession to a ticking off from Lennon’s aunt, Beatles biographer HUNTER DAVIES’ new memoir is a gossip-filled love letter to the Sixties
HIS name was George Best and he’d just broken into Man United’s first team when I interviewed him in the summer of 1965.
Still only 19 years old, the Belfast-born striker’s precocious talent was already getting him noticed by journalists like me.
‘What I’d really like is to be a millionaire,’ George told me. His basic wage was £150 a week — although he’d recently picked up an extra £25 playing an international for Northern Ireland.
George didn’t drink and he didn’t smoke, although on rare occasions he might have a lager. He shared digs with another boy and found the evenings very boring, as most of the team’s other players were married.
‘I would like to have a flat of my own,’ George told me. ‘But the boss, Mr Busby, thinks there might be temptations. Perhaps when I’m 22?’
The innocence of those early days would be transformed by the Sixties, years of immense significance for George — a crazy, wonderful decade that would form and shape the rest of his life.
It was the same for my wife Margaret and me. You don’t often feel blessed at the time. But every day, every moment of 1960, I was actively aware and grateful for all the wonderful things that were happening to me.
Margaret, of course, was the number one happening. I could hardly believe she had agreed to marry me, which she did on June 11, 1960, at Oxford register office.
The fact that I failed my driving test the day before, so our best man had to drive with us on the first stage of our honeymoon, was not, for me, a bad omen.
I never believe in things like that, preferring always to look on the bright side, believing all is for the best, even though I know of course it is mostly total rubbish. As anyone who gets to the age of 80 well knows.
At 22, Margaret was two years younger than me, but it didn’t feel like that. She had tastes and confidence, social skills and attitudes which belied the background and family she had come from — a rough Carlisle council estate where we had both grown up.
I don’t know how she’d turned out like that. But I realised she was something very special from the moment I first spoke to her when she was 17 years old, still just a schoolgirl.
THE second wonderful thing that happened in 1960 was finding our first rented flat: in the Vale of Health, in Hampstead, North-West London. Margaret and I lived a fairly frugal life in those days: we never, for example, had wine in the flat — not like today, when I have crates of it all over the place for emergencies (such as getting to 5.30 without having so far had a drink).
Strange how habits change. It’s the same with swearing. I never used to swear, nor did Margaret. Now I do it all the time, and it’s great fun — everyone does, from Downing Street to Buckingham Palace. I say f***inhell all the time. Appalling, isn’t it? AS A young teenager Margaret had wanted to be an MP, putting the world to rights.
But she’d long since abandoned that plan. Instead, as a break from furnishing and equipping our new flat and cooking for her dear husband after his awfully hard day, she started writing a novel. It took her about three months, all beautifully handwritten in ink.
eventually it was sent off to an agent, who wrote back pretty quickly to say he thought it did not quite work, but would she like to come and see him at his office to talk about it?
Margaret immediately tore up his letter and binned the novel. I never even had a chance to read it. That was it. She was no longer going to be a novelist. ‘Come on, pet,’ I said. ‘It’s only one opinion. Try somewhere else.’
But Margaret was adamant. She was giving up. Instead she became a teacher at a girls’ school in Islington — a job at which she excelled, naturally. I, meanwhile, was working on the diary column of a Sunday newspaper and meeting all manner of interesting folks.
Among them was David Hockney, a bright, chirpy northern lad who had just won a gold medal at the Royal College of Art.
I interviewed David at an enormous — rather rundown — flat in West London. In his lavatory I noticed a photograph cut out of a newspaper of Denis Law, scoring
a goal. I asked David if he was a football fan. He said no, he just liked Denis Law’s thighs. That bit didn’t make it into the paper , though. In 1966 homosexual activity could still be an offence.
To go with my successful manabout-town image I bought myself a brand-new Mini (ever so Sixties). It cost me £500 — dirt cheap now , but quite a lot at the time: a third of my year’s salary . I could never quite remember its colour — blue, or was it green? Or it could have been grey? I forget, and anyway I’m colour blind.
I took the Mini one day when I went to interview the novelist and philosopher Aldous Huxley , in Britain on a rare visit from California.
After the interview I offered him a lift to his next appointment. He looked somewhat askance when he saw my very small car, and I had to coax him into getting into it.
Then, as we were driving down Piccadilly, he kept looking nervously out of the window as we found ourselves between two giant London double - deckers. All he could see were the vast wheels of the buses towering over us.
‘Let me out of here!’ he suddenly yelled, convinced we were going to be squashed to death.
He tried to pull open the door , fiddling madly with the mecha - nism. Fortunately he could not find or understand the door - opening system, so he was forced to stay seated.
Very soon, at the next lights, I was able to zoom away from the two scary double-decker monsters — and the great man of letters lived to fight another day. WE MOVED into our first proper home, a three - storey semidetached house near Hampstead Heath, in January 1963. The asking price was £5,200, but I got it for £5,000. Unbelievable, when you think about it now. Today a young London couple, on average wages, would have to save for around 40 years to acquire such a place.
Margaret became pregnant later that year. We’d wanted to wait until we had our own place before we started a family. The local hospital wrote to ask if I’d like to attend classes on how to be a father , but in the end I wasn ’t there when Margaret gave birth.
I had been at the maternity ward all night, holding her hand and other manly contributions, but nothing appeared to be happening. By the morning I was fed up and hungry, so decided to go into Hampstead to buy a pork pie.
When I got back , our daughter Caitlin had been born. I was never forgiven for missing her birth — especially for such a prosaic and unromantic reason as buying a pie.
If 1960 had been a great year for us, 1965, the year after Caitlin ’s birth, ran it a close second. Margaret had recovered from her despair about her career as a writer , and her second novel, Georgy Girl, had proved a phenomenal success — a runaway bestseller which was immediately made into a film.
Charlotte Rampling was one of the stars of Georgy Girl, playing Meredith, who in the film has a baby. Charlotte had never had a baby and didn’t appear to know what one looked like, or how to hold one, so the producer insisted that she came to our house for tea to meet Margaret and hold baby Caitlin.
She did not seem at all comfortable, though — rather austere and cool.
And then, amazingly , the same success happened to me. I’d thought, if Margaret can write a book, why can’t I? My first novel, a racy teenage drama entitled Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush, was made into a film at the same time as Margaret ’ s, starring a young Christopher Timothy, who would later go on to find fame as the TV vet James Herriot.
It got fairly snotty reviews, the critics feeling that it was vulgar and commercial. Margaret ’s Georgy Girl, on the other hand, got excellent write-ups. It was in black and white and seen as an art film, while mine was in lurid colour with pop music and trendy clothes.
Very recently I met Alan Johnson, the former Labour MP and Home Secretary, and he told me that he had christened his son Jamie after the name of my hero in Mulberry Bush. He hadn ’t thought much of the film either , but he had loved the music.
NOW, I know I romanticise the Sixties — but it really was a marvellous time, when so much happened to Margaret and me. In 1967 I was asked to write a book about the Beatles — to this day, I’m their only authorised biographer.
I started work on the book on February 7 — and that very same day I got a call from a funny-sounding woman who said she was called Yoko Ono. She wanted me to appear in a film she was doing about bare bottoms.
I told her to get lost — I assumed it was some joker from a rival newspaper winding me up. But eventually she convinced me she was serious, so I went along.
When I arrived at the address off Park Lane, people were queuing down the pavement. One by one they were let in through the front door of an ordinary looking house and told to drop their trousers and knickers. They then stood on a children’s roundabout where a fixed camera focused on each bare bottom as it went round. Once round, they stepped off, put their pants back on and were ushered back out of the door.
I wrote a fairly amused, quite mickey-taking piece about it, and Yoko rang me afterwards to say thank you for the publicity.
I did not meet her again in the flesh till one day a year later I walked into Abbey Road studios, working on the Beatles book , to listen to their latest efforts. There she was, entwined round John.
Both of them appeared to be in a transcendental state. The other
three Beatles were staring at her, clearly thinking: ‘ Who the f*** is this?’ A YEAR abroad had not been on our todo list. But in the spring of 1968 we moved with the children — Jake had followed two years after Caitlin — to Malta for six months and then on to Portugal.
I’m not proud of it, but the reason was partly financial. Following the release of both our films, we had made more money than we were ever going to earn again, and our accountants suggested that for tax reasons we should stay away for a year and a day.
In Portugal we rented a converted sardine factory on the beach at Praia da Luz, near Lagos. We immediately fell in love with the country. The beaches were lovely, the food and wine wonderful, and the culture rich and deep.
In the middle of one night Paul McCartney arrived with his new girlfriend, Linda.
When we left London he had been engaged to Jane Asher and we thought they made a very good couple.
He and Linda had with them a girl called Heather, aged about eight, who was Linda’s daughter by a previous relationship.
Earlier that evening, in London, Paul had suddenly thought it would be a good idea to take his new girlfriend and her daughter to see us, as he knew we had young children. All service flights to Faro had gone, so he told Neil, their roadie, to hire a private jet. That was why they arrived in the middle of the night.
They had not rung, nor had they written. Typical Paul. He wouldn’t have been fazed if we had not been there — he would have seen it as an adventure, take life as it comes, let it all hang out.
They stayed for two weeks. At first we had assumed Linda was a groupie, but as we got to know her, we realised she was a strong character, better for Paul than we had imagined. When we got back to England, Linda kept in touch with Christmas cards, presents and invitations, but when she died, and Paul married Heather Mills, we lost touch with Paul and his family for a while.
Not long ago, though, he invited me to a party for old friends, which gave me a chance to meet his new wife, Nancy. His older daughter Mary was there, with her own children. I had not seen her since she was a teenager.
I decided to tell Mary something I had always believed but not mentioned to her when she was little — that she had been conceived at our house in Portugal. The dates were clear. Exactly nine months, almost to the day, after they had stayed with us, Linda gave birth to their first child together, Mary.
Mary was charmed. She gave me a hug and said I must be her, what is it, step- godfather or something?
Margaret was not at Paul’s party — she always refused to go to such events. When I told her afterwards what I had said to Mary, she said it was an awful thing to do, so embarrassing, she would never have done that, but typical of me, showing off.
ONEof the first people I interviewed on our return from Portugal was Noel Coward. In 1969, just before his 70th birthday, I wrote and asked if I could mark the occasion by speaking to him about his distinguished career as playwright, composer and actor.
He said yes, inviting me to his home in Switzerland. I was thrilled, naturally.
When I arrived at Chateau Coward there was a big argument going on between Coward and Cole Leslie, his assistant. (His real name was Leslie Cole, but Coward had made him change it). It transpired that one of them had broken wind but was denying it, blaming the other.
Cole was ordered to get an air freshener. He started spraying the room, which sent Coward into hysterics. ‘It now smells like a f***ing Turkish brothel in here!’ he shouted.
Over dinner Coward was full of stories. We got on to my book about the Beatles and he was very caustic, pretending he did not know their names, referring to John McCartney and Paul Lennon. He told me about how he’d gone to see them perform in Rome. Afterwards, he decided he would go backstage, so a message was sent to their dressing room that Mr Noël Coward would like to meet the Beatles.
The message came back saying the Beatles did not want to meet him. He was so furious he marched into their dressing room and berated them. ‘If you are a star, you have to behave like one,’ he told them. ‘I always have. I believe in good manners.’
We then got on to one of his hobbies. He was apparently in the habit of going into hospitals to watch operations, having found a couple of friendly surgeons who let him know when anything interesting was happening. Noel had recently seen a hysterectomy, an ovariectomy, a birth and a death.
I found this weird and horrific but fascinating, and felt it gave an unusual insight into his real character. But I must have appeared too interested, or too appalled, wanting to know too many details.
He suddenly changed the subject, realising he had given too much away. After coffee and brandy, and stuffing my face with food and wine — he was very hospitable, though he ate very little himself — I apologised for having stayed too long, and having asked perhaps too many personal questions.
‘Not at all, dear boy. I am fascinated by the subject,’ he said. AFTER a parenting gap of six years our third child, Flora, was born in 1972 — a wonderful surprise package. I can’t remember planning to have another — it just seemed to happen.
So what with three lovely children, a great marriage and a successful writing career, I was feeling like a hell of a feller. I’d returned to journalism after the novel-writing and was editing a Sunday magazine, being transported to work each day in a chauffeur- driven car, lunching in the West End, dealing with famous photographers like Tony Snowdon. Big budget, brilliant staff, lots of rushing about being busy. And then Margaret got cancer. Which day it was that she told me, I can’t now remember. Or what she said. Or what I said in reply. I tend to put my head in the sand, hope it will not be true and will all go away.
Margaret, on the other hand, was strangely, quietly, worryingly resigned. She had found a lump in her breast, and a full mastectomy had been advised.
But to her it wasn’t a surprise — she had always felt something awful like this would happen one day. We had been too lucky in life, she thought.
While I had always been irrationally optimistic about almost everything, she always saw the worst ahead. This, she argued, put her in a better position to cope if and when it did.
The surgeon explained Margaret was an unlikely candidate for breast cancer. She was only 36, had breastfed three children for nine months each, had never smoked, and was otherwise fit and healthy. Yes, most unusual.
Which was not exactly reassuring. It was like being damned and doomed. It suggested, in fact, that Margaret was right. That our good luck had finally run out.