My apartheid rage got me knocked out
OUT of the blue, Mick announced he was going to marry Nicaraguan diplomat’s daughter Bianca Perez Moreno de Macias, who he had met in France in September 1970. But then came a surprise twist.
It came as a request from Rolling Stones publicist Les Perrin. Would I agree to be the bridal couple’s bodyguard throughout the nuptials in Saint-Tropez?
I did not have to think twice but fear of the expected furore the wedding would cause clearly meant we needed a second bodyguard, and my colleague Patrick Doncaster agreed to play the role with me. The big day – May 12, 1971 – arrived.
Just one glance at the baying fans and invading paparazzi outside the town hall where the ceremony was to be conducted made us realise that Perrin had not underestimated the commotion.
The mayor threatened to call the whole ceremony off, such was the tumult.
Mick, in his best suit, and Bianca, in an Yves St Laurent white jacket and a long skirt, left it to Perrin to talk the mayor round into allowing the ceremony to go ahead. Risking all and sundry against the huge tide of fans and cameramen, we managed to guide Mick and Bianca through to the hall.
Trouble and tempers again escalated when the couple emerged as man and wife. The crowd went ballistic. We placed ourselves either side of the hemmed-in couple now marauded by the flashpopping paparazzi, rival journalists and hysterical fans. Punches were exchanged.
Patrick was elbowed and almost bowled over. My own battered frame was savaged relentlessly but inch by inch, we achieved our aim to get the couple into the waiting limousine to make their escape.
Photos of our struggle on the town hall steps became iconic — pictures in which we figured in the full thralls of our bodyguard duties.
Not long after his marriage to Bianca, Mick was assuring me that he was going to quit the scene when he reached the age of 33. “After that I will find something else to do. I couldn’t bear to end up as Elvis Presley and sing in Las Vegas with all those old ladies coming in with their handbags. Not me.”
He must have had a change of heart.
Bianca, Mick and Don in Saint-Tropez in May, 1971
UNLIKE Cliff, pop’s anti-hero, David Bowie, indulged in everything – cocaine, acid, pot, torrid relationships and band bust-ups.
As Ziggy Stardust, he also experimented with gender and sexuality, and throughout his career he alternately stated he was heterosexual, gay and bisexual.
When, unannounced, I visited the 24-year-old Bowie at his Beckenham home in the spring of 1971, he opened the front door wearing a dress.
His wife Angie, only two weeks away from having their first baby, was thrilled by the way her husband looked. “I rather fancy him that way. He looks so lovely in a dress,” she said. They both invited me in to stay for lunch.
Bowie’s shoulder-length blond hair hung over the flowing pink and blue dress which he wore with knee-length calf boots. David said he liked the dress so much, he’d ordered six more at £150 a pop.
IN South Africa in 1977, during The Wild Geese filming, I ended up in a bar with two bull-necked Afrikaans security guards.
The conversation turned heated and in my cups I criticised the apartheid system.
Walking back to my bungalow just before midnight, a car screeched to a halt behind me and a large, burly figure knocked me unconscious.
I woke under a clear blue sky concussed and dazed. They had dumped me in the wild.
I roused to my feet, started to run in sheer fright. I was at a point of exhaustion when I spotted the tiny airstrip where our little plane had landed.
I tried to explain my ordeal to a tribesmen by an outbuilding. He shook his head and said, “You are lucky to be alive.”