The Old Un’s Notes
Actor and regular Oldie contributor Trader Faulkner, ninety, has won a historic victory over Hollywood – and Martin Amis.
In his 1997 novel, Night Train, Amis called the chief murder suspect Trader
Faulkner. The name had stuck in Amis’s mind since he acted, aged fifteen, opposite Trader in the 1965 film A High Wind in Jamaica. Trader played a pirate in Alexander Mackendrick’s film version of Richard Hughes’s novel. Amis played a child on a ship taken over by the pirates.
When Night Train came out, Trader wrote to the Guardian, objecting to Amis’s use of his unique name. Christened Ronald Faulkner, he had been nicknamed Trader by his father in 1934. Trader had found his dad’s bootleg whisky in the bath in Sydney, and traded it at school, aged seven, for marbles.
On discovering that a film of Night Train was being made – under the name Out of Blue – Trader wrote to the film company, Independent, objecting to the use of his name.
He says, ‘I am pleased to say that I have now received a letter from the film’s director and screenwriter, Carol Morley, in which she agrees to change the character name Trader Faulkner to Duncan Reynolds. So Trader Faulkner can now continue to live and work with his identity unchallenged and intact.’ The Old Un congratulates him on his Tinseltown triumph!
Griff Rhys Jones has movingly told the Old Un that his dream dinner date would be Mel Smith, his late Alas Smith and Jones co-star. The great Mel died four years ago, aged just 60.
‘I’d love to tell Mel, who still comes to me in my dreams, everything that has happened since he unfortunately popped his clogs,’ says Griff, whose solo tour, Where Was I?, begins this January. ‘I’d much rather talk nostalgically with an old mate like Mel than one of my heroes – I always find it rather intimidating meeting one’s heroes.’ The Old Un is looking forward to seeing Christopher Plummer, 88, in All the Money in the World, released in January.
The film tells the story of billionaire J Paul Getty (played by Plummer), who initially refused to pay the ransom when his grandson John Paul Getty III was kidnapped in Italy in 1973.
Plummer stepped in when the original actor playing Getty, Kevin Spacey, was, um, indisposed. Scenes starring Spacey had to be reshot with Plummer. Whereas Spacey, 58, had to be given all sorts of prosthetics to play Getty, 81 at the time of the kidnapping, Plummer was just the right age and needed little make-up. When will Hollywood learn? If you want actors to play oldies, hire an oldie actor.
Talking of J Paul Getty, Oldie reader and distinguished architectural historian John Martin Robinson contacted the Old Un with memories of his friend Lady Ursula d’abo.
Daughter of the Duke of Rutland, Lady Ursula died at the end of last year, aged 100. She was best known as a train-bearer to the Queen at the 1937 coronation of George VI. She appeared in the balcony photographs at Buckingham Palace, a beautiful girl with distinctive, black hair worn in a widow’s peak. In her nineties, to the astonishment of her family, she wrote her memoirs, The Girl with the Widow’s Peak.
Lady Ursula also put the lie to the idea that J Paul Getty was a colossal stinge. In her widowhood, says John Martin Robinson, ‘She became close to Paul Getty, acting as his hostess at Sutton Place. On his death, she was one of the “girlfriends” (as the Press called them) who received generous bequests, including a Matisse drawing which she hung in the lavatory.’
The Old Un is longing for a stingy friend to leave him a Matisse.
O tempora! O mores! The Old Un is mortified to hear of declining Classics standards in British industry. Oldie reader and Classics don Professor
Peter Olive, has been examining the marketing material for Ineos, the chemicals and oil company.
He came across this bit of guff: ‘“Ineo” is Latin for a new beginning, “Eos” is the Greek goddess of dawn, and “neos” means something new and innovative.’
‘Nonsense,’ says Professor Olive, who teaches Greek at University College London, and Latin at Royal Holloway, University of London. ‘Ineo does not mean “new beginning” at all, but rather “I enter”. Neos certainly can mean “new” — though in Greek, not Latin. Eos does indeed mean dawn in Greek but, preceded by the Latin word “in”, it is rendered meaningless. “In eos” is Latin for “against them”.’
Is it any coincidence that, just as Ineos was making these classical howlers, its Forties pipeline in the North Sea, delivering 30 per cent of Britain’s oil, developed a dangerous crack? ‘ Mens sana in corpore sano,’ as Juvenal used to say. ‘A healthy mind in a healthy body’; or, to put it colloquially, ‘Healthy Latin; healthy pipelines.’
The Old Un was sad to hear of the death of Christine Keeler, aged 75, after a difficult life ruined by the Profumo Affair.
James Hughes-onslow, The Oldie’s Memorial Service correspondent, has told the Old Un an extraordinary Profumo story. Five years ago, he introduced Viscount Astor, son of the Lord Astor who owned Cliveden at the time of the Profumo Affair, to Lord Lloyd-webber. The latter wrote the music for the 2013 musical Stephen Ward based on the famous scandal. William Astor had been at Cliveden, aged nine, when the legendary events took place.
‘Lord Astor told LloydWebber that the man who saw Christine Keeler naked in the swimming pool was not John Profumo, the War Minister,’ says HughesOnslow. ‘It was Ayub Khan
[president of Pakistan from 1958 to 1969], who assumed she had been sent there for him to enjoy.’
‘Profumo’s wife, Valerie Hobson, came to the rescue, covering Keeler with a towel to conceal her from Khan. Profumo met Keeler much later, in Stephen Ward’s cottage on the estate.’
Of course, the more thrilling story is Profumo and the naked girl in the pool. So that’s the myth that’s been left to posterity.
It’s hard to be a music star and a peer of the realm at the same time. For fear of showing off, grand musicians turn out to be a modest bunch.
Viscount Mersey recorded his latest album, Staffa, under his other, humbler name, Ned Bigham. Previously, he was a drummer for the singer Neneh Cherry and produced songs for Amy Winehouse. Staffa is an enchanting collection of orchestral works, inspired by the Inner Hebrides island.
Meanwhile, the Duke of Beaufort has also released an album, Visions of Imaginary Furniture, with his band, the Listening Device – described by Jools Holland as ‘somewhere between Ray
Charles and Nick Cave’. The Duke – who provides the band with heart-stirring, gravel-tonsilled vocals – modestly calls himself Harry Worcester on the album sleeve. Both albums are available on itunes.
Excellent news for Miles Kington fans. A decade after his death on 30th January 2008, a collection of his peerless letters will be published this year. Many thanks to Oldie readers, who helped, through Unbound, to publish the book by our much-missed columnist.
Here is Miles in The Oldie in 1994, on the subject of American pantomime:
‘I was wrong about the absence of panto from North America. My wife tells me that, when she spent a year teaching drama in Wisconsin (way back in the 1970s, this is), she persuaded her group to put on Cinderella.
‘The two men playing the Ugly Sisters took some persuading to get into female clothes, and she spent a hilarious afternoon in a local woman’s shop getting evening slippers for them.
‘One of the Ugly Sisters refused point-blank to shave off his beard for the role, though this actually served as an extra joke. When it came to the show, half the audience in this Calvinist outpost had left before the end in protest against the cross-dressing and half had stayed to cheer and make the rafters ring.’
The book, edited by his widow, Caroline, is called My Mother, the Bearded Lady: The Selected Letters of Miles Kington. It will feature over 250 of his best letters.