Postcards from the Edge
Mary Kenny meets the costumier who loved him – and he loved her
Danny La Rue, that most popular of drag queens, died 11 years ago. His memory is kept ever fresh, though, by the woman who cared for him in his last years: his costume designer Anne Galbraith, who lives in Tunbridge Wells, Kent.
Danny was born Daniel Patrick Carroll in Cork and enjoyed terrific success as an entertainer from the 1960s onwards – making a lot of money in his heyday. But he was swindled of his property investments by Canadian fraudsters, and in his pensionable years he had nothing left but the state pension.
Annie, a renowned costumier who fashioned many of Danny’s outfits, said to him, in 2004, ‘Would you like to come and live with me, love?’
Danny replied, ‘Oh, Annie, I thought you’d never ask!’
And so he lived with Annie in Kent in her Victorian house, which is filled with glorious theatrical memorabilia – and some of Danny’s most stunning frocks, standing silently on display dummies in a room set aside for them.
Annie, a single lady aged 77 and tremendously cheerful, isn’t sure what will eventually happen to all the posters, programmes, costumes, sequins, feathers, photographs, letters, albums and mementoes of everyone in showbiz from Shirley Bassey to Roy Hudd – not forgetting the Queen Mother (or Barry Cryer, who wrote gags for Dan).
Many of us can identify with this question of what’s to happen to our memorabilia when we depart this world, but I think it’s especially important that Annie find a home for artefacts that are part of British light entertainment’s history.
Danny’s health began to decline from about 2006 – though he still continued doing panto – and Annie drove him about, as well as helping him with his debts. In 2009 he was diagnosed with throat cancer and he died, aged 81, in May that year, in his cosy, theatrical bedroom, holding Annie’s hand. He accepted the approach of death valiantly, telling the medics, ‘My only sadness is that I can’t take Annie with me. But I’ll talk to the Top Man about her when I get up there!’ Danny had been an altar boy at St Patrick’s, Soho, when young, and remained religious.
Annie still feels his presence around her. ‘I never stop telling him I just love him for ever.’
He was a gay man, and yet it’s obvious from the many happy photographs of Dan and Annie with their arms entwined that this, too, was a love story.
Of all the airports I have known, Manston, near Ramsgate, provided one of the most unforgettable landing experiences.
You approached Manston circling over a glittering panorama of the English Channel, with the undulating downs of Kent and Sussex rolling behind the White Cliffs of Dover – and the White Cliffs of Calais standing sentinel on the water’s other side.
But Manston struggled to survive financially as a passenger airport during the 2000s, and finally closed in the spring of 2014, after which Kent had effectively no airport for scheduled flights.
Now, in a kind of Brexit bounce, there are plans to reopen Manston, initially for cargo: if Britain is doing more global trading, there’ll be a need for more cargo-facility airports. It’s hoped that passenger flights will also resume when the airport reopens – maybe in 2023.
Manston was a military airport from the First World War until 1999, and a key location for the Battle of Britain 80 years ago. It has a long (and wide) main runway of over 9,000 feet: Barnes Wallis used it to test his dam-bouncing bombs. (There’s a statue of Barnes Wallis at nearby Herne Bay, though there are a few cranky complaints about honouring ‘a weapons expert’.)
I’d love to fly out of Manston again. After obligatory staycations this summer, I’d love to fly out of anywhere again!
Now that the Washington Redskins football team are changing their name for reasons of racial sensitivity, more names and words could be in line for deletion.
The Scrabble authority NASPA (North American Scrabble Players Association) is contemplating banning the word ‘culchie’ from the Scrabble board. It is deemed to be a slur towards rustic Irish people, familiarly known as ‘culchies’.
Yes, it can be mildly disparaging – especially when used by Dubliners about those who are ‘up from the country’. But ‘codding’ and ragging are part of Irish society, and usually nobody minds. Moreover, the ‘culchies’ call Dubliners ‘jackeens’, usually dismissively, as in ‘Sure, what would you know about agriculture, and you only a Dublin jackeen?’
If Native Americans are distressed by the historic tag of ‘Redskin’, then that is a reason to respect their feelings. But most Irish ‘culchies’, so far as I know, are proud of their status. There are ‘culchie’ stand-up comedians who delightedly trade on the sobriquet. Let’s hope the NASPA shows a sense of proportion about these matters.