Western Morning News (Saturday)
Golden years with Bowie and TV celebrities
THE fifth anniversary of David Bowie’s death has brought about toe-curling recollections for me – recollections that make me doubt my journalistic vocation.
Before I share them with you, I will say I’ve the feeling I may have told you the story a few years back. If that’s the case, then read Martin Hesp – infinitely more interesting. My story started when I returned from participating in the Tall Ships Race as working crew. The night we docked in Spain we partied – hard. I woke with the worst hangover but managed to get back to Heathrow before transferring to an almostempty plane to Plymouth.
I sagged gratefully into my seat, looking for the sick bag. I smiled automatically at my neighbour in the window seat, and realised it was David Bowie. He smiled back, and that was it. Despite being stranded on the runway for an hour, neither of us spoke. And that’s my David Bowie story. During the whole flight silence reigned.
The more unlikely aspect to the story is that I was rendered speechless for that long – it’s only ever happened when I’m under an anaesthetic – or the effects of alcohol. I felt so ill that any form of conversation, unless it was with a priest, was almost impossible.
The demon drink cost me a very interesting interview. Someone said that it was nice that a journalist had integrity, that I respected his space and didn’t pounce on him when he was cornered. It’s scant comfort to me now and I’d certainly pounce if I had the opportunity again. Missing the chance to have two hours conversation is one of my greatest regrets in my working life. I’m so embarrassed about it that if I make it
to the pearly gates and St Peter asks me what I would change in my life, it will be, without a shadow of doubt, the chance to re-run that flight.
I did actually see the great man perform. It was in Madison Square Gardens in the 70’s. I was dating a squat undertaker from the Bronx called Eddie Van Dolsen. I’ve no idea how I met him – don’t remember being part of the funeral scene but there you go. Anyway he invited me to see Bowie and suggested I meet him at his parlour. I turned up as he was finishing an embalming, and he proceeded to take the deceased’s hand and dance. I wasn’t quite prepared for such a gruesome start to the evening. When he’d finished, he invited me to try out the coffins, resplendent in brilliant gaudy satin linings. They were quite comfortable actually. We arrived at Madison Square in his hearse. The date, which I made my last, was almost more memorable than Bowie. I later heard that Eddie had been done for bringing his hearse over from Mexico with a coffin full of dope.
But back to the greatest story I never wrote. I wondered since what turned me soft that day – even with a hangover. I’ve doorstepped – and got – famous people for stories throughout my career. I remember climbing over Dustin Hoffman’s front gate in a white-out blizzard to get a story – yet sitting next to one of the most interesting musicians of our time and I clam up.
I blame the dreaded booze. So this year, just in case a few superstars happen to pass my door, I’m doing dry January, nurturing my liver for the onslaught of liquor when lockdown ends. Not sure dry January is aiding my interviewing skills but I’m getting more done – tackling those jobs that have lurked in the back of my mind for years, decades maybe.
I’m sorting all my saved cuttings. Boxes and boxes of ‘em and I’ve no idea why they’ve been kept. But some make interesting reading. My kids, who’ve hardly read anything I’ve written, are imploring me to save stuff I wrote when Adam was at school. I’ve no idea what they’ll do with them. So I’m diligently sorting and saving in various orders, and spending too much time in memory lane recalling commissions and their back stories.
And of course David Bowie isn’t among the cuttings, but lots of people are. In the days when I was an editor with TVTimes magazine, we held the franchise for the ITV programmes which meant programme information for ITV was exclusive to TVTimes. We sold seven million copies a week, with a readership tripling that.
Personalities starring on ITV would ring and beg us to do stories because it was the only way their programmes got publicity. We did makeovers long before Laurence Llewellyn-Bowen thought of them. I remember Benny Hill wanting his ceiling carpeted. I met Tommy Cooper for breakfast. He was accompanied by several bottles of whisky and was so drunk he was beyond speech. I was shot at when I rode with the South Bronx police to do a story on “Hill Street Blues”. Expense accounts were bottomless – I hired a plane once to do a story in Arizona. Today Western Morning News editor Philip Bowern would, I think, baulk at that request – even if it was to interview David Bowie.