Body found after radio tip-off
THE body of an avid radio station caller was only found 10 days after she died – because a worried newsreader alerted police when she had not heard from her.
The woman, known to the BBC Radio Cornwall team as “Clara from Bude”, was a huge fan of the station and would ring at 8.10am every Saturday and Sunday to talk to newsreader Joanna Twist.
But concern was raised when she failed to check in as normal one weekend. Joanna called the police who attended Clara’s home and discovered her body.
She is believed to have lain undiscovered for 10 days.
The elderly woman’s only relative was a stepson in Australia and so she had turned to the local radio station for company.
Presenter Donna Birrell told Clara’s story to highlight the importance of local radio to their communities.
She said: “Jo used to give her advice if she was unwell.
“Paul, our weatherman, used to give her personal forecasts – proper chats which obviously meant the world to Clara.
“Clara’s body lay undiscovered for 10 days. If Jo had not called the police she may not have been discovered for some time.”
IN THE summer of 1968, the Daily Sketch newspaper carried news of a film that would begin shooting in London later that year. “Anita Pallenberg, the actress who fell in love with Rolling Stone Brian Jones, then became Keith Richards’ girlfriend, has won co-star status in Mick Jagger’s first solo film,” it announced, before landing the punchline – “as his girlfriend”.
If it sounded messy on paper, proved even more so in real life.
In a gripping new biography of Pallenberg, She’s A Rainbow, writer Simon Wells documents how the casting of the magnetically beautiful German-Italian actress in Performance had an explosive impact on The Rolling Stones. The film resulted in what Marianne Faithfull, then Jagger’s pregnant girlfriend, later described as “a seething cauldron of diabolical ingredients: drugs, incestuous sexual relationships, role reversals, art and life all whipped together into a bitch’s brew”.
Such intrigues seemed to Pallenberg around.
Born in Rome in 1942, as a teenager she bewitched Federico Fellini during the making of La Dolce Vita and later spent time in New York as an acolyte of Andy Warhol’s Factory.
“Actress; model; designer; mother; muse; inspiration; sexual, chemical and feminist pioneer… Anita tore into the 1960s with an abandon rarely witnessed in modern times,” writes Wells.
Her agent recalled her aura of “uncanny mystery and her wicked cat smile”. Another friend commented, “She didn’t need any limelight – she was the limelight!”
Pallenberg held a dark allure for both sexes. Rumours of witchcraft and black magic clung to her like a second skin. Arriving in London as the capital started to swing, Pallenberg had been Brian Jones’ lover from 1965 until her “defection” to Keith Richards during a trip with the Stones to Morocco in February 1967.
The split marked the beginning of Jones’s downfall. The golden-haired Stone descended into drug and alcohol-fuelled disarray, becoming increasingly isolated within the band.
Co-directed by Donald Cammell and Nic Roeg, who later made the arthouse classics Don’t Look Now, The Man Who Fell To Earth and Walkabout, Performance pushed the boundaries of the permissive 1960s with daring depictions of graphic sex, cross-dressing, extreme violence, drug use and psychological terror.
The almost incidental plot centred on an unstable gangster, Chas, hiding out at the home of a reclusive ex-rock star, Turner, and two mysterious women: Pherber, a groupie/ it follow
LOVE’S YOUNG DREAM: Anita with Brian Jones muse figure, and the androgynous Lucy. Pallenberg was cast as Pherber, Michele Breton played Lucy and James Fox was Chas.
Jagger’s Turner was partly a selfportrait, but he also drew heavily upon elements of Jones and Richards.
The psychosexual ramifications alarmed Faithfull. “He became this hybrid character,” she said. “What I hadn’t anticipated was that Mick, by playing Brian and Keith, would be playing two people who were extremely attractive to Anita, and who were in turn attracted to her.”
When he became aware of the intimate nature of the film, Richards’ reaction was also one of intense discomfort. He hated Cammell, later calling him a “twister and a manipulator… utterly predatory”.
He was also well aware of Jagger’s reputation as a ladies’ man. “How much you gonna get for this film?” he asked Pallenberg. “I’ll give you the money. Don’t do the film.”
Pallenberg refused to bow to him.
AT THE time, she was staying at a luxurious Chelsea flat belonging to wealthy art dealer Robert Fraser. Although Fraser had recently served six months in jail for drug possession after a police raid on Richards’ Redlands country home, he was unreformed.
Both Pallenberg and Richards shared his predilection for shooting up heroin.
A further emotional complication arrived when Pallenberg became pregnant. She decided that a termination was the best course of action, partly so she could continue with Performance.
When filming began on September 2, 1968, much of the focus was on the bedroom scenes between Jagger, Pallenberg and Breton. Legend suggested the explicit sex scenes took five days to film; more likely they only lasted a few hours.
“Lit by two enormous