Soho bon viveur who sexed up the stuffy world of books
He ran the Queen’s jewellers, revolutionised publishing and revelled in his ‘harem’ of society beauties — including Nigella. As his story ends aged 89, a tribute to Naim Attallah, the . . .
BEYOND the incestuous world of books, his was not a household name. To the publishing trade, however, Naim Attallah, who has died aged 89, will go down in history as a genius who ‘sexed up’ its stuffy reputation and gave the industry a much-needed kick up the backside.
He did so with a combination of business acumen, charm and studied eccentricity.
From the mismatched socks, to the dressing gown-style coat he wore to lunch in his favourite Soho restaurants — with two watches he would flash on each wrist — the erudite Attallah was a man who liked to stand out in a crowd.
And in the 1980s and 1990s he seemed to be everywhere, his tall patrician figure a regular presence at launch parties and theatrical openings. As publisher of Quartet Books, which he bought in 1976, he was a godfather figure to a generation of clever — and invariably pretty — young women.
For many years he was the driving force behind Asprey, the Queen’s jewellers, and the publisher of two of Britain’s most idiosyncratic magazines, The Literary Review and The Oldie.
He was also a compulsive risk-taker, investing in films — one such production was visited by the Queen Mother and Princess Margaret — West End plays, fashion collections and the fragrance business. He liked to gossip and was a frightful name- dropper, but he was a droll story-teller with a voice that could reach a chandelier-shattering squeaky pitch, along with constant finger-prodding.
And he could be startlingly direct: on one occasion asking the aesthete and homosexual scholar Sir Harold Acton if he had ever held a naked woman in his arms, drawing the confession that indeed Acton had — a young Chinese girl.
On another he infuriated the mystic and explorer Laurens van der Post by accusing him of embroidering his gruelling adventures in African deserts.
But it is perhaps his role as a ‘collector’ of much younger women that earned him both admiration and opprobrium in equal measure. Almost every beauty with a double-barrelled name or famous father found a berth on Attallah’s payroll.
‘Naim’s harem’ was the title bestowed by newspaper columnists on the extraordinary slew of ‘posh totties’, often with literary aspirations, who went to work for Quartet in the 1980s.
Nigella Lawson was one of his most prominent employees, but he also drew well-bred figures such as Winston Churchill’s granddaughter Emma Soames, Lady Cosima Fry, Virginia Bonham- Carter and Jenny Aeron-Thomas (of whom Attallah said, ‘tall and slender with fabulous legs, blonde hair and a gorgeous bosom’).
‘ Naim’s girls’ were part of London’s social season and occupied a demi-monde of unbridled loucheness. Some were encouraged to wear rubber dresses for launches (among them Princess Katarina of Yugoslavia) and they provided the satirical magazine Private Eye with a never-ending fund of stories about ‘ Naim Attallah-Disgusting’.
AS ONE member of the gang Sophia Watson, granddaughter of writer Evelyn Waugh, put it: ‘ We were young, pretty, had “names” and we loved parties. We were not paid very much but we certainly enjoyed ourselves.’
She said there were claims ‘ he employed us to counteract Quartet’s Left-wing reputation, which may have been true, but it was no secret that he also wanted to surround himself with beauty’.
Not everyone fell for his blandishments, however. One well connected figure, Sonamara Sainsbury, walked out on him, even failing to attend the farewell lunch he had arranged in her honour.
So was there a dark side to the Palestinian-born polemicist, who came to London at the age of 18?
At the launch of his 2019 book, A Scribbler In Soho, a celebration of his friend Auberon Waugh, the film director Chloe Ruthven, a niece of former arts minister Lord (Grey) Gowrie, led a one-woman protest. The gist of her complaint was that she had been invited to Attallah’s house in France but once there he allegedly attempted to ‘paw’ her.
Another troublesome brush came when a former employee, Jennifer Erdal, brought out Ghosting, a ‘fictional memoir’ of her 17 years working for a publisher called ‘Tiger’ who produced several books under his name, despite the fact that she had written them.
Jennie had been Attallah’s assistant for years and reviewers jumped to the conclusion this was a factual account. It was a betrayal that cut him deeply. He later wrote: ‘ The word “regret” has never had a place in my vocabulary, yet it is the only word to use on this single sad occasion. I would never dispute the fact that the finished books were realised through her writing . . . Her version . . . can only suggest a large measure of ill-will towards me, in spite of the many years of our friendship and close working relationship . . . A vow had been broken . . .’
Of his relationships with women, Attallah insisted he was a flirt but didn’t have affairs. When his wife Maria, with whom he had one son, fell ill, he was devoted to her care until her death in 2016.
A life-long teetotaller, Attallah was born in Haifa, the only son of a Barclays Bank cashier, and raised in a household of women, attending a convent with his sisters.
He dreamed of being a journalist, but after the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 he instead came to Britain to study engineering at Battersea Polytechnic.
He did not finish his course, instead taking a string of manual jobs. Through contacts he arrived in the City and began to make a name for himself.
He became close friends with John Asprey, heir to the jewellery company, and after becoming group chief executive oversaw a massive expansion.
Turnover rocketed from £2.8 million a year to over £200 million. But after rescuing the company and 21 years’ service, he was forced out following a downturn, another betrayal he felt sorely.
Meanwhile, he had begun to buy his way into literary London. Along with Quartet, he established The Woman’s Press and even launched perfumes.
For all his high-minded literature, it was the tomes about sex that made him money.
Naked London, published in 1987, featured a lot of people with no clothes on. It included aristocratic beauties such as Sabrina Guinness, Andrea von Stumm and Sophia Sackville-West.
The ebullient Jubby Ingrams — daughter of former Private Eye editor Richard (she tragically died in drug-related circumstances) — gave Attallah her naked Polaroids from the shoot for safe-keeping.
He hid them in his wallet ahead of publication of the book only for them to flutter out during a visit to see his bank manager.
He later imagined the manager thinking: ‘Who is this seedy customer carrying about photos of naked young women — some sort of sex maniac?’ A notion Attallah would always disavow.
HIS most recent autobiography, published two years ago — shortly after he was awarded the CBE for services to literature and the arts — is a namedropper’s paradise. From Billy Connolly and the Bee Gees, to Paula Yates and Dame Margot Fonteyn for whom ‘sex had been her driving force’.
One way of getting to know such luminaries better was to publish books by or about them.
Seeing ‘ divine’ Charlotte Rampling in the film The Night Porter, Attallah commissioned a coffee table tome in her honour.
Many of Attallah’s views would seem strangely unfashionable to the post-MeToo generation, but his death robs the literary world of one of its most extravagant and larger-than-life figures.
oVER the past few months, Cheryl Baker has sold her car, let her cleaner and gardener go, turned down the heating, and no longer shops online or anywhere else for anything other than essentials.
‘I haven’t bought any clothes for a year. Nothing! And I used to go shopping all the time, mostly high Street but, if I liked it, I would happily spend £500 on a dress.’
Instead, the former pop star and TV presenter has been selling her possessions on eBay.
‘Clothes and all sorts,’ she says. ‘My daughters are doing it for me. Though I haven’t got any proper jewellery, it’s all fake, along with my furniture and the paintings on the wall!’
Even if they were allowed, she and husband Steve — a bass guitarist who used to play with Sir Cliff richard — can no longer justify the cost of popping to their local pub for dinner.
So instead, 66-year-old Cheryl has swapped high heels for wellies, embraced the joys of home-grown veggies from an ever-expanding plot at the bottom of her garden, and even started performing jolly £10-a-ticket ‘Covid gigs’ from the beige, striped sofa in her Kent sitting room.
To put it bluntly, Cheryl, once a star of charthas topping group and Eurovision winners Bucks Fizz and then a ubiquitous face on our TV screens in a range of programmes, is broke.
So broke that, lately, the £30 she charges for the odd happy birthday video message to fans has become her only income stream other than her £700-a-month state pension, simply not enough with a tax bill looming.
She has been so refreshingly open about her predicament that fellow celebrities and former bandmates have begun offering handouts.
‘Mike [Nolan — her former original Bucks Fizz bandmate] called me the other day and said, “I’m getting the train down. I’m going to come and see you and I’m bringing you money. I’m bringing you cash”.’
her Dancing On Ice partner, Dan Whiston, offered to help out. radio presenter Mark Curry has messaged her and fans in Australia have suggested a whip round for their beleaguered heroine.
‘Quite a lot of Fizz fans have been absolutely adorable,’ she says. ‘ Some people are just so nice.’
Though not everyone. She’s also been on the receiving end of some very unpleasant messages on social media, accusing her of begging, sponging and all sorts.
Not that she has any intention of taking any charity from anyone.
By her own account, Cheryl has never been very good with money and, despite years riding high in the aftermath of that Eurovision triumph — Making Your Mind Up — three Number Ones and then a busy TV career, she is no stranger to financial dips.
‘I’m not a saver. Never have been. I just love living my life and having fun. My kids are learning from my mistakes and are always saying, “Mum! You haven’t saved anything!”’ What, nothing? ‘Not really, no,’ she says. ‘I did have a few pension pots, but there have been low times before, so most of those have gone and the intention was to be mortgage free by now because of our age, but we saw this house and we loved it . . .’ But, for once, just before Covid struck, things were looking buoyant.
Cheryl was performing 50 gigs a year — at festivals, parties, 1980s nights — with fellow Bucks Fizz members performing as Fizz: the one name they could all agree on after endless expensive and very bitter legal battles with former band members Bobby Gee (‘ an idiot’) and later David Van Day (‘a horrible, horrible man’)
Now, however, that’s all up in smoke.
‘March has gone. Everything in April has been cancelled. Today another two cancelled in May,’ she says. ‘ They were all postponed to this year and now they’re being pushed back to next year.
‘I’ve had no work at all — I’ve been scratching around. And it’s hard. I’m a doer. I like to be busy. To be working. To be earning money and I’ll try pretty much anything.’
Indeed, over the years, she has been impressively resourceful in doing just that.
She jumped out of a plane in the Celebrity version of the game show Drop! in 2003 (and broke her ankle). In 2018, she appeared in Dancing On Ice with Whiston and fractured a bone. She’s had cosmetic makeovers on live TV, and appeared on Celebrity Cash In The Attic and a celebrity 24-hour quiz, but never the big one — I’m A Celebrity.
‘I’d chew my own arms off to do I’m A Celeb. And Strictly, of course,’ she says. ‘But they’ve never asked me.’
During one especially lean period, she sold coffee mugs live on the graveyard shift on QVC on Monday nights.
‘It was utterly soul destroying — who wants to buy eight pink and lilac latte mugs at that time of night? But it was the only gig I could get to keep the wolf from the door.’
EVEN that wasn’t quite the nadir. That came soon after on Channel 4 — at teatime on a Thursday — when she endured colonic irrigation on live TV.
‘I hated it! I thought, “what have I done?” I don’t even need it — I’m as regular as clockwork!’
Along the way, she’s also done a huge amount for charities.
‘Well if you can, you do, don’t you?’ she says. ‘And even if I’m speaking on behalf of a charity, it’s keeping my name in the frame. My brand.’
As we sit drinking tea — socially distanced — in the drizzle in her overgrown back garden, it must all feel far removed from the heady days of Bucks Fizz: a blur of brilliantly cheesy dance routines, short skirts, bad highlights, limos, first- class flights and expensive restaurants — all of which, it later transpired, came out of their pay packets.
‘We were on a terrible deal, but I loved it all and I don’t regret it,’ she says. ‘But if I’d known, I’d definitely have gone economy.’
There was enough money to buy cars and designer clothes, a 32 ft boat — ‘it’s very expensive keeping a boat’ — a new house for her parents, and to make a disastrous property investment in Cape Verde.
‘The bottom fell out of the market and I lost the lot’.
So today, there is no financial padding. No buffer.
WHAT she does deeply regret is the group’s long, bitter in-fighting and financially draining legal disputes.
First with original band member Jay Aston, who was nearly bankrupted when she left under very bad terms, breaking her contract in 1985; then with another founder member Bobby G, and later, David Van Day who joined the group from Dollar in the late 1990s — all embroiled in endless and expensive legal battles over who had the right to use the Bucks Fizz name.
She and Jay have made up, thanks to a reunion on a celebrity cosmetic makeover show — but there is no love lost with the other two.
‘I detest David. he’s a horrible man. I’ve got no time for him. he’s not to be trusted. Mike had to sell his house to pay the legal costs! And I’ll always be supportive of Mike.’
Cheryl has loved Mike since she was first introduced to him by Nicola Martin, the band’s creator, at her house back in 1981 when he was blond, tanned, beautiful and fresh from the shower.
‘We had a huge connection from the moment I saw him in his white towel,’ she says. ‘It was a vision. he was a very handsome guy. We were never romantic, but I just really love him and always will.’
So when, in December 1984, the band was involved in a coach crash on the way back from a gig in Newcastle, and Mike suffered horrific head injuries, Cheryl — who sustained three fractured vertebrae — became fiercely protective.
‘After the crash, he was affected mentally and it was very easy to make a fool of him. The drugs he was on made him really bad — very forgetful and he’d fall asleep and say things that were offensive but that he thought was a joke, so I’d look out for him,’ she says.
‘To this day, I watch his back. I don’t think he’ll ever fully recover. Not after brain surgery. But he’s fantastic. he’s brilliant and we still perform together.’
Or they did, after they’d finally ironed out the difficulties with Bobby G over who can perform under which name. For the record, Cheryl, Mike and Jay are ‘The Fizz’. While Bobby G, his wife and two other singers are ‘The Official Bucks Fizz’.
‘We lost a lot of gigs. A lot of money. It was pretty s***ty,’ she says. ‘ We
have no contact with [Bobby] now. What an idiot, we could have shared it out.’
You’d think it would be harder to have had money, luxuriate in it, and then lose it, but Cheryl is adamant that she’s never been materialistic.
She grew up one of five children in a council flat in Bethnal Green, East London, where money was always tight, clothes, furniture and toys second hand and Cheryl, then, Rita Crudgington, was teased at school ‘for being the poor kid’.
‘One girl used to sing about me being a fleabag — “Rita’s fleabags”. I’ll never forget what she did and how spiteful she was,’ she says.
But for all that, she insists it was a blissfully happy time.
‘My mum sang all the time, my dad was a shoemaker — it was a joyous household. Money is not everything,’ she says. ‘But I have always worked my way, whatever I need to do.’
That’s why some recent comments on social media about her predicament since she went public have really stung. Because not everyone has been as nice as her old muckers Mike and Mark.
‘There was a really nasty one today saying, “You should be ashamed of yourself, begging people for money!”’ she says.
‘ But I haven’t begged from anyone. Never in my life. I’ve never been on the dole, I’ve never asked for assistance from anybody and, if I’m not earning, I’ll find work somehow. I always do!’
A couple of years ago, during another particularly lean spell after she, Mike et al, lost the right to use the name Bucks Fizz and couldn’t perform, she asked a friend for a job.
‘I did his typing and answered his phones and did telesales — as Rita, not Cheryl,’ she says. ‘ I really enjoyed it. But I did it because I needed the money. I couldn’t not work. I had to do something.’
The same goes for the video birthday greetings. ‘It’s usually one or two a week and I get £22.50 for each one. But it all tots up and, in the past few days, I’ve had seven or eight. Lovely jubbly! I feel very lucky.’
ALTHOUGH lockdown has been a total nightmare on the money front, there have been upsides.
her twin daughters, Kyla and Natalie, 26, moved back home with their partners and Cheryl insists she couldn’t be happier.
‘That’s what matters,’ she says. ‘It’s a really happy home. That’s worth more than all the riches.’
So today, there are long daily walks with husband Steve and their enormous German Shepherd, Cuba, which don’t cost a penny, and she’s loving that veg patch.
‘I’ve been wearing wellies so much, now I can’t wear heels. It’s agony. I can’t walk! how am I going to get back on stage?’
She and Steve have been married for 29 years and still tell each other ‘I love you’ every single day, even though they sound polar opposites: he, a rather gloomy pessimist (‘I call him the dark side of the moon’) and she so relentlessly, tiringly upbeat that he’s for ever telling her ‘to cheer down’.
‘I know he finds me irritatingly happy,’ she beams.
But however overflowing your cup is, however upbeat, bills still need to be paid — including that ‘chunky’ mortgage. Is she really going to be OK? Can she keep her head above water?
I hope so. She certainly deserves to. Because no one could ever accuse Cheryl of lolling lazily on her laurels.
‘I’m struggling but I’m managing,’ she says firmly. ‘I have cut my cloth accordingly and it’s not that bad. I’m not destitute. I’m just struggling like so many people — and I’m in a much better position than a lot of them. There just isn’t any work.’
So, she tells me firmly, she doesn’t want to be all ‘ woe is me’ and doesn’t want anyone feeling sorry for her, or arranging whip rounds.
‘Because I’m very lucky — much luckier than a lot of people. When people call me a ‘‘ has-been’’, I think, ‘‘Yeah, but at least I have been and actually I still am. I’m still here. And I’ll be performing again soon.” ’