Confessions of Scotland’s IT-GIRL original
She’s a doctor who’s flirted with princes, married a knight, been to rehab, made an album and saved countless lives. Now Lady Anna Brocklebank is making a movie...
ILOVE it when people tell me something’s impossible,’ declares Lady Anna Brocklebank in a deep, plummy voice. ‘It’s like a shot of heroin. Bang! I want to prove them wrong. ‘Not,’ she adds hastily, ‘that I’ve ever done heroin.’
Of course not. But you get the impression it’s one of the few things the former It-girl hasn’t considered, in what could only be described as an outrageous life.
Tall, willowy (‘I’ve always been stick thin’) and quite, quite beautiful at the age of 64, Lady B is a riot of colour, indiscretion and rich throaty laughs – the legacy, she says, of ‘too much depraved living’.
A one-time society girl and model, a working doctor and yes, a former drug addict, she has flirted with princes, married a knight of the realm, been to rehab, made an album and saved countless lives along the way through her work both in medicine and charity.
And now, for reasons even she doesn’t seem entirely clear on, she has made a film. ‘To tell you the truth, it’s not the sort of film that I would want to go and see,’ she says with startling frankness. ‘It’s a bit disturbing. It’s about love, betrayal and jealousy, and how far that can go.’ Gosh.
A psychological thriller made on a shoestring budget in two weeks on the island of Corsica, the film, she says, is a metaphor for her own life. And what a life it’s been.
Originally from the tiny island of South Ronaldsay in Orkney – her father, William, was a respected doctor – the young Lady B, then Anna-Marie Dunnet, was sent off to Malvern, a prim and proper boarding school in the English countryside. Her family, meanwhile, settled in Surrey.
‘It’s all terribly romantic, the Orkney islands, and Daddy was so proud of our Viking blood,’ says Lady B. ‘But he did want to get out.’ After boarding school and university in Southampton, where she studied medicine (‘I chose Southampton for the sailing, mostly’) she returned to Scotland, where she found herself working as a junior doctor at Raigmore Hospital, Inverness, in the 1970s.
‘It was like working in a warzone,’ she says. ‘We were looking after patients from across the Highlands and Islands and we were so understaffed and there I was with about two minutes’ experience. But you learn quickly, you really do.’
From there, she ‘did a runner’ after an engagement went sour, found herself a job at an A&E department in Bedford and immersed herself in the London social scene. Young, intelligent and beautiful, life became an intoxicating swirl of parties and balls. She did some modelling, including an ad campaign for Levi jeans, and even appeared on the cover of a shortlived magazine called Voila (she still has a copy of it framed in her kitchen).
There were rumours of an affair with Prince Andrew (rumours, it should be said, that she hotly denies), as well as a dalliance with John Cleese (she will only admit that the comedian is a ‘friend’). There was also an engagement to an unnamed man she describes as Prince Charles’s best chum.
‘I spent quite a bit of time swanning around in those circles,’ she says. ‘I always called Prince Charles Chukka, which I thought was rather clever. He didn’t. He expected everyone to call him Sir. Even his best friend. I just thought that was ridiculous. I’m not a republican, but come on. They’re just a family.’
Lady B really does talk like this. Her conversation is peppered with outrageous, hilarious stories (‘so there I was at the airport in Kerala, stuck on the luggage belt heading towards the X-ray machine, hat the size of a flying saucer, pencil thin skirt and six-inch heels, because what else do you travel in’ begins one such tale) and she happily describes herself as a confirmed ‘motor mouth’.
These days, while she no longer kicks about with ‘Chukka’, she still has a wide and varied social circle, all of whom tend to get caught up in her various schemes. The cast of her film are all pals, including her co-director, Dr Emily Mabonga (a respected London sexual health consultant). I’m A Celebrity star Lady Colin Campbell is a friend (her son Dmitri is Anna’s godson), as is Carol Thatcher.
But privileged as it has undoubtedly been, Lady B’s life has not always been easy.
Her lowest point came when her first husband, financier Sir Aubrey Brocklebank, whom she married after six failed engagements (six!) walked out on her when their second son, Hamish, was born, leaving her to cope with a baby, a toddler and a full-time job as a GP.
‘I was terrified,’ she says. ‘He went off with someone else and I was so scared. I am a very emotional person and I don’t think I coped well at all.’
She sighs deeply. What happened next is still difficult for her to talk about, nearly three decades later.
‘I was in bed one night and the pain was so bad I felt I was being strangled. I had my doctor’s bag under the bed, so I thought to myself in a deranged fashion “what would I do if I saw a patient in such pain? Well, I’d give them an injection of pethidine, a painkiller”.
‘So that’s what I did. I gave myself a shot. And my God the effect was instant. It took the pain away, and I felt a kind of calm. So the next night I thought I’d do it again. And again. And again. I became a right old junkie.’
Astonishingly, it was ten years before she realised she had a serious problem with the drug, a powerfully addictive opiate. ‘I felt awful if I didn’t take it but I felt awful if I did,’ she says.
During this time, following the collapse of her first marriage, she became engaged to society playboy William Grosvenor, son of Lord Ebury and cousin of the Aga Khan. The relationship was going swimmingly until she discovered he was still married – and also had a girlfriend.
‘His wife arrived on my doorstep one day with a bottle of champagne and said “I’ve got something to explain to you”,’ she says. ‘She told me they weren’t getting divorced, and he was having an affair. We actually got on very well – she had brought champagne after all – until Grosvenor arrived and saw us together. He couldn’t believe it. I thought he was going to have a fit. But, of course, I had to finish it immediately.’
Meanwhile, Lady B’s drug addiction had taken its toll.
‘I looked in the mirror one day before going to work and I wasn’t pale, I was green. I looked at myself and thought “bloody hell I’m not going to live the rest of the week”. I looked like a walking cadaver. So I checked myself into rehab.’
She brightens at the memory. Rehab, it seems, like so many facets of Lady B’s life, was something of a hoot. Her first stop was the Priory, where she palled up with fellow patient Ruby Wax (who has since written extensively of her stay there, and gone on to train as a psychotherapist) and had an affair with another patient, who was a writer.
‘I had to check myself out because I had such a blast. I ran riot in that place and eventually I thought, this is just too much. I had to leave.’
NEXT she went to another clinic called PROMIS, where she was finally forced to confront the seriousness of her addiction. ‘The awful thing with addiction is the ripple effect it has on your family,’ she says mournfully.
‘I was there for three months, until I got chucked out for spreading sedition. But I was clean by then anyway, so off I went.’ That was in 1998. She has been clean ever since.
In 2002, she married her second husband, lawyer John MacMillan, and retreated to a life of relative suburban anonymity in leafy Surrey, continuing her work as a specialist in sexually transmitted diseases at a major London teaching hospital and raising money for charities such as Street Child by working her extensive network of glamorous contacts to arrange fundraising balls.
She spent time in Sierra Leone and created a Christian music album that raised money to build new schools in the country.
‘The thing is, I’ve actually lived a very privileged life and I do believe those who have been given so much have a duty to give back. Does that sound too pious for words?’
Perhaps. But gilded privilege does
have its limits. In 2009, she was struck down by an auto immune disease and told that, if she kept working, she was at risk of her internal organs failing.
‘I lost my vision for around four months. It was like someone had taken my life away from me. And I had to retire. It was awful. I would have worked for free – I thought it was money for old rope.
‘If you really love your job you’d do it for nothing and when I couldn’t do that any more I actually thought “what’s the point in me? I’ll kill myself.” But then I thought “oh don’t be so pathetic Anna, you’ve just got to do something else”.’
And so she did. Much of her time these days is filled with music and travelling between her home in Corsica and the house she shares in Surrey with her husband.
She runs an occasional choir, called a Mixed Bag, and plays the piano. She practises kung-fu (‘it keeps me supple’) and still does the odd bit of modelling, primarily for a London designer named Charles Svingholm. Her YouTube channel is filled with videos of her singing and playing, as well as one eye-popping clip which involves a seductive Lady Gaga-esque dance in a white sequined mini dress while brandishing two daggers.
‘I don’t mind making a fool of myself, I really don’t, because I think it’s terribly funny,’ she says. ‘As long as you don’t hurt people I just think “why not?” Life’s too short – let’s give it a bash.’
Which brings us, neatly, to the film. Made on a tiny budget on Corsica, Malevolent Shadows was written and co-directed by Lady B herself. And, of course darling, she’s also in it.
‘I love writing stories,’ she says. ‘And my father always told me that you can do lots and lots of things in life.
‘Just because I’m a doctor that doesn’t mean it’s the only thing I can do.
‘So I decided to write a film and then see if I could get it made. And, amazingly, I did. When I watched it I thought well, I’ve seen worse.’ She says her children wish she would just ‘sit down and be quiet’ but I imagine, too, they must also be a teensy bit proud of their outrageous mother.
The elder, Aubrey, is an investment analyst, while the younger, Hamish, runs his own firm in Los Angeles.
HAMISH is married to Jess Weixler, an American actress who has appeared in Law and Order and the Good Wife and whose best friend and chief bridesmaid was Oscar-nominated actress Jessica Chastain. It’s yet another glamorous connection in the sparkling life of Lady B.
As for this film – will people enjoy it? ‘I have absolutely no idea what people are going to make of it,’ she says with another of those throaty laughs. ‘And honestly, I couldn’t give a damn.’
Sounds like a good motto for a riotously colourful life.
Malevolent Shadows has been released on A&E Films. Available on DVD and Vimeo.