NOW THAT’S AN EXTRAORDINARY LIFE!
You knew the big names who died in 2018. But as we start a new year, revel in the heroic, odd and infamous characters we lost who make MUCH more thrilling reading...
SOME, like former U.S. President George H.W. Bush, went on their way mourned by world leaders on live TV. The finest brains on earth also lined up to pay homage to the omniscient Professor Stephen Hawking. Sport lost the peerless Sir Roger Bannister. As for showbusiness, the proverbial tributes just ‘poured in’ for Nancy Sinatra, Burt Reynolds, Aretha Franklin, Ken Dodd, Dale Winton and, most recently, Dame June Whitfield. As we sail in to 2019, however, let us also remember those whose passing in 2018 may not have made headlines but who, for better or worse (usually for better), made their mark.
SPITFIRE ACE WROTE DEFINITIVE MEMOIR
Squadron Leader Geoffrey Wellum DFC, 96
One of the last of ‘The Few’, Wellum was barely out of basic training when he was thrown in to the thick of the Battle of Britain at the controls of a Spitfire.
narrowly avoiding death on numerous occasions, he went on to serve across europe, earned the Distinguished Flying Cross and took part in the heroic mission to resupply besieged Malta.
By the age of 22, however, his nerves were shredded. Much later in life, following the failure of his business and his marriage, he decided to turn his wartime notebooks into a memoir.
After lending the (handwritten) manuscript to the historian, James Holland, a publisher came knocking. First Light, published in 2002, has been acclaimed as one of the great RAF memoirs of the war.
‘I look into the far distance,’ he wrote. ‘There it all is, the whole arena for bloody battle, and there they are, the enemy. A swarm of gnats on a warm summer evening . . . the whole spectacle frightens yet fascinates.’
CODE-BREAKER WHO TOOK COLD BATHS
Rosemary Bamforth, 93
Another modest member of that extraordinary generation, 17year-old Rosemary Ince delayed her place at university to volunteer for the Women’s Royal naval Service during the war.
Dispatched to the top-secret code breaking unit at Bletchley Park, she was posted to Hut 11, known as the ‘Hell Hole’, working on the ‘bombe’ machines designed by tortured genius Alan Turing.
On being warned of the risk of kidnap by German agents, and their use of ice-cold showers by way of interrogation, she took to having cold baths every day. It was a habit that lasted long through her post-war years as a pathologist, mother-of-three and wife of fellow doctor, John Bamforth.
In her 60s, she even took up competitive windsurfing.
For most of her life she never spoke about Bletchley Park but returned to look round in 2011. As a tour guide struggled in vain to make the last ‘bombe’ machine do its stuff, Rosemary calmly stepped forward. She hadn’t clapped eyes on it in more than 65 years and soon had it working in no time.
LIFE WAS SAVED BY MAGIC TRICKS
Fergus Anckorn, 99
AT the age of 18, he was the youngest member of the Magic Circle. By the time of his death in March, aged 99, he was the oldest. By his own admission, it was his skill as a magician which saved his life during one of the darkest chapters in British military history.
Anckorn arrived with the Royal Artillery in Singapore in 1942 and was badly wounded during a Japanese air raid. He was recovering in the Alexandra Military Hospital when Japanese troops charged through bayonetting the staff and patients.
One of just four survivors in a ward of 76, he was put to work on the Burma Railway where he ended up in a camp run by a ruthless sadist who was also a fan of magic. Doing simple tricks for his captors, Anckorn managed to procure enough scraps of food for himself and his comrades to make it through to the end of the war.
The stress of performing one particular trick, involving an egg, was such that he was unable to perform it for another 40 years. ‘My knees would knock even thinking about it,’ he said.
His story was the driving inspiration for Richard Jones, the British soldier and magician, who won Britain’s Got Talent in 2016.
WIFE WHO DEFIED HER PM HUSBAND
Mary Wilson, 102
Though lampooned by sections of the Press as the quiet, dutiful wife of Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson, this first lady of Downing Street was very much her own woman.
Both before, during and after her husband’s years in office, she was a passionate writer of poetry, producing one of the best-selling anthologies of her day. Yet she would reject nearly all requests for interviews and public appearances, up until her death in June.
She met her future husband when they were both working for Lever Brothers in Cheshire. From Harold’s election in the Labour landslide of 1945 and on through his rapid rise through the party ranks, she preferred to remain in the wings, raising their two sons.
At the same time, however, she had a coterie of firm friends with whom she would exchange letters and poems, ranging from Prince Charles to the Poet Laureate, Sir John Betjeman.
She remained impervious to her husband’s politics. In 1975, as Harold Wilson led the referendum campaign to endorse Britain’s entry in to the european economic Community, Mrs Mary Wilson voted to leave.
PRINCE SULKED FOR THREE WEEKS
Prince Henrik of Denmark, 83
Married to the long-reigning and immensely popular Queen Margrethe of Denmark, Prince Henrik was always inviting comparisons with his British opposite number.
Here was a bright, talented foreign-born consort destined for a life in a supporting role to his wife. The key difference is that whereas, for the most part, Prince Philip would accept his place in the royal pecking order, Prince Henrik would become increasingly cross about his own. Born a French count (he changed his name from the French ‘Henri’ to the Danish ‘Henrik’), he took on a wide range of patronages and ambassadorial roles for his adoptive land following Margrethe’s accession in 1972.
Yet it always rankled that a land famed for its egalitarian principles did not extend them to the monarch’s husband.
When the elder of their two sons was chosen to step in for the absent Queen at a national event in 2002, Henrik retreated to his French chateau in a sulk for three weeks. Though his appointment as Prince Consort in 2005 went some way to making amends, there were further outbursts in later life.
He would renounce the Prince Consort title in 2016 and latterly voiced a wish to be buried alone in
France. A few months before his death, in February, it was announced that he was suffering from dementia.
MONEY BROUGHT HIM ONLY MISERY
Matthew Mellon, 54
A tragic exemplar of the old adage that money does not buy you happiness, Mellon was born in to one of the richest families in America in 1964.
His great, great, great grandfather had founded one of the country’s largest banks in the late 19th century. Following an expensive education, he inherited the first of 14 trust funds at the age of 21 and embarked on a life of drugfuelled playboy partying, tempered by the occasional unsuccessful business venture.
it did not help that his wife, tamara, whom he met at a Narcotics Anonymous meeting in London in 1998, had enjoyed great success as cofounder of the Jimmy choo shoe empire.
the couple had married at Blenheim Palace in 2000 but had split, one child later, by 2004. A second marriage and two further children offered signs of a reformed character but the couple divorced in 2015 and Mellon embarked on a descent from which there would be no return.
GARDEN FROM A GRAVEL CAR PARK
Beth Chatto, 94
Having been assured that she would never grow anything in the old car park next to her Essex home, Beth chatto did just that, creating a Mediterraneanstyle gravelbased garden which became a national attraction.
‘I really don’t hold with watering,’ was one of her near-heretical sayings, yet it earned her an influential posse of admirers, including the great Sussex plantsman, christopher Lloyd.
She won a remarkable ten gold medals at the chelsea Flower Show yet refused to become part of the royal Horticultural Society establishment, even after the RHS bestowed on her its victorian Medal of Honour, its highest award, in 2002.
DAUGHTER OF THE NAZI SS CHIEF
Gudrun Burwitz, 88
Known as ‘Puppi’ or ‘Poppet’ to her doting family, she was the ultimate Daddy’s girl to the very end. the only problem was that Daddy was one of the most reviled specimens in modern history.
gudrun Himmler was born in Munich, in August 1929, the only daughter of the head of Hitler’s SS.
though his marriage to Marga would fall apart, the architect of the ‘Final Solution’ remained devoted to his little girl. At the age of 12, she received a special treat.
‘today we went to the SS concentration camp at Dachau,’ she wrote in her diary. ‘we saw everything we could. we saw the gardening work. we saw the pear trees. we saw all the pictures painted by the prisoners. Marvellous. And afterwards we had a lot to eat. it was very nice.’
Following her father’s suicide in British custody 1945, she was interned by the Americans but not for long. Married to author wulf Burwitz, she worked for german intelligence during the Sixties.
it clearly wasn’t paying much attention to this particular member of staff. ‘Puppi’ not only remained fiercely loyal to her father’s memory all through her career but was active in an organisation called Stille Hilfe (Silent Help), an outfit providing assistance to exSS members whose past had caught up with them. Not for nothing was she often referred to as the ‘princess of Nazism’.
AMATEUR COOKED UP PIZZA EXPRESS
Peter Boizot, 89
HE couldn’t cook and never had a business plan. Yet Peter Boizot has done as much to transform British eating habits as any celebrity chef.
in 1948, working as a tutor in Florence, he was given his first slice of pizza and thought it was ‘the most delicious thing’ he had ever tasted.
Years later, after a string of jobs, he decided to invest his £3,000 life’s savings in a proper italian pizza oven and found himself somewhere to set it up in London’s Soho.
the joint was called Pizza-Express and he opened in 1965. ‘the pizzas came in big sheets, which i sliced up and sold for two shillings a piece,’ he recalled. ‘A friend said: “You ought to let them eat with a knife and fork, and perhaps offer a round one”. So i started making round ones.’
He created a totally new ambiance — with plants, black and white tiles, a staff uniform — and imported italian beer. He would offer washingup jobs to the homeless and slapped a surcharge on his veneziana pizzas which went to the venice in Peril Fund.
After selling out for £40 million in 1993, he invested heavily in his native Peterborough, although he had resisted opening a branch there for many years. there were, he explained, just too many italians living there.
HOAXER FAKED HIS OWN DEATH
Alan Abel, 94
A serial prankster in the Ali g mould, Alan Abel achieved fame for hoodwinking the American people — and media — time and again during his long life.
in the Fifties, he created the ‘Society for indecency to Naked Animals’ as a joke and urged people to put clothing on farm animals and pets to cover their modesty. Suddenly, it caught on with national television coverage and even a donation of $40,000.
other hoaxes included a presidential campaign led by a (nonexistent) Jewish housewife called Yetta, using his wife for radio interviews, his mother’s photo and the slogan: ‘vote Yetta and things will get betta’.
in 1974, the media flocked to a press conference to hear the missing section of the notorious watergate tapes — and heard a blank tape.
His favourite con was when he faked his own death in 1980, in order to read his own obituary. He was thrilled when the New York times devoted more space to him than to the inventor of the sixpack.
on September 14, 2018, however, the joke really was over — as was Alan Abel.