When I danced with George Michael

And other amazing interviews

Before we begin…

This is a re-post of one of my early Substacks. Let me explain.

For some reason I’ve gained hundreds of new free subscribers this week - HELLO NEW FRIENDS.

I think it might be from the very kind recommendation of this feed by Daily Beast European Editor at Large

Tom Sykes

, who writes the absolutely gripping commentary on the British royals (and other societal elites)

The Royalist

.

I have been (almost unhealthily) fascinated recently by his reporting on Prince Andrew’s revolting sexual proclivities, where Sykes dishes even more detailed scandal than the forthcoming book, all supported by impeccable sources .

I’m still processing the revelation that Andrew (no Prince to me) had a dedicated cupboard at Epstein’s New York house, where he stored ‘newly-wrapped pantyhose, lingerie and sandals of various sizes’ for his goings on there.

This activates pinball machine style activity in my imagination. Who, what, where, why and which way up? The Duke of Pork indeed. Revolting.

Anyhoo… to welcome my new followers I thought I should post a freebie, so they can stroll around a bit and take in the view, before the paywall descends again, which it must.

Then I had the idea to go back and look at my archives from when I started on here two years ago and when I went over to Paid, last September.

It does make me sad that thousands of people read my early free posts and then only hundreds the paid ones - but I do understand it’s a commitment and the total can quickly build up.

For this reason, I only subscribe to a few paid subs myself, but I get a great deal of delight out of them and consider it money very well spent.

So what I’ve done here, is repost as FREE one of my early paid posts, which was read by very few people at the time, before I built subscribers - so it should be fresh to most of my Paidies, as well as the new Freebies.

Enough with the explaining already. Here we go.

Chatting to Sophia Loren and the Bay City Rollers (not at the same time)

(This piece was written when I was doing a mini Marie Kondo on my house, sorting out my crap.)

My redecorating, reorganising and decluttering continues apace. I’ve very nearly finished my ground floor study and among all the stationery, books and archive stuff (a polite term for random rubbish) I found a box containing old interview tapes. Well, that was fun to go through.

Sophia Loren, Kylie, Patricia Arquette, Cate Blanchett, John Cleese, Vivienne Westwood, Vidal Sassoon, Nanci Griffith, Joan Rivers… what wonderful people. I adored them all.

So sad that the last four of them are no longer with us.

I interviewed Nanci and Joan in their own homes, which was fun. Nanci’s place was in the country (where else?) outside Nashville (ibid) and I’m not sure I did my best work, as we had our chat in her music room and I felt quite overwhelmed, thinking about all the amazing songs she’d written in that space.

I mean, Love at the Five and Dime… It’s much harder to interview people you worship.

Here’s a clip of her singing that song, with one of the gorgeous little intros she used to do live.

Ms Rivers welcomed me to her magnificent town house, just off 5^th Avenue in 2001. I gave her a Rigaud candle I’d just bought in Bergdorf’s which got things off to a good start and the first thing she said when I sat down was, ‘Ask me anything.’

Which was incredibly generous of her, because it wasn’t long after her husband had committed suicide and I was dreading bringing it up. Thanks to her, we talked about that first. She was so warm.

Barbara Cartland was another home visit – and that was all part of the unbelievably camp construct of her life. Like hundreds of other journos before me I travelled up to her mansion Camfield Place in Hertfordshire, for the occasion.

You can visit it now, see here (and the website says ‘not free’ which made me laugh).

The first thing I clocked on entering the black and white-tiled hall was a bright white fox fur coat tossed onto a chair. As you do.

Dame Barbara was waiting for me reclined on a sofa in the drawing room in a full-length shocking-pink evening gown, her eyelashes caked with mascara like huge spider legs, the lids bright blue.

After the chat, she gave me an absolutely splendid tea in the dining room and urged me to eat honey every day, as she did, for the sake of my looks. Coming from her chalk-powdered face, it was hard to know what to say to that.

What can it have been like for Princess Diana having such a character as her step-grandmother?

It amused greatly when I opened the box to see Ms Cartland’s tape sitting next to Lara Flynn-Boyle’s. You couldn’t imagine two more different people.

Lara is a whirlwind force of nature. She came to see me in the house I was renting in Belair, while in LA to do a big shoot for British ELLE, which I was editing at the time.

She was hilarious, very beautiful with energy like a cyclone and I could so get it when she and Jack Nicholson got together a few years later. That must have been quite a party.

Then it was really bittersweet to see the tape labelled ‘WHAM’ that’s up at the top here.

I interviewed them in 1984, just before Wake Me Up Before You Go Go came out. They weren’t unknown, they’d already had top ten singles, but that was the song that took them to the serious big time - top of the charts in the UK and the States.

Even then, aged just 20, George Michael was amazing, so charismatic and confident, so nice, he insisted on playing me the track, immediately jumping up to dance – so I got up and danced with him.

That’s the only time that’s ever happened in an interview. I’m still so sad about his death.

Another one I mourn is Rik Mayall. That was, with no competition, the funniest interview I’ve ever done. I met him at 4pm, at the end of some lunch thing he’d been at and he insisted we started drinking before I even turned the tape recorder on.

Then we started laughing and we continuted to laugh, hysterically, until three in the morning, only leaving the Groucho Club (then at its peak) when they threw us out.

Of course he was hilarious, probably the funniest person I’ve ever met, but the wonderful thing was that he laughed at my jokes too. A lot of comedians don’t like other people to be funny – especially not women. Rik Mayall loved it.

By the end of the night he’d decided I was going to marry Ben Elton, who at the time was single. He was going to ring me the next day and set up the introduction.

That never happened, I never saw Rik again, but that was one of my best, ever London nights. What a guy.

From there, looking at the tapes, I see the male actors, who I always find hard to interview. They either act the whole thing, or are just a blank cypher without a script.

Mickey Rourke in 1985 was still beautiful, but in personality he was already as odd as he is in looks now. Hard even to describe.

Then it gets interesting, because there are names here I have only vague memories of meeting. The Bay City Rollers? Really? There’s a misty recall of Madness, but having hung out with Suggs since, I can’t believe he didn’t make more of an impression the first time.

But the really weird one is Eddie Murphy. I have no memory of ever talking to him. EDDIE MURPHY! Donkey???

So, I wondered if it was in fact another Eddie Murphy, perhaps an actor in a quite obscure British soap opera - I see I’d spelled the name wrong, ‘Eddy’ - so I thought I’d play the tape.

But I couldn’t get my old Dictaphone thing, which I’ve kept as a memory of those swashbuckling journo days of the 80s and 90s, to work.

So I’m going to get all these tapes made into digital files, somehow, and the numerous others I must have somewhere, as this is just a few of the people I’ve profiled.

Then perhaps I’ll put some highlights on here - just as I used to play extracts of my tape of interviewing Liam Neeson to friends at dinner parties, so they could enjoy the sound of me melting into a puddle of lust every time he said my name in that voice…

It’s Bridget Jones’s Colin Firth interview in real life.

Dear new Free friends - I don’t expect everyone to sign up to be a Paidie (although it woud be lovely if you would) but if you have enjoyed reading this, perhaps you would like to Buy Me a Coffee?