The Chap Issue 122

ISSUE 122 SPRING 2025

EXPAND YOUR MIND, REFINE YOUR WARDROBE

SAMMY DAVIS JR

EDWARD TUDOR POLE

VIVIEN OF HOLLOWAY

BEN IRURZUN

BORSALINO

ISSUE 122

£7.99

JOAN COLLINS “I’VE NEVER YET MET A MAN WHO COULD LOOK AFTER ME. I DON’T NEED A HUSBAND. WHAT I NEED IS A WIFE”

SS25

House of Cavani’s SS25 range brings a modern twist to classic tailoring with vibrant colours, lightweight fabrics, and exclusive patterns, perfect for making a statement in the warmer months.

SPRING SUMMER COLLECTION 2025 CAVANI.CO.UK

King Charles III's Coronation. The new Despatch Boxes of His Majesty’s Government display the new royal cypher of King Charles III

Major contribution to the war effort, notably “L” Detachment, Special Air Service Brigade

1939

2023

Continue to make and supply official governmentDispatch Boxes, notably for Churchill as Secretary of State

1921

HRH Princess Elizabeth proclaimed Queen Elizabeth II and officially photographed with her Dispatch Boxes

Hepburn & Gale merges with Samuel Barrow & Brotherto become Barrow, Hepburn & Gale

1920

1953

Make and supply saddles, belts and cases to officers and soldiers during the Great War

1914

Hepburn & Gale merges with Ross & Co

1901

Samuel Barrow & Brother is formed

1848

John Hepburn commences leather tanning in Bermondsey

1760

Proper Chaps Carry Proper Bags.

Proper Bags From Barrow Hepburn & Gale.

‘Barrow, Hepburn & Gale have been making travel goods for generations, and although fashions are constantly on the change, their quality has always been superlative.

They are supplied not only to the home market, but the whole world, for the good reason that British craftsmanship in this class of goods has always been admired. At a time when a flourishing export trade is absolutely essential to the country’s survival, no manufacturer can do his country a better service than to produce goods so well made and designed that they may properly be called ambassadors of goodwill.’

Everything In Leather – The Story Of Barrow Hepburn & Gale, published in 1948.

thechap@barrowhepburngale.com | barrowhepburngale.com |

@barrowhepburngale

Editor: Gustav Temple Art Director: Rachel Barker Picture Editor: Theo Salter Sub-Editor: Romilly Clark Circulation Manager: Andy Perry Subscriptions Manager: Jen Rainnie

GUSTAV TEMPLE

CHRIS SULLIVAN

ANDREW ROBERTS

IAN SIMMONS

ACTUARIUS

The editor of The Chap for the last 25 years is also the author of The Chap Manifesto, The Chap Almanac, Around the World in 80 Martinis (Fourth Estate), Cooking For Chaps and Drinking For Chaps (Kyle Books) and How To Be Chap (Gestalten). He is currently working on a book without ‘Chap’ in the title.

Chris Sullivan is The Chap’s Contributing Editor. He founded and ran Soho’s Wag Club for two decades and is a former GQ style editor who has written for Italian Vogue, The Times, Independent and The FT. He is now Associate Lecturer at Central St Martins School of Art on youth style cults. @cjp_sullivan

Andrew Roberts read for The Bar in his (comparative) youth but the lure of British cinema led him to a PhD in this engrossing subject. The recent purchase of his Wolseley 6/99 is largely due to Carry On Cabby, Quatermass and the Pit, The Fast Lady and many other fine pictures.

Ian Simmons is News Editor of Fortean Times, possibly Britain’s strangest magazine.

When he is not writing about spontaneous human combustion and rains of fish, he is in-house writer for Mattereum, an innovative lawtech startup, although he is allegedly retired after a career as a museum curator and science communicator.

Actuarius is an artist, essayist, photographer and journalist. A selfconfessed petrolhead, he mainly produces works based around his twin passions of Art Deco and mechanised transport, making the shortlist for the highly prestigious Guild of Motoring Writers Feature Writer of the Year in 2021.

TORQUIL ARBUTHNOT

DARCY SULLIVAN Darcy Sullivan writes about artists, aesthetes and algorithms. His articles have appeared in The Comics Journal, The Wildean and Weird Fiction Review.

He is press officer of the Oscar Wilde Society and curator of the Facebook pages ‘The Pictures of Dorian Gray’ and ‘The Arkham Hillbilly’.

OLIVIER WOODESFARQUHARSON

STEPHEN ARNELL

Torquil Arbuthnot is a social affairs journalist whose career started with The Chap in its early days. Torquil was ‘on the barricades’ at the very first Chap protest, Civilise the City, and continues the Great Work today by bringing traffic to a standstill on the Aldwych through the display of astounding pocket squares.

FRANCIS GIORDANELLA

Office address The Chap Ltd 69 Winterbourne Close Lewes, East Sussex BN7 1JZ

Olivier Woodes-Farquharson is an adventurer, diplomat, voice actor and writer, although not always in that order. When not travelling to obscure places that may or may not exist, he is most likely to be found at Cheltenham Races – the best place to blood his latest tweed – or furiously foraging in the English countryside.

Advertising Paul Williams paul@thechap.co.uk +353(0)83 1956 999

Stephen has been a TV channel controller, author (his first novel was published last year), media/culture commentator, occasional lecturer, movie consultant/ sales broker and amateur antiquarian. A habitué of Soho’s Colony Club scene during his younger years, Arnell now resides in bucolic Bedfordshire.

Subscriptions 01442 820 580 contact@webscribe.co.uk

Francis Giordanella formerly worked in the silversmithing trade and and later became a sommelier, studying with the Italian Sommelier Association. He spends his time perambulating around London and Europe in search of interesting, well-dressed, discerning individuals. @dandyfrancis

chap@thechap.co.uk www.thechap.co.uk @TheChapMag @TheChapMag TheChapMagazine

Printing: CPUK Ltd, Suite 12B Davey House, 31-31a St Neots Road, Eaton Ford, Cambridgeshire PE19 7BA Distribution: Warners Group Publications, West Street, Bourne, Lincolnshire, PE10 9PH T: 01778 391194

THE CHAP MANIFESTO 1 THOU SHALT ALWAYS WEAR TWEED. No other fabric says so defiantly: I am a man of panache, savoir-faire and devil-may-care, and I will not be served Continental lager beer under any circumstances.

2 THOU SHALT NEVER NOT SMOKE. Health and Safety “executives” and jobsworth medical practitioners keep trying to convince us that smoking is bad for the lungs/heart/skin/eyebrows, but we all know that smoking a bent apple billiard full of rich Cavendish tobacco raises one’s general sense of well-being to levels unimaginable by the aforementioned spoilsports.

3 THOU SHALT ALWAYS BE COURTEOUS TO THE LADIES. A gentleman is never truly seated on an omnibus or railway carriage: he is merely keeping the seat warm for when a lady might need it.

Those who take offence at being offered a seat are not really Ladies.

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4 THOU SHALT NEVER, EVER, WEAR PANTALOONS DE NIMES. When you have progressed beyond fondling girls in the back seats of cinemas, you can stop wearing jeans.

5 THOU SHALT ALWAYS DOFF ONE’S HAT. Alright, so you own a couple of trilbies. Good for you - but it’s hardly going to change the world. Once you start actually lifting them off your head when greeting passers-by, then the revolution will really begin.

6 THOU SHALT NEVER FASTEN THE LOWEST BUTTON ON THY WAISTCOAT. Look, we don’t make the rules, we simply try to keep them going. This one dates back to Edward VII, sufficient reason in itself to observe it.

7 THOU SHALT ALWAYS SPEAK PROPERLY. It’s really quite simple: instead of saying “Yo, wassup?”, say “How do you do?”

8 THOU SHALT NEVER WEAR PLIMSOLLS WHEN NOT DOING SPORT. Nor even when doing sport. Which you shouldn’t be doing anyway. Except cricket.

9 THOU SHALT ALWAYS WORSHIP AT THE TROUSER PRESS. At the end of each day, your trousers should be placed in one of Mr. Corby’s magical contraptions, and by the next morning your creases will be so sharp that they will start a riot on the high street.

10 THOU SHALT CULTIVATE INTERESTING FACIAL HAIR. By interesting we mean moustaches, or beards with a moustache attached.

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86

CONTENTS 8 AM I CHAP? Readers submit themselves to the ultimate sartorial assessment

12 SACKCLOTH & TASHES Torquil Arbuthnot provides a handy guide to the various types of vicar one may encounter

FEATURES 20 INTERVIEW: EDWARD TUDOR POLE Gustav Temple meets the former Sex Pistol, frontman of Tenpole Tudor and host of the Crystal Maze

34 28 MR BURTON

new film about the early life of Richard Burton A in wartime Wales and how one man mentored him to his full acting potential

34 THERE IS NOTHING LIKE A DAME Andrew Roberts swoons at the sheer magic and mystery, not to mention persistence, of Dame Joan Collins

SARTORIAL FEATURES 44 HOTEL PARADISO

The ghost of Diana Dors overlooks a Vivien of Holloway photoshoot at Pelirocco Hotel in Brighton

57 FAREWELL, OLD TOWN

Ian Simmons laments the passing, after thirty long years, of a beloved sartorial institution which closed its doors earlier this year

69 BORSALINO AND BOGART

Gustav Temple pays a visit to the London branch of Borsalino to find out why Humphrey Bogart got nearly all his hats from the Italian hat maker

76 CUTTER’S CHOICE

Thomas Mahon, head cutter at Savile Row tailors Redmayne 1860, succumbs to a sartorial interrogation from Francis Giordanella

CHAP LIFE 86 BEN IRURZUN

Advice on how one should tackle the interior design of one’s hearth and home

96 FIRE, FROLICS AND BRIMSTONE

The various incarnations of the Hellfire Club since its first inception in 18th century England

102 HONG KONG HIKE

A flaneur’s guide to the Pearl of the Orient

108 WYND FARM

A walking tour of Viktor Wynd’s Museum of Curiosities, Fine Art and Unnatural History

116 FIRE UP THE MERLINS

Actuarius handles a Spitfire Flight Simulator

REVIEWS 124 KINGS OF THE SWINGERS

The highs and lows of the careers of Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr

130 FALLING ROCKET

The famous trial between James Whistler and John Ruskin

136 WILDE WIT

Results of last year’s annual competition to outwit the great Oscar Wilde

Photo: Rob Rich/Everett Collection

ISSUE 122 • SPRING 2025

READERS SUBMIT THEMSELVES TO THE ULTIMATE SARTORIAL ASSESSMENT. SEND YOUR PHOTO FOR CONSIDERATION TO CHAP@THECHAP.CO.UK

“Despite having read your fascinating periodical for some 15 years,” writes Patrick Hopkinson, “I have never submitted myself to your scrutiny.

I believe that it is about time that I did so, although of course you may not share that opinion. Please find my photograph, taken by my wife Elaine in ‘our’ paddock at the Goodwood Motor Circuit during the Members’ Meeting.”

Sir, we have spent the equivalent of 15 years poring over your photograph, and can confidently say that everything is in order. The correct amount of break on the trousers, the dimple in the tie, the unfastened button on the waistcoat, the right amount of shirt cuff showing. The slightly curling tips of your Tattersal shirt might want seeing to by your valet, and the pocket square – whose thematic choice is ideal – could do with a bit more panache in its insertion.

“After purchasing an Anthony Sinclair Midnight Blue dinner suit (a copy of the dinner suit worn by Sean Connery’s James Bond, in Dr No),” writes Daryl W Milford, “from the excellent father and son team at Masons and Sons, I decided to wear this in anger at the Burn’s Night Supper at my local Freemasons Lodge. As suggested by Elliot Mason, I also wore the Mr Fish white double cuff pleated dress shirt, with the midnight blue bow tie to match the suit.”

In anger at what, sir? At other guests wearing tartan, or at the lack of self-tied bow ties? We can only bow to your accurate Bond references, not least in acquiring them from the current owners of the Anthony Sinclair back catalogue. The new owner of the James Bond film back catalogue, sadly, will not have a clue what any of the above means. Perhaps this was the cause of the anger to which you refer, sir.

Teddy Tinker took a good look at Mr. Milford’s raiment and decided to take precisely the opposite approach in every detail, in order more closely to resemble a Bond villain. In this he was entirely successful.

“Please give your honest opinion of my boatrace from Twinwood a few years back. I have had the pleasure of ‘competing’ at the Chap Olympiad, but I’m afraid matters of Queen and country took over, nothing personal!”

Sam Ruddock is a gold medallist Paralympian, with World Championships in sprinting, cycling and shot put. Born with cerebral palsy, Sam began his Olympic career at the London Paralympics in 2012 as a sprinter, switching to shot put for the 2014 European Championships. But it sounds as though being put through his paces in Umbrella Jousting at the 2012 Chap Olympiad was where things really started for him. As to his outfit, it seems acceptable enough for the task, though a gold cravat would have added a little more panache.

This mysterious woman turned up at the editor’s sixtieth birthday party in February, claiming to be an employee of the magazine. She was granted ingress purely on the strength of her stunning flapper attire, with exuberant expression to match, and it had to be admitted that she did bear a slight resemblance to the magazine’s art director.

While the ability to create an entire outfit purely using AI and a 3D printer is impressive, the results can often look as though the wearer has been dipped in several pots of appropriately coloured resin.

This gentleman from the 1930s clearly has a figure just as svelte and toned as the skinny fellow in the previous image, yet his approach is to smother it completely in heavy tweeds, leaving only a tantalising glimpse of a well-turned ankle in harlequin hosiery to hint at what lies beneath.

The cuffs on this gentleman’s shirtsleeves are of insufficient length, and they neither display his cufflinks adequately nor show the requisite one and a quarter inches of shirt cuff, had he been properly dressed enough to wear a jacket. Also, belt & braces is one thing (incidentally not correct in any circumstances) but combining belt and braces into one garment seems a step too far.

“About to enjoy a proper lunch last Friday,” writes David Evington. “I can’t reveal which club I was in, as mobile devices are not permitted in the dining room (and rightly so).”

Yet they allow gentlemen to dine in tweeds, sir? So clearly not a proper club in Town. Nevertheless, you are perfectly dressed for a country club in the Home Counties, and your tribute to the late David Lynch in the form of an ‘Eraserhead’ haircut is also very touching.

Society

Sackcloth and Tashes Torquil Arbuthnot’s guide to the six different types of vicar, how to spot them and where they may be located

“He fashions his own surplice and ecclesiastic garments using yards of lace, satin and organza.

He tried wearing a cheeky mauve biretta of his own design until given a warning by his local bishop that it was frightening the verger.

His flamboyant style and fluting voice mean he is invited to many parties and sometimes graces the airwaves, where he peppers his conversation with innuendo and frequent mentions of “as the actress said to the bishop” 12

D

espite the best efforts of the General Synod and Archbish Justin Welby, the Church of England is still going strong and is an acceptable berth for the younger sons of the gentry. All one needs is a working knowledge of the New Testament and a smattering of Latin, as belief in God has long been seen as an optional and usually disagreeable trait in the C of E. Indeed, if one aspires to become an archbishop, one should pooh-pooh the very idea of the Deity and espouse instead a form of fluffy Bolshevism.

Apart from the Bible, the only required reading is Wodehouse’s The Great Sermon Handicap and (for Irish clergy) the Racing Post. It also helps to have a private income and a reliable bicycle, as the stipend for the clergy is low and the vicarages often draughty.

Those chaps who possess genuine and fervent religious beliefs are advised to emigrate to the USA. They will find our more excitable American cousins to be more welcoming to fire and brimstone preaching and speaking in tongues.

Once one has decided to take the cloth, one must decide what avenue of clerical life one wishes to follow.

THE MUSCULAR CHRISTIAN He believes that cleanliness is next to godliness and in mens sana in corpore sano.

He is usually the chaplain at a public school.

He leads by example, plunging into an ice-cold bath before morning prayers while bellowing verses of Onward, Christian Soldiers.

He coaches the first XV and is not averse to somewhat unecclesiastical language

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The Muscular Christian

The Padre

@thewarchaplain

THE PADRE

when cheering from the touchline. For any boys who show a calling for the Church, he advocates missionary work in Africa. If not a school chaplain, his ministry is in the East End of London, where he runs a missioncum-boxing gym. There his working-class flock are encouraged to godliness by knocking seven bells out of one another.

He is a promoter of the slaughtering of small defenceless animals, whether this be on the hunting field or on the grouse moors.

His favourite books are not the Bible and Pilgrim’s Progress but Tom Brown’s Schooldays and Theodore Roosevelt’s The Strenuous Life.

One needs a backbone to be an army chaplain, as one has often to give holy communion while under light mortar fire.

In a battle, the padre will always be where the fighting is thickest, with the Good Book in one hand and a knapsack full of bandages and morphine in the other.

Although a non-combatant, one day he will lose his temper and kill twenty Nazis with an entrenching tool, thereby earning the MC. He holds the Grenadier Guards officers’ mess record for smashing the

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The Fruity (left)

most furniture with a swagger stick. He is the regiment’s liaison with local religious leaders, be they evangelical African despots, whirling dervishes or South Sea islanders who worship the late Duke of Edinburgh as a god. There is a bonus that captured chaplains are not considered prisoners of war and must be returned to their home nation.

wine. He models himself on Dick Emery’s vicar and on clergymen in Aldwych farces, to the extent where his trousers once fell down during evensong. He is very much of the “bells and smells” wing of the C of E. He fashions his own surplice and ecclesiastic garments using yards of lace, satin and organza. He tried wearing a cheeky mauve biretta of his own design until given a warning by his local bishop that it was frightening the verger. His flamboyant style and fluting voice mean he is invited to many parties and sometimes graces the airwaves, where he peppers his conversation with

THE FRUITY Frankly, he is in the Church just for the dressing up, the incense and the communion

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The Sinister

The Monk

innuendo and frequent mentions of “as the actress said to the bishop”. If he lets his love of ostentation run away with him, he can be tempted over to Rome. He fantasises about doing exorcisms.

talk at high table is that he is an escaped convict who murdered the real college chaplain and stole his identity and his dog collar. He models his demeanour on the various sinister clerics played by Alastair Sim. When the police finally catch up with him, he will insist, in vain, that privilegium clericale (benefit of clergy) should apply and that he be tried instead in an ecclesiastical court by his fellow Old Etonian bishops.

THE SINISTER The sinister parson is capable of murder, but not for him the blunt instrument or the carving knife. Rather he utilises the communion wafer dusted with a little-known poison or the bellringers’ rope used as a garotte. He is not averse to helping himself from the collection plate if he fancies a flutter on the gee-gees. He is also an expert at befriending elderly widows, helping them prematurely into a Better Place by smothering them with a pillow, and forging their wills. If a member of an Oxbridge college, he will spend most of his time intriguing against his fellow academics. The

THE MONK Let’s face it, we all tire of our fellow man from time to time, and sometimes the strain of putting up with the Great British Public becomes too much to bear and one will gravitate naturally to a monastery and a vow of silence. Admittedly the social life palls after a while, but there are always hobbies such as illuminating manuscripts and keeping bees. Much fun can also be had frightening

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The Lady Vicar (right)

Dibley until 1994. One would have thought ladies have quite enough of ministering to the mentally deficient and needy in their daily encounters with husbands and sons, but some do have the additional gumption to become lady vicars. The ideal lady vicar is a jolly hockeysticks type who brooks no nonsense. As a lady vicar, she is allowed to be moderately happy-clappy and will often lead the congregation with her guitar for a chorus of Kum ba yah. She needs to be of a strong disposition, as she will be up against the entrenched ‘Jam and Jerusalem’ ranks of the local Women’s Institute and the bowls club when it comes to village matters. She can cement her place in her rural diocese by riding to hounds and advocating the reintroduction of the ducking stool. n

the villagers by strolling the country lanes in the small hours with one’s cowl up, making ghostly noises. Anyone who chooses the monastic life should make sure he enrols at a monastery that makes its own liqueur or, at the very least, brews its own high-octane beer.

The chappist monk should also make sure he gets the gig of looking after the monastery’s alcohol quality control, as being permanently benumbed from sipping chartreuse or benedictine will at least compensate for the passé robes one has to wear.

THE LADY VICAR The C of E did not permit ladies to be priests until late in the twentieth century, thereby thankfully delaying the release of The Vicar of

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FEATURES

INTERVIEW: EDWARD TUDOR POLE

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FILM REVIEW: MR BURTON

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JOAN COLLINS

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Interview

Edward T u d o r P ol e Gustav Temple meets the former Sex Pistol, frontman of Tenpole Tudor, former host of The Crystal Maze and author of his autobiography, The Pen is Mightier, out now from Oldcastle Books

“It was awful when Malcolm was sacked as manager of the Sex Pistols by Virgin. He had such great ideas for the band’s next move after Johnny Rotten left. He wanted Sid Vicious to make a whole album of Frank Sinatra covers, after he’d proved himself on Somethin’ Else and C’mon Everybody”

S

of others. The ‘Tudor’ was added by my great grandfather, who was a bit of a snob.

I think creating double barrelled surnames is as vulgar as having a personalised number plate. I have since dropped the hyphen and my son is an unhyphenated Tudor Pole.

o let’s start at the beginning.

Tudor Pole is an unusual surname. Is it as aristocratic as it sounds – after all, Tudor was Henry VIII’s surname?

Actually, I am descended from Richard III’s older brother, George, Duke of Clarence, who, if he hadn’t been slain already by their eldest brother Edward IV, would certainly have been killed when the Tudors came to power, having a superior claim to the throne. The Poles and the Tudors were sworn enemies. I’m proud to be a Pole but it’s less impressive when you consider I share this lineage with hundreds of thousands

Were you the poshest punk?

It’s true that punk was a very working class movement, but no-one ever questioned my class credentials during the Sex Pistols years. In fact I was given an unconditional welcome by the half of society that would normally be closed to someone of my background.

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22 Edward and Bob Kingston in Amsterdam. Photo: Maarten Corbijn

In the Admirable Crighton at The Haymarket, 1988

In The Crystal Maze, 1993-1995

Sex Pistols sounded like.” Which was ironic, because I had been trained to sing and write songs by Malcolm McLaren.

So you went to a decent school?

Well, prep school Yardley Court, but only for a very short time, then a comprehensive school and that was a different story.

In the book there is a passage where you describe McLaren sending you home to write a song called Who Killed Bambi? for the album The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle in two days.

I took the commission seriously, thrilled to be recognised as a songwriter, but how did Malcolm know I could write songs? He seemed to assume I could, which I suppose gave me the power to do it. It is faith shown that releases the talent, a prime example being when Chuck Berry was first offered a recording contract to record Maybelline and Wee Wee Hours. It was in the narrow gap after he’d signed the contract and before the first

Was it difficult to recall all the details you shared in the book? I must say you do sound rather sprightly for a 71-year-old.

Traipsing around London on the Tube carrying a guitar keeps you youthful and fit. And playing music, running around the stage and working up a sweat, that doesn’t work unless you’re in trim. I used to be referred to as ‘bug-eyed and bouncing around the stage’ when I first started. The worst review was by Danny Baker, who said that Tenpole Tudor’s first single was “like an 11-year-old schoolboy’s idea of what the

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recording session that he went home and wrote Johnny B. Goode, his biggest hit.

You also speak very fondly of Sex Pistols guitarist Steve Jones.

Even though I was inferior to him, Steve being a Cockney, he was nice to me, very kind. We were a bit shy with each other, but he took me out to a restaurant and we started talking about the bands he liked, like Slade and Sweet. He liked bit of the old glam and Bowie. I’ve never seen a man who plays guitar like Steve Jones. One guitar, one amp and it sounds like three people playing three guitars. He had some special talent.

He was self taught, he had no education, he could hardly read, let alone write. I often helped him out.

Your affectionate memory of Malcolm McLaren is evident in the book.

Yes, he was always nothing but kind and encouraging to me. It was awful when he was sacked as manager of the Sex Pistols

by Virgin, who accused him of embezzling all the band’s fees and royalties. But all he was doing was ploughing the money back into the film budget for The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle. He had such great ideas for the band’s next move after Johnny Rotten left.

He wanted Sid Vicious to make a whole album of Frank Sinatra covers, after he’d proved himself on Somethin’ Else and C’mon Everybody, which were both hits. But Virgin forbade him to have any involvement at all

There’s another chap you speak about very fondly in the book, John Michell.

Sounds as though he was quite a mentor for you?

Yes, he saved my bacon really. He was the cleverest man; it was like meeting Merlin or something. He was part of that group of aristocrats who took the Rolling Stones under their wing when they started. At first I thought he was some old hippy who I wouldn’t like, but actually he was far too upper class for that. He was slightly older.

He’d taken acid when he was about 30 in 1964, which expanded his mind, and he suddenly realised how the world was made. He was so full of energy, always talking about Plato. Everything he said was intensely illuminating and wise, but also very funny.

“I think what John Michell meant was that I was sort of a clown figure, who’s allowed to speak the truth in front of the king. Perhaps I am a bit of a simpleton in some essential way.

I was expelled from school at 16 and didn’t go to university. I went to a polytechnic, which is like a holding pen for delinquents, and then I went to RADA”

In the book, you say that he described you in a way that wasn’t very flattering to your intellectual ability?

Oh yes, he called me a simpleton. He didn’t mean it nastily; I think he meant that I was sort of a clown figure, who’s allowed to speak the truth in front of the king.

But in some ways, perhaps I am a bit of a simpleton, in some essential way. I was expelled from school at 16 and didn’t go to

in anything the band did after that. Malcolm without the Sex Pistols was like Van Gogh without his brushes and paints. He was a true artist. Luckily he was able to come back with new projects after that, like Bow Wow Wow and his hip-hop records, which were all as groundbreaking as punk had been.

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Photo: Marina Maclean/Stylescanner

Robert Munro/Alamy

university. I went to a polytechnic, which is like a holding pen for delinquents, and then to RADA. That’s why I was slightly late to the punk scene, because I didn’t get out of RADA until April 1977, so I missed the kickoff in ’76. When you’re at RADA, there’s no world outside. Ten in the morning until closing time, it’s all encompassing. Which is terrible training for an actor, because most of the time as an actor you’re not working!

Can you imagine being in a West End play in your eighties?

I can actually. You get into the routine of doing eight shows a week. The only time Harrison cancelled was for a matinee show, and the excuse he gave was so he’d have the energy for the evening performance. But that’s pretty good going – one cancellation in a whole West End run. He used the provincial tours as a place to learn his lines!

The Admirable Chrichton, fascinatingly, is all about class. It’s by J.M. Barrie and was reputedly the Queen Mother’s favourite play. Rex Harrison plays the lord of the household, but once a week they all take tea with the servants and all try to behave as equals. And of course it’s excruciatingly embarrassing for all parties. In the middle of the play they’re shipwrecked and the butler, being the only one with any practical skills, saves the day. Then Lord Loam’s daughter falls in love with him, because he’s the alpha male. And she’s just about to kiss the butler when they get rescued, so it’s all over between them, and then it’s back to the old class system.

In the book you talk about being in an hotel in Croatia for two weeks while filming Game of Thrones, doing a fiveminute scene and then languishing by the pool for the rest of the day. It sounds rather nice, actually.

Oh it’s awful. You have to be quite a bland character to hack all that. Easygoing, good natured, someone like Clark Gable. You can’t be very individualistic to be a big star.

I always preferred the mavericks like Stephen Berkoff.

Weren’t you in one of his plays? He looked quite fearsome to work with.

Yes, he did scare a lot of people, but because I’d been in punk rock, he didn’t frighten me.

I was used to these hard nuts. But of course he liked that about me, because if there’s one thing people don’t like, it’s people being scared of them. And when you’re not, they really like it. I think he’s gone mad now, he’s very old and very cantankerous. But his plays were great, I really liked him. The one I was in, at the technical rehearsal he made the stage manager cry. Another one I worked with who made people cry was Rex Harrison. He was very rude to people.

Sounds like exactly the same plot as Ruben Östlund’s 2022 film Triangle of Sadness.

Really? I must look that up. [takes out a leatherbound diary and carefully notes down the film title] I’ve just turned 60 and it feels like a real milestone towards old age. What advice do you have as someone who has reached the next decade?

Sixty? You’re a mere whippersnapper! All I would say it, remember when you turned 40 and how young 30 seemed, then when you turned 50 and 40 suddenly seemed so young? Well it’s the same when you reach 70 – being sixty will look like the golden age of youth to you. Try and remember that and you’ll be alright. n

Your description of working with him on The Admirable Chrichton didn’t make him sound too bad.

Harrison used to say, ‘Well if I’m not enjoying it, nobody else will.’ But by then he was in his eighties.

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Film Review

MR BURTON Gustav Temple on a new film about the early life of Richard Burton in wartime Wales, and how one man mentored him to his full acting potential, as well as giving him a new name and a new father

“Richard Burton, nee Jenkins, grew up in a poor coal mining community in Port Talbot; his father was an irascible old drunkard who had nine other children, and the boy Richard read Shakespeare while off duty from his dull job in the haberdashery department of the Co-op”

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efore anyone speaks, you know you’re watching a modern film set in the 1940s because the colours are a faded, muted tone, somewhere murky between black and white and colour.

Everyone’s face is pale, drawn and slightly yellowish, the grass is a muddy shade of sage green and the sky is the colour of faded newspaper.

Then the tank tops come rolling in and you can safely say, ‘Ah yes, 1942, early November unless I’m mistaken.’

When the CGI-created backdrop to the action shows continually smoking factory chimneys, further clues are offered. We must be either in the industrial north of England

or Wales. Then the subtitles indicate that a non-English language is being spoken, by angry men with soot on their faces and their sleeves rolled up.

Definitely Wales. Enter Toby Jones, gently easing himself towards national treasure status by playing yet another kind-hearted, mild-mannered fellow whose benign character hides a tough, uncompromising ambition. In the case of his character, Philip Burton (the titular Mr Burton), his driving ambition is to nurture his pupil and protégé Richard Jenkins into the fine actor Philip knows he can become.

The trouble with clichés is that sometimes they are so true that they are the

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Toby Jones (left) as Mr. Burton, Harry Lawtey as Richard Jenkins

Harry Lawtey as Richard Burton. Photo by Warren Orchard

only way to tell a story accurately. It isn’t director Marc Evans’ fault that Richard Burton, nee Jenkins, grew up in a poor coal mining community in Port Talbot, that his father was an irascible old drunkard who had nine other children, and that he really did read Shakespeare while off duty from his dull job in the haberdashery department of the Co-op. Unfortunately, when all these accurate scenes are portrayed on the screen, it sometimes feels like we are watching a Monty Python sketch about coal miners who write plays arguing with playwrights who mine coal.

Some of us may have previously seen the actor playing Richard Burton, Harry Lawtey, in HBO/BBC co-production Industry, and also as Harvey Dent in Todd Phillips’ The Joker: Folie a Deux. His part in Mr Burton

might have proved a tougher one than either of those roles, since Lawtey has to affect a strong Welsh accent at the beginning, which is gradually eroded via his mentor’s tireless coaching of his thespian skills. Philip Burton also takes his protégé up to the valleys to shout his lungs out and expand his range.

The young Richard returns to the same spot alone after an ugly encounter with his drunken father in the pub. We are being told that Burton’s passion and energy as an actor came from the tension around his father and the fact that he was largely ignored by the old soak. On the one night of the month when the young Richard expects to spend the night at his father’s hovel on the other side of Port Talbot, his father simply hands him a sack of laundry to give to his sister to take care of.

Richard’s sister is played by Aimee-Ffion

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Aimee-Ffion Edwards as Richard’s sister. Photo by Warren Orchard

“The only other recent film about the actor’s life was Burton and Taylor, in which Dominic West seemed unable to grasp the notion of playing someone else. He plays Burton identically to the way he played Prince Charles in The Crown, ie without any attempt to impersonate him. West is presumably one of those actors who only ever plays themselves”

Edwards, one of Toby Jones’ co-stars in BBC comedy Detectorists. With other names in the credits being Daniel Evans and Steffan Rhodri, along with director Evans and co-writer Josh Hyams, this production is clearly in part a hymn to the mythical land of Wales.

Unsurprisingly, another Port Talbot boy from the valleys, Rob Brydon, had a hand in the genesis of this project. Co-writer Josh Hyams is also producer of BBC travelogue/ impressionism show The Trip, in which Brydon often slips into the silky baritone of fellow Valleysman Richard Burton. This prompted Hyams to revisit the high points of Burton’s career, such as his recording of Under Milk Wood. When Hyams discovered that Richard had not been born with the name Burton, and that the stage name

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Lesley Manville as Ma Smith. Photo by Warren Orchard

came from an influential teacher and acting coach, he knew there was a good story for a film script. When he found out that Burton’s teacher adopted him, having to pay off the boy’s real father Dic Jenkins a fee to sign the adoption papers, effectively selling his own son for £50, Hyams saw that the genesis to both Burton’s genius as an actor, and his downfall as an alcoholic, were all generated from those dramatic beginnings.

The film all builds up to Richard Burton playing Prince Hal in Henry VI at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-uponAvon. “This allowed us some latitude,” says director Marc Evans, “and the film is as much myth as it is history, a kind of fairy tale even. Young Richard Jenkins is transformed into the Burton we know in the final frames of the film and is almost blinded

by the flashbulbs of the celebrity that is to define the rest of his life. He re-visited Wales many times but in one sense he could never go back.”

A few days before opening night, Richard meets his old mentor in the church where Shakespeare is buried. “Tommorrow, Richie, sound trumpets. Let our bloody colours wave.” Young Richard completes the line from Henry VI: “And either victory, or else the grave.”

The trend for biopics today is to focus on one key period of the subject’s life, and the director could not have picked a more poignant one in the life of Richard Burton.

The only other recent film about the actor’s life was Burton and Taylor, in which Dominic West seemed unable to grasp the notion of playing someone else. He plays Burton

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Photo of Harry Lawtey by Warren Orchard

identically to the way he played Prince Charles in The Crown, ie without any attempt to impersonate him. West is presumably one of those actors who only ever plays themselves. Perhaps there will be a film about him one day, where the actor playing him gets his own back by refusing to pretend he is Dominic West.

Mr Burton is a bit of an acting masterclass, especially when Harry Lawtey is on camera. It is however completely redeemed by Toby Jones, who also fills the screen but in a much more subtle way.

When they are on screen together, it’s a bit like watching Dustin Hoffman acting with Laurence Olivier, one of them trying much harder than the other to achieve the same result. Nevertheless, this is a pleasant rainy Sunday afternoon kind of movie, one to be

enjoyed while wearing a tank top and eating Spam sandwiches.

Richard Burton and his mentor remained friends for the rest of their lives.

In Philip Burton’s 1992 autobiography, Richard & Philip: The Burtons: a Book of Memories, he commented: “One day in 1964 when Richard was playing in Hamlet on Broadway, he and I were interviewed jointly in a private corner of an Eighth Avenue bar and restaurant much frequented by theatre people. We had a live audience of one, Richard’s wife, Elizabeth Taylor. One of the questions aimed at me was, “How did you come to adopt him?” Richard jumped in with, ‘He didn’t adopt me; I adopted him.’

There was much truth in that. He needed me, and, as I realised later, he set out to get me.” n

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Feature

T HE R E I S NOT H I N G L I K E A DAME Andrew Roberts swoons at the sheer magic and mystery, not to mention persistence, of Dame Joan Collins

“I became known by the British press as Queen of the Horror Films, a title I didn’t particularly relish. But I was resilient.

A survivor. I considered myself lucky to be working so much after such a long period away from the British screen, and particularly since I was already well into my thirties”

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t would be fair to say that Revenge is not one of the great British films of 1971; it made The Guardian’s critic “feel as though its makers ought to be put down inhumanely”. However, it does have two redeeming features, the first being its ambiance. I am just about old enough to vouch for the accuracy of the narrative’s

vision of early 1970s England: brown wallpapered living rooms, beige nylon wear, rusting Singer Vogues and grocer’s shops that look as though they have not yet recovered from the Blitz. Almost everyone on the screen appears drawn, pale and suffused with Mother’s Pride toast & marmalade – with the exception of Joan Collins.

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The young Joan Collins was clearly a match for Elizabeth Taylor

As was often the case in a film, Joan was a most welcome presence in Revenge. While her co-star James Booth spends much of the film glowering in the manner of a once very promising actor reduced to a low-budget production, Joan’s performance is totally committed. To quote Kim Newman, she “gives her all despite getting the clunkier lines (‘I don’t know what’s happening to all of us, we’ve all gone raving mad’) and an unflattering hairdo”. By 1971 Joan Collins was 38 years old, with a screen career lasting twenty years since leaving RADA. All of which is the perfect opportunity to celebrate the often-overlooked aspects of her British screen career.

Some of my earlier memories of seeing the great lady on screen are from when I

was a young blade. Rather than revise for A-level economics, I often found myself distracted with such 1970s British horror films as Revenge on late-night television. Many pictures in this genre featured Joan, who reflected: “I became known by the British press as Queen of the Horror Films – a title I didn’t particularly relish. But I was resilient.

A survivor. I considered myself lucky to be working so much after such a long period away from the British screen, particularly since I was well into my thirties”.

These pictures varied from the rather good – 1972’s Fear in the Night with Peter Cushing, the entertainingly artless – 1971’s Tales from the Crypt – and the hilariously awful – 1975’s I Don’t Want to Be Born. Yet, even when playing a Soho stripper who is cursed

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Publicity shot from the late 1950s

by her dancing partner and consequently gives birth to a very badly behaved infant, Joan remains utterly stalwart. To quote Chris Woods’s review of this nonmasterpiece of British filmmaking: “There’s brutal killings galore, including drownings, hangings, a spectacular beheading and a comedy sweaty dwarf heart-attack that seems to go on forever. Plus you get to see a (dubbed) Caroline Munro and hear some fantastically bad dialogue”. All this, a minor role for Floella Benjamin and Joan, who looks quite wonderful. She is certainly better value than a woebegone-looking Ralph Bates with his 1971 footballer hairstyle and interesting attempt at an Italian accent.

Similarly, 1973’s Dark Places has Joan’s delightful performance as a strumpet

attempting to tempt an over-acting Robert Hardy, who is much given to bellowing, “You’re not going to get rid of me, do you hear me? This is my house!” But nothing can prevent Joan from making the most of her screen time, even if her dialogue sounds like rejected Carry On film material. Best of all is the same year’s Tales That Witness Madness, aka ‘The portmanteau British horror film in which Michael Jayston leaves Joan for a tree trunk named Mel’. Both leads seem to treat the material with the respect it deserves, and the result is some of the finest comedy in the history of British cinema.

Such roles led me to seek out Joan’s earlier work, and her first major feature film role was in Ealing’s 1952 probation service drama I Believe in You. The 18-year-

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Joan with Harry Fowler in I Believe in You (1952)

old actress gives an extremely accomplished performance, more than holding her own in scenes with Celia Johnson and Cecil Parker. Her would-be delinquent Norma Hart is calculating, naive, vulnerable, and childlike; there is a scene at Holborn’s Oasis Swimming Baths where her unselfconscious smile illuminates the screen. The plot has her choosing between Harry Fowler’s basically decent Charlie Hooker and the decadent Jordie Bennett, played by our old friend Laurence Harvey with a strange Johannesburg-Cockney voice. He belongs to a world of spivs, black market gin and subterranean jazz clubs; the poster artwork features Norma mesmerised by Jordie’s pompadour of evil.

The Monthly Film Bulletin thought, “Norma and Hooker, in particular, are

types rather than individuals”, and it is to Joan’s credit that she created a believable figure in Norma. The Daily Mirror was more appreciative, its somewhat overwrought film critic referring to the young star as a “saucy and sexy lass”. The News of the World appeared equally smitten, raving about the “fire and spirit in her acting and that odd combination of allure and mystery that spells eventual world stardom”.

For now, Joan was the ‘Coffee Bar Jezebel’ who would star in the 1953 X-certificate proto-Teddy Boy drama Cosh Boy, as Rene Collins, a teenager who falls for local gang leader Roy (James Kenney).

Post-sentencing for robbing an old lady, a probation officer directs our anti-hero towards his local youth club. Sadly, Roy is so dastardly he seduces Rene, the sister of

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on a desert island with Robertson Hare, George Cole, and Kenneth More, the last-named essaying an Irish accent of spectacular awfulness. Add a cockatoo voiced by Peter Sellers and the fascinating possibility of a Collins/Cole love scene, and you have highly memorable entertainment.

Kine Weekly snidely wrote Joan “strips well as Sadie” – some 1950s film critics really were mouldy figs.

By 1955, Joan Collins had left for Hollywood, which was not entirely surprising. British cinema of that era had a poor record of accomplishment in recognising the talents of Audrey Hepburn, Diana Dors, and Fenella Fielding, to name but a few actresses. We could add Imogen Hassall to this depressing list by the following decade. In addition, the smugly puritan belief of mainstream British cinema that female sexuality needed to be repressed or punished lasted well into the 1960s; one thinks of Janet Munro in 1963’s Bitter Harvest and Julie Christie in 1965’s Darling.

Between 1955 and 1970, Joan’s appearances in British films were intermittent. By 1958, there was the tantalising prospect of Joan in the title role of Cleopatra, opposite Peter Finch as Caesar, which surely would have been more entertaining than the elephantine Burton/ Taylor debacle. She also co-starred with her soon-to-be ex-husband Anthony Newley, aka David Bowie Mk. 1, in 1969’s Can Heironymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness?. Newley, a prodigiously gifted actor, songwriter, and singer, aimed to create a British 8 ½ filmed on a beach in Gozo, with Joan as the memorably named ‘Polyester Poontang’. Bruce Forsyth guest stars as ‘Uncle Limelight’, the spirit of the Music Hall, and the production cannot be said to lack ambition. Roger Ebert found it “strange, wonderful, original, and not quite successful. It is just about the first attempt in English to make the sort of personal film

Our Girl Friday (1953)

one of his gang members. Cosh Boy’s vision of London is fascinatingly grim; bombsites, dank Victorian terraces, and youth clubs as described by George Melly – a “grey colourless world where good boys played ping-pong”. Joan brings a note of glamour to this bleak realm so, following British cinematic morality of that time, she must be punished for falling for such a young villain.

The story ends with Roy’s new macho Canadian stepfather applying a damned good thrashing before the police arrest the young rotter. Sigmund Freud would have several field days.

Even more bizarre is 1953’s Our Girl Friday, shot in ravishing Eastmancolor, and a film that illustrates the casual surrealism of mainstream 1950s British comedy. We have Joan in a bikini as Sadie Patch shipwrecked

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Joan arrives in Hollywood

Fellini and Godard have been experimenting with in their very different ways”.

Television could also remind viewers of Collins’s range; Tales of the Unexpected and especially her stripper having a nervous breakdown in the 1965 Struggle for a Mind episode of The Human Jungle. 26 years later, she starred in a BBC adaptation of Noel Coward’s Tonight at 8.30, almost unrecognisable as Myrtle Bagot, the doyenne of the railway buffet rock cakes, in Still Life. Her Doris Gow of Fumed Oak, a Lady Macbeth of the outer suburbs, is superior to Betty Ann Davies in the 1952 film adaptation. Joan’s performance wonderfully complements Anthony Newley’s quietly malevolent underplaying as her spouse Henry. One feels The Master would have approved.

Joan Collins received a DBE in 2015, and her next work is a Mike Newell-directed biopic of the last days of Wallis Simpson.

We hope she will make many more screen appearances. Throughout her career, Dame Joan was often the sole redeeming feature in a film, including those you might move continents to avoid; let us not mention The Stud and The Bitch. More importantly, she is the chief reason for watching an overlooked gem, and perhaps her finest hour is 1971’s Quest for Love, based on John Wyndham’s Random Quest. It is a subtle, delicate, and extremely moving performance that can reduce even hardened viewers to tears.

From her first scenes in I Believe in You, it was obvious that Joan Collins was a bona fide star – and one who was also a fascinating actress. n

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THE

GRAND

FIFTH

FLANEUR

WA L K

Midday, Sunday 11th May 2025 Meeting Point: The statue of Beau Brummell on Jermyn Street, London W1 This year sees the first run of special commemorative Grand Flaneur Walk lapel badges, available to purchase from WWW.THECHAP.CO.UK and at the walk itself

SARTORIAL

HOTEL PARADISO

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OLD TOWN VALEDICTORY

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BOSALINO, BOGART AND ME

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CUTTER’S CHOICE

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Photoshoot

HOTEL PARADISO CLOTHES: VIVIEN OF HOLLOWAY WWW.VIVIENOFHOLLOWAY.COM LOCATION: HOTEL PELIROCCO, BRIGHTON WWW.HOTELPELIROCCO.CO.UK PHOTOGRAPHER: ROSS ROBERTSON MODELS: RUBY DEMURE, CHERRY SHAKEWELL, JOE LEATHER

T

here is something reassuring about things happening in threes, especially when they involve silver. Last year was the Chap’s silver jubilee, and when we discovered that our old chums at Hotel Pelirocco in Brighton were also celebrating 25 years in business, we approached Vivien of Holloway for some natty threads that could be photographed in the hotel’s Pin up Parlour room. Only then did we discover that Vivien was also celebrating 25 years of selling 1940s and 50s retro-inspired clothing.

So with an assortment of clothing for both chaps and chapettes with a distinctive forties and fifties flavour, we checked into Room 9 at the Hotel Pelirocco with two female models, one male model and one gentleman photographer. The room is dedicated to Diana Dors, the British fifties actress touted as the English Marilyn Monroe at the time, and it has been styled as if it were the star’s dressing room.

Hotel Pelirocco has 19 themed rooms, with themes from forties boudoirs to Star Wars. Cultural heroes celebrated run from Bettie Page to David Bowie to Dolly Parton, via other rooms themed around Japanese love hotels, Brighton tailor Gresham Blake and the Moulin Rouge. There are even a couple of rooms specifically aimed at what Brighton is famous for – the dirty weekend.

Those rooms come with a little more than breakfast in the hamper and the check out time is extended (probably).

Meanwhile, over in north London, Vivien Wilson founded her brand Vivien of Holloway in the early eighties, having toured America in a fifties Chrysler in search of a non-existent rockabilly scene – which turned out to be happening in London. She began, aged just 17, by selling a mix of vintage pieces and her own hand made clothes from a stall in Kensington Market. As the only maker of forties and fifties inspired womenswear, Vivien was much in demand, styling her first magazine cover while still only seventeen.

The Vivien of Holloway shop opened in 2010 and ran for 15 years until closing last year, now still selling online. As well as the vast range of women’s dresses, tops and trousers, the brand now also offers men’s shirts in a fifties style, skirting the more tasteful edges of the Hawaiian shirt with designs that are authentic to the period. While the murky English Channel crashed on the shore a few hundred yards away on Brighton Beach, our motley crew of retro dressers quietly showcased their Vivien of Holloway ensembles, watched over by the ghost of Diana Dors, whose image, apparently (although it wasn’t caught on camera) winked at the photographer at least once. n

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Ruby wears: Halterneck Dress in Forna Custard Joe wears: Short-Sleeved Shirt in Motel White Cherry wears: Gloria 1940s Dress in Tigerfish Ocean

Joe wears: Short-Sleeved Shirt in Angelfish Turquoise Ruby wears: Gloria 1940s Dress in Motel White Cherry wears: Halterneck Dress in Chrysanthemum Lilac

Cherry wears: Halterneck Dress in Tapa Emerald Joe wears: Short-Sleeved Shirt in Tapa Sapphire Ruby wears: Grace Chrysanthemum Dress in Black Sateen

Ruby wears: Grace Chrysanthemum Dress in Black Sateen

Joe wears: Short-Sleeved Shirt in Grey Pink

Joe wears: Short-Sleeved Shirt in Motel White

Cherry wears: Halterneck Dress in Tapa Emerald

Joe wears: Short-Sleeved Shirt in Motel White Cherry wears: Gloria 1940s Dress in Tigerfish Ocean

Joe wears: Short-Sleeved Shirt in Angelfish Turquoise Ruby wears: Gloria 1940s Dress in Motel White

Cherry wears: Gloria 1940s Dress in Tigerfish Ocean

Cherry wears: Halterneck Dress in Chrysanthemum Lilac Joe wears: Short-Sleeved Shirt in Angelfish Turquoise

Sartorial

OLD TOWN VALEDICTORY Ian Simmons laments the passing, after thirty long years, of beloved sartorial institution Old Town, which closed its doors earlier this year

“For a time, the Old Town website provided their garments with splendid descriptions that owner Will Brown called a fictitious provenance – an aid to the imagination – with, if I remember correctly, their Stanley jacket allegedly being ‘an unfaithful copy of one found in a tool locker during the demolition of Stratford locomotive works’” 57

The author in Old Town’s three-piece linen suit

The editor trying to civilise the city in Old Town’s ginger biscuit three-piece Harris Tweed suit

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ll is not well across The Chap multiverse. To quote what I understand is a well-regarded science fiction moving picture, “I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror”; word was out that the beloved classic workwear company Old Town would be finally and irrevocably closing its doors at the end of last year.

Founded in 1994 by designers Marie Willey (universally known to customers as ‘Miss Willey’) and Will Brown, Old Town provided beautifully made, functional and reasonably priced clothes, perfect for stylish everyday wear. As summed up by former Royal Academy Chief Executive and longtime Old Town afficionado Charles Saumarez Smith: “It was exactly the opposite of every

other men’s clothing store: the clothes were made to last forever; they made no effort whatsoever to follow fashion, in fact were wilfully modelled on styles which date from round about the First World War; and they were designed to be generous to the expanding waistline instead of assuming that everyone is built like a svelte twentyone year old”. For a time, the Old Town website provided their garments with splendid descriptions that Brown called a “fictitious provenance – an aid to the imagination”, with, if I remember correctly, their Stanley jacket allegedly being ‘an unfaithful copy of one found in a tool locker during the demolition of Stratford locomotive works’.

The combination of style, comfort and affordability made Old Town a cult brand for much of the cultural sector for the last

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Billy Childish in Old Town, photographed by Elizabeth Blanchett

“My friend Gary Hardiman, one such lecturer, told me that when he passed on news of Old Town’s closure to a colleague, the man burst into tears… but then immediately headed for their London stockist Labour and Wait and maxed out his credit card buying everything they had in his size. ‘I’ll be good for at least ten years now,’ he told Gary”

30 years. It was rare that museums did not have at least one curator habitually dressed in Old Town, and it was positively a uniform for art school lecturers. My friend Gary Hardiman, one such lecturer, told me that when he passed on news of Old Town’s closure to a colleague, the man burst into tears… but then immediately headed for their London stockist Labour and Wait and maxed out his credit card buying everything they had in his size. “I’ll be good for at least ten years now,” he told Gary.

Getting an early intimation of their forthcoming closure some time back, I paid a visit to their shop in Holt, Norfolk, and stocked up on suits that I reckon will see me out; I’ll most likely be buried in one. Old Town probably has the world’s most fiercely loyal customer base, and Gary tells me that at least one art school teaches Old Town as an example of how to build a community around a brand, although I am not sure Old Town

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CHAP readers Fred Delius (left) and Micky Gibbons (above) in their cherished Old Town threads

would have seen themselves as ‘a brand’.

Part of the appeal of Old Town was that their creations lasted. My first purchase was from their original shop, in Elm Hill, Norwich, in the early 90s, and the cotton drill Marshalsea jacket I bought then is still in my wardrobe, pleasantly patinated with age; in fact I wear it now as I write. This longevity is a result of the Old Town approach to making; they used good quality fabrics and traditional techniques. They were a splendid example of how to develop a rural craft business; their clothes have always been made by skilled crafts people around Holt, and they are about the last organisation that I dealt with where a phone call was immediately answered by a

knowledgeable, helpful human being, often Miss Willey herself.

Old Town’s output of up to 70 garments a week was produced by a team of nine experienced local machinists. “We don’t like factories,” Brown said, “You just end up with that factory style – everything looks the same. It takes us months to show someone how we want things done, but it’s worth it”.

However, in this dedication to proper making skills lay the seeds of Old Town’s demise.

Closure came not because the business ceased to be financially viable - far from it, it was positively thriving – or because Willey and Brown decided to retire, but because their machinists retired, one by one, until there

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George Buchanan (above and right) captures the general sentiment about Old Town’s closure

were too few to keep up with orders. Gary Hardiman told me that Miss Willey had explained to him that there was one maker whose full-time job was sewing Canvey caps, but she’d had to give up because her eyes and fingers were no longer good enough to thread needles. The machinists, many who were with Old Town since the start, have proved to be irreplaceable, as younger people just do not have equivalent skills. Far fewer people sew from childhood and fast fashion means that now very few people routinely make their own clothes in Britain, while the government has

shown little interest in encouraging craft skills or small-scale industry; Savile Row is suffering a skills drought for the same reason.

Willey and Brown hoped they could sell the business to someone with access to the necessary skills, but while there was considerable interest in buying the company, no-one came to the table with a suitably skilled team. So, reluctantly, Old Town took the decision to close. Mourning their passing, Saumarez Smith says, “It is exactly the sort of small-scale business enterprise producing ecologically sustainable clothing which should

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Above: CHAP reader Micky Gibbons’ comment on Old Town’s closure

be a model for the future. Surely there is someone enterprising out there of the next generation who might be willing to take it on, even some hedge fund which might invest in it, or one of those Japanese companies which might take it on under new management?”

While Darcy Clothing, The Carrier Company and others sell garments akin to Old Town’s,

they lack the heritage and panache of the originals. Saumarez Smith mourns the fact that future generations will be deprived of the pleasures of ringing up Miss. Willey’s successors and ordering a new suit, and I think he speaks for all Old Town loyalists when he adds “In Japan, they would be living national treasures”. n

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Sartorial

BORSALINO AND BOGART Gustav Temple pays a visit to the London branch of Borsalino to find out why Humphrey Bogart got nearly all his hats from the Italian hat maker

“Maddalena also points out that the inside of one’s hat should never be seen, which is why, when indoors, you carry it placed against your chest with the lining facing towards you. ‘Your own sweat is there, so a gentleman never lets anyone see the inside of his hat.’

These Borsalino people are as well informed as I had expected them to be” “When your head says one thing and your whole life says another, your head always loses.”

Humphrey Bogart as Frank McCloud in Key Largo

H

umphrey Bogart’s line from Key Largo (1948) rang in my head as I mounted the steps to Burlington Arcade in London. I may have been a long way from a storm-lashed hotel in Florida, but the spirit of Bogie didn’t seem so far away when, after passing all the sparkling jewels peddled by other stores in the arcade, I stopped outside Borsalino.

Reassuring rows of men’s hats, mainly Fedoras, greet the customer at this newest branch of Italy’s oldest and most reputable hatmaker. Giuseppe Borsalino opened his first atelier in Alessandria 1857 with his older brother Lazzaro, their very first handmade felt hat going on sale on 4th April 1857. By 1868 the business was flourishing and had begun to garner industry awards.

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The five different hat styles that Borsalino produced served all the headwear needs of late 19th century Europe, but one style began to catch on, and the felt Fedora soon became their signature model.

By 1888, Borsalino had grown from a small atelier to a vast factory in Alessandria, turning out 2,000 hats every day for the good folk of Italy. Those numbers may have dwindled slightly today, but the quality has not, despite attempts by Guiseppe’s son Teresio to introduce mechanised manufacture in the early 20th century.

Today the process of making the finest Fedoras in the world continues to be largely done by hand, and still in Alessandria.

The reason I am here is because the Borsalino brand was suddenly back in the limelight, with the release of Bogart: Life Comes in Flashes last November. This epic documentary, the first to be officially sanctioned by Bogie’s son Stephen, features a panoply of Borsalino Fedoras. To

commemorate the release of the film, the company produced a Bogart edition of their classic Fedora, retrieving from the archives the precise dimensions of Bogie’s signature style. His was a high-crowned version, typical of its day in the 1940s, with a 12cm dome and a medium brim of 6.5cm. The Bogart edition is made from Jorasse palette brushed felt, the grosgrain band being much wider than today’s typical Fedora styles. Inside the satin lining is etched one of Bogart’s most famous quotes, ‘At heart I am a lovable character’.

Today I am trying to convince the staff at Borsalino that at heart I am a lovable character, for I am here to commission a made-to-measure Fedora with a nod to Humphrey Bogart. Many of my vast collection of hats are already Fedoras, ranging from soft cream colours to jet-black, all with contrasting bands, my own particular preference. If a hat comes with a band in the same colour, I usually have the band changed.

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Humphrey Bogart with Elisha Cook Jr in The Maltese Falcon

“I am assured by the staff at Borsalino that Bogie’s hats were mainly black or dark grey and I am inclined to believe them. In the 1940s, it wasn’t just the film stock that was generally monochrome, at least in Hollywood. It would be difficult to imagine Humphrey Bogart in a bright purple Fedora” Today, for once, I can choose this feature from the very start. Marco and Maddalena immediately seem reassured when I enter their shop wearing a vintage grey Fedora.

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I expected to have my head measured to get an accurate size, but instead my hat size is established through trying on various existing hats on display.

This also gives me a chance to assess the three brim widths on offer, deciding eventually that the widest brim has more elán than the others. Marco agrees, saying that he thinks I can carry off the wider brim, and then gives me a choice between a rabbit/hare combo or beaver for the body of the hat. Once informed that beaver is higher quality and is also better at keeping off the rain, reader, I choose beaver.

His colleague Maddalena then shows me the huge selection of grosgrain bands available. Having chosen a black hat, the band must, in my opinion, be of a lighter colour. Among the greys there is one that has a touch of green in it, and Marco observes the green of my eyes and declares this to be the right band for me.

Checking out Bogie’s hats in most of

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Here the discerning Chap or Chapette will find original period items with which to adorn their vintage wardrobe, from 1920s Art Deco cufflinks to 1950s spivvy tie clips to Tootal scarves, ties and cravats of all shapes and colours.

The four categories of accessory are cufflinks, tie clips, neckwear and miscellaneous – the latter containing anything from a pair of WWI-era braces to a gold plated pocket watch. New stock is added weekly, so be sure to check in regularly to see what new items are gracing the shelves.

Recent additions include sets of cufflinks made from the keys of an original prewar typewriter.

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Above: the finished hat, perfect in every detail

his films, we have very little to go on in terms of colour, as the best ones are all in black and white. I am assured by the staff at Borsalino that his hats were mainly black or dark grey and I am inclined to believe them.

In the 1940s, it wasn’t just the film stock that was generally monochrome, at least in Hollywood. It would be difficult to imagine Humphrey Bogart in a bright purple Fedora (though this colour is now available among the huge palette of outer colours).

And so to the lining. Silk, naturally. Greys and browns are the classic colours inside a black hat, although when I flashed the scarlet lining on my suit, both staff members pointed out that red lining was also available. “When you collect your hat from the cloakroom,’ Marco points out, “there will be no possibility of someone else taking your hat by mistake.”

Maddalena also points out that the inside of one’s hat should never be seen, which is why, when indoors, you carry it placed against your chest with the lining facing towards you.

“It’s an intimate place, the inside of your hat.

Your own sweat is there, so a gentleman never lets anyone see the inside of his hat.” These Borsalino people are as well informed as

I had expected them to be.

So red for the lining, and a black leather band on the inside. Gold or silver is offered for the logo stamped on the leather, and then, a final detail, the font for one’s engraved initials may be chosen. Naturally I choose the cursive font based on Guiseppe Borsalino’s own handwriting. The initials may be placed, instead, on the exterior bow of the band, but we all agreed that this would be a touch vulgar, like having monogrammed shirt pockets.

The final addition is a length of elastic attached to the band, which connects to the lapel of one’s jacket, preventing it from flying off in high winds. I wasn’t expecting to wear this Fedora in the hurricanes of Key Largo, but better not to take any chances. The Borsalino Fedora then took around eight weeks to manufacture, all my details being sent straight to the factory in Alessandria. We waited over a hundred years for a Borsalino hatters to open in London, so this didn’t seem too long a wait. n Bogart: Life Comes in Flashes is available to download on digital platforms

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Sartorial

CUTTER’S CHOICE Thomas Mahon, head cutter at Savile Row tailors Redmayne 1860, succumbs to a sartorial interrogation from Francis Giordanella

“Tailors and cutters are very dependent on each other. The cutter’s position is a little more ‘lone wolf’, as he can only earn an income from his or her skill and reputation.

A tailor is in the background and often works for several firms, and hence can benefit from several income streams”

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lease tell us where you work, in what capacity and how long you have worked there.

I’m the head Cutter at Redmayne 1860. I’ve been here for seven years. However, I started my career at Redmayne more than forty years ago, moved to Anderson & Sheppard and ultimately returned. I’ve always had a relationship with the firm, so you could say I’ve come home.

Savile Row was once the epicentre of gentlemen’s bespoke tailoring. The Row now has several non-bespoke outlets.

Is this progress?

It’s a form of progress, yes, but hopefully not at the expense of true bespoke. We offer MadeTo-Measure and true bespoke, which is ideal if you have the skill and heritage in your house.

We have a more accessible financial starting point for clients, so I think it can be beneficial

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“Our patterns are cut freehand by eye, using skill and experience and not standard block patterns, physical or digital. The measures are a guide for the cutter but not the be all and end all. Giving the garment style is paramount, and using your hand and eye to draft an elegant pattern will ultimately create an elegant garment”

to the trade in general. Certainly the cloth merchants are happy. Dressing well is a good move, whatever your circumstances.

A gentleman’s relationship with his tailor has always been a closely guarded secret; similarly there was always a tradition of tailors never mentioning their high-profile clients in public. Is this still observed on the Row? The honest answer is I don’t know about the other firms. From our point of view we don’t reveal anything. If we do, it’s because our clients did so first. As always, the least said the better.

Do the tailors and cutters on the Row all know each other and socialise in certain pubs?

We certainly don’t all know one another but

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we’re pretty knowledgeable of who everyone is. Regarding socialising, when it comes to my generation, very much so. But the younger ones I think not so much. In all fairness to them, they probably can’t afford it – and neither can I when I pick up the tab for a few rounds! The West End is very expensive, though I do occasionally see some of the younger tailors and cutters in The Masons and other local pubs. Generally speaking it’s the older guard, and I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not.

connection to digital technology and is very rarely used today, although it’s the only way we draft patterns for bespoke at Redmayne. Our patterns are cut freehand by eye, using skill and experience and not standard block patterns, physical or digital.

The measures are a guide for the cutter but not the be all and end all. Giving the garment style is paramount, and using your hand and eye to draft an elegant pattern will ultimately create an elegant garment. Not rigidly keeping to a client’s measurements is key, but using the cutter’s experience and eye to create the best garment for the customer.

The term can also be used when fitting garments. It’s all about giving a suit three things – a beautiful silhouette, comfort and distinguishable style. Sometimes we need to hide or emphasise parts of a person’s body to achieve this. A literal perfect fit (possibly gained by technology) is usually sterile, boring and completely without style or elegance.

The other Rock of Eye you could say is when you fit a garment. As I’ve described, this is about an objective that must be attained that can be applied to made-to-measure and when altering ready-to-wear tailoring.

Is there any hierarchical difference between a tailor and a cutter?

Not on a personal level, but on a business level, over the years I’ve found that it’s the cutter that generates the work for both parties to be successful. They are very dependent on each other. The cutter’s position is a little more ‘lone wolf ’, as he can only earn an income from his or her skill and reputation. A maker (tailor) is in the background and often works for several firms, and hence can benefit from several income streams.

Perhaps you could explain precisely what a cutter and a tailor’s roles are?

The cutter is front of house and ensures the client’s satisfaction throughout the process, and takes full responsibility for everything.

The tailors/makers are guided and instructed by the cutter and very rarely meet the clients, but their skill and diligence is immensely important. You’ll often see on our social media a mix of both roles as we try and explain what each role is and their responsibilities.

How has the clientele on the Row changed over the years that you’ve been there?

Personally speaking, I think it’s a bit broader now. Younger people and many from all sorts of backgrounds, rather than the typical whitecollar professionals. So our type of client base has been added to but not diminished.

There used to be a tradition of men spending many hours in the tailor’s, as much of a social visit as a professional one. Does this still happen?

Absolutely, sometimes they’ll visit the City for a few days and drop by the shop every day. We’ll socialise together at the pub with the staff and often have dinner. We have overseas clients that

Is the ‘Rock of Eye’ technique still used by tailors? Has digital technology altered the process of constructing a bespoke suit in any way?

There are two ways to describe Rock of Eye regarding bespoke. Firstly, it’s a method of pattern construction that has absolutely no

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love to stay in the vicinity of the shop and we’re often seen very much like a club. So certainly we never rush anyone and our relationships are very special, often spanning decades.

big challenge. We’re fortunate to have good apprentices but they’re hard to find and it’s a long journey without a lot of pay.

“A well-known bespoke cutter from a famous house recently commented on what he thought was my under-cutter’s beautiful bespoke blazer, which was actually a hand finished made-tomeasure, so I’ll take that”

Do they still have houses of pleasure above any of the tailor’s shops on Savile Row, like they did in the 18th century?

Houses of pleasure’? Well I’ve never experienced one, and above our shop are only tailors and cutting boards. I like the idea though and must seek one out.

In a crowd of men wearing suits, would you easily be able to pick out the ones wearing bespoke suits?

Easy, as long as it’s not a Redmayne Acclaim made-to-measure. A well known bespoke cutter from a famous house recently commented on what he thought was my under-cutter’s beautiful bespoke blazer, which was actually a hand finished made-to-measure, so I’ll take that.

How is Savile Row protected from nonclothing outlets opening there?

Sorry, I’ve no idea but I’d hope common sense from the landlords would keep the symbiosis of the street for its preservation and success of existing tenants. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of understanding from the current Government regarding the trade.

We all heard about the changes taking place in Gieves & Hawkes senior management. How many other ancient establishments on the Row have succumbed to outside investment?

If it means survival of the older tailoring houses, then it’s a good thing. I suppose they individually must be judged by their merits and on how they preserve the craft. All I know is that we are independent, with my wife (our CEO) as the biggest shareholder. So when she says jump, we jump.

Were you aware of the Chap’s protest against Abercrombie & Fitch taking premises at No.3 Savile Row in 2012 and, if so, was it appreciated?

I remember the protests but not the Chap’s specifically. I have mixed views. We’d all like the Row of old but we always have change. At least A&F brought young people to the Row. I try to be positive and hope that helps increase interest in what we do.

Postscript: Since conducting this interview, Thomas was awarded the title of Master Tailor by the The Worshipful Company of Merchant Taylors, with a ceremony with the Mayor of London at Mansion House on 3rd of March. n

Would you personally object to shops opening on the Row that did not offer clothing, such as jewellery stores?

No, because it wouldn’t make any difference anyway. Money talks, I’m afraid. We all just need to be the best in the world so the opportunity doesn’t arise. However, although there’s a lot more interest in the trade, good skilled people are getting scarcer and this is the

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HONG KONG HIKE

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VICTOR WYND’S MUSEUM

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CHAP LIFE

BEN IRURZUN

FIRE, FROLICS AND BRIMSTONE

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FIRE UP THE MERLINS!

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Interiors

BEN IRURZUN Advice from one of the contestants from last year’s Interior Design Masters on how to style one’s home

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“If you took the side of the Chap that is more Oscar Wilde it would look more like my house, kind of crazy bordello boudoir, but if you went more traditional, I’m thinking of something like an office above a tailor’s on Savile Row from the past, where everything is quite weathered”

ave you always been an interior designer?

I came here from San Sebastian in the Basque Country, Spain, to finish my master’s degree in the UK, in Couture tailoring at central St Martins, and once I was here I fell in love with London. My father had a small business here, so we came here a lot when I was a child and always loved the UK. I started with a few little roles in costume, for companies like Angels of Bermondsey. Then I met my current partner, who runs the history department at Birmingham University. So we invested in his career, moved to Birmingham and bought a house together.

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Ben with one of his projects on Interior Design Masters

I’d already done interior design for myself and friends, so I used my own house as a laboratory. I’ve always loved history, and working on my own house led me to apply to go on Interior Design Masters.

If you took the side of the Chap that is more Oscar Wilde, it would look more like my house, kind of crazy bordello boudoir, but if you went more traditional, I’m thinking of something like an office above a tailor’s on Savile Row from the past, where everything is quite weathered. Two worlds collide in the Victorian period for me; the hyper masculinity and the soft femininity of the florals. In the world of the Chap I’m more towards the crazy dandy type of character.

What period or style is your house?

I always describe myself as a Victorian maximalist, but the house itself is an amalgam of eras. There was already some furniture we inherited from Daniel’s family, from the 1700s to the 1930s, and some of my own inherited furniture from Spain. I would call the style ‘generational layering’.

The house was built in 1903, but the rest of the house looks like an organic accumulation of the family that lived here before.

In the show, one of your last challenges was a dressing room for an actor or musician, and you designed a completely white room that was quite old Hollywood style. It seemed less Oscar Wilde and perhaps more Joan Collins, didn’t it?

As it was a competition, I wanted to

What do you think Chap interior design would look like?

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Ben with a crew member and winner Roisin Quinn

“Look at the bones and the proportions of your house. It might not have the proportions of a 1930s building, but look at floor plans of how those houses were arranged. You can put dividing walls, or doors were there was no door before, maybe add double doors between the dining room and living room.

Compartmentalising your house gives it more of a period flavour”

The Ladies’ Pool in the 21st century

reference what I think of as the last era of real style, which was the golden age of Hollywood in the 1930s and 40s. During my research, I found that quite a lot of stars, and not just women, requested pure white dressing rooms. Elizabeth Taylor, Greta Garbo, lots of them wanted a white dressing room because it reminded them of the sets they were working on. White also looks better in photographs, and they were always being photographed in their dressing rooms.

How do you feel about authentic period features versus faked ones?

Would you stick on ceiling roses and picture rails to a 1960s house?

Absolutely. I don’t have any problem with having a theatre set in a house. Many people might not be in their ideal property, so why not make the inside your own little fantasy? What I don’t agree with is when,

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Ben’s first entry on Interior Design Masters, a small bedroom in a B&B

for example, you have a 1930s house and you remove the original 1930s fireplace and replace it with a Victorian one. If Victorian is your aesthetic, then box the original fireplace in and protect it, then place your Victorian one on top of it. Preserve it for someone else that will love it.

Do you have any tips on turning a drab modern house into a 1930s stylish pad?

Look at the bones and the proportions of your house. It might not have the proportions of a 1930s building. But look at floor plans online of how those houses were

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arranged. If you are so inclined, you can put dividing walls, or doors were there was no door before, maybe add double doors between the dining room and living room.

If you can compartmentalise your house, it already gives it more of a period flavour.

The next most important thing is to have plenty of secondary lighting, in the form of lamps, lit ensconces, vintage light fittings. All of this can be acquired in salvage yards. Once you’ve decided on a style, for example English 1930s art deco, which is very domestic, attainable and affordable, go to a salvage yard and get things like fireplaces, flooring, but don’t buy the first thing you see, because you’re going to get ripped off. Salvage dealers, like antique dealers, can be absolute hoarders and they don’t want to sell a single thing, therefore the prices are going to be inflated. Facebook marketplace, antique markets – those are your friends. And most importantly – dress down, for God’s sake!

I shouldn’t even be confessing to this, but when I go to these places, I dress very badly and I walk with a fake limp, just to get pity out of traders and get things cheaply!

very 80s or 90s, but grab any of those books and they can be complete bibles of style.

Their original pieces, especially Laura Ashley, might cost you and arm and a leg, but if you get the gist of the drapery, how to arrange the house historically, the wallpaper, the colour tones, they clearly have studied the early manuals of interior design.

There is a myriad of books, from the 1920s to the 1960s, as well as magazines like Practical Woodworker, which tell you everything you need to know, from marbling to hanging wallpaper, with colour palettes and everything.

I heard that you are planning an interior design book of your own?

Oh my God, long story! So I reached a stage last year with Instagram where I had 27,000 followers, then my account was hacked and I lost them all. Then all the brands I was working with cut all my deals. This book at that stage was on the table at Penguin, they had the first chapter and my agent was negotiating the contract.

The book was a guide to do up your house by using memories. I don’t believe in fashion, fads or anything like that. When I have a client, I ask them to do a memory exercise. I ask them to close their eyes – and I know how corny this sounds – and conjure up a happy memory from childhood. I always give the example of my partner’s.

When he closes his eyes, he can vividly remember his grandmother in a townhouse in London, cooking tea. Then I ask him, what are the colours, what is the feel of the room? Is it warm or cold?

Often, when people inherit a property or family mementoes, they don’t even know what to do with them. But if you work from your own memory, you’ll be able to work them into your house. Don’t throw anything away; work with what you’ve got and build up from that. That, in essence, was what the book was going to explain. n

Which interior designers of the past do you admire?

If I thought about quintessential Hollywood style it would have to be Billy Haines and Dorothy Draper. Both geniuses at what they did. But someone more contemporary who marries historical style with modern is Mario Buatta. He was very good at taking all that 18th and 19th century European style and transposing it to contemporary New York City, especially for new money clients. At that time in America, new money was very concerned to give the appearance of having heritage, and the only way to achieve that was by generational layering.

For more commercial work, I really admire the work of Martha Stewart and Laura Ashley. I know that it might sound

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Religion

FIRE, FROLICS AND BRIMSTONE Stephen Arnell examines the various incarnations of the Hellfire Club, since its first inception as a society of reprobates and blasphemers in 18th century England

“Club members indulged in satirical blasphemy, addressing each other as ‘devils’ and dressed as characters from the Bible, echoing the popular trend amongst the swells of mocking religion. Nosh included ‘Breast of Venus,’ ‘Devil’s Lion,’ and ‘Holy Ghost Pie,’ washed down with a flagon or two of ‘Hell Fire Punch.’ Scrumptious” 96

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he Hellfire Club was the name used by a number of exclusive establishments patronised by highsociety rakehells, founded in Great Britain and Ireland in the 18th Century.

The most notorious of these was Francis Dashwood’s iteration of the club, which met from 1749 to the 1760s. Dashwood excavated The Hellfire Caves at West Wycombe for his Hellfire ‘gatherings’.

The club had no set location, meeting on Sundays at various places in the capital, including Wharton’s Riding Club, members’ houses, and Carshalton’s The Greyhound Tavern. Club members indulged in satirical blasphemy, addressing each other as ‘devils’ and dressed as characters from the Bible, echoing the popular trend amongst the swells of mocking religion. Nosh included ‘Breast of Venus,’ ‘Devil’s Lion,’ and ‘Holy Ghost Pie,’ washed down with a flagon or two of ‘Hell Fire Punch’.

But by 1721, the Hellfire Club’s days were numbered when Hanoverian George I, urged by the likes of Robert Walpole, put forward a Bill condemning ‘horrid impieties’.

Continuing the Great Work of the Hellfire Club, Sir Francis Dashwood began meeting his fellows at the City of London’s still

THE FIRST HELLFIRE CLUB

The first iteration of the ‘official’ Hellfire Club was founded in London in 1718 by Philip Wharton, 1st Duke of Wharton (16981731). A distinguished politician, Wharton had two entirely separate lives, firstly, as a distinguished man of letters, the second as “a drunkard, a rioter, an infidel and a rake”.

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Francis Dashwood’s mausoleum at West Wycombe

“Bacchus and Venus were the deities to whom they almost publicly sacrificed. Whores (referred to as ‘nuns’) were on the 18th century equivalent of speed dial for meetings in both the abbey and caves.

When a quorum had been established, mock rituals, pornographic tableaux, heavy boozing and banqueting was followed by a stimulating bout of ‘wenching”

When the goings-on at the Abbey attracted unwelcome attention, Dashwood relocated the more outré events, seeking the ultimate setting for debauchery in the labyrinthine caves and tunnels (decorated with mythological and sexual carvings) excavated into the hillside above West Wycombe village. But these happy days were relatively short-lived, as Dashwood’s teetering political career, accusations of printing pornographic material, the Club’s notorious reputation and the effects of years of riotous living on the ageing members, meant that the fellowship had reached its natural, or unnatural, end by 1766.

In other parts of the British Isles, Scotland’s similarly libertine The Beggar’s Benison (motto ‘May prick nor purse ne’er fail you’) lasted until 1836, while County Dublin’s own Hellfire Club survived a mere six years (1735-41), although it was revived later in the century (1771-1800). Built using some of the stone from a prehistoric burial site it had displaced (always a dodgy move), the mountain-top Irish branch was an ill-famed place, where the devil himself occasionally played a hand of cards, a huge black cat stalked the corridors, dwarves were sacrificed and black masses were held.

extant, and rather atmospheric, George and Vulture Inn during the 1730s. In the 1750s the Club, in search of a more secluded venue to their increasing risqué revels, met at Dashwood’s Gothic-revival renovation Medmenham Abbey, by the Thames in Buckinghamshire. Written in stained glass at the entrance was ‘Do What Thou Wilt’.

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Inside the more sedate Hellfire Caves today

society of high school students in Netflix’s YA fantasy-drama Stranger Things. Prior to this, popular culture also appropriated the Club in an episode of 1960s cult tv show The Avengers entitled A Touch of Brimstone (1966) where Diana Rigg’s Emma Peel encounters perverted modern-day members determined to resurrect the debauchery, costumes and more of Dashwood’s 18th century establishment.

Chap icon Peter Wyngarde, louche lead in Department S and Jason King, stars as kinky society leader The Honourable John Cleverly, a thorough scoundrel intent on gaining political power between orgies at the Hellfire Club. He particularly hankers after Diana Rigg in her (self-designed) ‘Queen of Sin’ outfit, complete with accessorised python, jolly keen on administering her a sound whipping after her identity as an infiltrating secret agent is revealed. Cleverly’s

RIGOROUSLY PAGAN PRACTICE

What had actually taken place in Dashwood’s establishment? Horace Walpole, who visited Medmenham Abbey, noted that the members’ “practice was rigorously pagan: Bacchus and Venus were the deities to whom they almost publicly sacrificed.”

Whores (referred to as ‘nuns’) were on hand for meetings in both the abbey and caves.

When a quorum had been established, mock rituals, pornographic tableaux, heavy boozing and banqueting was followed by a stimulating bout of ‘wenching.’ Obscene parodies of Christian rituals were staged, where Dashwood used a communion cup to pour out libations (of various kinds) to assorted heathen deities.

A TOUCH OF BRIMSTONE

The Hellfire Club is nowadays probably best known as a Dungeons & Dragons-oriented

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Peter Wyngarde in A Touch of Brimstone

wicked schemes are inevitably foiled and the club disbanded, likely as not to be converted into a swinging 60s bingo hall.

clubs for the super-rich and powerful as a front for their many nefarious worldconquering schemes. The 18th century Club contributed to the DNA of Claremont’s creation, but he also took inspiration from various other sources.

He drew on relevant TV shows and films for the peculiar ethos of the Hellfire Club, acknowledging a sizeable debt to the aforementioned A Touch of Brimstone episode of The Avengers; Rigg’s ‘Queen of Sin’ was the model for the Black Queen character, while hypnotic manipulator Jason Wyngarde was of course inspired by A Touch of Brimstone’s Peter Wyngarde.

2011’s X-Men: First Class saw the first movie appearance of Marvel’s Hellfire Club; totally wasted, as the venue appeared like a branch of SophistiCats strip club on a wet Wednesday afternoon, rather than the

MEMBERS ONLY?

My personal favourite fictional version of the Hellfire Club is to be found in the pages of Marvel Comics, when, after months of behind-the-scenes scheming, the villainous group was finally revealed in the January 1980 issue of the X-Men. In truth, I much preferred them (at least in their earliest incarnation) to Professor X’s band of dogooders, who never seemed to have much fun. Aside perhaps from Wolverine, who at least enjoyed a beer and liked the ladies.

Created by writer Chris Claremont, they were a shadowy group of rather depraved billionaire mutants, who adopted 18th century dress and used upscale private

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Christopher Lee in The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959)

elegant, antique-furnished, wood-panelled brownstone of the comics. The Club also featured in Fox’s Marvel tv series The Gifted (2017-19) as the precursor to a new organisation, The Inner Circle.

Claremont had used the film world as a source for the names and appearances of other Club members; for instance, Donald Sutherland provided the physical template for villainous cyborg Donald Pierce. The Black King – the leader of the Club, industrialist Sebastian Shaw (an absorber of kinetic energy), took his appearance from Jaws actor Robert Shaw and name from Star Wars’ ‘de-shelled’ Darth Vader, thespian Sebastian Shaw. Portly density master Harry Leland owed a lot to Orson Welles, with his tubby frame and a moniker that was a reference to Harry Lime from The Third Man and Joseph Cotten’s Citizen Kane reporter

Jed Leland.

Even Sherlock Holmes himself got in the Hellfire act, with a mention of the group in Granada’s adaptation of The Priory School (1986), where it’s noted that the Duke of Holdernesse’s ancestors “once provided a member of the Hellfire Club.”

One can also see something of the Club’s disreputable activities in the flashback sequence at the beginning of the superb 1959 Hammer adaptation of The Hound of the Baskervilles. A couple of years later, Robert S. Baker & Monty Berman made a picture about the original Hellfire Club written by Hammer regular Jimmy Sangster, but it was decidedly lacklustre. Clearly a fascination for filmmakers, in Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut (1999) the orgy scene had a whiff of Hellfire festivities, if a slightly Disneyfied version. n

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Travel

HONG KONG HIKE Ferris Newton provides guidance for a walking tour of the Pearl of the Orient, now basking in independence for 28 years

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“Glenealy is the most enticing strip of terrain in the City; a jungle under the bypass with a name that echoes distant highlands. It is also the location of one of the most wonderful public conveniences in a city where there are many”

t a recent soirée, I had just returned from Hong Kong with a skull ring, a pair of plastic nunchuks and a Cantonese calendar with writing on that I cannot understand. Mr Temple suggested that chaps and chapettes who are heading East might like some sense of what to do in the city, and that, given my exposure to the delights of Hong Kong, I might offer some notes for guidance.

Assured that the readers of this journal would not be interested in the normal tourist tat: golden Buddhas, funicular railways and beer pong in Lan Kwai Fong, how should the linen suited flaneur/flaneuse navigate the alleys and backstreets of this intense and sprawling mega-city known as the Pearl of the Orient?

Having spent countless sojourns in Hong Kong, often with much time on my hands with which to explore the city, what follows are some hints at the pleasures that

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The Pearl of the Orient is forever being polished

Chungwa, Chairman Mao’s favourite smokes

await the curious traveller. The first thing that you will notice when you arrive is the peculiar aroma of the city. Hong Kong has a scent of sea salt and mothballs that greets you at the airport and will be your constant companion. Back in the day there was also the reek of a particular kind of cigarette.

Sadly the smell of tobacco has been largely expunged from the city, but you can still buy the cigarettes in question: Chunghwa, or . As smoked by Mao. From the airport, the Airport Express takes you straight into the city, past container ports and huge residential blocks.

As the jet lag kicks in, or a strange portal opens in the space-time continuum, you suddenly see deserted bays with sandy

beaches and tumbledown shacks. They fall back as you are propelled into the modern cityscape: Tisng Yi, Kowloon, Central.

Hong Kong is a city that welcomes the jet lagged, and you should make the most of your disconnection with reality. Plane fresh and somewhat befuddled, get off the MTR at Central. You need to go down either Des Voeux Road or Queens Road, then past Theatre Lane. On a dark night I’ve sensed the ghosts of old colonial administrators coming down the hill for a night on the town.

See if you can find Yat Fat Stationery and get yourself a set of Cantonese Dominoes. There are also some wonderfully cheap notebooks, designed for Chinese characters, but excellent for traveller’s notes and poems.

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Yat Fat – for all your stationery requirements

“Try to locate Luddite on Haven Street, a most excellent boutique, particularly if you want to pick up a pair of cowboy boots, a corduroy coat or emergency brothel creepers. It also specialises in the kind of trousers that Paddy Leigh Fermor might have worn”

gone. Soho is, for the most part, a wasteland; or, at least a wasteland for those who do not want to drink overpriced cocktails. The Luk Yu Tea House has tasty siu mei, but you might also try any of the nearby cafes for a budget luncheon. The chain Café Coral does good, cheap food. Hong Kong does not really welcome hungry vegetarians, but for the carnivore, neon light reflecting off the honey glaze of roast meat is all a tremulous gut desires.

Take the escalator. You ascend like Orpheus from the underworld over the streets of the city. Get off when you see the Phoenix Bar. Perhaps have a beer there.

The Young Master is good, as is the Gweilo.

Should you catch what you think are hostile comments from locals, ‘ghost face’ is an affectionate Cantonese name for pale visitors.

It is also worth looking up Wallace Stores. Wallace is a big fan of Bauhaus and a charming man. Club 71 would have been worth a visit, but this legendary bar is long

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Luddite – for all your vintage trousering requirements

Leave the Phoenix and go left up Mosque Street, passing the site of what was once the Bruce Lee Museum. Up to Robinson Road, then left. Keep going.

Before Bishop Lei hotel, there is a narrow and precipitous path down the hill to Glenealy. Below you is the Catholic Cathedral, which was built on the site of Warren Delano Jr.’s mansion. Delano, who made his fortune in Opium smuggling, was the grandfather of the 32nd US President.

One of Delano Jr’s biggest clients was the US War Department during the period of the American Civil War. No doubt some of the boys Walt Whitman cared for were dosed up on Delano Jr’s stock.

At the bottom of the path, you will find yourself in Glenealy, the most enticing strip of terrain in the City; a jungle under the bypass with a name that echoes

distant highlands. It is also the location of some great culverting, and one of the most wonderful public conveniences in a city where there are many. Marvel at the towering concrete supports of the road overhead and engage in some Ballardian fantasies of abandonment.

The Glenealy conveniences are a hub for exhausted limousine drivers, asleep at the wheels of their parked vehicles. Snoozing scaffolders are also frequently found in the cafes off Robinson Road. From Glenealy, take a turn around the Zoological and Botanical Gardens. The monkeys are most convivial and worth a quick chat. They tell you things you don’t know. Sit on a bench and watch the leaves fall. Perhaps time to take out one of those notebooks and compose a haiku.

As luck would have it, and if you

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Ingress always granted to those with a letter of introduction

have not got lost, you should now be within striking distance of the Foreign Correspondents Club on Lower Albert Road.

If you require entrance to the Club, a letter from Ian Fleming will grant you ingress and bar privileges. In the absence of such, please contact me at this journal’s address, and I shall see if I can put in a good word.

Anyway, let’s assume that you are now refreshed. I would recommend a saunter down Ice House Street, purely because it has such a striking name, making one shiver even in the depths of summer. Find your way back to Central. Pick up the Island Line to Chai Wan and get off at Causeway Bay. Try to locate Luddite on Haven Street, a most excellent boutique, particularly if you want to pick up a pair of cowboy boots, a corduroy coat or emergency brothel

creepers. It also specialises in the kind of trousers that Paddy Leigh Fermor might have worn. Some of the Japanese biker T-shirts in Roadmentic next to Luddite are also very fetching.

Enjoy a cup of milk tea in the often deserted Haven Street food court. I’ve heard that milk or ‘silk stocking’ tea (strong tea with condensed milk) was a gift from the British squaddie to the Orient. As is luncheon meat with noodles, and soup with an egg on top. A delicacy enjoyed by some, but a delicacy too far for this weary flaneur.

I would recommend completing your tour of the city by taking a random MTR line into Kowloon, and getting off at a station whose name you like the sound of.

Then get lost in the strange streets and see what happens. n

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Culture

WYND FARM Ian Simmons takes a walking tour of Viktor Wynd’s Museum of Curiosities, Fine Art and Unnatural History, after downing a few glasses of Absinthe laced with edible scorpions

“Turn around and go home if you do not worship and adore the enigmatic and bizarre, including Fairy Tales, Dead Animals, Dead People, Erotica, the World’s Largest Crab, Monsters, Surrealism, the Occult, Preserved Front Bottoms… and much, much more. This is quite some promise, but Wynd’s lives up to it, and then some”

S

hould your dérive happen to take you up Hackney’s Mare Street to the point just before it crosses the Regents Canal and gives way to Bethnal Green’s grittier Cambridge Heath Road (home, incidentally, to an excellent backyard market selling vintage clothes by the kilo), you may spot an unusual shop

front to your right. This belongs to Viktor Wynd’s Museum of Curiosities, Fine Art and Unnatural History, one of London’s stranger attractions, a monument to creative decadence and constructive self-indulgence, and home to The Last Tuesday Society’s series of lectures and events relating to obscure and unpopular culture.

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The Bird Cabinet. Photography © Oskar Proctor at The Viktor Wynd Museum

The shop window contains an ever changing display of wondrous and faintly worrying items – on my recent visit this included vases of dried flowers, a human skull, some garden gnomes and an array of Japanese Kokeshi dolls, plus a small ceramic Tardis – while a sign on the door reads “This is not a brothel, there are no prostitutes at this address”. Enter, and you will find a large panel setting out the institution’s manifesto, stating, “We are a Cabinet of Curiosities – a Pre-Enlightenment Wunderkabinett” and offering a “Warm embrace to strangers & the strange” plus a warning others to “Turn around and go home if you do not worship and adore...”, giving a fulsome list of the enigmatic and bizarre, including “Fairy Tales, Dead Animals, Dead People, Erotica, the World’s Largest Crab, Monsters, Surrealism, the Occult, Preserved Front Bottoms….”and much more. This is quite some promise, but Wynd’s lives up to it, and then some.

The ground floor is extraordinary enough, opening most evenings as an absinthe parlour, serving a cocktail menu based on its own brand of the green fairy, Devil’s Botany, although it seems to have stopped serving the cocktails with edible preserved scorpions in that I enjoyed on a previous visit.

There is the traditional Wunderkabinett stuffed crocodile upside down on the ceiling, with a variety of other taxidermied creatures; skeletons, including that of a ‘wholfin’, a rare whale/dolphin cross, and a wall of animal heads, including Creature from the Black Lagoon and a striped unicorn. The latter suspiciously resembles a zebra with a supplementary narwal tusk, but apparently when a visitor pointed out to Wynd that it couldn’t be a unicorn, as unicorns were white, he replied, “How do you know? Have you seen one? I have this one here though”. There are erotic prints,

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Viktor Wynd in front of his museum. Photography © Oskar Proctor at The Viktor Wynd Museum

The Cocktail Bar. Photography © Oskar Proctor at The Viktor Wynd Museum

McDonald’s Happy Meal toys, a large collection of ethnographic masks from around the world, and works by artists such as Mervyn Peake and Austin Osman Spare.

Wynd is a major Spare collector, and the rear part of the parlour, dubbed “The Spare Room” showcases his collection.

The parlour, though, is just the entrée; the full Wunderkabinett experience lies below in the basement, accessed via a slightly precarious spiral staircase and only open to people taking the guided tours.

Bookable from the museum website, these are usually led by the emeritus curator Vadim Kosmos, but sometimes by Wynd himself. Viktor Wynd is very much the decadent’s decadent; an artist, writer, explorer, aesthete and collector, he radiates an aura of slightly dissipated languor and charm, and makes no bones about much preferring the realms of dream, surrealism,

the bizarre, the occult and the perverse, to prosaic reality, which immediately endeared him to me. The lower depths are truly the inside of Wynd’s mind made manifest – a densely packed wonderland of objects and artefacts he has accumulated over the years, from model ships made with his grandfather to the preserved genitalia of Victorian prostitutes, given to him by the family of a deceased surgeon after an auction house declined to include them in the sale of his collection.

Items are densely packed in display cases to create meaningful juxtapositions as opposed to systematic classifications, and when something is labelled, it is with a neat handwritten text in Wynd’s flowing script, pleasingly following the example of Oxford’s Pitt Rivers museum. There are, theoretically, ‘departments’ and these include Fairies, Mermaids, Unicorns and Giants, the

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Lions Chamber with Sarcophagus human skeleton sea monster. Photography © Oskar Proctor at The Viktor Wynd Museum

“The museum’s own brand of the green faerie is Devil’s Botany, although it seems to have stopped serving the cocktails with edible preserved scorpions in that I enjoyed on a previous visit. Your absinthe arrives at the table complete with a proper vintage absinthe fountain, perforated spoon and sugar cube, so you can sweeten and dilute the spirit in the appropriately decadent traditional manner” 112

Cabinet of Monsters, Viktor Wynd’s Dead Pets, Human Hair, Relics, Magick and the Occult, The Beast with Two Backs, Dead People, Parasites, and best of all for Chap readers, Dandies. Something of a dandy himself, Wynd was a close friend of muchmissed Chap associate, the late Sebastian Horsley, and there is a cabinet devoted to Horsleyana, including an immaculate sequinned suit, but also a selection of his favourite heroin syringes. Elsewhere, there are artefacts relating to Stephen Tennant, and drawings of the glorious Quentin Crisp done by his friend Mervyn Peake.

There’s other art down here as well, with not only a selection of Wynd’s own gnomic Shrigleyesque doodles, such as Four Elephants Investigating a Grape, but also the eminently disturbing fairies of Tessa Farmer.

These have a case of their own, but also appear elsewhere committing mischief; they

The Shrine to Sebastian Horsley. Photography © Oskar Proctor at The Viktor Wynd Museum

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Photography © Oskar Proctor at The Viktor Wynd Museum

are decanting clothes moths into the Horsley case to threaten the suit, and one can be seen sipping beer from a tankard among some anthropomorphic stuffed toads sitting in a miniature pub.

There are intestinal worms, mutant pigs in jars, a multi-legged lamb from the scandalously dispersed Walter Potter’s Museum, and an entire occult temple of indeterminate age, the Gnostic Temple of Agape. This was, Wynd says, transported from Mile End when its home there was threatened and installed in Wynd’s basement. The visible elements are apparently only a fraction of the actual temple; under this basement there is a further one, belonging to the current Victorian building’s Georgian predecessor, and the rest of the temple is down there, with no public access, still used periodically

by its acolytes, who are, according to Wynd, “beardy”.

The library, whose volumes appear throughout the museum, specialises in books with unintentionally comic titles, such as Warfare in the Enemy’s Rear, and Sex Instructions for Irish Farmers. One section, overlooked by a lion’s skeleton in a cage, contains a glass topped table with a human skeleton inside, and can be hired for private events, although no longer for ‘intimate moments’ after a particularly energetic one cracked the glass.

The public loo has a cast of Wynd’s bottom on the door and a ribald lithograph of a masturbating monk on the wall… I could go on. Wynd’s Museum is an endless cornucopia of bizarre wonder and good absinthe, a fascinating torrent of arcane weirdness flung in the face of convention, and worth a decadent evening of anyone’s time. n

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Transport

Fire up the Merlin!

Actuarius gets as close as he ever will to flying a real Spitfire into battle, courtesy of Runway Flight Simulators

A

sk the average Joe or Josephine on the street to name an aircraft from the Second World War and chances are they will say “Spitfire”. In fact, ask them to name any aircraft and this will probably still be their answer. Impressive for a design that first flew 90 years ago, but unsurprising when one considers that it has become a totem for RAF Fighter Command and synonymous with the Battle of Britain (despite the Hurricane having shot down more aircraft during that period). The looks, which owe much to performance over manufacture or maintenance, along with the

distinctive Merlin engine growl, don’t do any harm either.

Of course it is also a firm favourite with the enthusiast, and for the truly committed there are number of two-seat aircraft available. These offer the chance for anyone to experience the view from the cockpit, albeit for an eye watering price. As my own ‘Spitfire flight’ funds keep getting raided to fix cars, this is an option that remains out of touch for me. However, I have sat in a few examples, which brings its own thrill and, more importantly, a little understanding of the environment in which those young men

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The author diving over Littlehampton

“As soon as you step into the door you are embraced by the world of aviation.

The use of an old aircraft lavatory door, a departures board with the names of the ‘pilots’ booked for that day giving the personal touch, and the waiting area evoking the feel of a private departure lounge”

of the war sought to stay alive, defend their country and ultimately destroy the threat presented by the Axis forces.

There is another way to get a taste of flying the aircraft, though, and that’s through a simulator. Once the preserve of large organisations, advances in computing technology have seen the flight simulator becoming an increasingly viable option.

There is no indication of what to expect when you arrive at the unimposing red brick premises of Runway Flight Simulators.

However, as soon as you step into the door you are, if not exactly transported to an airport, at least embraced by the world of aviation. The use of an old aircraft lavatory

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A comprehensive Boeing 737 simulated cockpit

“As predicted, I was shot down a few times but also managed to bag a few and ended up breaking even – if you accept my view that being rammed from behind by a particularly enthusiastic computer-flown Bf109 counts as a kill” door, a departures board with the names of the ‘pilots’ booked for that day giving the personal touch, and the waiting area evoking the feel of a private departure lounge.

They reflect the driving force and ethos behind the company; put simply it is run by professionals who fully understand their customers. The Spitfire simulator consists of

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a cockpit section with a wraparound screen, extending sufficiently to allow searches for Luftwaffe without jarring intrusions in the peripheral vision.

Although the instruments are a computer generated display, they sit behind a cutout panel and work really well when most of the time is spent looking out of the windscreen. Personally, I found the touch of the controls a bit jarring but, from my limited knowledge, they were weighted correctly (something confirmed by my instructor). The graphics projected ahead and to the sides in a continuous sweep fall shy of fully detailed realism but are enough to place you in the moment. Most of these considerations would evaporate with the Vulcan or 737 simulators, also operated by Runway Flight Simulators on the site, as these are built around cockpits with fully authentic hardware – but they are not the

RW382 displaying over Ibsley, where Tim Hamer was based

aircraft that has a particular significance for us.

A talk though the controls and instruments is followed by climbing aboard and a chance to stooge about (fittingly over our old home on the South coast) to get used to the controls, and this is where everything starts to come together. The patient instruction and discussions regarding the accuracy of what you are experiencing reveals the knowledegable enthusiasm that lies at the heart of the company. This may be the evocation of reality but, with a reset button, merely playing at what was a desperate and lethal business. Despite this, it would be churlish to deny the inner 12-year-old and, once a few loops and rolls had been completed, followed by beating up Bognor Regis railway station, it was time to go hunting the enemy.

As predicted, I was shot down a few times but also managed to bag a few and ended up breaking even; if you accept my view that being rammed from behind by a particularly enthusiastic computer flown

Bf109 counts as a ‘kill’. If you’re taking it seriously then you need to concentrate, and after 45 minutes I was ready to stop. I’d say my energy management of the aircraft was adequate but I was close to stalling a few times and I didn’t get long enough to work out a strategy for keeping track of the Messerschmitts while attacking the JU88s.

No mirror and not being able to look over the shoulder were, I am sure, key to this, but a little more time should allow better tactics to be developed.

Having an experienced instructor guiding you throughout means that you will get the flight profile you wish at a level appropriate to your experience and knowledge. The 737, with a representative cabin section for those who join you, is the most popular with customers. However, the Vulcan cockpits really do look like the next level and would provide the opportunity to try to emulate Roly Falk, who put one through a barrel-roll just after taking off at Farnborough in 1955.

I suspect we may well be heading back before too long to give it a go. n

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TIM HAMER Runway Flight Simulators are currently putting together a display featuring the story of Spitfire pilot Thomas ‘Tim’ Harold Hamer, born in Bulwell, Nottingham on 4th June 1921.

When war came he signed up as a member of the RAF Volunteer Reserve, taking to the air in December 1940 and soloing a month later.

May 14th 1942 saw his first flight in a Spitfire – X4255 – and he joined 66 squadron at Ibsley under New Zealand ace Bob Yule.

Looking through Tim’s logbook reveals that, after a period of working up to operational readiness, he had his first scramble on 8th September and his first dogfight a week later. What he told me once (for he was my father-in-law) was that he did not fear going up against the formidable FW190, as he knew all he had to do was keep turning inside it, something that he had a chance to prove on at least one occasion.

There were a lot of bomber escort duties going on during Tim’s time with 66, as well as the usual practice and cross country flights that are a part of ensuring the pilots are kept at the peak of their ability. He did get to escort Whirlwinds, a magnificent looking but ultimately underwhelming aircraft, a couple of times, which was something of a rarity as they only equipped three squadrons between 1940 and 1943. However, the one piece of drama that is recorded came on 13th October 1943 where “INSTEP II PATROL – Ju88 SHOT DOWN” is noted. “FLIGHT GOT”

in a different coloured ink above suggests a “kill” became a “shared kill” after de-briefing.

Remarkably, the Imperial War Museum holds Tim’s gun camera footage from this encounter.

Tim may not have been a Bader or Johnny Johnson, but he regularly went into battle and was good enough to survive when many didn’t. He represents those fighting in the air who may never have been individually in the spotlight, but who equally stepped up and applied themselves to a highly skilled and hazardous role when they were needed.

Runway Flight Simulators are creating the display because when I had my ‘flight’ we took the log book to show them. He flew 49 different Spitfires during his active service and always thought it a shame he never made it a round fifty. SM520 is now added in pencil in the back of his log book, noting the dropping of his ashes over the Channel, Tim’s final flight and his 50th Spitfire.

BFI FLIPSIDE PRESENTS

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REVIEWS

THE KING SWINGERS

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BOOK REVIEW: FALLING ROCKET

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Music

THE KING SWINGERS 2025 marks 30 years since the passing of Dean Martin and 35 years since the passing of Sammy Davis Jr. Stephen Arnell looks at the highs and lows of their respective and often conjoined careers

D

EAN MARTIN: KING OF COOL OR KING LEER?

an actor or actress who tells me acting is hard work. It’s easy work. Anyone who says it isn’t never had to stand on his feet all day dealing blackjack.”

When Dino hit the big time as a singer, he was said to have sold 100% of his management contract multiple times, meaning the deals never really stuck – a trick he presumably learned mixing with the criminal element on the seamier side of Manhattan’s illegal gambling dens. And incidentally, unlike his Rat Pack confrere

Dino Paul Crocetti wasn’t always the lazy drunk he affected to be (and unfortunately later became), having worked as boxer nicknamed Kid Crochet, a steel mill worker, a gas station attendant and, just before his big career break, as a casino croupier/stickman/dealer. The long hours Martin put in with each shift at casinos prompted his rueful comment, “I can’t stand

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The Rat Pack (L-R): Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr, Frank Sinatra

“I can’t stand an actor or actress who tells me acting is hard work. It’s easy work. Anyone who says it isn’t never had to stand on his feet all day dealing blackjack” – Dean Martin

Dino blew out Sinatra’s 1988 ‘Together Again National Concert Tour’ after just six dates, going so far as to toss a stillsmouldering fag into the audience at the Oakland Coliseum.

He also slurred his songs and joked to himself, chiming with his previous riposte to concertgoers’ complaints; “You wanna hear it straight, buy the album.” Martin left the tour for ‘health reasons’ but soon returned to the Las Vegas gigs he could manage in his sleep; his previously feigned drunkenness now sometimes all-too real.

Despite saying “In order to share intimate feelings, you have to have intimate feelings”, Dean Martin was not one to share

Frank Sinatra, Martin was never a Mob groupie; he humoured Ol’ Blue Eyes but was never in thrall to him as the man’s other companions appeared to be. Hence the sad ending to their working relationship, when

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“You’re not drunk if you can lie on the floor without holding on” - Dean Martin

“The whole world is drunk and we’re just the cocktail of the moment.

Someday soon, the world will wake up, down two aspirin with a glass of tomato juice, and wonder what the hell all the fuss was all about ” – Dean Martin

(Nutty Professor excepted) Jerry Lewis being one, as was his long-running, unrehearsed (on his part, allegedly) Dean Martin Show (1965-1974), which, during its sixties heyday, was the epitome of mainstream ‘with-it’.

Rather less so as it dragged on into the mid-1970s though.

As to Dino’s singing, Ain’t That a Kick in the Head is still a belter, ditto seasonal (and one of them now banned) ditties Baby It’s Cold Outside, and Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow! And he could be very funny, albeit in a smutty or generally demeaning way; witness his Celebrity Roasts (1974-84), and his amusing 1975 takedown of Johnny Carson’s corny clothing line on the talk-show host’s own show, contrasting with his own more sophisticated lounge-lizard meets the golf course cashmere polo neck and suit combo.

his emotions, preferring never to appear needy and instead affecting the Italian air of Menefreghista – basically not giving a damn.

And Martin had some serious cool, at least at certain stages of his career. His decision to cut loose from the generally loathsome

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Dean Martin and Ricky Nelson duet in Rio Bravo

And as to the acting, the boy could act – but only when he needed or really wanted to, in such movies as The Young Lions and Some Came Running (both 1958), Rio Bravo (1959 – featuring a superb duet My Rifle, My Pony and Me between Dino and Ricky Nelson), Kiss Me, Stupid (1964) and Something Big (1971), which also features a terrific Burt Bacharach title tune.

about it, that whole era was cocaine, that cocaine mouth; the way he would laugh hahaha! And hug and all that, he was totally coked up, that was cocaine man, that was his thing”.

A glib response perhaps, but drugs played a major part in the life of the multi-talented singer/dancer/musician/ impressionist/actor. As did booze, sex and, more surprisingly, Satan.

None of the fascinating stories about Sammy Davis Jr, including his early life as a stage performer with his father in the Will Mastin Trio, his rise to fame, the racism he encountered, the many wives, his near-open bisexuality, his 1956 car accident (in which Davis lost his left eye), his conversion to Judaism, the Rat Pack, comebacks, health issues and much more – none of them quite

THE CANDY MAN: WHAT MADE SAMMY RUN? For Eddie Murphy, in his 2019 Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee conversation with Jerry Seinfeld, the answer to what made Sammy run was easy – cocaine: “You know what I realise about Sammy is that it was coke, the whole thing with the mouth like this, think

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“What have I got? No looks, no money, no education. Just talent.” Sammy Davis Jr

“I became a Satanist.

I actually joined the Church to find out what I could about their beliefs.

I still have many friends in the Church of Satan” – Sammy Davis Jr

interesting case will often find I’m a willing convert.”

Sammy’s interest in the Horned One apparently continued from the late 1960s to the end of his life, fuelled no doubt by the orgiastic excesses on offer, together with the prospect of Luciferian influence turbo-charging his then sagging career.

Which didn’t really happen, despite Davis filming the 1973 NBC TV movie Poor Devil, a kind of recruiting film for The Church of Satan. The picture starred Davis as, naturally enough, ‘Sammy,’ a lowly minor demon seeking promotion from Hell’s furnace room by convincing nebbish San Francisco accountant Burnett J. Emerson (Jack Klugman) to sell his soul. Poor Devil also starred Adam West as Burnett’s nasty employer and Christopher Lee as The Dark Lord. Despite Davis flashing Church of

compare in fascination to his belief in Satanism.

“I became a Satanist. I was introduced to some very interesting people, including the head of the Satanist Church in the States, and became fascinated by their philosophy. I actually joined the Church to find out what I could about their beliefs.

I still have many friends in the Church of Satan... People who can put up an

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With Jack Klugman in Poor Devil

With a nice big drink

Satan-approved V signs and wearing red polish on a single fingernail, Old Nick still couldn’t help the show go beyond the pilot.

As for Sammy’s music, it is still enjoyable in a cornball kind of way, mainly divided between anthemic showtunes (I Gotta Be Me/If I Ruled the World) and overwrought tearjerkers (Mr Bojangles). His two most popular songs (both released in 1972) were movie novelties dedicated to sugary foodstuffs: The Candy Man (Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, 1971), and Sweet Gingerbread Man (The Magic Garden of Stanley Sweetheart, 1972).

His movies were a story of wasted potential, for Sammy Davis Jr was a decent enough actor – undignified sidekick parts in Rat Pack pictures and comedies, the exception being his ‘Big Daddy’ religious hipster in Bob Fosse’s Sweet Charity (1968), where he essayed The Rhythm of Life with

genuine gusto.

Davis had his own distinctive sartorial style, from the sharp Sy Devore sharkskin suits that in 1967 helped make him the first black man to be featured on the cover of GQ magazine, to the late Sixties/early Seventies with beads and trimmed beard; his ‘Hollywood Hippie’ phase (always with flashy gold jewellery), then to his later more conservative showbiz bespoke tailoring. And often accompanied by that Rat Pack staple, a pork pie trilby.

HBO’s 1998 TV movie The Rat Pack paints a fascinating picture of Dean Martin (Joe Mantegna), Sammy Davis Jr (Don Cheadle) and Sinatra (the late Ray Liotta) with a more sympathetic Peter Lawford (Angus Macfadyen) than may be expected.

The film is currently free to watch on YouTube. n

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Book Review

FALLING ROCKET James Whistler, John Ruskin and the Battle for Modern Art (Pegasus Books)

By Paul Thomas Murphy Reviewed by Gustav Temple

“Obsessed with pre-Renaissance Italian painting, Ruskin would spend months in Venice weeping over the heavenly Giottos and snarling at the chocolate-box Canalettos. He championed the Pre-Raphaelites and was friends with Edward Burne-Jones. He’d admired Turner’s early works, but as soon as Turner started going a bit impressionistic, Ruskin harrumphed into his hock and seltzer and turned against him”

T

he rather grand and perhaps pompous subtitle of this book gives the reader high, possibly unreachable expectations. How

can a book about the trial between a fusty old art critic from the 19th century and a firebrand painter who took umbrage at the critic’s poor review of his exhibition be

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James MacNeill Whistler

John Ruskin

anything more than a footnote to the dawn of modernism?

Reader, it can. James MacNeill Whistler was the Damian Hirst of Victorian England.

Sharply dressed, witty, bold and brash, he took no prisoners when it came to art and architecture. In the beginning, his painting style was fairly traditional, gradually veering further and further away from classical figurative art and deeper into semi abstraction. He was his own worst critic, often rubbing out an entire work he had spent months working on, to the frustration of both his models and his dealers.

John Ruskin was older than Whistler and long established as the country’s most highly regarded art critic. Obsessed with pre-Renaissance Italian painting, he would spend months in Venice weeping over

the heavenly Giottos and snarling at the chocolate-box Canalettos, writing wordy tracts in Modern Painters, his first series of books. He championed the Pre-Raphaelites and was friends with Edward Burne-Jones.

He’d admired Turner’s early works, but as soon as Turner started going a bit impressionistic, Ruskin harrumphed into his hock and seltzer and turned against him.

When an exhibition was staged in the newly opened Grosvenor Gallery in central London by Sir Coutts Lindsay (yes, a member of that family) in April 1877, it was a major event – not least because Lindsay aimed to topple the Royal Academy from its position as London’s most significant art gallery. Present at the private view was Oscar Wilde, freshly graduated from Oxford and yet to make his mark on literature:

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Book Review

“The walls are hung with scarlet damask above a dado of dull green and gold; there are luxurious velvet couches, beautiful flowers and plants, tables of gilded wood and inlaid marbles, covered with Japanese China and the latest ‘Minton’ globes of ‘rainbow glass’ like large soap bubbles, and, in fine, everything in decoration that is lovely to look on, and in harmony with the surrounding works of art.”

by the great Palladio and installed it in the gallery’s entrance.

To have been selected in the Grosvenor’s inaugural exhibition was a huge honour, and immediately secured the artist’s reputation as ground-breaking, innovative and modern.

Artists such as Ford Madox Brown, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Holman-Hunt, frustrated at being continually rejected by the RA, were proud to have been selected by Sir Lindsay. And so was James Whistler.

By the late 1870s, Whistler had begun a series of paintings he called ‘Nocturnes’.

Painted at night from the banks of the Thames near his house in Chelsea, these were hastily finished in order to capture the soft, moody, fading light on the river, sometimes with a ghostly figure lurking on a bridge, but mostly they were landscapes.

Whistler would rush them back to his studio and allow them to dry in the sunlight in the garden. Often by morning he would have three or four completed paintings.

Three of these Nocturnes were exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery, to great acclaim by most of its first sets of visitors and many glowing reviews in the newspapers. Ruskin had been in Venice when the exhibition opened, and therefore was not able to attend the Grosvenor until two months after opening night. When he did, he was not pleased at all.

The Palladian portal annoyed Ruskin immediately. He had always derided this popular Renaissance architect’s works as “wholly virtueless and despicable”, preferring the more spiritual flavour of the earlier Gothic period. Everything that Wilde had admired about the interior design of the galleries, Ruskin loathed. He found the scarlet damasks “vulgar” and “distracting”, although

“Asked by the Defence whether “that was the labour for which you asked 200 guineas?”

Whistler replied, “No, it was for the knowledge gained through a lifetime.” Much of the trial hinged on how little time Whistler had spent on his paintings and whether that justified the prices he charged. The fact that the artist had stayed up all night in the freezing mist of London to complete the paintings was not seen as relevant” Sir Lindsay had intentionally constructed his new gallery, at vast expense, to represent the burgeoning Aesthetic movement, shunning the austerity of the RA and providing an exhibition space that was a work of art itself. He imported a 300-yearold limestone portal from Italy designed

133

Nocturne: Blue and Silver – Chelsea

once he focused on the painting themselves, he probably welcomed the distraction.

Singling out only two minor works by barely known painters for a hint of praise, Ruskin’s review, published the following week, ripped apart nearly the whole exhibition. Even the works by his old chum Burne-Jones were not up to his usual standard, said Ruskin, while the rest of the painters were an insult to the vocation. But, as he ascended the grand stairway, Ruskin was merely warming up his ire for the big event: criticism of Whistler’s three paintings.

“For Mr. Whistler’s own sake,” Ruskin’s review thundered, “no less than for the protection of the purchaser, Sir Coutts Lindsay ought not to have admitted works into the gallery in which the ill-educated

conceit of the artist so nearly approached the aspect of wilful imposture. I have seen, and heard, much of Cockney impudence before now; but never expected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public’s face.”

It is worth pointing out, and Falling Rocket provides ample detail on this, that by 1877 Ruskin’s star was fading. He’d lived a very comfortable, privileged life, continually supported by his parents to the point of suffocation (his father would complain if he spent too much time writing about some Gothic cathedral). Ruskin Jr’s one attempt at betrothal, to Effie Gray, was a complete disaster, Ruskin being unable to consummate the marriage. (The rather salacious and probably apocryphal myth about her pubic

134

hair repulsing him is thankfully not explored in this book.) By then he was divorced, the marriage annulled due to lack of intimacy, and had turned his sights on Rose, the 14-year-old daughter of some academic friends, who didn’t bat an eyelid when Ruskin insisted on spending hours with their daughter, educating her in the PreRaphaelites and Giotto’s use of lapis lazuli.

Let us assume, then, that by 1877 John Ruskin was a shadow of his former self, a sexless wanderer looking for something to get excited about. James Whistler provided exactly that.

Whistler was precisely the opposite of Ruskin. Highly sexed, dynamic, independent, American and continually looking to the future rather than the past. He was also constantly besieged by financial difficulties, with a list of creditors as long as his arm.

As soon as he read Ruskin’s scathing review of his paintings at the Grosvenor, Whistler went straight to his solicitor and together they issued a suit for libel. The resulting trial, held a few months later, had all the public sensation of the O.J. Simpson trial in 1996.

While that case turned into something much bigger than a murder trial, and grew into the People v the LAPD, the Whistler v Ruskin trial – though not about anything as serious as a double murder – took on its own greater cause: that of traditional figurative art versus modern abstract art.

The Defence, ie Ruskin’s lawyers, brought in all sorts of objects not usually displayed as evidence at a court hearing: the paintings by Whistler exhibited at the Grosvenor, as well as paintings by ‘proper’ artists such as Titian, to compare the two. There was much laughter and witticisms flung about the courtroom, with Whistler always issuing the best lines.

Asked by the Defence whether “that was the labour for which you asked 200 guineas?” Whistler replied, “No, it was for the

Nocturne in Black and Gold – The Falling Rocket

knowledge gained through a lifetime.” Much of the trial hinged on how little time Whistler had spent on his paintings and whether that justified the prices he charged. Again, this was the traditional versus the new. The fact that the artist had stayed up all night in the freezing mist of London to complete the paintings was not seen as relevant.

Falling Rocket, like the trial of Whistler v Ruskin, tells a much greater story. It also forces the reader to take sides, but provides a sufficient case for the opposing parties to make this difficult. Paul Thomas Murphy provides enough biographical information about both subjects for the reader to finish the book with a decent portrait of both the fusty academic critic and the firebrand artist.

Whichever one you side with will depend entirely on where you stand on modern art; and, as to the result of the trial, the most informed way to find that out is by reading this excellent book. n

135

WILDE WIT WINNERS Oscar Wilde is the patron saint of wit. Each year the Oscar Wilde Society invites his modern admirers to compose their own Wildean bons mots and compete in the Wilde Wit competition, co-sponsored by Chap magazine.

And they do not disappoint.

T

his year’s contest drew more than 500 entries, the most ever, each crafted to sound like something Oscar himself might have said. The Oscar Wilde Society committee determined the shortlist and the members voted to determine the winners, each of which does indeed sound like a quip from the master of the epigram himself.

Maarten Asscher took first place and won the new book from Kate Hext, Wilde in the Dream Factory: Decadence and the American Movies.

Nick Symondson won a copy of Articles from The Woman’s World, Edited

by Oscar Wilde, the 2024 book produced by the Oscar Wilde Society and edited

by Eleanor Fitzsimons.

Coming in third, Simon Scarratt won a year’s membership in the Oscar Wilde Society.

A new award was chosen by Darcy Alexander Corstorphine, who won the first three editions of the competition and was then requested to retire from participation by the Oscar Wilde Society committee, to give others a chance!

The first Darcy’s Choice award goes to Amalia Dolores. Amalia also wins a year’s membership in the Oscar Wilde Society.

To see the rest of the shortlist, as well as videos on the winners from Gyles Brandreth, Stephen Fry and OWS chairman Vanessa Heron, visit oscarwildesociety.co.uk/wilde-wit

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