The Old Un’s Notes

It’s the pantomime season once more. Oh no, it isn’t! Oh yes, it is!

Pantomimes, growing out of commedia dell’arte, have been around in Britain since the 18th century.

The pantomime dame, always played by a man in outrageous costumes, first appeared in around 1806 in the show Harlequin and Mother Goose, also known as The Golden Egg.

Jack Tripp (1922-2005), an English comic actor, singer and dancer, performed as a pantomime dame in more than 35 shows. Described in The Stage newspaper as ‘the John Gielgud of pantomime dames’, he was born 100 years ago, on 4th February 1922, in Plymouth, Devon, the son of a baker.

A natural dancer, he was soon billed as ‘Plymouth’s Fred Astaire’.

He went on to become half of a popular double act with his on- and off-stage partner, Australia-born singer Allen Christie. A celebrated sketch saw Jack as Rosy Bottom, a refined, sex-starved pianist.

During war service with the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, Jack honed his skills with the Stars in Battledress show in Europe and the Middle East. After the war, he made his West End debut in 1946 and stole the show in pantomimes until his retirement in 2000.

After his death in 2005, his name lived on, gracing the front of the number 713 bus in Brighton. You all know what pedestrians were told when they were nearly knocked over by the bus – ‘It’s behind you!’

The Oldie has lost one of its most dedicated readers in Maureen Cleave, who has just died aged 87.

She became famous by writing wittily and sharply about the 1960s pop scene, notably about the Beatles. It was to Maureen that John Lennon said the Beatles would soon be ‘bigger than Jesus’, causing outrage in the American Bible Belt.

At her funeral in Essex, her granddaughter Molly played, on the flute, Bach’s G minor Sonata and Let It Be.

She later said she’d never again interview anyone young – only older, wiser people. So she took up the cause of The Oldie with enthusiasm, when Richard Ingrams invited her, among others, to make suggestions. Her ‘terribly excited’ letter enclosing her subscription was printed in Ingrams’s January 1992 pamphlet heralding his new mag 30 years ago.

Miss Cleave suggested having a memorial service correspondent: ‘These are of great interest to oldies, partly because of the whitewash and partly because they are free. They are also competitive, more so than parties – who has the best trumpets etc.’

Another suggestion was ‘Re-reviewing of books. Oldies like to re-read books. I should like to know what Bron [Waugh] thinks of Anna Karenina. (Verdict of my husband: “A very tiresome woman in my view.”)’

The Memorial Service column, written first by Ned Sherrin and now by James Hughes-Onslow, has been a resounding success.

And The Oldie Review of Books, which reviews recent books and looks back at classics, has also been a hit. Thank you so much, dear Maureen.

She’s behind you! Jack Tripp and Beryl Reid, 1969

Among this month’s contributors

Eleanor Doughty (p12) began her career at the Daily Telegraph. She specialises in writing about country houses. When she isn’t writing, she can be found either on or near a horse.

Kenneth Cranham (p16) was in Shine On Harvey Moon and Hatton Garden and has been in many Harold Pinter and Joe Orton productions. He writes in this issue about playing Noah Claypole in Oliver! (1968).

Sara Wheeler (p24) is author of The Magnetic North: Travels in the Arctic, Cherry: A Life of Apsley Cherry-Garrard and Too Close to the Sun: The Life and Times of Denys Finch Hatton.

Anthony Haden-Guest (p28) inspired Peter Fallow, the British hack in New York, in Tom Wolfe’s The Bonfire of the Vanities. He is author of The Last Party: Studio 54, Disco and the Culture of the Night.

Mo’s moment: the Beatles and Maureen Cleave, 1964

Important stories you may have missed

50-yard drive from pub proves costly for North Berwick Man East Lothian Courier

Laurels are replanted following complaints Congleton Chronicle

Hefty fine for woman who dropped cigarette butt in Kidderminster Kidderminster Shuttle

£15 for published contributions

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Could you be a murderer? The talented Miss Highsmith

‘This just gets worse…’ Historian Lady Antonia

Fraser recently had a – thankfully minor – fall on leaving the Athenaeum, the distinguished club for intellectuals, dons and bishops. Her tumble made her think of another fall – and compose this poem:

Crashing If it’s true about Adam – There was only one fall – Why blame Adam that he fell at all? Old age is a stage When most people crash And frequently smash But God made Adam Pure without sin. He had his chance. I wish I were him. Yet we have to believe That he fell once. So why blame Eve For the work of a dunce?

Antonia Fraser – on the steps of the Athenaeum

Are you capable of murder?

Yes – anyone is, said the great crime writer Patricia Highsmith (1921-95), whose notebooks are just out.

That’s what she told writer Christopher Matthew, when he met her in the 1970s in her farmhouse near Fontainebleau, with Tinker, her Siamese cat, on her lap and a pastis in her hand.

She asked what crimes he had committed. He confessed to nicking office stationery, and travelling by bus and charging for a taxi.

‘They’re all a breach in the wall,’ she said, with a resigned shrug. ‘If one is capable of stealing a library book, why shouldn’t one be capable of killing someone?’

Bruno, one of the killers in Strangers on a Train, her 1950 novel, also said, ‘Any kind of person can murder.’

Highsmith then told Matthew how easy it was to get rid of a body – as the talented Mr Ripley, her anti-hero, often did.

‘Ripley now lives in a village about 15 miles from here,’ she told Matthew, indulging the fantasy. ‘In the new book I’m writing about him, there’s a prevalence of rivers. In a place like this, for example, everyone goes to bed early. So all you’d have to do would be to wait until after midnight and you could quietly drop someone into the canal that runs past the top of my garden without anyone noticing.’

Murder is one thing. Theft is quite another, Highsmith thought.

‘I have no sympathy with thieves,’ she said. ‘Theft makes me very angry. So often, thieves take things of no financial value, which may be of great sentimental value to the owner.’

A warning to all Oldie readers. If you’re driven to murderous thoughts at family gatherings this Christmas – it’s easier than you think!

We have just celebrated the bicentenary of Fyodor Dostoevsky, born on 11th November 1821. 2022 marks the 150th anniversary of the first publication of The Devils (1871-72, also known as The Possessed or Demons). Along with his other three classic novels – Crime and Punishment (1866), The Idiot (1869) and The Brothers Karamazov (1879-80) – it often appears on lists of the greatest books of all time.

However, the Russian great