The Old Un’s Notes The late, great Lester Piggott was more sociable than some of his obituaries suggested. The historian Lady Antonia Fraser remembers bumping into him with her late husband Harold Pinter. Lady Antonia says, ‘On our way to holiday in Mauritius – a long flight – Harold and I found ourselves on the same plane as Lester Piggott. We made cautious friends (I was a fan). ‘Then, bliss, we were at the same hotel! Several dinners were had together over the next few weeks – all merry and interesting. He was perfectly polite, if not wildly chatty – pleasant company.’ When they left, Lady Antonia asked Harold, ‘Well, what did you think of Lester Piggott?’ ‘Great man. If only he played cricket,’ Pinter told her, referring to his (other) passion in life. One rumour about Lester did turn out to be true. Lady Antonia adds, ‘Harold always paid the bill for dinner – but he enjoyed that and possibly the great man didn’t.’ The Old Un longs to change his name after a chance meeting with his new hero. Enjoying a brief tincture at the bar at the Garrick Club recently, he got into conversation with the charming waiter, from Torre Annunziata, near Naples. His name? Oldi – short for Olderigi, a rare, medieval French word.
The Oldie’s hero – Oldi
Can there be a greater name anywhere on the planet? The Old Un promptly gave Oldi his copy of The Oldie – a match made in heaven.
It won’t surprise you that Winston Churchill appeared in Punch cartoons. But you might not know that he appeared in more than 600 of them, lasting all the way from 1899 to 1988. A new book, Churchill in Punch, by Gary Stiles, reveals them all, from the adulatory to the critical. Pictured (right) is one by Oldie contributor Michael Heath, depicting the moment the artist Graham Sutherland died, in 1980, and was confronted in heaven by Churchill, who loathed the unflattering portrait Sutherland did in 1954. The painting was destroyed
Among this month’s contributors Mary Killen (p18) is The Oldie’s new fashion correspondent. She writes the Dear Mary problem page in the Spectator and appears on Gogglebox with our Country Mouse, Giles Wood, who is on page 39. Robert Bathurst (p27) was in Cold Feet and Downton Abbey. He played Ed Howzer-Black in Toast of London. A National Hunt devotee, he wrote, directed and starred in The Fall, a film about racing. Claire Cohen (p28) writes for the Telegraph, Grazia and the Evening Standard. She presents the Imposters podcast. Her book BFF?: The Truth About Female Friendship is out this summer. Elinor Goodman (p31) was political editor of Channel 4 News. She has worked on the Financial Times and often presents The Week in Westminster on Radio 4. She was on the panel of the Leveson Inquiry.
‘Now, Sutherland, about that painting’
on the orders of Churchill’s wife, Clementine. Mary Kenny’s reference to Deal’s ‘rum residents’ prompted the Old Un to recall two others, the novelist Simon Raven and the louche Carry On stalwart Charles Hawtrey. Raven moved to Deal in 1960 at the insistence of his publisher, Anthony Blond, whose stipend of £15 a week was conditional on Raven’s living at least 50 miles from London – ‘the remittance man’s distance’. Raven liked Deal, a town once infamous for its wreckers. He said the inhabitants were ‘a salty, unregenerate lot with a taste for off-colour jokes, like the one about the famous local adulterer whose coffin turned out to be too small – “He was never happy in his own bed.’’ ’ As Roger Lewis writes on page 49 of this issue, Hawtrey was a very heavy drinker, who used to cruise the local pubs in search of pick-ups from the local barracks. He was outré enough to earn a blue plaque. In 1987, he collapsed at the entry to the Royal Hotel (where Raven would dine most evenings) and was told in hospital that his life The Oldie July 2022 5
