DIRK BOGARDE
JOHN STAPLETON
EXTRACT HUNTING THE FAMOUS
George Orwell finished writing 1984 in 1948, perhaps partly with the notion that the title depicted a date so far in the future the book would never age.
Within a few decades there would be countries where more than half of the population had been born since 1984.
The year did seem pivotal however, even if only because one of the 20th century’s most famous books had the same title.
The partner and I were settling into one of our cosier periods of domestic bliss. With Margaret Thatcher in full flight, in our political naivety it really did seem that the world was becoming increasingly Orwellian.
Martin had a trust fund.
I did not.
And the trust fund was kept under very tight wraps.
We were much the same age, in our mid-twenties – well he was 18 months younger.
And the younger was not about to keep the older in the style to which he was occasionally accustomed.
“Tighter than a fish’s asshole,” was one of the ways Martin was commonly described.
Everyone knew he had money.
Getting him to pay for a round of drinks was like climbing Mt Everest; well probably harder. Mt Everest just took perseverance. Getting Martin to pay for a round of drinks required a miracle.
It was old money.
Not flashy.
Not about to be spent.
Certainly not on a miscreant such as myself.
Instead, and not for the first time, I had to get inventive on that tricky little question of money.
The newspapers and magazines I was writing for back in Australia could take anything up to 10 weeks to pay; and then they didn’t pay well.
So as a result my hunting of the famous stepped into overdrive.
Once they hit the stratosphere of multi-million dollar sales, world-wide fame and flanks of public relations experts most living legends became unavailable to all except the most prestigious newspapers and magazines.
Except when they were flogging product.
And they all come to London to do just that.
While they might be impossible to meet under normal circumstances, particularly for an Australian from the other side of the known universe, they were all available when they had something to sell.
London had long been one of the world’s great cultural and artistic centres; but many of the city’s multiple joys were open exclusively to the rich.
And the people I was hunting were all rich.
In contrast I was the young man from the colonies staring from the outside in.
The interviews took me to legendary hotels like Claridge’s and The Savoy.
“You come sit next to me!” Dirk Bogarde declared, patting the elegant couch on which he was sitting in the luxuriant public areas downstairs at Claridge’s.
Bogarde was promoting his series of memoirs which included loving detail of his home in France.
It was his birthday and he was clearly in a jolly mood.
I had been slotted in with two other English journalisms, both at least by the look of them broken down hacks who couldn’t have much cared who they were interviewing.
Bogarde was known for his personal charm. While ignoring the English hacks he cosied up to me immediately and embarked on a lengthy reminisce about Australia and an uncle or someone who lived there; the light, the landscape, what a perfect place it was to paint.
For a while we got so familiar I thought I was going to be invited to the private party being held upstairs after the interviews in honor of his birthday.
I could have been the birthday present from down under.
But it never happened.
It’s always hard to pick up someone in the glare of publicity.
After the interview was over Bogarde swept up the stairwell under the gaze of just about everybody; and disappeared into a bubbling crowd.
While I headed out into crowded streets, a crowded life, a city full of opportunity. Everything about London that time around was different.
Journalism and writing was central to our state of grace; lives full of adventure and romance. I had just finished a novel set in Sydney about a younger man and his relationship with a high-profile sugar daddy. Dirk Bogarde would have been perfect for the role of the older man, and for a time, at that time of life, with horizons infinite, everything seemed possible. Even Dirk Bogarde in a movie based on a novel written by an aspiring journalist from Australia, a dream repeated so often it almost became real within itself.