Evening Standard, January 1972 Before Bill Blatty began to write The Exorcist he was told by a priest friend that merely investigating the occult might lay him open either psychologically or in reality to possession. Undeterred, he wrote, and turned out what has become one of the best-selling novels in years in the United States.… Continue reading…
Evening Standard (October 1971) Muhammad Ali, stretched horizontally across the three first-class seats of the train compartment, was either asleep bored or riding on this Ali Special from Euston to Manchester. Momentarily Ali allowed his eyelids to flicker the tiniest, meanest gesture of welcome, before settling back into the repose of the unconscious. The gentleman… Continue reading…
Evening Standard, September 1971 I’m sitting in the Albert Hall which, apart from a cluster of technicians around the platform, two pianists and a disembodied Germanic voice that seems to be drifting down from heaven with instructions, is quite empty. The two pianists sit facing each other at opposite sides of the platform. They are… Continue reading…
Evening Standard, July 1971 A chat with James Baldwin can be a pleasant, jokey, easy-going relaxed affair, but an interview with him can be very hard work. He differentiates between the two encounters. Not I. As soon as he believes an interview has begun he switches on a new persona, forgets that it’s he, Jimmy,… Continue reading…
Evening Standard, June 1971 Right on 6.30 yesterday evening, just three weeks after negotiations for our meeting were begun and ten days after I first tried to interview him, Joe Frazier, naked from the waist up, came lumbering out of his hotel bathroom, yawned and stretched so wide that I momentarily wondered whether the room… Continue reading…
Evening Standard, June 1971 Spike Milligan reckons he was born a clown – just as some people are born with funny shaped noses or whatever. In fact one of his earliest memories has him as a little boy of seven playing a clown in the school Christmas play. ‘I remember it so clearly,’ he says.… Continue reading…
(Evening Standard, March 1971) Michael Caine can speak fluent French. I bet you didn’t know that. He’s also very good at German. Practically no one knows that either, but he’s quietly proud of the fact. It’s an accomplishment of which no one considers him capable. Sometimes when he’s in a restaurant and he speaks to… Continue reading…
Evening Standard, September 1970 Dusty Springfield looks as though she’s playing at doctor-during-consulting-hours sitting in a white walled room at Philips Records, meeting the all and sundry members of the musical press. I’ve never met her before, and the first thing she says is: ‘You’re sinister. Would you mind if I go to the loo… Continue reading…
Evening Standard, February 1970 They’d told me that Ronnie Hawkins used to hold parties Nero would have been ashamed to attend, so when the invitation came I didn’t need any arm-twisting. ‘We’re in the Penthouse at the Playboy. Come right up,’ were the instructions, and that seemed to be just about Ronnie’s lifestyle all right.… Continue reading…
Evening Standard, January 1970 ‘The money you get paid as a singer is all out of proportion. In America they pay you to sing – but they don’t pay the birds to sing in the trees. So it really is ridiculous. But I don’t want to give to charity just to appease my conscience. I… Continue reading…
