From The Vault: The Day Hollywood Came Calling

so many Marilyns

Dear reader, cast your mind back some decades. 1980 to be exact.
Whispers was living in a small but cute Mews flat just off London's famous Portobello Road. To be exact, where the real antique shops began and before the bits & pieces stalls started. Saturday was always a joyful day as the Portobello Market began in full swing early in the morning.

In our quaint street we were always awakened by the sound of a Tuba on a Saturday around 10am. A neighbor taught the instrument and it really was the most pleasant and reassuring way to be awakened and one always knew it was market day,
Whispers had a pal staying. His name was Ben and he worked in films organizing transport. As a bonus he would take a side job of driving around whatever star was in town at the time and filming at Pinewood Studios. While he lived in the country, Notting Hill was far more convenient for obvious reasons.
I had also moved in the legendary rock manager Kit Lambert who had fallen on rather tough times and who I was working with attempting to revive various music projects. Kit had discovered and nurtured one of the most famous and enduring bands on the planet, The Who along with legends like Jimi Hendrix.
 
This was the era of The Blitz. A Tuesday night club in London's West End, operated in a small restaurant by a budding entrepreneur named Steve Strange (pictured). The Blitz Kids had grown out of the Punk era and the kids wwo flocked to the club called themselves the New Romantics with their colourful and inventive outfits. It was really just kids from the suburbs dressing up. Innocent but a lot of fun
I had convinced Lambert that there were bound to be future stars and musicians to come out of the very creative Blitz scene. And they surely did. Boy George with Culture Club was one. Duran Duran and Spandau Ballet began there as did Strange himself who had a huge hit with his band Visage. Another was Phil Collen, my personal discovery who I hired for a band and who later went on to join one of the biggest groups on the planet Def Lepard. I took Kit to The Blitz once and he was hooked. Together we decided there was a gold mine of talent there.

Living in Notting Hill had distinct advantages because of it's close location to central London. Most of the teenagers who went to the Blitz on a Tuesday night, after planning their exotic outfits, lived in the outer London Suburbs. George O'Dowd ( Boy George) was one. Peter Robinson who called himself Marilyn and styled himself after the Hollywood legend Marilyn Monroe was another, Inevitably half a dozen or so would choose to flop on my Mews flat floor having missed the last tube home.

And so it was on one such night when we had been partying at The Blitz that around 8 souls descended upon my tiny flat, along with flatmate Ben who had accompanied us to The Blitz for his first visit. Ben was now working on a film called Saturn 3 staring two Hollywood greats - the late star Kirk Douglas and the former Charlies Angels star Farrah Fawcett Majors. Ben had also nabbed me a job as Kirk Douglas' "gofer". Such an easy job although one had to be available at all hours. Douglas was popular with film crews. He had a reputation as being easy going, very professional often only needing one shoot of a scene, treating the crew respectfully and a great tipper when a project had been completed.

Kirk Douglas and Farrah Fawcett Majors in the Sci Fi flick Saturn 3

CONTINUED HERE.

Kerry Packer's family pours scorn on Richard Desmond claims

A close relative of the late  Kerry Packer says claims by Britain's Daily Express newspaper owner Richard Desmond in his autobiography The Real Deal that the Aussie media mogul said to him "I will slit your throat from ear to ear" are complete hogwash.

The relative who wished to remain anonymous said "Kerry was tough in business, could be brusque but was also very fair and it was not his style to issue threats like that".
People who have worked for Packer or who have done business deals with him often confirm that although the media baron could drive a tough deal, he was also very honest in his dealings.
"Kerry always wanted the most advantageous deal" says the relative "but he was never one to threaten or do the dirty on anyone. It was his policy to pay good money or even more than required and he expected loyalty in return and he always received it. There was no need for him to ever talk like that as his reputation was - you do the wrong thing to me and I will never deal with you again".

And Britain's famous Private Eye magazine seems to agree and in a review of Desmond's book point out that he has put words into several mouths of people who are all conveniently dead, echoing the late Hollywood actress Shelley Winters who was once asked for advice by an actress friend on how she could beef up her book as she had had so few affairs : "include anyone who is gay or dead" said Winters, "neither will complain".

Whispers has experience with Richard Desmond when he was Britain's most successful, and much disliked porn merchant. Taking over management of a gay bookshop in Notting Hill while the owner was being detained at Her Majesty's Pleasure (for tax evasion) we were instructed that the local police would raid the shop once a month. Although the books and magazines on sale were perfectly legal the police did arrive and confiscate half the stock to "examine" it to see if it was legal. The magazine were so cheap to produce, costing around 30p for a magazine that might sell for £15-20, it wasn't worth the hassle getting back the material so several warehouses would need to be visited to obtain new stock.
 One of those warehouses was Desmond's in the East End and he was one of the most abusive, arrogant and mean people we have ever encountered. None of his heterosexual porn titles sold (they were just there for 'balance') and according to Private Eye that has  been his history along with many unsavoury dealings with dubious 'partners' in the UK and the Mafia type people in New York.

Former porn barons in the UK have now risen to such heights they support the ruling Conservative Party as this article demonstrates but Desmond's desperate desire to receive a Knighthood in Britain seems doomed to failure considering his background.