Odd boy out, p.1
Odd Boy Out, page 1
Gyles Brandreth
* * *
ODD BOY OUT
Contents
Prologue: Permission to speak
PART ONE
Growing Up 1. What’s in a name?
2. The Pill Man
3. My father’s stories
4. My mother’s secrets
5. ‘Balance on the wrong side’
6. I am born
7. A London childhood
8. Dressing up
9. Flying solo
10. Name dropping
11. The Pavilion on the Sands
PART TWO
Leaving Home 12. Sex
13. Oscar Wilde and friends
14. School
15. Holidays
16. ‘That little extra something’
17. Discovering America
18. Dream and remember
19. Cinderella – and Michèle
20. Illyria
21. So famous – once upon a time
22. ‘The television star’
23. I said yes
24. ‘An excursion to Hell’
25. I hope there is a heaven
Epilogue: Journey’s end
Acknowledgements and Permissions
Index
About the Author
Gyles Brandreth is a writer, broadcaster, veteran of Just A Minute, QI and The One Show, former MP and Government Whip, now Chancellor of the University of Chester and founder of the ‘Poetry Together’ project bringing schoolchildren and older people together to learn poetry by heart. His many books include the best-selling poetry anthology, Dancing by the Light of the Moon, and the international best-seller about spelling and punctuation, Have You Eaten Grandma? With Susie Dent, the lexicographer from Countdown, he co-hosts the award-winning podcast, Something Rhymes With Purple. With Dame Sheila Hancock he presents Great Canal Journeys on Channel 4. With Dame Maureen Lipman he is a regular on Celebrity Gogglebox.
Gyles is married to writer and publisher Michèle Brown and has three children, seven grandchildren, and lives in London with his wife, his jumpers, and Nala, the neighbour’s cat.
The things a man has heard and seen are threads of life, and if he pull them carefully from the confused distaff of memory, any who will can weave them into whatever garments of belief please them best.
W. B. Yeats
Best trust the happy moments. What they gave Makes man less fearful of the certain grave, And gives his work compassion and new eyes. The days that make us happy make us wise.
John Masefield, ‘Biography’
It is curious to look back over life, over all the varying incidents and scenes – such a multitude of odds and ends. Out of them all what has mattered? What lies behind the selection the memory has made? What makes us choose the things that we have remembered? It is as though one went to a great trunk full of junk in an attic and plunged one’s hands into it and said, ‘I will have this – and this – and this.’
Agatha Christie, An Autobiography
Prologue: Permission to speak
‘What are you up to?’
My wife popped her head around my study door. She never knocks. She likes to keep me on my toes.
‘I’m writing a book,’ I said.
‘A book?’ Her face fell. (She’s reached the age when quite often she looks more severe than I think she means to – like the Queen who, when she isn’t actively smiling, can look positively grumpy.) ‘A book? Another one?’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh, Gyles, does the world really need another book by you?’
‘Well, er –’
She had come into the room now. She was looking down at me bent over my laptop. ‘Sit up,’ she said automatically. ‘Come on, straight back.’
I lifted my head.
She sighed. ‘I don’t know why I bother. I’ve been saying it for fifty years. You don’t take a blind bit of notice. Look at you, you bent old thing. It’s like being married to Methuselah.’ She picked up the cold mug of tea from my desk. (I make about ten cups of tea a day, but I only drink about an inch out of any of them.) ‘Why on earth do you want to write another book?’
I had an answer to that. ‘We need the money,’ I said. ‘We have three children and seven grandchildren and haven’t we discovered over the years that money is the one thing keeping us in touch with them?’
She gave a wan smile. ‘And what’s this book going to be about, then?’
‘Me,’ I said.
‘Oh no,’ she cried, ‘not again. Me, me, me, that’s the story of your life.’
‘Perhaps that should be the title?’ I countered brightly.
‘No one’s interested in you, Gyles – they really aren’t. We know you’ve got an ego the size of the planet and, bless, you think everything revolves around you, but it doesn’t, it really doesn’t. Nobody’s interested. Nobody cares. They don’t even know who you are.’
‘A few people do,’ I bleated.
‘Not that many,’ she said crisply. ‘Often they don’t even get your name right. “Charles Branston – was he the jumper man? Countdown? Gogglebox? Teddy bears? Wasn’t he an MP for a while?” They’ve sort of heard of you, but they’re not sure why.’ She was warming to her theme now. ‘Come on, Gyles, why would anyone want to read your memoirs?’
‘Not memoirs,’ I said quickly. ‘More … memories. Growing up, leaving home, that sort of thing. We all have memories, don’t we? And never mind whether they know me or not, some of my memories might chime with theirs. That might interest them.’
She paused. She put the mug of cold tea back on my desk. ‘Mm, memories.’ She looked at me, not unkindly. ‘And what’s your very first memory, then?’
Her question startled me. I don’t believe she had ever asked me that before – and we have known one another a very long time. We met at 3.00 p.m. on Thursday, 6 June 1968. I wanted her in that very moment, at that instant. I pursued her from that afternoon onwards, relentlessly. She is still here because she is immensely tolerant. I’m still here because I haven’t caught her yet.
‘My first memory?’ I said. I hesitated. ‘The coronation, I suppose. June, 1953. I sort of remember being on my father’s shoulders, in the streets, in a crowd, waving a flag. It was raining. And I remember our television. We got it specially for the coronation – hired from Radio Rentals. I remember standing close to the television set, right up against the screen, pointing my finger at the Queen – and my sisters telling me to get out of the way.’
‘Oh,’ said my wife, chuckling, ‘we’re going to get the Queen on page one, are we? You and the Queen together, in fact.’
‘People are fascinated by the Queen. Who was at Buckingham Palace on coronation day to do the Queen’s make-up?’
‘Remind me. You have told me. More than once.’
‘Oscar Wilde’s daughter-in-law.’
‘Of course.’
‘People are fascinated by the Queen. A lot of people dream about the Queen. At least I’ve met her.’
‘Don’t overdo the name-dropping, Gyles. It’s irritating. And don’t go too heavy on the Oscar Wilde stuff. We all know how you love the 1880s, but we’re in the 2020s now – you could do with a few readers under eighty.’ She sighed and picked up the mug again. ‘How long’s it going to take?’
‘A hundred and twenty days – at a thousand words a day.’
‘If you must, you must. But try not to bang on too much. Remember: less is more.’
‘I’ll do my best.’fn1
‘And avoid being too predictable. You always fall back on the same old things, Gyles – Winnie-the-Pooh and woolly jumpers, how you love words and poetry. If you’re going to do this, surprise yourself. Dig a bit deeper than usual.’
‘Really? Should I write about you, then?’
‘For God’s sake, no. Keep me out of it. This is about you. Who are you? An egomaniac who can’t stop talking. We know that – but why? That’s the question.’ She smiled. ‘Good luck.’
As she left the room, I looked down to the screen, this screen – the screen that was blank until ten minutes ago. A moment later, her head reappeared briefly around the door. ‘You could begin with your favourite story about the Queen, I suppose. It’s quite funny.’
In the run-up to one of her jubilees, I found myself in the Royal Box with the Queen – and the Duke of Edinburgh – at the Royal Variety Performance. I was writing a book about them, and because, for a few years, I had been the chairman of one of Prince Philip’s pet charities – the National Playing Fields Association (he was president, the Queen was patron) – I managed to get privileged access to the royal couple. For several months I was allowed to walk with them, to talk with them, as they went about their official duties.
Sitting next to Prince Philip at the Royal Variety Performance and listening to his banter was rather like being caught in the commentary box at the Eurovision Song Contest with Graham Norton on speed. You got two hours of non-stop caustic quipping. Most of it was Greek to me, but I got the gist. In this particular year the show’s finale featured an excerpt from The Full Monty, the stage musical based on the movie about a group of unemployed steelworkers from Sheffield who form a male striptease group, like the Chippendales. The musical comes to a climax with the lads doing a full striptease – everything comes off. But as they complete the strip, as their gold lamé thongs finally hit the stage floor, there’s a blinding lighting effect: bright lights are shone from the stage straight into the audience’s eyes to dazzle them and spare their blushes. Bizarrely, this male stri ptease show was what the organisers of the Royal Variety Performance reckoned the elderly sovereign and her consort (then in their eighties) would really enjoy.
Prince Philip glanced down at his programme and saw the word ‘Finale’. His spirits soared. Below the word ‘Finale’ he read the title of the final item: ‘The Full Monty’. He turned to the Queen and said, ‘Look, cabbage, we’ve reached the finale and do you see what they’re doing? “The Full Monty”. I think we’re going to enjoy the finale, for a change. “The Full Monty” – I imagine it’s going to be a tribute to Field Marshal Montgomery and the battle of El Alamein.’
His Royal Highness and Her Majesty were quickly, sorely and rudely disabused, as on to the stage strutted eighteen strapping lads, waxed, tanned, oiled, and wearing nothing but a shimmying codpiece and a couple of golden tassels apiece. They marched centre stage and performed a ludicrous dance to ghastly music, culminating in the full strip-off.
Suddenly they were all stark bollock naked.
Fortunately, on cue, as their thongs bit the dust, there was the blinding lighting effect – so you could not see a thing … if you were seated in the Stalls.
However, if you were seated immediately adjacent to the stage, in the Royal Box, you could see it all – and, as we know, the problem with naked dancing is that not everything stops when the music stops.
The Queen did not flinch. Elizabeth II gazed steadily at the hideous jingling-jangling sight, without a flicker of an eyelid or a furrowing of the brow.
I sat in the corner of the Royal Box, ashen-faced and aghast.
The Duke of Edinburgh leant towards me and murmured reassuringly, ‘You needn’t worry. She’s been to Papua New Guinea, she’s seen it all before.’
Part One
* * *
GROWING UP
When you were just a little boy somebody ought to have said ‘hush’, just once.
Mrs Patrick Campbell
1. What’s in a name?
They say everyone has a secret. What’s yours? We will come to mine in due course. My hero, Oscar Wilde, had several. He reckoned the secret of his success lay in his name. Oscar Wilde had a thing about names. He believed that to live in the imagination and memory of the public you needed to have a name of just five letters – like Jesus or Plato. Or Oscar. Or Gyles.
Or Jumbo.
P. T. Barnum, the great American showman (and friend of my great-great-grandfather), bought Jumbo the Circus Elephant from London Zoo in 1881. In 1882, Oscar Wilde was in New York on one of his lecture tours and was introduced to Jumbo at Barnum and Bailey’s Circus. ‘His name will live for a hundred years,’ said the flamboyant Irish playwright of the mighty African elephant. Oscar was right. He was right, too, when he noted that the five-letter people the public have a soft spot for are usually known by their first names (like Elvis or Cilla – or Boris, even) while those the public don’t, aren’t (like Trump – or Putin).
‘A century from now,’ predicted Oscar, ‘my friends will call me Oscar and my enemies will call me Wilde.’
As you read this, I hope you will think of me as Gyles.
In Ancient Rome the predictive power of a person’s name was summed up in the Latin tag ‘nomen est omen’, meaning ‘the name is a sign’. I am as I am, in part, because of what I’m called. Gyles isn’t a bad name (I quite like it), but why is mine spelled with a ‘y’? It’s the most ridiculous affectation. What were my parents thinking? (Of course, it could have been worse. At school there was a girl in my class whose surname was Balls. Her first name was Ophelia. I kid you not.)
My full name is Gyles Daubeney Brandreth because my father claimed family kinship with Sir Gyles Daubeney (1451–1508), first Baron Daubeney, Knight of the Garter, soldier, diplomat, courtier, politician. This Gyles (whose tomb you can visit in Westminster Abbey) knew Edward IV. He attended the coronation of Richard III. He was Master of the Mint and Lord Chamberlain to Henry VII. His son, Henry Daubeney, was present at the Field of the Cloth of Gold, the celebrated summit that took place in 1520 between King Henry VIII of England and King François I of France. In 1538, Henry Daubeney became first Earl of Bridgewater, but despite having two top-drawer wives (one, Elizabeth Neville, kinswoman to Edward IV; the other, Katherine Howard, daughter of Thomas Howard, 2nd Duke of Norfolk), he failed to have any children. His titles died with him.
My father, Charles Daubeney Brandreth (1910–81), never produced proof of this illustrious connection, but he reckoned there must be something in it because his acknowledged forebears (and therefore mine) included, over many generations, a good number of people named either Gyles or Henry Daubeney. In my late pre-adolescence (around the time I was also devoting many happy hours to perfecting a rather stylish autograph) I spent a good deal of time at the local library poring over copies of Burke’s Dormant and Extinct Peerages, working out how I might establish my right to reclaim the family titles.
When he was about the same age, the young Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson was asked what he hoped to be when he grew up, and replied, ‘King of the World.’ My aspirations were less exalted. I simply felt I should be Gyles, 3rd Baron Daubeney, 2nd Earl of Bridgewater.
I had other childhood fantasies, of course. At six or seven, I had a Peter Pan fixation. My parents played along with it: at some expense my father hired an authentic Captain Hook costume from Berman’s, the theatrical costumiers. (You can see us dressed to kill on the back cover.) In 1958, when I was ten, Pope Pius XII died, and I decided my destiny was one day to succeed St Peter as Bishop of Rome. When my father pointed out that we were Anglicans not Catholics, I settled for being Archbishop of Canterbury. With an eiderdown for a chasuble, one of my father’s ties as a stole, and a woollen tea cosy (knitted by Auntie Ida) as my mitre, I conducted regular church services in my bedroom, using the liturgy as set out in the Book of Common Prayer, with my large collection of string and glove puppets serving as my congregation. I realise now that when I married my Sooty to my Sweep, it was probably the Church of England’s first gay wedding.
A little later, when I was eleven or twelve, I spent many afternoons on my own, trolling up and down the side streets of Marylebone – the part of London that was then home to the wholesale rag trade. There, a tad furtively, I studied the mannequins in the shop windows, thinking how good I’d look as a well-shaped woman, imagining the gorgeous figure I’d cut on the catwalk. This was at the end of the 1950s, when the French model and actress Brigitte Bardot was reckoned to be the most beautiful girl in the world. I reckoned I would look exactly like her.
By the time I was fourteen I had moved on in my fantasies, to lead a make-believe double life: working by day as a tail-coated waiter in a grand hotel in the south of France and, by night, as an effortlessly charming, and deadly efficient, confidence trickster. A few hearts were broken, but other than that, no physical harm was done as I pursued my secret life of crime.
In real life, there have been a number of lawyers in the Brandreth family (my father and grandfather were both barristers and solicitors in their time; my son, Benet, is a QC and part-time judge) but, so far as I know, no convicted criminals. In 1817 Jeremiah Brandreth was the last man to be beheaded in England, but that was for treason.
Jeremiah was an unemployed stocking-maker and political activist from Sutton-in-Ashfield in Nottinghamshire. He was a Luddite, opposed to the mechanisation of the textile industry, and bent on revolution. He was nothing if not ambitious. On 9 June 1817 he led a small band of men from The White Horse pub in Pentrich along the road to Nottingham. The plan was first to take Nottingham Castle and then to move on to London to join 50,000 more men, capture the Tower of London, overthrow the government, cancel the national debt and ‘end poverty for ever’. Unfortunately for the ‘Nottingham Captain’, as he was known, the Pentrich rebels counted a spy among their number. They were barely three miles down the road when they were surprised by twenty mounted troops from the 15th Regiment of Light Dragoons. The rebellion was routed and Brandreth and his co-conspirators were sent for trial at the Old Bailey.
