The Wili Si
Simon Hoggart, the journalist, crops up in the previous essay. He died in 2014, and I’ve been thinking about him. I’m Godfather to his son, Richard Hoggart, named after Simon’s father, the Richard Hoggart of ‘Uses of Literacy.’ Along with many others of my generation, it was a book that had a profound effect on me – aged 13 or 14 when I read it – describing me and my life (upper working class/ lower middle class) at a time when there were there were few analyses and descriptions particularly of Northern working class life. I met Hoggart senior later, was thrilled to do so. This was the man who, also, ‘won’ the Lady Chatterley trial. After his devastating testimony (‘this is a deeply moral book’) the other expert witnesses called by Penguin Books were not needed, T.S. Eliot sitting outside the court remained uncalled. Richard had wanted to be a writer himself, he told me – in the sense of novelist or playwright , and approved of me, I think. He could come across like an Old Testament prophet (check out his appearance with Sue Lawley on ‘Desert Island Discs’). The last time I saw him, at his son’s Fiftieth, he said to me, chop-logically, ‘The next time we all meet will be at my funeral.’ In fact, he died a few months after Simon, and wouldn’t have known his son was dead: he’d been in a home with his wife, Mary, for many years. They had dementia and died – it’s the only cheer - within weeks of one another.
I first heard Simon’s voice coming through the wall into my bedroom in Room T1 of the Fisher Building at Queens,’ Cambridge. It was guesswork that it was him, but I caught a Northern accent and a lot of (inadequate word) chuckling. He was a bit of a star even then, a journalist on Cambridge ‘Varsity’ along with my roommate, Peter Cole, and they kept late hours. They would later work together on the Guardian, and stay friends and rivals throughout their careers. I have never made long lasting friends with another writer (see ‘Almost Famous’) and wonder about writers’ reputation as ‘sensitive’ compared with more ‘ruthless’ journalists. In reality, my observation is that journalism is a very companionable profession, more co-operative than outsiders might imagine. Almost all my adult life I have hankered for its (too?) easy camaraderie.
(Simon) Hoggart once called me – we were standing, chatting, in the foyer of the University Library – ‘the funniest man in Cambridge’. It was an honour coming from him and a mark of his own status even then that he should apparently concede the prize. I used to sparkle in those days, wanting to impress – worked at it. But it was Simon who made his living out of humour, first evinced by his accounts of politicians on the Election trails of the Seventies. Before, he had been based for a time in Belfast, and I remember going to see a film with him on one of his leaves from the Province in Leicester Square – the film was the great ‘Don’t Look Now’ – and where, at the climax (spoiler alert), the homicidal dwarf reveals himself, Simon jumped out of his seat. It was a result of all those months in the Europa Hotel, Belfast and bombings. I sometimes shared bedrooms (or more accurately sofas and living room floors) in friends’ flats with him in London at that time, before he settled in London, with a Parliamentary job on the Graun. He fetched up, eventually - it seemed unlikely - in Peckham, then fell on his feet, lodging in Camberwell, with the actress Celia Bannerman as his landlady, lucky man. Peter Cole, good at nicknames which stick (I am ‘Wakers’) first gave him the nickname of ‘Peckham Si.’ Later this transmorphed into ‘The Wily Hog,’ (why?). I remember Simon bringing Celia to my little house in South Yorkshire. Celia had just been the lead, Elizabeth Bennett, in ‘Pride and Prejudice’ on television, and it was like Royalty arriving. It was hot weather and we went swimming. I put together a sort of Salade Nicoise Delia Smith style and Simon commented gratefully about this spatchcock concoction (lots of green beans) ‘You can feel the Mediterranean warmth.’ I’d just given up teaching for writing and was doing a bit of examining of O Level papers to make ends meet. I had a letter on my desk from the Chief Examiner, congratulating me on my marking of an early trial batch of papers, and Simon, picked it up and read it (as a journo would) and said, ‘It must be very pleasing to get a letter like that.’ He was the established journalist, along with the well known actress. I felt as if I was just getting going, ‘a little no one from nowhere,’ as Julie Christie spits at Dominic Guard in ‘The Go-Between,’ and appreciated his kindness.
In later life, he was much moodier and bad tempered than his later radio public persona suggested, capable of arriving for Sunday lunch and immersing himself in the papers, rather than the general conversation. He also developed an annoying habit of practising his jokes (for the Saturday Guardian) on you. But was, when he chose, brilliantly benign and funny company, with a huge range of acquaintance and friends and anecdotes to match. I stayed with him and Alyson a couple of times in the States, where he worked for the Observer. He loved America. Once, driving him back from a dinner party, after he had returned to London (reluctantly) I said I had enjoyed Bill Bryson’s book on America, and he spluttered – he wanted to appropriate the place - ‘You need to read mine.’ I parked while he went into his house, returning to present me with a signed copy. He understood – without approving of – Reagan and wrote very cleverly about American culture, its hundreds of varieties of ice cream and gargantuan meals (I remember a German meal we had in West Virginia where he ordered doggy bags, in advance). We went pony trekking and rafting. His daughter Amy was very small then and known as ‘the Bun’. The ‘Bun’ derives from ‘bun in the oven’ and I was with them the previous year when she was still in the womb. Alyson had a scan at that time and the nurse said, ‘Look mummy and daddy, she’s waving at you.’ We had a number of holidays in the Eighties and I like to say I went on honeymoon with them – in fact it was a jaunt closely following on the honeymoon. We went to Italy, part subsidised by the Observer, to Olivetti Castle (we called it, un-originally, Typewriter Castle) near Florence. On the way, on the Cross Channel Ferry, I had spurted out yoghurt when laughing at a joke, and any condition of general hilarity became known from then on as ‘a yoghurt spraying situation.’ We were with Julia, Alyson’s cousin, with whom I had also holidayed in Greece. Julia had pointed to some small wild flowers while I was staring at the bigger picture – a ruined town on a hill. When I pointed out that I was more interested in the spectacular view, Julia said, ‘Well, if I have a fault it’s my love of wild flowers.’ This was eagerly picked up by Hoggart and riffed on: ‘If I have a fault it’s my extreme generosity to my guests’ etc. These are the little interchanges/routines friends fall into. My main memory of Simon on that holiday is his reading ‘The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail’ and laughing at the preposterousness of it. I couldn’t wait to get hold of it, being more suggestible than him. Simon had no time at all for anything beyond our rational ken, pillorying crackpot religions and spiritual mumbo jumbo. When I suggested (teasingly) I took his son to church, my having taken on the serious role of Godfather – the devil is mentioned in the service, I remember - he said, ‘No, you won’t.’ He was also, entertainingly, a great hater, and enjoyed a dig in print at, say, Esther Ranzen and Richard Branson.
Simon was a skilled travel writer, never too critical of his hosts and paymasters. though (for someone who travelled as much as he did) remaining extremely nervous about arrangements to such an extent that the rest of us on that sweltering Tuscan holiday never gave a thought to forward planning. I look after myself most of the time and have never known such a relaxed time. He did all the worrying the way Christ took on the sins of the world. We also kept him, without his knowing it, from driving the car: he was a terrible driver and I think in later life gave up driving altogether. I remember, in Sienna one evening (it was so hot we only went sightseeing after six) the rest of the party were going on to a wine tasting. I said I would stay on in the square. They were suspicious of my motives, which were innocent, but as soon as they had gone a young Spaniard came to sit by me and put his hand on my thigh. Most of the time after that was spent looking for somewhere to ‘go’ and comparatively little on getting down to it, but I was late in meeting up with Si, Aly and Julia. They accused me of what I had in fact been doing and I denied it for years. He was funny about my gayness, turning to me when Boy George was singing ‘Victims’ on ‘Top of the Pops’ and saying ‘Victims of what?’ ‘Victims of Aids,’ I said flippantly. ‘You think everyone’s gay,’ he said – at a time when George was pretending to like nothing more exciting than a cup of tea. He liked silly humour: my singing ‘Driller Killer’ to the tune of ‘Mellow Yellow.’
In the mid Nineties, I left West London and went a long wander, described in the earlier essays. On a visit back to London, and lunch with him and his young family, followed by a walk in Marble Park, close to where he lived, he looked round at all the families, a number of whom he knew, and said, perceptively: ‘This is what you’ve given up.’ Ten/fifteen years on, he had an affair, well publicised: he was someway to being a public figure, or ‘C list celebrity,’as he put it. I became aware of this sensation, seeing his face in an Evening Standard discarded in a rainy Islington gutter. It surprised me, except in the sense that it’s what a lot of married middle aged men (given the opportunity) presumably do, without it hitting the tabloids. Alyson asked me just after the fuss had died down to accompany her to a recording of ‘The News Quiz’ which Simon hosted, for a bit of moral support, and we had a very jolly meal afterwards (she having forgiven him) where he announced expansively and a bit drunkenly to the whole table: ‘You are all my friends,’ and picked up the bill. I didn’t see him much after that. I stayed at their place once and he didn’t come out to see me off (in one of his depressions?). I’m prickly like my mother and this annoyed me. I thought, ‘If I was Chris Patten’, - one of his chums - ‘you would have.’ Then he fell ill, and I was due to see him one August lunch time, but the Commons had been reconvened (the Syria debate? Or the riots?), he was required to cover the debate, and missed him. I did see Alyson regularly once or twice a year for a meal – and we still meet under the clock at Waterloo and wander to a restaurant to catch up. I was too ill myself to go to his funeral, but managed the terrific get together some months later in Westminster. There we all were – the group who met at Cambridge. It’s his voice I remember, the Northern accented voice coming though the wall, the laughter rising through it. I retain one more tangible memory of him. In the States I admired an overnight bag he had – ‘Land’s End’ – soft, grey and with various compartments; ‘Look there’s a secret compartment’ he said, with glee. ‘I’d like one,’ I said, and he sold me his, having decided he would like a brighter colour. It accompanies me more or less whenever I go. It’s seen better days, but then we all have.
22/8/2015
I first heard Simon’s voice coming through the wall into my bedroom in Room T1 of the Fisher Building at Queens,’ Cambridge. It was guesswork that it was him, but I caught a Northern accent and a lot of (inadequate word) chuckling. He was a bit of a star even then, a journalist on Cambridge ‘Varsity’ along with my roommate, Peter Cole, and they kept late hours. They would later work together on the Guardian, and stay friends and rivals throughout their careers. I have never made long lasting friends with another writer (see ‘Almost Famous’) and wonder about writers’ reputation as ‘sensitive’ compared with more ‘ruthless’ journalists. In reality, my observation is that journalism is a very companionable profession, more co-operative than outsiders might imagine. Almost all my adult life I have hankered for its (too?) easy camaraderie.
(Simon) Hoggart once called me – we were standing, chatting, in the foyer of the University Library – ‘the funniest man in Cambridge’. It was an honour coming from him and a mark of his own status even then that he should apparently concede the prize. I used to sparkle in those days, wanting to impress – worked at it. But it was Simon who made his living out of humour, first evinced by his accounts of politicians on the Election trails of the Seventies. Before, he had been based for a time in Belfast, and I remember going to see a film with him on one of his leaves from the Province in Leicester Square – the film was the great ‘Don’t Look Now’ – and where, at the climax (spoiler alert), the homicidal dwarf reveals himself, Simon jumped out of his seat. It was a result of all those months in the Europa Hotel, Belfast and bombings. I sometimes shared bedrooms (or more accurately sofas and living room floors) in friends’ flats with him in London at that time, before he settled in London, with a Parliamentary job on the Graun. He fetched up, eventually - it seemed unlikely - in Peckham, then fell on his feet, lodging in Camberwell, with the actress Celia Bannerman as his landlady, lucky man. Peter Cole, good at nicknames which stick (I am ‘Wakers’) first gave him the nickname of ‘Peckham Si.’ Later this transmorphed into ‘The Wily Hog,’ (why?). I remember Simon bringing Celia to my little house in South Yorkshire. Celia had just been the lead, Elizabeth Bennett, in ‘Pride and Prejudice’ on television, and it was like Royalty arriving. It was hot weather and we went swimming. I put together a sort of Salade Nicoise Delia Smith style and Simon commented gratefully about this spatchcock concoction (lots of green beans) ‘You can feel the Mediterranean warmth.’ I’d just given up teaching for writing and was doing a bit of examining of O Level papers to make ends meet. I had a letter on my desk from the Chief Examiner, congratulating me on my marking of an early trial batch of papers, and Simon, picked it up and read it (as a journo would) and said, ‘It must be very pleasing to get a letter like that.’ He was the established journalist, along with the well known actress. I felt as if I was just getting going, ‘a little no one from nowhere,’ as Julie Christie spits at Dominic Guard in ‘The Go-Between,’ and appreciated his kindness.
In later life, he was much moodier and bad tempered than his later radio public persona suggested, capable of arriving for Sunday lunch and immersing himself in the papers, rather than the general conversation. He also developed an annoying habit of practising his jokes (for the Saturday Guardian) on you. But was, when he chose, brilliantly benign and funny company, with a huge range of acquaintance and friends and anecdotes to match. I stayed with him and Alyson a couple of times in the States, where he worked for the Observer. He loved America. Once, driving him back from a dinner party, after he had returned to London (reluctantly) I said I had enjoyed Bill Bryson’s book on America, and he spluttered – he wanted to appropriate the place - ‘You need to read mine.’ I parked while he went into his house, returning to present me with a signed copy. He understood – without approving of – Reagan and wrote very cleverly about American culture, its hundreds of varieties of ice cream and gargantuan meals (I remember a German meal we had in West Virginia where he ordered doggy bags, in advance). We went pony trekking and rafting. His daughter Amy was very small then and known as ‘the Bun’. The ‘Bun’ derives from ‘bun in the oven’ and I was with them the previous year when she was still in the womb. Alyson had a scan at that time and the nurse said, ‘Look mummy and daddy, she’s waving at you.’ We had a number of holidays in the Eighties and I like to say I went on honeymoon with them – in fact it was a jaunt closely following on the honeymoon. We went to Italy, part subsidised by the Observer, to Olivetti Castle (we called it, un-originally, Typewriter Castle) near Florence. On the way, on the Cross Channel Ferry, I had spurted out yoghurt when laughing at a joke, and any condition of general hilarity became known from then on as ‘a yoghurt spraying situation.’ We were with Julia, Alyson’s cousin, with whom I had also holidayed in Greece. Julia had pointed to some small wild flowers while I was staring at the bigger picture – a ruined town on a hill. When I pointed out that I was more interested in the spectacular view, Julia said, ‘Well, if I have a fault it’s my love of wild flowers.’ This was eagerly picked up by Hoggart and riffed on: ‘If I have a fault it’s my extreme generosity to my guests’ etc. These are the little interchanges/routines friends fall into. My main memory of Simon on that holiday is his reading ‘The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail’ and laughing at the preposterousness of it. I couldn’t wait to get hold of it, being more suggestible than him. Simon had no time at all for anything beyond our rational ken, pillorying crackpot religions and spiritual mumbo jumbo. When I suggested (teasingly) I took his son to church, my having taken on the serious role of Godfather – the devil is mentioned in the service, I remember - he said, ‘No, you won’t.’ He was also, entertainingly, a great hater, and enjoyed a dig in print at, say, Esther Ranzen and Richard Branson.
Simon was a skilled travel writer, never too critical of his hosts and paymasters. though (for someone who travelled as much as he did) remaining extremely nervous about arrangements to such an extent that the rest of us on that sweltering Tuscan holiday never gave a thought to forward planning. I look after myself most of the time and have never known such a relaxed time. He did all the worrying the way Christ took on the sins of the world. We also kept him, without his knowing it, from driving the car: he was a terrible driver and I think in later life gave up driving altogether. I remember, in Sienna one evening (it was so hot we only went sightseeing after six) the rest of the party were going on to a wine tasting. I said I would stay on in the square. They were suspicious of my motives, which were innocent, but as soon as they had gone a young Spaniard came to sit by me and put his hand on my thigh. Most of the time after that was spent looking for somewhere to ‘go’ and comparatively little on getting down to it, but I was late in meeting up with Si, Aly and Julia. They accused me of what I had in fact been doing and I denied it for years. He was funny about my gayness, turning to me when Boy George was singing ‘Victims’ on ‘Top of the Pops’ and saying ‘Victims of what?’ ‘Victims of Aids,’ I said flippantly. ‘You think everyone’s gay,’ he said – at a time when George was pretending to like nothing more exciting than a cup of tea. He liked silly humour: my singing ‘Driller Killer’ to the tune of ‘Mellow Yellow.’
In the mid Nineties, I left West London and went a long wander, described in the earlier essays. On a visit back to London, and lunch with him and his young family, followed by a walk in Marble Park, close to where he lived, he looked round at all the families, a number of whom he knew, and said, perceptively: ‘This is what you’ve given up.’ Ten/fifteen years on, he had an affair, well publicised: he was someway to being a public figure, or ‘C list celebrity,’as he put it. I became aware of this sensation, seeing his face in an Evening Standard discarded in a rainy Islington gutter. It surprised me, except in the sense that it’s what a lot of married middle aged men (given the opportunity) presumably do, without it hitting the tabloids. Alyson asked me just after the fuss had died down to accompany her to a recording of ‘The News Quiz’ which Simon hosted, for a bit of moral support, and we had a very jolly meal afterwards (she having forgiven him) where he announced expansively and a bit drunkenly to the whole table: ‘You are all my friends,’ and picked up the bill. I didn’t see him much after that. I stayed at their place once and he didn’t come out to see me off (in one of his depressions?). I’m prickly like my mother and this annoyed me. I thought, ‘If I was Chris Patten’, - one of his chums - ‘you would have.’ Then he fell ill, and I was due to see him one August lunch time, but the Commons had been reconvened (the Syria debate? Or the riots?), he was required to cover the debate, and missed him. I did see Alyson regularly once or twice a year for a meal – and we still meet under the clock at Waterloo and wander to a restaurant to catch up. I was too ill myself to go to his funeral, but managed the terrific get together some months later in Westminster. There we all were – the group who met at Cambridge. It’s his voice I remember, the Northern accented voice coming though the wall, the laughter rising through it. I retain one more tangible memory of him. In the States I admired an overnight bag he had – ‘Land’s End’ – soft, grey and with various compartments; ‘Look there’s a secret compartment’ he said, with glee. ‘I’d like one,’ I said, and he sold me his, having decided he would like a brighter colour. It accompanies me more or less whenever I go. It’s seen better days, but then we all have.
22/8/2015