He has a genius for mimicking the rich and famous.
But in a fascinating departure, CRAIG BROWN’s latest book is based totally on fact. Utterly bizarre as these encounters between the rich and famous may seem, each one really did happen. In this glorious series, he picks the most revealing.
And remember: each one actually took place — proof that sometimes, fact truly is stranger than fiction...
'What is it about her? She's not a great dancer or singer': Michael Jackson said of Madonna
MADONNA AND MICHAEL JACKSON
The Ivy restaurant, Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, March 15, 1991
Wondering who might be sufficiently glamorous to accompany her to the Academy Awards, Madonna has a brainwave.
‘How about Michael Jackson? Oh my God, what a great idea!’ she exclaims to her manager, who immediately arranges a preliminary dinner at The Ivy for the two biggest-selling stars in the world.
In the past, Jackson has been puzzled by Madonna. Though he is an astute businessman, he can’t fathom her appeal.
‘What is it about her? She’s not a great dancer or singer.’
Two years ago, he was somewhat put out to discover that she was being advertised by Warner Brothers as the ‘Artist Of The Decade’.
‘It makes me look bad,’ he explained. ‘I’m the artist of the decade, aren’t I? Did she out-sell Thriller? No, she did not.’
At their table at The Ivy, Madonna wears a black jacket and hot pants with lacy stockings. Around her neck hangs a crucifix. Jackson is wearing black jeans, a red shirt and matching jacket, topped off with a fedora. He keeps his dark glasses on.
‘I’m sitting there, you know, trying to be nice. And the next thing I know, she reaches over and takes my glasses off ... And then she throws them across the room and breaks them. I was shocked. ‘ “I’m your date now,” she told me. “And I hate it when I can’t see a man’s eyes.” ’
As the dinner progresses, Madonna thinks she has spotted Michael taking a crafty peek at her breasts. Grinning, she snatches his hand and places it upon them. Jackson recoils.
When all is said and done, this is not his style. But Madonna is not the kind of person to take no for an answer; later during their dinner, she saucily drops a piece of bread down her cleavage, then fishes it out and pops it into her mouth.
The effect on Jackson is one of instant queasiness. Their exploratory dinner cannot, therefore, be judged a great success, but at least it is not so disastrous as to derail their joint entrance at the Academy Awards ceremony.
They cut a dash together: Jackson in a white-sequinned suit with a large diamond brooch, plus gloves and gold‑tipped cowboy boots, Madonna in a skintight low-cut gown, also white‑sequinned, and $20 million worth of jewels.
Afterwards, they go to Swifty Lazar’s annual Oscar night party at Spago.
Once inside, it is not long before Madonna drifts towards her former lover Warren Beatty, leaving Jackson all alone. He is rescued by his old friend Diana Ross.
Once inside, it is not long before Madonna drifts towards her former lover Warren Beatty, leaving Jackson all alone. He is rescued by his old friend Diana Ross.
‘Well, I just don’t understand it, Michael,’ Ross says loudly.
‘I mean, she’s supposed to be with you, isn’t she? So, what is she doing with him?’
‘I don’t know,’ whispers Jackson. ‘I guess she likes him better.’
‘Well, I think she’s an awful woman,’ says Diana Ross, reassuringly. ‘Tacky dress, too.’
TERENCE STAMP AND EDWARD HEATH
F2, Albany, Piccadilly, London W1, February 1968
In 1968 Terence Stamp (left) had lunch with his neighbour Edward Heath (left) who apparently told him that the Prime Minister, Harold Wilson frightened him
Albany is the grandest apartment block in London. As a teenage messenger boy, Terence Stamp peeked through the back entrance in Burlington Street and looked in awe at the arcade entrance, lined with rhododendrons.
Ever since then, he has dreamed of living there. Now, with the success of Billy Budd and The Collector, he can afford to.
So Stamp, who describes himself as ‘a new kind of Englishman … very swinging, very aware, well-dressed … the working-class boy with a few bob’, snaps up the next Albany ‘set’ that comes on the market.
When he moves in, he finds that one of his neighbours is the leader of the Conservative Party, Edward Heath.
One day, the stiff, awkward, virginal leader of the Opposition takes the unusual step of inviting his relaxed, fashionable, sexually-charged neighbour to lunch.
A few days later, Stamp describes their three-hour meeting to his friend, the author John Fowles, who duly records it in his diary.
Heath apparently told Stamp that the Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, frightened him and sometimes hurt him in the House of Commons.
Stamp advised Heath: ‘OK, you’re sitting on the Opposition front bench, old Wilson gets up.
‘As soon as he starts annoying you, you just think: “This morning Harold got up at No 10, he went downstairs to the kitchen, got out the best tea, warmed the pot, did it all perfect, took it upstairs to the old woman, thinking: ‘Maybe this is it, this time, she’ll open her arms and we’ll have a lovely s***.’
‘Instead of which the old bag just says: “Oh gawd,” and turns over and goes to sleep again.
‘You just (have to) think: “It’s not me (Wilson’s) trying to hurt, it’s his missus or whatever. All I got to do is work out what it is in Wilson’s life that makes him have to hurt me. Then I can handle him.” ’
Later, Fowles asks Stamp whether Edward Heath has taken this advice to heart.
‘He could have learnt a lot, but he just couldn’t get the groove, didn’t seem to hear what I said,’ Stamp replies.
ELVIS PRESLEY AND PRESIDENT NIXON
The White House, December 20, 1970
Elvis Presley wrote to President Nixon in 1970: 'I would love to meet you just to say hello if you're not too busy'
As 1970 nears its end, Elvis Presley is riddled with worries about assassinations, anti-war protests, a lack of respect for authority and the prevalence of drugs.
His paranoia about the abuse of drugs by young people is exacerbated by the quantity of substances he himself consumes.
Shopping proves a reasonably effective method of allaying his fears about everything else.
Over the course of three nights, he spends $20,000 on guns; the following week, he buys two Mercedes — one for himself and another for a girlfriend; the week after, he buys a third Mercedes for an aide, plus a new Cadillac as a wedding present for a Palm Springs patrolman with whom he has struck up a friendship.
On December 19, his father and his wife Priscilla confront him: his spending is getting out of hand. Presley takes this badly.
‘I’m getting out of here,’ he shouts.
Without telling anyone where he is going, he flies from Memphis to Washington, from Washington to Dallas, then on to Los Angeles, then back to Washington.
In flight, he writes a letter to the President in which he asks to be made a Federal Agent at Large.
He has, he adds, pursued ‘an in-depth study of drug abuse and Communist brainwashing techniques … I would love to meet you just to say hello if you’re not too busy.’
Hours after dropping the letter off at the White House, he receives a phone call. It is Egil ‘Bud’ Krogh, deputy counsel to the President, wondering if he would drop by in 45 minutes.
The senior staff at the White House feel that, in view of Richard Nixon’s poor standing among the young, it would be ‘extremely beneficial for the President to build some rapport with Presley’.
Elvis arrives in full make-up, wearing a large brass-buttoned Edwardian jacket over a purple velvet tunic with matching trousers held up by a vast gold belt. A necklace and a gold pendant hang from his neck.
He strides confidently into the Oval Office and spreads his collection of police badges over Nixon’s desk for him to admire.
Soon, he has launched into a passionate diatribe against The Beatles: they have come to America and taken American money, then gone back to England to foster anti-American feeling.
‘The President nodded in agreement and expressed some surprise,’ reads Bud Krogh’s official memo of the meeting.
Elvis then tells him: ‘I’m just a poor boy from Tennessee. I’ve gotten a lot from my country. And I’d like to do something to repay for what I’ve gotten.’
‘That will be very helpful,’ replies Nixon, cautiously.
Elvis senses the moment is right to ask for a Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs special agent badge. The President looks a little uncertain and says: ‘Bud, can we get him a badge?’
‘Well, sir,’ Krogh answers, ‘if you want to give him a badge, I think we can get him one.’
Presley is overcome. ‘This means a lot to me,’ he says.
He pulls Nixon to him and hugs this least tactile of presidents to his chest. Nixon pats Presley briskly on the shoulder.
Managing to extricate himself from Elvis Presley’s embrace, he takes a step back.
‘You dress kind of strange, don’t you?’ he says.
‘You have your show and I have mine,’ explains Elvis.
Presley returns home, badge in hand, in such a state of triumph that he buys a further four Mercedes as Christmas presents.
His wife later claims he only wanted the badge so he could transport all his prescription drugs and guns without being arrested.
But he will use it for other purposes, too: as a fully-fledged FBI special agent, he sometimes flashes the blue light on his car to pull motorists over for speeding, or to offer assistance at road accidents.
SALVADOR DALI AND BARRY HUMPHRIES
Gotham Book Mart, 41 West 47th Street, New York, November 1963
Barry Humphries (right) encountered Salvador Dali (left) and his wife Gala at the Gotham Book Mart in New York where he was invited back to their hotel room
Early one afternoon, the 29-year-old Barry Humphries happens to be standing on top of one of the ladders in the rare book room at the Gotham Book Mart, New York, when Salvador Dali enters, ready for a signing session of his latest book, The Diary Of A Genius.
With him is his avaricious 69-year-old wife Gala, who is always on the lookout for young men.
Humphries shuttles down and ‘somewhat obsequiously’ introduces himself to the artist who has long been one of his idols.
Dali tells Humphries of his great wish to visit Australia and examine the cave paintings of the Aboriginals. Then he breaks into what Humphries describes as ‘a kind of gibberish, which was his fanciful version of Aboriginal speech’.
The manager of the bookshop is anxious to start the signing session — but Gala Dali has other plans.
‘She began to stroke my none-too-lustrous hair and proposed that we all go back to the St Regis Hotel immediately,’ recalls Humphries.
He is very excited, ‘yet not a little apprehensive’, for Gala’s reputation as a sexual predator precedes her. To dispel her terror of growing old, she is known to have a constant succession of young lovers.
Nevertheless, Humphries travels willingly with the Dalis to the St Regis Hotel, where the staff are perfectly used to Salvador walking his pet ocelot on a leash through the hall. Throughout the journey, Dali keeps up an unending stream of Aboriginal banter.
In the suite, Gala produces a large pair of scissors. She clasps the back of Humphries’ head firmly in her left hand and starts hacking away at his hair. Snip! Snip!
Happily, Humphries manages to wriggle out of her clutches without the loss of too much hair.
Then Salvador and Gala descend into a furious and intimate argument, Salvador gesticulating wildly and screaming curses at Gala, and Gala returning the abuse in French.
Feeling somewhat de trop, Barry Humphries slips away unnoticed, back to the real world.
LORD SNOWDON AND BARRY HUMPHRIES
Chez Moi, Addison Road, Holland Park, London W14, November 1966
After Barry Humphries (right) played a practical joke in a swish London restaurant, Lord Snowdon (left) had him evicted from the establishment
One evening, the composer Stanley Myers and up-and-coming young Australian comedian Barry Humphries go out to dinner at the swish new restaurant Chez Moi.
Once they have settled at their table, Myers attempts to persuade Humphries to perform one of the practical jokes for which he is fast gaining a reputation.
Humphries is a long-time devotee of pranks. Before boarding aeroplanes, he sometimes fills a sick-bag with Russian salad, then pretends to be sick mid-flight and spoons the contents into his mouth.
But it is the trouser trick that Stanley Myers particularly wants Humphries to perform on this particular evening in Chez Moi.
It is, in Humphries’ words, ‘a simple, and perhaps juvenile, stunt which worked well only in a dignified or pretentious ambience. All that happened was that my pants fell down, apparently by accident, at a conspicuous moment. The “trick” was that I should exhibit a high degree of embarrassment.’
Humphries retreats to the restaurant’s loo in order to loosen his trousers.
Halfway back to the table, he times the release of the trousers to perfection.
With a tremendous show of shame, he returns to the table, where Myers is convulsed with laughter. But the joke doesn’t afford much amusement to the other tables.
The maître d’ sidles over to Humphries.
‘I am sorry, sir,’ he says, ‘but we must ask you please to leave the restaurant immediatement. Lord Snowdon over zair is most offended by what just ’appen.’
Two waiters then lift Humphries bodily from his chair and carry him out of the restaurant with such speed that he has no time to catch even a sideways glimpse of Princess Margaret’s horrified husband.
He tries to get back into the restaurant, but finds the door has been locked. There and then, he plots his revenge.
He walks to a telephone box and riffles through the directory for the phone number of Chez Moi.
Humphries, an adept mimic, puts on the voice of an upper-class Englishwoman.
‘This is the Countess of Rosse speaking. My son Lord Snowdon is dining in your restaurant. May I speak with him urgently?’
There is a long pause.
‘Mother? How did you track me down here?’
‘Tony, darling, there is a lovely and talented man in your restaurant tonight who has been far from well. His name is Barry Humphries and he has been accidentally locked out in the street. Please buy him and his party a large bottle of champagne and get the management to apologise.’
Throughout this monologue, Humphries hears Snowdon’s voice going: ‘What, Mother? Who is this? Who is this speaking?’
Humphries waits hopefully in the street, but the doors remain closed. Ten years later, he is starring as Dame Edna Everage in his West End show Housewife, Superstar!. The show is a triumphant success.
Vogue magazine has arranged to send a photographer to the theatre. He is already waiting by the stage door when Humphries arrives: it is Lord Snowdon.
‘I’d like to take up most of your day on this job,’ he says. ‘Perhaps we could break somewhere for lunch?’
Humphries suggests an Italian restaurant near the theatre.
‘Oh no, thank you,’ replies Snowdon. ‘I want you to be my guest. There’s an excellent French restaurant I know in Holland Park called Chez Moi. I wonder if you know it?’
‘He gave me a broad Royal Doulton smile, and I think he might have even winked,’ recalls Humphries.
‘Otherwise, no subsequent reference was ever made to that evening, so long ago, when for two minutes I had been his mother.’
JAMES DEAN AND ALEC GUINNESS
The Villa Capri, Hollywood, September 23, 1955
Alec Guinness (right) was always more than a touch superstitious. He told James Dean (left) about a premonition he had regarding Dean's new racing car
A week before he is due to die, James Dean is sitting at a table in his favourite little restaurant in Hollywood, the Villa Capri. Looking towards the entrance, he spots a familiar figure attempting to get a table, then being turned away.
He recognises him as the English actor Alec Guinness, the star of so many of his favourite Ealing comedies, such as Kind Hearts And Coronets. Guinness has always been more than a touch superstitious. In a few minutes, he will be applying his sixth sense to James Dean.
He delights in recounting his psychic powers. On the afternoon of New Year’s Eve, 1943, he had been resting in the cabin of the naval ship of which he was a lieutenant, when he had apparently heard a sinister voice saying: ‘Tomorrow.’ He was convinced that this was a premonition of death.
That night, his ship was caught in a hurricane and was dashed against the rocks as it entered the small Italian port of Termoli. He gave the order to abandon ship. He had, it seems, outwitted the sinister voice.
Now, 12 years later, he has arrived in Hollywood, exhausted after a 16-hour flight. The screenwriter Thelma Moss has invited him out to dinner, and they settle for the Villa Capri. But when they are told by the maître d’ that it is full, they begin to walk away.
At that moment, Guinness becomes aware of the sound of feet running down the street behind him. He turns to see a young man in sneakers, a sweatshirt and blue jeans.
‘You want a table?’ he asks. ‘Join me. My name’s James Dean.’
‘Yes, very kind of you,’ replies Guinness, and eagerly follows him back to the Villa Capri.
Before they go in, James Dean says: ‘I’d like to show you something,’ and takes them into the courtyard.
There, he proudly shows them his new racing car, one of only 90 Porsche 550 Spyders ever produced.
He has had it customised: it now has tartan seating and two red stripes at the rear of its wheel-well, all designed by George Barris, the man who will go on to design the Batmobile.
‘It’s just been delivered,’ Dean says, proudly.
Guinness is seized by one of his premonitions.
‘How fast can you go in that?’
‘I can do 150 in it.’
‘Have you driven it?’
‘I’ve never been in it at all.’
And then — ‘exhausted, hungry, feeling a little ill-tempered’ — Guinness hears himself saying, in a voice he can hardly recognise as his own: ‘Look, I ... must say something. Please do not get into that car.’
He looks at his watch.
‘It’s now 10 o’clock, Friday, September 23, 1955. If you get in that car, you will be found dead in it by this time next week.’
Despite this grim prognosis, Dean laughs.
‘Oh, shucks!’ he says. ‘Don’t be so mean!’
Guinness apologises, blaming his outburst on a lack of sleep and food.
The three of them then have dinner together — ‘a charming dinner’ — before going their separate ways.
A week later, on September 30, Dean is driving his new Spyder across the junction of Route 46 and Route 41 near Cholame, California, when he collides head-on with a Ford Custom Tudor coupe driven by a student with the inappropriately comical name of Donald Turnupseed.
James Dean is taken by ambulance to Paso Robles War Memorial Hospital, where he is pronounced dead on arrival at 5.59pm.
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