ParacelsusAsia takes his own last look in fond remembrance (mostly) of just a few of the extraordinary
and not-so-extraordinary men and women whom you may have missed and who made their mark.
Anne Scott-James b.1913 (96) journalist, author, gardening expert and panelist on the BBC’s much-loved My Word radio series with Frank Muir, Dennis Norden and Dilys Powell. Scott-James was one of the first women to break into the all-male stronghold that was pre-war Fleet Street. She combined wit and beauty and at nearly six foot, more than held her own at El Vino’s. During WW2 she was Women’s Editor of Picture Post and in 1941, a good quarter of a century before women were crashing dress codes at the Savoy Grill and elsewhere, cutting a dashing figure in pin stripes (see picture). After the war she edited Harper’s Bazaar, introducing Elizabeth David and the work of writers John Betjeman and John Mortimer. From the mid-60’s on she became a noted columnist with her own page in the Daily Express and Daily Mail. She was three times married, since 1967 very happily to the writer, designer and cartoonist, Sir Osbert Sitwell (d. 1986).
Sir Clement Freud b. 1925 (84), writer, broadcaster and former Liberal MP, grandson of Sigmund Freud, founder of psychoanalysis and brother of artist Lucien Freud. Born in Berlin his family moved to Britain in the 1933, the year Hitler came to power in Germany. Freud had a famously varied career from the 1940s on, including stints as a British Army liaison officer at the Nuremberg, politician, chef, restaurateur, food critic, horse racing pundit, children’s writer, and dog food barker. The advertisements Henry the Bassett followed him through his 14-year parliamentary career, when he was met as he rose to speak with cries of “Woof! Woof!” He was perhaps best remembered as a panelist on the BBC’s radio series Just a Minute, where his lugubrious wit delighted audiences since the program first aired in 1967.
Danny La Rue, b. 1927 (81), self-styled grand dame of female impersonation became one of the biggest stars on the cabaret circuit; his combination of expensive gowns and flagrant double entendre proved an enduring hit with the public. Born Daniel Patrick Carroll in Cork he joined the Royal Navy. Quickly cast as a girl in concert party revues, he recalls, “I looked stunning, but I never wanted to be a woman… the lads knew that”. Danny Carroll first appeared as La Rue at Churchill’s Club in Mayfair in 1957. All big brown eyes and hands-on-hips camp he was a hit. He went on to open his own successful nightclub in Hanover Square 1964. La Rue insisted there was no attempt at sexual disguise, “I’m not a drag queen, just a bloke in a frock… just a jockstrap and on with the motley”. In 2002 he was awarded an OBE for his charity work. This despite having earlier commanded Princess Margaret to “Piss Off!”, her having barged into his dressing room to find him stark naked. “I thought she was Peter Sellers messing about”, he said.
Colin Jordan, b. 1923 (85), son of a Birmingham postman, Jordan was Britain’s most notorious neo-Nazi. He occupied a niche at the extremity of British political life in the 1960s as founder of the National Socialist Movement and was jailed on several occasions for inciting race hatred. Attracting almost universal opprobrium Jordan cut an almost comical figure strutting around at far-Right rallies in Nazi-style uniforms and losing his deposit whenever he stood for parliament. He campaigned for the return of all Jews to Israel (or, when Israel was full, Madagascar) and the repatriation of all non-white immigrants. In 1975 his image as a serious Nazi was badly dented when caught stealing three pairs of red women’s knickers. He was he said the “victim of a Jewish plot” and they were “for his mum”. His extreme views were subsidised by his one-time wife, Françoise Dior, of the French perfume and fashion empire and herself a committed fascist and serial fuehrer konsort. Together they made an irresistible pair as ‘Fascism as farce”.
Simon Dee, b. 1935 (74), British TV’s first superstar, invented the persona of trendy talk show host, watched weekly by up to 18 million viewers before his precipitate fall in 1970. Born Cyril Nicholas Henty-Dodd in Ottawa, he was son of a wealthy Lancashire cotton-mill owner and his third wife. Their marriage ended when Dee was 11: his father, arriving home from war in 1946, discovered his wife in bed with two men from the BBC. Educated at Shrewsbury he served in the RAF 1953-58. After an undistinguished civvy street career, he estimated some 50 jobs in all, Dee got his break when Ronan O’Rahilly offered him a job as DJ aboard his new pirate radio ship Radio Caroline. On Easter Monday 1964, affecting a mid-Atlantic accent and christening himself Simon Dee, he launched the station in the informal style setting a benchmark for a new generation of radio presenters. After a row with O’Rahilly, he was given a job ashore as Radio Caroline’s director of programming. In 1965, Dee was recruited by BBC Radio going on to a stellar but brief 3-year career as the Beeb’s top TV show host and national celebrity. By 1968 it was all over. The combination of uppity professional arrogance and tantrums coupled with the dislike felt in the BBC’s senior echelons and certain sections of Fleet Street, did him in. He was sacked and never made it back to the top again. His moment had passed, he lacked the talent or the humility needed for a comeback. Dead end jobs, spells of vagrancy and the odd brush with the law was all that was left.
Jack Jones, b. 1913 (96), was general secretary of the Transport and General Workers’ Union from 1969 to 1978, when he exercised more power over government economic policy than any other trades union leader in British history. In 1937 he left for Spain where he fought with distinction with the International Brigade and was wounded. A crusading socialist, dedicated to collectivist ideals Jones was able to bend both Labour and Conservative administrations to his will. He was more radical than previous TGWU leaders, such as Ernie Bevin and the other traditional barons of unionism. Jones truly saw himself as the workers’ tribune, deriving his authority directly from the shop floor. Throughout his career he strove to increase the power and influence of shop stewards. He was ostentatiously incorruptible and was contemptuous of luxury (to the very end he lived in a council house), but later faced allegations of being a KGB agent. Though he had had his way for almost two decades, by the 1980’s he had lost control of his most left wing factions, depicted in the press as the Loony Left, paving the way for the Thatcherite industrial counter revolution that changed Britain forever.
Hugh Van Es, b. 1942 (67), a Dutch photojournalist who covered the Vietnam War who recorded the most famous image of the fall of Saigon in 1975 - a group of people scaling a ladder to a CIA helicopter on a rooftop. Van Es arrived in Hong Kong as a freelancer in 1967 and went to Vietnam in 1968 for NBC before joining AP (1969-72). He covered the last years of the war for UPI (1972-75). A fearless and resourceful photojournalist he was proudest of the pictures he took during the battle for Hamburger Hill.
Janet Rosenberg Jagan b. 1920 (89) American-born socialist politician who was President of Guyana from 1997-99 and Prime Minister in 1997. Daughter of middle-class Jewish parents from Chicago she met Cheddi Jagan, an Indo-Guyanese dentistry student at Northwestern University, and married before moving with him to Guyana in 1943. She and her husband were co-founders of the left-wing People’s Progressive Party (PPP) opposed British colonial rule of Guyana. After its electoral victory in April 1953 the British jailed both Jagans, who were kept under house arrest for two years. Cheddi Jagan went on to dominate Guyanese politics for three decades with his wife serving both as MP and Minister. In 1992 her husband was elected President and on his death she in turn was elected President in 1997. Social works and women’s health were lifetime concerns and, needless to say, being both Marxist and Jewish, she was the subject of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories in the United States, including false reports that she was related to Ethel and Julius Rosenberg.
