William Donaldson; hilarious Telegraph obit (Henry Root)
Hyfler/Rosner
week. Those who read this one through will be rewarded
with, perhaps, the answer to a very important musical
secret..
William Donaldson
(Filed: 27/06/2005)
William Donaldson, who died on June 22 aged 70, was
described by Kenneth Tynan as "an old Wykehamist who ended
up as a moderately successful Chelsea pimp", which was true,
though he was also a failed theatrical impresario, a
crack-smoking serial adulterer and a writer of
autobiographical novels; but it was under the nom de plume
Henry Root that he became best known.
Willie Donaldson's alter ego was a Right-wing nutcase and
wet fish merchant from Elm Park Mansions, SW10, who
specialised in writing brash, outrageous and frequently
abusive letters to eminent public figures, enclosing a one
pound note. Donaldson's genius was to write letters that
appeared absurd to the public but not to those to whom they
were addressed. The recipients duly replied, often unaware
that the joke was on them.
Root chastised the Archbishop of Canterbury for failing to
thank him for the five pounds he had donated towards roof
repairs; suggested to Margaret Thatcher (who kept the
enclosed one pound) that Mary Whitehouse should be made Home
Secretary; sympathised with the Queen about the "problems"
she was having with Princess Anne ("My Doreen, 19, is
completely off the rails too, so I know what it's like");
and told the Thorpe trial judge, Sir Joseph Cantley: "You
tipped the jury the right way and some of your jokes were
first class! Well done! You never looked to me like the sort
of man who'd send an old Etonian to the pokey", a
communication which brought a visit from the police,
investigating allegations of attempted bribery.
He volunteered to run sundry failing football clubs; to
visit the Chief Constable of Manchester with his newly
formed-group The Ordinary Folk Against The Rising Tide of
Filth in Our Society Situation (TOFATRFLOSS); asked Angela
Rippon to send him a photograph of Anna Ford and enquired of
the Tory Party director of finance the going rate for a
peerage. He wrote to the late Sir James Goldsmith urging the
elimination of "scroungers, perverts, Dutch pessary salesmen
and Polly Toynbee". "Dear Mr Root", Goldsmith replied,
"Thank you for your letter which I appreciated enormously."
Some recipients were puzzled, some furious, and some
swallowed the hoax, hook, line and sinker. Nicholas Scott MP
answered Root's letters about his love life, claiming that
all was well between himself and his wife. The Foreign
Office replied to Root's enquiries as to whether Mrs Root
might be assaulted by "local Pedros" on holiday in Ibiza,
informing him that "the activities to which you refer are
indeed apt to occur in most popular tourist centres". When
he told Sir David McNee, then Police Commissioner at
Scotland Yard, that it was "better that 10 innocent men be
convicted than that one guilty man goes free", he was told:
"Your kind comments are appreciated."
Mrs Thatcher's first priority, Root informed general Zia-al
Haq of Pakistan, was "the immediate restoration of the death
penalty". The General thanked the sender for his "very
pertinent views" and enclosed a photograph for Mrs Root. A
letter in which Root informed Esther Rantzen that she was "a
fat idiot" and her television show "a disgrace", received a
reply assuring him that "hearing from viewers like yourself
is a tremendous morale boost for all of us".
Journalists were the most gullible of all. Not one refused
the invitation to contribute some choice item of rubbish to
the Henry Root Anthology of Great Modern British Prose. In a
letter to Nigel Dempsey [sic], the Daily Mail's diarist was
softened up by the assurance that "some folk deride
sycophantic gossip about one's social superiors as a lot of
snobbish nonsense, but I am not of their number".
He had an unerring eye for the approach which would rankle
most with his recipients. Writing to Harriet Harman, then of
"The National Council for so-called Civil Liberties", he
began: "I saw you on television the other night. Why should
an attractive lass like you want to confuse her pretty
little head with complicated matters of politics,
jurisprudence, sociology and the so-called rights of man?
Leave such considerations to us men, that's my advice to
you. A pretty girl like you should have settled down by now
with a husband and a couple of kiddies." If she must work,
he continued, she should consider a career such as "that of
model, actress, ballroom dancing instructor or newsreader",
before enclosing a pound for her to buy a pretty dress and
urging the future MP to get in touch with "my friend Lord
Delfont".
Compiled and published in 1980, The Henry Root Letters
became the number one best seller that year. Although
Donaldson kept his name off the volume - the author's
identity and even the copyright notice were ascribed to
Root - Donaldson's cover was blown when it was noticed that
Root's address and Donaldson's were the same.
Donaldson/Root's torment of his victims was often lovingly
prolonged and Donaldson readily accepted there was something
unpleasant and dishonourable about the whole operation. It
was claimed that one of his more redeeming features was that
while he hated pomposity and hypocrisy in others, he
disliked himself even more.
This might have been so, had he not enjoyed hating himself
so much: "The salient features about me are laziness,
self-indulgence and sex addiction," he confessed, in his
characteristic melancholy drawl. "I'm genuinely shocked by
my own behaviour."
Charles William Donaldson, the son of a Scottish-born
shipping magnate, was born on January 4 1935 at Sunningdale,
Berkshire, where he grew up, surrounded by servants, in a
30-roomed mansion. He was fond of his father, but disliked
his snobbish, bullying mother and never forgave her for
firing the family's faithful chauffeur after she discovered
that he voted Socialist.
Donaldson was educated at Winchester, where he discovered
that he had lost the contest for the title of stupidest boy
in the school when his competitor, an Earl, was advised to
"try Eton" after just one term. He then concentrated on
perfecting his skills as an eccentric nuisance, wearing his
straw hat at a facetious angle, conducting sexual
experiments with other boys behind the squash courts and
instigating "positive" bullying - by boys of the prefects.
When he was called up for National Service in the Navy,
Donaldson's mother rang up the First Sea Lord and told him
that her son was about to do the season - "affianced to
Isabelle Giscard d'Estaing, the future President of France's
sister" - and was not ready. "The First Sea Lord realised
that he had met his match and suggested that I pitched up
when it suited," Donaldson recalled. He served as an officer
in submarines then went up to Magdalene College, Cambridge,
to read English.
During National Service, Donaldson had come under the
influence of the writer Julian Mitchell, who introduced him
to theatre and ballet and suggested he edit a literary
magazine, Gemini. Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath were among his
contributors. On graduation, Donaldson joined Ogilvie and
Mather, but resigned two days later after being asked to
write a commercial for Ovaltine.
Donaldson's father had died, an alcoholic, in 1957, leaving
him £175,000, a fortune in those days (his mother had died
in a motor accident two years earlier). After leaving
advertising, he bought a theatrical company - "in order to
audition actresses" - and became an impresario.
He first came to prominence in 1961 as the London producer
of Beyond the Fringe, which brought together Peter Cook,
Alan Bennett and Jonathan Miller. He was also the first
promoter to arrange a Bob Dylan concert at a time when the
singer was barely known in Britain. "He [Dylan] was sitting
in my office one day when I came back from lunch," Donaldson
recalled. "I couldn't get rid of the f***er."
Other successes included The Bedsitting Room and An Evening
of British Rubbish. But four years of success were followed
by a string of failures, beginning with the aptly named
Knights of Catastrophe (1965), a doomed attempt to revive
British music hall. From then on it was all downhill.
Donaldson was sued for blasphemy by the dowager Lady
Birdwood for a show in which God joins forces with Satan to
punish Pope Alexander VI. In 1966 the Daily Sketch carried a
report which read: "Vanished producer leaves entire cast in
Liverpool. Sole clue to his whereabouts a note reading 'Have
gone to London for money! Back tonight! Don't worry! We have
a hit on our hands!' ". He remained on the Equity blacklist
for many years afterwards.
By the late 1960s, Donaldson was losing so much money he had
to sell the family house in Berkshire; in 1970 he went into
voluntary liquidation. He did not, though, divide up his
life by reference to his fluctuating fortunes, but rather to
his wives and lovers; and more often than not, it was his
personal life that won him headlines.
His first marriage, in 1957, was to Sonia Avory, the
daughter of tennis champion Ted Avory. But Donaldson had
never been attracted to the "squashy, pink-faced tennis
type", and he regretted the marriage even before he had
walked down the aisle. On honeymoon he read pornography
wrapped in the cover of Kingsley Amis's Lucky Jim.
By the time his only son was born in 1959, he had begun an
affair with Jeffrey Bernard's actress wife, Jackie. When,
two years later, they agreed to elope, Donaldson hurried
home to tell his wife and left with his pyjamas in a
suitcase. Three days later Jackie rang to tell him that they
were "ships that pass in the night" and that the deal was
off.
After a six-month affair with a dancer who had appeared in
Summer Holiday, he spent two years with the actress Sarah
Miles. He moved into her flat but when she went off to make
a film in Ireland, he invited a "page three model" round,
who left her shoes behind. When Sarah Miles found them, she
kicked Donaldson out. Later, she wrote a memoir in which she
described Donaldson "adjusting his cufflinks" as he seduced
her.
The following years were a blur of starlets and minor
celebrities, including the American singer Carly Simon, whom
Donaldson jilted when she was preparing to come to Britain
to marry him.
In 1968 he married another actress, Claire Gordon, whom he
had auditioned for Lady de Winter, a nude role in his
production of The Three Musketeers. She introduced him to
cannabis and they held wild orgies, with call girls, naked
DJs and two-way mirrors. In 1970 a headline read "Cannabis
case impresario fined. When cautioned the accused asked the
arresting officer 'Haven't I seen you at one of my pot
parties?' "
In 1992 Claire Gordon revealed the "Randy secrets of the
real Mrs Root" to a tabloid, describing how her husband sent
pornographic pictures of her to contact magazines in
exchange for a plug for her fitness video.
In 1971 Donaldson fled wife and creditors and left for
Ibiza, where he spent his last £2,000 on a glass-bottomed
boat, hoping to make money out of tourists. By the end of
the season, he had no money left and had to sell the boat
for £250. He returned to London when he heard that a former
girlfriend had gone on the game, moved in to her Chelsea
brothel as a "ponce" and used his experiences as the basis
for his first book, Both the Ladies and the Gentlemen
(1975).
The book prospered modestly and Donaldson was astonished to
find himself being taken seriously as a writer. Kenneth
Tynan compared Donaldson's prose to PG Wodehouse and bought
the rights to the book, hoping (in vain) to turn it into a
musical. One day, a friend in America sent Donaldson a book
called The Lazlo Letters, the published correspondence
between a character calling himself "Lazlo Toth" and the
likes of LB Johnson and Richard Nixon.
By the time Henry Root put pen to paper, Donaldson was
living with his former secretary, Cherry Hatrick. They
married after she told him that he had behaved so badly that
they would have to get married if he wanted to continue
living with her. The marriage lasted six months before she
walked out.
Donaldson made a good deal of money from Henry Root, and
there were Root sequels (including Root into Europe (1992)
and Henry Root's World of Knowledge (1982), a television
series and a column in the Independent, in which Donaldson
chronicled the bad behaviour of his friends.
In the mid-1980s, Donaldson moved back to Ibiza where he
became infatuated with Melanie Soszynski, who in 1986 was
charged, along with the Marquess of Blandford and others,
with supplying cocaine. After the trial (at which she was
acquitted) Donaldson sent her to a clinic in
Weston-super-Mare, where the doctor told her: "I can help
you, but I don't think I can help Mr Donaldson."
When Melanie Soszynski dumped him, Donaldson wrote Is This
Allowed? (1987), inspired by their life together. In 1986
there was a stint as Talbot Church, friend of the royals and
the author of a book about Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson
entitled 101 Things you didn't know about the Royal
Lovebirds.
In 1994 Donaldson went bankrupt for a second or possibly
third time, after failing to open several years' worth of
tax demands. When rung by The Daily Telegraph's Peterborough
column to ask how had managed to run through the Root
takings in such a short period, he candidly admitted that he
had "been an idiot". (Though he put it more bluntly: "I've
been a complete c***.")
His books kept him in the limelight. In The Heart Felt
Letters (1998) under the pseudonym "Liz Reed" of Heartfelt
productions (company motto: "a tragedy aired is a tragedy
shared") Donaldson pitched proposals for television shows to
Dawn Airey at Channel 5, including such gems as Topless
Gladiators, with the former Judge Pickles acting as
arbitrator; succeeded in involving the Dean of St Paul's in
a Princess Diana "Compassion video" (featuring Esther
Rantzen and a group of grieving mothers reciting prayers
over footage of catastrophes), and offered James Boyle at
Radio 4 a game show with "in the hot seat a celeb, who in
spite of mega achievements, is thought by everyone to be a
total pillock. Jeffrey Archer, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Janet
Street-Porter. "
Brewer's Rogues, Villains and Eccentrics (2002) was a series
of pen portraits of "Roguish Britons Through the Ages"; I'm
Leaving You Simon, You Disgust Me (2003) was a collection of
modish clichés and dinner party vacuities. Both books were
dotted with vendettas pursued through masterpieces of
cross-referencing, for example "Jesus, believing oneself to
be having carnal relations with. See Edinburgh, Prince
Philip, Duke of". Magnus Magnusson, Sandi Toksvig, Mariella
Frostrup and Sven-Goran Eriksson were all referenced under
"See Eskimos working in the United Kingdom".
This was an expansion of a joke which had begun in Henry
Root's World of Knowledge, when, under the entry for call
girls, he had written: "Surely we don't have to be reminded
yet again that Jack Profumo copulated with a tart, deceived
his wife - the lovely and gracious Valerie Hobson -
endangered the security of the state and lied to the House
of Commons? The poor man has paid his debt to society and
should now be left in peace. See: Profumo, John; Keeler,
Christine; Rice-Davies, Mandy; Ward, Stephen; Denning,
Lord." The paragraph was repeated verbatim under each of
those entries.
Other books included The English Way of Doing Things (1984);
Great Disasters of the Stage (1984); (The balloons in the
black bag) Nicknames only (1985); The big one, the black
one, the fat one and the other one: my life in showbiz
(1992); and From Winchester to This (1998).
Donaldson painted himself as a sordid sexual obsessive
indifferent to the misery he heaped upon others: "My life is
f***ed up - I've used people, and on the whole I haven't had
a good time. I say to young people 'steady on, or you'll end
up like me'." In his sixties he claimed to have been in
thrall to a prostitute, used crack, and taken the date rape
drug Rohypnol recreationally: "The trouble is, it wipes your
memory. You have to video yourself to appreciate just what a
good time you had."
Alan Hope
>William Donaldson
>(Filed: 27/06/2005)
What a fantastic epitaph that would be:
"He wore his straw hat at a facetious angle".
Who wouldn't want to be remembered thus?
--
AH
Hyfler/Rosner
"Hyfler/Rosner" <rel...@rcn.com> wrote in message
news:roadnSCuCcA...@rcn.net...
> Almost as good as The Independent obit posted earlier this
> week. Those who read this one through will be rewarded
> with, perhaps, the answer to a very important musical
> secret..
>
>
Bill Schenley
> > posted earlier this week. Those who read this
> > one through will be rewarded with, perhaps, the
> > answer to a very important musical secret..
> > The following years were a blur of starlets and
> > minor celebrities, including the American singer
> > Carly Simon, whom Donaldson jilted when she
> > was preparing to come to Britain to marry him.
I just wanna' know if you're related to Roy ...
J.D. Baldwin
Now, that was unkind.
I think this guy sounds like the opposite of whoever Carly had in mind
with that song. But it's an interesting theory.
--
_+_ From the catapult of |If anyone disagrees with any statement I make, I
_|70|___:)=}- J.D. Baldwin |am quite prepared not only to retract it, but also
\ / bal...@panix.com|to deny under oath that I ever made it. -T. Lehrer
***~~~~-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Hyfler/Rosner
"Bill Schenley" <stra...@ma.rr.com> wrote in message
news:%wXve.18884$7X1....@tornado.ohiordc.rr.com...
Don't start with me, Bill, or I'll give you what for about
your insane use of apostrophes.
Bill Schenley
> > > > posted earlier this week. Those who read
> > > > this one through will be rewarded with,
> > > > perhaps, the answer to a very important
> > > > musical secret..
> > > > The following years were a blur of starlets
> > > > and minor celebrities, including the American
> > > > singer Carly Simon, whom Donaldson jilted
> > > > when she was preparing to come to Britain to
> > > > marry him.
> > I just wanna' know if you're related to Roy ...
> Now, that was unkind.
Well, I was just wondering ...
> I think this guy sounds like the opposite of whoever
> Carly had in mind with that song. But it's an interesting
> theory.
I dunno', I think Amelia could be on to something ...
"You're So Vain"
"You walked into the party
Like you were walking onto a yacht
Your hat strategically dipped below one eye"
From the obit:
"He then concentrated on perfecting his skills as an eccentric
nuisance, wearing his straw hat at a facetious angle ..."
"You're So Vain"
"But you gave away the things you loved
And one of them was me"
From the obit:
"By the late 1960s, Donaldson was losing so much money he
had to sell the family house in Berkshire; in 1970 he went into
voluntary liquidation."
"You're So Vain"
"You had me several years ago
When I was still quite naive"
and ...
"And all the girls dreamed
that they'd be your partner
They'd be your partner, and
You're so vain"
From the obit:
"The following years were a blur of starlets and minor
celebrities, including the American singer Carly Simon,
whom Donaldson jilted when she was preparing to come
to Britain to marry him."
<Note: Carly Simon was only 20 when she met Donaldson .. although I'm
not sure how "naive" she was>
"You're So Vain"
"And when you're not, you're with
Some underworld spy or the wife of a close friend"
From the obit:
"By the time his only son was born in 1959, he had begun
an affair with Jeffrey Bernard's actress wife, Jackie."
and ...
"... who ended up as a moderately successful Chelsea
pimp", which was true, though he was also a failed
theatrical impresario, a crack-smoking serial adulterer."
One more thing ... Simon released "You're So Vain" in 1973 ... but she
had actually written it years before. I can't recall the working
title of the song, just that she was unable to get the song to come
together. Then, one day in the early 70s, while she was at a party,
standing next to another woman ... a guy walked in ... and the other
woman said something, like, "Look at him, doesn't he look like he is
walking on a yacht?" Simon wrote the line down ... and went back to
work on what became "You're So Vain."
Donaldson fits into that timeline ... However, trying to narrow it
down to past Carly Simon lovers is a trick in itself ... We're talking
about the combined population of any six continents.
Bill Schenley
> Don't start with me, Bill, or I'll give you what
> for about your insane use of apostrophes.
"Is you kidding?" "My 'grammar,' 'usage,' 'sentence structure' and
'spelling' is so horrible, 'I'd feel lucky' to be ridiculed" for just
my "insanity based" apostrological use."
J.D. Baldwin
> > Carly had in mind with that song. But it's an interesting
> > theory.
>
> I dunno', I think Amelia could be on to something ...
The hat thing I noticed ... everything else got by me. I think you
may be right. In any event, he's a pretty good candidate I have never
seen mentioned anywhere else.
Brad Ferguson
<INVALID...@example.com.invalid> wrote:
> In the previous article, Bill Schenley <stra...@ma.rr.com> wrote:
> > > I think this guy sounds like the opposite of whoever
> > > Carly had in mind with that song. But it's an interesting
> > > theory.
> >
> > I dunno', I think Amelia could be on to something ...
>
> The hat thing I noticed ... everything else got by me. I think you
> may be right. In any event, he's a pretty good candidate I have never
> seen mentioned anywhere else.
I think Bill's onto something. I'd never heard of William Donaldson at
all before this, much less as a candidate for Deep Gloat.