Mercedes Driver

Mercedes Gleitze. Not a new model of German automobile. You’ve probably never heard the name. She (she’s a she, not an it) was the first British woman to swim the English Channel and an all-round remarkable person.

The same can be said of Elliott Hasler. Last night saw (at the fabulous [and at risk] Curzon Mayfair) the premiere of his debut feature film, the unusually titled ‘Vindication Swim’, which he wrote at the age of 18 after reading a newspaper article about Mercedes, who was born in Brighton, as was Elliott.

It took him over three years to shoot the film which is highly ambitious being a period drama (set in the 20s) and involving extensive shooting on the open sea. Whenever the Channel off Brighton was reasonably calm and the weather OK he had to scramble his cast and crew, including his lead actress Kirsten Callaghan (making a knock-out debut), old-school character actor John Locke (who recently appeared in the brilliant ’Poor Things’) and Victoria Summer (‘Saving Mr Banks’ as Julie Andrews). Kirsten, as totally committed as all the cast and crew, did all the sea swimming herself. They come across as a family engendered by Elliott.

Elliott called in no end of favours. Period vehicles and horse-drawn carts for the street scenes. Background artists from local am-dram groups from Rottingdean to Worthing. Huge attention to detail, extending to making this one of the lowest carbon footprint feature films of all time.

Through sheer dint of will this low-budget independent British movie is now getting a good release of over 300 UK showings and Elliott and his team are setting off on a month of post-screening Q&As all round the country. Picnik Entertainment have come in firmly behind the now 23-year-old’s stand-out calling card, amplifying the huge talent of ‘Vindication Swim’ ‘s prime mover.

The cherry on the cake of last night’s premiere was the presence of Ronnie Wood. No moss will gather on this young rolling stone – Elliott is now working on his follow-up feature, also South coast based (with Graham Greene’s ‘Brighton Rock’ at its heart).

Mercedes Gleitze (who was finally honoured in 2022 with a blue plaque in her native city) attempted the cross-Channel swim seven times before finally securing that swimming first on 7th October 1927. Persistence, resilience, vision, inspiration from a committed parent (in Mercedes’ case her German-born father, in Elliott’s his accountant father as producer who no doubt stretched the sub-£400K budget to its limit – Simon, Elliott & I first met in Brighton in January 2023 and they made an immediately charming duo), boldness, humility, winning the loyalty of a rock-solid team – the maker of this remarkable film and its subject share many outstanding qualities. Mercedes’ name is now becoming more known. Elliott’s, without a shadow of a doubt, will soon be.

Photo: Stewart Weir

Premiere at Curzon Mayfair 28/2/24

Elliott Hasler, Kirsten Callaghan, Victoria Summer, John Locke

124 Freshfield Road, Brighton

Coincidences No.s 455 and 456

No. 455 Howdah

21.i.24

We are in Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire exploring its history as a New Town (established in 1949). There’s a map by the water gardens showing how they were designed to look like a serpent with a seat on its back,  the seat marked by a flower garden. The name for such a seat – the sort people sat in on the backs of elephants in India – is a ‘howdah’. I’d never come across that word before.

That evening we  go to the Cineworld in Hemel to see ‘Poor Things’. Queuing up for drinks and Minstrels I spot some snacks in crisp-type bags. The brand is called Howdah. They seem to originate in Warrington, Cheshire. They donate a school meal in India for every pack purchased.

Serpent head at bottom, Howdah just above on left (flower garden)

No. 456 Howzat

25.i.24

I meet Worthing-based TV director Nicholas Ahlberg at Brighton Beach House and we walk over to a newish bar/restaurant off East Street, Brighton for a drink (in my case a first very pleasant draught of Ascension Sour Cherry Cider made at Ringden Farm, Etchingham, East Sussex). It is called The Permit  Room and was set up by the people behind Dishoom.

In Bombay back in 1949 alcohol was banned in the city. “Enterprising Aunties” set up shebeens in their houses. A boiled egg seller was stationed outside as a sign for those in the know. In the 1970s the law was relaxed and permits became available for citizens to buy liquor (“for the preservation or maintenance of health”) in these Permit Rooms.

26.i.24

The next morning I am looking at Facebook when a group pops up called Classic Captures. Today it offers “Vintage Color Snapshots of Brighton in the 1970s”. These include a photo of “East Street, 1974.” The building it shows, set back from the street in a small yard, is the one which now houses The Permit Room. Back then it was called Zetland (a suburb of Sydney, Australia or an archaic spelling of Shetland).

The Question of ‘Work-Life’ Balance

Lee Miller, Self-Portrait (1930)
Photo: Salvador Dali Museum

Kate Winslet’s film ‘Lee‘ about the life of American photographer Lee Miller, which premiered at TIFF in Toronto last September, is due to arrive in cinemas and on Sky sometime this quarter or thereabouts.

The movie is based on the biographical ‘The Lives of Lee Miller‘ by her son Anthony Penrose, who I had the pleasure of meeting when it came out in 1988 and I was reviewing the book – he gave me a tour of  Farley Farm in Sussex (where the Lee Miller Archives are now based, it had been Lee and Roland Penrose’s home, which then was passed on to Anthony and his late wife, who together welcomed me warmly to their cosy kitchen). Anthony later pulled various prints out of plan chests to show me. The moment I particularly remember relates to Holocaust Memorial Day which was this weekend. Lee, working as a war correspondent for Vogue, was among the first to enter Dachau and Buchenwald concentration camps. She felt she had to telegraph to the editor this message once she had sent back her photos: “I IMPLORE YOU TO BELIEVE THIS IS TRUE!” Anthony recounted to me that his mother had told him in relation to these pictures that the one thing she could never forget, more than the sights, was the smell.

Following the bijou ‘You Will Not Lunch In Charlotte Street Today‘ exhibition of her work which closed a week ago at the handsome TJ Boulting building in London’s Fitzrovia, I visited another Lee Miller show at Brighton Museum, ‘Lee Miller: Dressed‘ (also well worth a visit – 59-minute train from London, closes 18th Feb). It explores Lee’s life through clothes, given that Lee was a celebrated model for the likes of Vogue, becoming a fashion photographer in her own right after training with Man Ray in Paris, the clothes lens makes perfect sense. The exhibition was prompted by the recent discovery of boxes of Lee’s clothes in the attic at Farley Farm, including a number of items by top European couturiers.

A quotation caught my eye (and imagination) near the exit:

When I fired up LinkedIn this morning I noticed a post by Fanatics Live CEO Nick Bell about work-life balance, prompted in part by a video of Amazon’s Jeff Bezos on the subject. My late mentor, veteran documentarian and polymath Roger Graef, was always a brilliant help and support but work-life balance was arguably his one blind spot, he was a ferociously hard worker who rarely seemed to switch off. It’s a fascinating and nuanced issue, and my jury is still out on whether Bezos’ argument – that it’s actually a work-life circle – and Nick’s – that being happy at work makes you a better spouse and parent – is on point or has an underlying post-rationalisation. As another Jeff (Goldblum) says in another movie, ‘The Big Chill‘:

“Michael: Don’t knock rationalization! Where would we be without it? I don’t know anyone who could get through the day without two or three juicy rationalizations. They’re more important than sex.

Sam: Ah, come on. Nothing’s more important than sex.

Michael: Oh yeah? Ever gone a week without a rationalization?”

I directed a film years ago about creative thinking and I remember a line from it which was broadly: “No one on their death bed ever thought ‘I wish I’d spent more time in the office’.” Perhaps the starkest factor: you can’t ever get back time with your children once it’s passed.

So I find Lee’s reflections resonant – why not be more focused on and bold with our ideas, our physical being (less time in our heads) and our love in its myriad forms (romantic, parental, familial, environmental, spiritual, for our fellow human-beings…)?

Lee Miller by Man Ray (1929)

Lee as war correspondent :: Lee Miller – Normandy, France (1944) :: Photo: Lee Miller Archives

Lee’s most famous wartime shot, illustrating her love of Surrealism

Lee Miller and Picasso after the liberation of Paris, by Lee Miller, Paris (1944) :: Photo: Lee Miller Archives

Lee Miller, SS Guard in Canal, Dachau, Germany (1945)

Coincidence No. 240 – Cyprus Avenue

21/3/23

My friend Stuart comes to visit me in Brighton and is pleased to see that I have a poster in my bathroom from the Bruce Springsteen gig we saw in Dublin together in 2003 – possibly the best gig I have ever seen.

21/3/23

That night we go to Komedia, Brighton to see a gig – Robert Forster (The Go-betweens). Standing in the crowd Stuart spots a face he thinks he recognises. He leans over and asks this bald, middle-aged man: “Are you called Adam?” He is. “We met at the Bruce gig in Dublin in 2003. We were in touch about it on [the Chelsea fan site]. We had a drink before the gig.” How Stuart recognises him is amazing – he must have had a lot more hair two decades ago. (The other) Adam is with his brother, sister-in-law and friend, Aidan, who lives in Hove. We chat. It turns out that Adam grew up in Windsor Road, behind where my late grandparents’ house was, in Cyprus Avenue, Church End, Finchley. Aidan, who he has known since childhood, grew up in Village Road which is the continuation of Cyprus Avenue. And Stuart’s mum has just moved to Cyprus Avenue.

18/3/23

Two days before, after not having been in or near Cyprus Avenue for ages, I am being driven home by a friend when she overshoots and we try to correct ourselves by turning into the small group of streets by Cyprus Avenue and getting a bit lost, stuck in the dead-end of Cyprus Gardens which sits where Village Road becomes Cyprus Avenue.

And I’m caught one more time
Up on Cyprus Avenue
I’m caught one more time
Up on Cyprus Avenue
And I’m conquered in a car seat
Not a thing that I can do

Van Morrison – Cyprus Avenue

9/5/23

Exactly 20 years on, Stuart and I are going to Dublin in May to see Bruce again.

Wilde wild Worthing

The 1895 production of ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’ (Irene Vanbrugh as Gwendolen Fairfax & George Alexander as Jack Worthing)

‘The Importance of Being Earnest’ comes across as the most metropolitan and refined of plays and yet it was not written in Oscar Wilde’s Cheyne Walk home in Chelsea but in a holiday home in Worthing, West Sussex. That’s how come the protagonist is named Worthing and his family origins include reference to a first-class railway ticket to Worthing.

JACK. The late Mr. Thomas Cardew, an old gentleman of a very charitable and kindly disposition, found me, and gave me the name of Worthing, because he happened to have a first-class ticket for Worthing in his pocket at the time. Worthing is a place in Sussex. It is a seaside resort.

LADY BRACKNELL. Where did the charitable gentleman who had a first-class ticket for this seaside resort find you?

JACK. [Gravely.] In a hand-bag.

LADY BRACKNELL. A hand-bag?

JACK. [Very seriously.] Yes, Lady Bracknell. I was in a hand-bag – a somewhat large, black leather hand-bag, with handles to it – an ordinary hand-bag in fact.

LADY BRACKNELL. In what locality did this Mr. James, or Thomas, Cardew come across this ordinary hand-bag?

JACK. In the cloak-room at Victoria Station. It was given to him in mistake for his own.

It’s the most famous exchange in the play, largely due to Dame Edith Evans’ defining performance in which she made the very most of the word “hand-bag”. That’s why, in the performance last night at Brighton Open Air Theatre, the inventive players of Slapstick Picnic just mouthed the word. It was a superb distillation into a two-hander, reminiscent of Steven Berkoff’s mannered acting in his brilliant ‘Decadence’ (Berkoff being a big fan of Brighton with a bolt-hole in Kemptown), whose comic invention Wilde would have enjoyed.

2021 (6th August) production at Brighton Open Air Theatre

In the summer of 1894 Wilde went on holiday for two months to Worthing with his wife, Constance, and sons, Cyril (9) and Vyvyan (7). It was the last summer before his life disintegrated. Constance travelled down with their two young sons on 7th August, Wilde followed on the 10th.

Wilde was married to Constance (35) but in love with Lord Alfred Douglas, known as ‘Bosie’. He had met Bosie in 1891. They were both at Magdalen College, Oxford. Within 8 months of Worthing, Wilde was in jail as a direct result of his infatuation with the handsome young aristocrat. 

Although it was a family holiday, Bosie showed up and stayed three times. He was a demanding, immature character and his egotism caused Wilde no end of problems.  

Meanwhile, Constance, lonely and unhappy, fell in love (in a platonic way) with another man, Arthur Humphreys (30), bookseller, publisher and a family friend, who came down to spend the day in Worthing with the Wildes on 11th August. She wrote him a heart-felt love-letter while he was still at the house, slipping it to him before his departure.

And to complete the bedroom farce Wilde became sexually involved with a local teenage boy, Alphonse Conway. Born in Bognor but raised in Worthing, he was six weeks past his 16th birthday when they first met. Plus there were two other teenage boys on the scene.

Meanwhile he was writing what is broadly acknowledged as his masterpiece, The Importance of Being Earnest – a landmark in English-language theatre. He had previously written three comedies but he peaked on this fourth.

Wilde was under pressure at that time financially so he really needed a hit play. He was also under pressure back in London from Bosie’s overbearing father, the Marquess of Queensberry, he of boxing fame, who was doing his utmost to harass his son’s lover. It was this crude man who finally landed a knock-out blow to the refined Wilde. The day before leaving for holiday Wilde wrote to Bosie of Queensbury: “It is intolerable to be dogged by a maniac.”

Wilde and Bosie had a sexual relationship for only a few months two summers before the Worthing trip. Queensberry, judging by Wilde and Bosie’s overtly gay behaviour in public, assumed it was on-going. Some four months after the Worthing holiday Queensberry left a visiting card at Wilde’s club on which he had written: “For Oscar Wilde, Posing as a Somdomite [sic]”. Wilde inadvisedly sued Queensberry for libel. He lost the trial, got convicted himself for homosexuality and ended up doing hard labour in Reading Gaol (where he served the last 18 months of his sentence) which broke his health although yielded a brilliant long poem.

Worthing was chosen as a place where Wilde would have peace to write. It was quieter than Brighton (which Wilde knew well) and Constance was able to rent a house from a friend who had gone north for the summer.

Wilde and Bosie, Alphonse and other male teenagers, swam, fished and went out every day on a sailing boat. Constance, whom he no longer loved (sexual relations between them had ceased around 1886), was left back in the house, isolated and saddened. She wrote to a friend: “I have had no-one to talk to, and I have been rather depressed.”

Wilde attended several events in Worthing over the summer:  a lifeboat demonstration, the annual sailing regatta and the Venetian fête, a lamp-lit water carnival, where, as a celeb, he presented the prizes for the best-decorated boats and made a witty speech in praise of Worthing: “It has beautiful surroundings and lovely long walks, which I recommend to other people, but do not take myself.”

Worthing provided several of the names in the play. Beside the protagonist Jack Worthing, Wilde found the name Bunbury in the Worthing Gazette. Miss Prism, “a woman of repellent aspect, remotely connected with education” is probably based on the “horrid, ugly Swiss governess” (as described in a letter to Bosie) looking after Cyril and Vyvyan on the Worthing trip.

Bosie was largely a hindrance and distraction to Wilde but he liked to bask in the aura of ‘Earnest’. He claimed he was in the same room while most of the play was being written and that some of the jokes were drawn from his own “repartee”. He was considered fairly witty and amusing. This Wilde child’s claims were no doubt overblown and another facet of the toxicity he brought to Oscar’s life. 

Oscar Wilde & Lord Alfred Douglas by Gillman & Co. (1893)

The Haven , the rented house in Worthing

Constance Wilde – 30th July 1894, a week before the Worthing trip

The lifeboat demonstration 22nd August 1894 – according to the Worthing Gazette “Mr Oscar Wilde was one of the occupants of a small rowing boat busily flitting about”

Very little of the concrete aspects of Wilde’s time in Worthing survives. The Haven, the house that Constance rented for the family, was demolished in the 60s. It stood at the northern (Brighton Road) end of the Esplanade terrace, four houses which stood between Brighton Road and the seashore at the eastern end of the town. The terrace eventually became a hotel. There is though a Blue Plaque on the site of the Esplanade terrace, a building called Esplanade Court. It is at the sea-end of the east façade of Esplanade Court (the opposite end from where The Haven actually stood). When the blue plaque was put up it caused a ripple of controversy in the town, a waiting room for heaven (or hell) with its dominant elderly population . Unworthy of Worthing said some of the duffers including a local historian: “This role model, a man preying on teenage boys with little or no education – I don’t think that would be regarded as heroic today. I think it would be regarded as smutty and reprehensible”.  All quite a contrast to Worthing’s neighbour Brighton whose alternative vibe is set by its LGBT community and whose current motto (devised by the local tourist board in response to the post-Covid term “the new normal”) is ‘Brighton Never Normal’. Oscar Never Dull.

Looking down on Stars of Brighton by the gutter

“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”

― Oscar Wilde, ‘Lady Windermere’s Fan’

 

“…he happened to have a first-class ticket for Worthing in his pocket at the time. Worthing is a place in Sussex. It is a seaside resort.”

― Oscar Wilde, ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’

East of Worthing, east of Hove, at the eastern end of Brighton, just below Kemptown, sits Brighton Marina (site of ArkAngel Productions’ regional office). It was built from 1971 to 1978 and opened in 1979 with the age of Thatcherism. Rumour had it that it was some kind of scam to secure European (EEC) money.  In 1985 it was taken over by Brent Walker, nicknamed ‘Bent Walker’, a property and leisure business run by the former boxer and Soho gangster George Walker. Earlier in his career he was jailed for stealing nylon stockings in Victoria Docks, London.  

Among the shops Walker established in the Marina is a rather incongruous Walk of Fame, a set of stars built into the pavement Hollywood-style. I’ve walked over them often over the years, frequently asking myself the question what have they got to do with Brighton? Like Kevin Rowland of Dexy’s Midnight Runners – he’s a Brummy as far as I know (Wolverhampton?), of Irish descent (Co. Mayo) and he has lived in London a fair bit, but what’s Brighton got to do with him?

Young soul rebel in 1980 (front left)

Whilst tramping over them during the summer I decided to use the stars as the basis of an occasional series on Simple Pleasures Part 4, of which this is the introduction.

So Brighton Marina’s Walk of Fame is the first such one in the UK. It was the brainchild of David Courtney, a Brighton-born songwriter/music producer who had an internationally successful partnership with Leo Sayer in the 70s which brought him to L.A., spiritual home of Walks of Fame. That prompted him to bring the concept back to his home town and to the Marina his uncle, Henry Cohen, helped conceive and realise.

So the first star in this series, given the business of ArkAngel Productions, will be Ray Brooks.

Ray Brooks is the voice of Mr Benn, the sober suited businessman from Festive Road who made regular visits on the sly to a certain dressing up shop. There The Shopkeeper offered him outfits to try on and when he went into the changing room there his magical adventures began. From knight in armour to cowboy, he lived a more colourful, adventurous life for a brief while until the Shopkeeper fetched him back to the changing room. The character was conceived by David McKee originally for children’s books but became the star of a much-loved BBC animated series in 1971/72 (the year the Marina was born).

I worked with Ray Brooks only once – he did the voice-over for a film I directed for Barnardos about whistleblowing, ‘Sounding the Alarm‘. 

His Brighton connection is simple: he was born there just before the Second World War. His career as an actor started in ‘Coronation Street’ in the early 60s. A breakthrough came in 1965 when he joined Michael Crawford and Rita Tushingham in Richard Lester’s comedy ‘The Knack …and how to get it’ which won the Palme d’Or in Cannes that year. 

Interlude: Coincidence No. 266

That’s the second time ‘The Knack’ has come up in the last couple of days. Someone in my circle posted a picture of the LP sleeve of the soundtrack by John Barry because they’d dusted it off and were giving it a Lockdown2 listen.

The following year Ray appeared in the landmark ‘Cathy Come Home’. Throughout the 60s he got parts in cult classics from ‘The Avengers’ and ‘Danger Man’ through to ‘Dr Who’. 

He was the voice of the storyteller in ‘Jackanory’ throughout the 70s. At the turn of the millennium he starred in ‘Two Thousand Acres of Sky’ with Paul Kaye and did a spell in ‘Eastenders’ in the mid-noughties. 

He lives in London but still goes to Brighton to write. He clearly remains attached to the place as his final blog post (17th March 2019) ends with a reference to it as the place he’d go to get rid of his ego:

But what could I expect.? The old ego was popping up again. I’ll put it into a box and chuck [it] off the Brighton Pier I’m sure David Attenborough  wouldn’t complain ‘cos fish with egos wouldn’t eat plastic bags any more they’d be too full of themselves.

Jane Birkin (uncredited) & Ray Brooks in ‘The Knack …and How To Get It ‘ (1965)

Jane Birkin was married to John Barry, composer on ‘The Knack …and How To Get It ‘ before moving on to hook up with Serge Gainsbourg at the end of the decade. This is a CD cover my old friend Marcelino Truong drew and designed for Gainsbourg. Marcelino has stayed at ArkAngel South-East in Brighton Marina.

Gainsbourg ‎– Mon Légionnaire (1988) by Marcelino Truong

Coincidences No.s 208, 209 and 210 – Sussex

Coincidence No. 208 – Kemptown

I’m sitting at this café in Kemptown, Brighton when I hear a familiar voice. I look round and the face is familiar too. I ask this young woman: “Excuse me but do you have some kind of clothes business in Camden Town? were are you in a film a while ago? “ At first Camden Town doesn’t ring much of a bell with her and I say sorry my mistake. Then she suddenly realises that she took premises temporarily in Camden Town sometime ago and that she is the woman I’m thinking of. She was in a documentary I commissioned a couple of years ago about psychedelics. I know her voice and face not from any direct contact but because I heard and saw her over and over in the editing process.

I didn’t even know she had anything to do with Brighton and associated her with Camden Town and somewhere up north where her accent comes from. 

Coincidence No. 209 – Saltdean & Lewes

My old friend N comes to visit me in Brighton. First thing in the morning I take him to Saltdean for a swim (which is something of an adventure as he hasn’t swum in UK waters for over two decades, he prefers hotter climes). As we walk to the beach we pass the Lido (opened by Tarzan (Johnny Weissmuller) in 1938). “What does Lido actually mean?” asks N (i.e. specifically). “Is it always like this?” I say that I think it’s usually a 1930s large open-air pool like this, although I was taken to Ruislip Lido as a child and that, from memory, was more of a lake.

a public open-air swimming pool or bathing beach 

At N’s request we go to Lewes in the afternoon in search of a second-hand bookshop. We go to the excellent Bow Windows in the high street. We browse, masked up, in the stifling heatwave heat. I examine a Graham Greene novel, one of the first books I lift from the shelf (are you allowed to actually lift books in the Covid era?). It is The Comedians (1966) set in Haiti. The hotel in the story is called Hotel Lido.

I speak to Enfant Terrible No. 2 in the evening. I ask what he’s been doing with his day in this heat. He has been down to Crouch End Lido he informs me, which is full of “old people” (i.e. 30 plus) doing lanes and, post-Lockdown, none of the young yahoos that used to be there seem to have registered the reopening, all of which pleases him.

Coincidence No. 209b – Saltdean & London

Walking beside Saltdean Lido to the beach I notice the name of the makers of the old pale blue iron railings sloping down to the pedestrian tunnel: J. Every, Lewes

At the spot where I normally park in front of our house in London N2 is a metal plate by the drain. It is made by J. Every, Lewes. The drain itself is made by J. Gibb & Co. Ltd., London. Why did London Borough of Barnet go all the way to Lewes for its drain stuff?

Coincidence No. 210 – Rottingdean

I am starting to read the new novel by Ali Smith, Summer. It just came out a few days ago and I have read and enjoyed Spring and Autumn (the latter for our book group which is where I first came across her). I read these sentences: 

She already knows she is never going to have children. Why would you bring a child into a catastrophe? It would be like giving birth to a child in a prison cell. 

This last sentence reminds me of a programme I heard a few days before on BBC Radio 4 about women giving birth in prison. I remember that I was approaching the traffic lights in Rottingdean when I was listening to it. Rottingdean is the village beside where I now live much of the time in Brighton.

Then comes the next sentence which I have not yet read or glimpsed:

And Brighton’s a good place, one of the best in the country for green things, the only place in the whole of the UK with a green MP

I had no idea the novel was set in Brighton until that moment. This sentence is the first reference to it.

Violet Vixen

My latest Real Stories Original commission to go live is Violet Vixen. In the wake of the documentary‘s launch, its protagonist, Leo Noakes aka Violet Vixen, appeared this week on ‘Loose Women’ (ITV). I went to the live studio transmission at the BBC Studios at Television Centre, Shepherd’s Bush with the director, Leanne Rogers. Leo did a good job in a high pressure situation, wittily taking up Stacey Solomon’s  offer to have him become her make-up artist.

Leo is an articulate, sassy, amazingly mature 11 year old boy who loves doing make-up, dressing up and playing with his identity. He doesn’t want to be a girl but he does want the liberty to do ‘girlish’ things and above all to be who he is.

“I love dressing up. I don’t particularly see the clothes and make-up I wear as belonging to girls, or even to boys. I hate the fact that society labels stuff.” says Leo.

His mother surprises him with a trip to Brighton to meet his hero, drag artist Courtney Act, who Leo first came across on US reality TV show RuPaul’s Drag Race. The contrast between conventional Corby where his home is and progressive Brighton blows his young mind.

Leo runs a very successful Instagram channel, overseen by his mother, Lauren. She has to protect him from trolls but by and large people are positive about his alter ego, Violet Vixen. He uses his social media channels to spread the age-old message: Be true to who you are!

Leo’s know-how about make-up is particularly striking. He taught himself as Lauren is not really into cosmetics or clothes. He has ambitions to move to the USA and become a TV drag artist. But above all he wants the freedom to be himself.

Courtney Act aka Shane Gilberto Jenek, winner of Celebrity Big Brother 2018, was delightful in his interactions with Leo and proved a huge inspiration.

Courtney Act

One of my favourite aspects of the film is the way Leo cannot compute that a place like Brighton (where he meets Courtney) actually exists – a place where he wouldn’t stand out for being who he is.

Courtney, Leo, mum & friend

Art Deco Sussex

Bexhill-on-Sea to Brighton, east to west 23.vii.18

De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill-on-Sea, East Sussex

Staircase, landside

58 South Cliff, Bexhill

The Sandcastle, Pevensey, East Sussex

from the beach

Embassy Court, Brighton

 

Fits & Starts (Phase 2: Weeks 9, 10, 11)

Lying on the couch in Brighton, balcony doors open, ‘Crescent’ (John Coltrane) playing, Enfant Terrible No. 1 doing his revision at the table, spirit of my dad floating around and seagulls making those seagull noises outside over the water – and I’m feeling pretty fine. Just finished the first full draft of the Littlewood/Theatre chapter. The two of us drove down last night to get a couple of days’ quiet and get some hours in.

We had our lunch break just before down in Rottingdean – a Ploughman’s lunch each in the sun (god knows what the ploughmen ate) and then a walk down to the beach for some chat and stone throwing.

The last three weeks have been bitty but at least progress is still being made.

I hooked up with a couple of writers this week to glean some know-how and advice both around the practice and motivation of writing and the business of publishing. The first of them has a string of factual books to his name, including one really big hit. We did beer and chat, sharing our mutual Hibernophilia, and he gave me a copy of one of his books about Ireland. The second is about to have his first novel published and is just completing his second. He used to work as a TV journalist/presenter and is revelling in his new-found life as a full-time writer. We did blood-orange juice in the sunlit bar of Soho House, welcoming in the Easter holidays. Both encounters were very encouraging and inspiring.

Meanwhile ‘When Sparks Fly’ went in to a Penguin group publisher on Monday and the wait begins…

Last week I got to write some of it in the pleasant surroundings of Juan Les Pins. I was there for the TV market MIP and came home after work to a gueridon (round metal table – that Modern Languages degree comes into useful occasionally, not least for the title of the book which comes from Breton’s first Surrealist Manifesto), a spacious balcony, palm trees framed in the view – a pretty nice place to write.

As is this…