It was 1991, the year Indian politician Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated and the Hubble Telescope launched. It was the year that the Soviet Union, officially came to an end.
That year, Anthony Hopkins ate someone’s liver “with fava beans and a nice Chianti” in that most terrifying of horror genre movies, The Silence of The Lambs; and Madonna shed her clothes as she sang Justify My Love to her adoring public.
It was a good year for television: Murder She Wrote with the redoubtable Angela Lansbury was on the small screen, and comedies Roseanne and Murphy Brown had us screeching with laughter.
I remember Anjelica Huston — who played Morticia in the most iconic of films, The Adams Family — telling me how, once strapped into her corset on the set, she could not sit down, or pee, for as long as it took for that day’s shoot. It did give her a spectacular silhouette — almost as if she wasn’t there if you gave a quick glance in her direction.
I liked her. She smoked in the chi-chi Chelsea (London) hotel room during our interview. Without guilt. Everyone smoked back then. Even me. Camel cigarettes that cost me £1 a packet.
During our meeting, Anthony Hopkins — still regarded by me as the best person I have ever interviewed — told me smoking would kill me. He had a twinkle in his eye when he said it.
Why my best ever interview? Because he was so charming, self-deprecating, unassuming and smart that it was a pleasure just being in his company. More than that, he listened carefully, answered thoughtfully and treated me with the same kind of respect I suspect he gave the Queen when she knighted him two years later.
I loved London, the pace of it. The breadth of it.
It was where I learnt that Francis Bacon was my all-time favourite artist. He died in 1992 while I was the Sunday Times’ correspondent in London. I went to St Michael’s Church in St Albans in Hertfordshire, to where he was buried, and rather dramatically lit a candle for him. I was young and given to such flights of sentimentality.
All things Beatrix Potter
This same streak made me put flowers on Karl Marx’s grave in Highgate Cemetery. Oh, and I read the EE Cummings poem, I carry your heart. Foolish? Well I was foolish back then.
One day in early summer, I raided my bank account and went to Paris, to the opera. Later that summer I took a trip to The Hague, to visit a friend and see the tulips in Keukenhof.
Later still, I caught the train to the UK’s Lake District and took a cottage near Lake Windemere where I swear I saw Jemima Puddleduck and Peter Rabbit at the bottom of the garden. Busloads of Japanese tourists swarmed the area in search of all things Beatrix Potter.
All through that year, I went on shopping sprees and bought several cashmere Liberty scarves, a glorious Burberry Mac, a thigh-length waxed Barbour coat that I wore, ostentatiously, on country walks — whether it was raining or not.
I was young and carefree and life was glorious. I had lots of money … or thought I did because I had chosen to ignore the fact that I was not being taxed
I went, with my friend Jeremy, to Glyndebourne to see Die Zauberflöte. We ordered Champagne, and emerged in the interval to find it poured with our names on little cards in front of the long flutes.
I went to concerts at St Pauls and, on Sundays, I went to mass at Brompton Oratory, the Catholic church in Knightsbridge, where a real, live operatic soprano enthralled the congregation, transporting us to a Godly place.
On our frequent trips to visit a friend who lived in the countryside, Jeremy insisted we take the ingredients for a summer pudding — the berries (that simply had to be bought from a particular Chelsea deli) cost £100. We ate Peking Duck at Cheng Du in Camden.
I lived high on the hog. I denied myself nothing. It was a wonderful time — my own version of Tales of the City (if Armistead Maupin had been writing about London instead of San Francisco).
Looking back on it, I knew that at the root of it, it was a little shaky. It could all come crashing down. You see, I was earning an SA salary in London. London thought I was being taxed at source; SA thought I was being taxed in London.
I was young and carefree and life was glorious. I had lots of money … or thought I did because I had chosen to ignore the fact that I was not being taxed in either of the countries that were owed it. Who cared about money, I thought.
As it turned out, the British taxman, that’s who. To paraphrase from a popular saying, the UK Revenue Service grinds exceeding slowly, but exceeding fine.
In the end, Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs caught up with me and I had to pay many thousands of pounds in back tax. Huge (for me) sums! I ate dry bread and gruel for what seemed like months. Or I would have had to if my lovely Dad hadn’t bailed me out — with a stern warning about fiscal responsibility, blah, blah, blah…
I still have (most of) the shoes and the clothes — and the memories of an intoxicating time where anything was possible and the world was new and fresh and on my side.
Anyway, the point I am making is this: give Shamila Batohi, National Director of Public Prosecutions at the National Prosecuting Authority, a chance for goodness sake. Give her a moment to catch her breath.
I have been at a few dinner parties in the last few weeks in which the Zondo commission has been the only topic of discussion. The general view seems to be that the bad guys are getting away with their thuggery and venality and corruption.
Justice is not being done, people are saying. Evidence is being led, names are being named, and nobody is being made accountable.
Yet, I say. Yet. Batohi has to investigate and make watertight cases that will stick. Lets not hurry her along. Allow her to grind slow, but exceeding fine. I think we owe her, and our legal system, that.
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