1960s WORK
0139 Peter Bartlett & the Profumo Affair
At Foote Cone & Belding (FCB) the social lives of Pat and myself went up several notches. There was the annual Christmas party, of course, but being an advertising agency it was much more lavish than normal. It was fancy dress and I went to it as one of our clients’ packets of tea, since I had to strip off the stuff at the end of the evening and make a quick exit; where we were going to Pat’s parents home that evening. I remember Pat being very jealous of one of the girls in the PR department who was wearing a Mary Quant original which she had managed to scrounge as part of her work!
One interesting aspect, though, was that just before the dance I was in the lift with one of the young girls in the agency – a rather attractive brunette – who offered me a bed for the weekend! This was only just into the swinging sixties so I was surprised and, newly-wed, I reacted by refusing. I'm not certain I would do the same now!
The main features of my social life though were provided by Peter Bartlett, with whom I worked. Peter was the son of a vicar, and moved in elevated circles. I remember him explaining that his father had done the traditional thing and put down a pipe of port for him when he was born. A pipe was something over 50 gallons.
Unfortunately Peter found, when it came time for him to inherit this, his father had already drunk it all. Peter was a great character, but his days of following his father into the church were rather abruptly ended when he was caught in the church yard with some of the choirboys!
Peter had a maisonette in South Kensington. It was a very elegant maisonette, and he held wonderful parties there – to which we regularly went. He served an absolutely wicked punch. It was white wine diluted with vodka. It tasted just like apple juice, and everyone drank far too much. Every time we went there Pat and I had to stop at South Kensington Tube station, while she went to the ladies and was sick!
The interesting thing, though, was the clientele of these parties. As I have said, he moved in elevated circles, and almost everyone at the party would be an honourable this or honourable that. In those days the second sons of the gentry, with whom he mixed, were given the title honourable. They were lovely people and were some of the most unassuming people I've ever met.
The further background, I should explain, was that this was the time of the Profumo affair; when Stephen Ward's girlfriends entrapped the Conservative Defence Minister. Stephen Ward himself committed suicide in prison. It was a wonderful time to be in an advertising agency, since all the most colourful stories about what was going on couldn't be published. The rule, therefore, was that when you got in first thing in the morning you found out what the grapevine had to say about the latest developments. The Daily Express had set itself up as the news clearing agency and passed on the latest information minute by minute to all the advertising agencies; so we were well and truly up-to-date with who was doing what to whom. It was interesting that far more government ministers were involved one way or another than ever reached the headlines, or even was mentioned in the Denning report -- which clearly was something of a whitewash. But it was notable that all these ministers quietly disappeared from the government ranks in the following year!
All of this was also very relevant to an experience at one of Peter's parties. It was almost traditional that Peter used to have two of his girlfriends at each of these parties, and they used to fight each other -- albeit verbally -- to see who would get Peter for that night. On this occasion four of us were standing together, myself and another guy opposite to each other with Peter’s two girlfriends facing each other between us. In line with the tradition one of these girls made a catty remark about the other's low-cut dress. At this point the other girl, who was one of the crowd that ran with Stephen Ward and Profumo, leaned across grabbed the neckline of the other girl’s dress, together with her bra, and pulled them forward so that everything she had was exposed to all of us. To justify this she said “... well you've got nothing to show have you duckie”, before slapping the bra back into place. Myself and the other guy had looked down, fascinated at what proved to be a very nubile pair of bare breasts, and a number of other people around the room had also turned to see the same sight -- though not as well as we could. The real fascination was, however, that - as soon as the bra had loudly slapped back into place - everyone turned back and carried on talking as if nothing had happened. This was, I think, a function of upper-class politeness rather than the onset of the naughty Sixties.
Peter had a lot of stories about these encounters. Thus, one time he had accidentally left the front door open, even though he was making quite passionate love on the hearthrug with the girl from the Stephen Ward group, when someone walked in stood over them. At this point the girl looked up and, without halting in her stride, said - pointing to the stains on the hearthrug – “...well it's obviously not the first time is it”!
Peter was also a great gambler. In fact he ran a private chemie table, which in those days was quite illegal. He used a clear about £600 every time he ran the table. But he spent all his winnings from these games, going round other people's illegal chemi tables. He claimed that he had to do this in order to advertise. In reality he was the sort of addicted gambler who assumed that, if you had had four heads in a row when tossing a coin, the next one must be a tail. We could never persuade him that statistically still had to be a 50-50 chance.
In particular I remember one evening, when we had persuaded him to go to bed early. He came in the following morning looking absolutely haggard. It turned out that he had woken up in the middle of the night and, not used to going to bed before the early hours, had become bored with nothing to do. So he went off to Esmeralda's barn (a legal gaming club), where he dropped £600 in one-hour. It should be pointed out that my salary at that time was £600 per annum!
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