Further to my appreciation of Nicky Haslam's incomparable memoir Redeeming Features - the only thing that could make you want to have diarrhoea because it is the ultimate loo read (antiseptic Wet Ones at the ready, please) - I am distressed by two things on p108 on the subject of a very famous dead astrologer.
The late Patric Walker was the master stargazer of the late 20th century as well as actor Richard Chamberlain's most expressive admirer. Thanks to lucrative international syndication, and a socialising liver which sadly was not as robust as one might have wished, his constellation of sunsign frippery informed and entertained hundreds of millions of hopers. Yet, even though Patric was a Haslam intimate, a frequent companion in a basement club beneath Fortnum & Mason, in the company of pretty boys, Nicky misspells his name as Patrick. How Patric must be seething wherever. The omission of the k was special, part of the mythologising branding: had Patric been born Colin he would now be remembered as Coli, a thought that brings back to mind antiseptic Wet Ones. Patric died of salmonella poisoning in 1995, by the way.
Richard Chamberlain:
a gratuitious inclusion in this piece
It doesn't end there. Nicky then goes onto suggest that Patric (a Libran) may have in 1974 murdered his octogenarian astrologer mentor Celeste in order to grab her horoscopic column on Harpers & Queen (as was): he did this by pushing her down some stairs, it was rumoured. Celeste was the pseudonym of the American astrologer Helene Hoskins: she taught Patric everything she knew about the heavens. It could be that this "rumour" was part of the fun campery of the time: but who knows?
34 comments:
Fabulous. God I loved Patric. I wish someone would revive Celeste, by way of hommage
Isn't Madame studying astrology ?. Was murder in Walker's stars ?
And what is the name of this club beneath Fortums and how come I never went there ?
My dear, you'll have to read Nicky's book first, p108. Then get back to me. +++ Nicky writes of Queen mag. He means Harpers & Queen (no apostrophe). Where are the cunting fact checkers?
Dear Mrs Trefusis, Thank you. You are of course a goddess in your own right.
You know Patric always fancied you,you tart.
Your best item yet. I just died laughing. XX
Victor Olliver? Perhaps you've ruined it all.
Celeste was the best! As soon as she 'left', the Horoscopes weren't so good. Go figure!
Of course Patric was known as "Celeste" himself for a while after Celeste's death/murder - a very creepy variation on Psycho and the son who is his mother ...
I used to lucnh with Patric at Joe Allen's. A very funny man who knew everybody, a 20th Century Cheiro. Intriguing you knew him.
Cheiro was a bit 2oth C himself, but I know what u mean xx
Madame Olivier, did you know all the Gay Walker Brothers - Patric, Alexander and Sebastian?
Well, I knew/know the Walker Brothers. Will that do?
Oh tell us about Scott! Interview him! Is it true that he's really someone else altogether?
I would need to ask his mother first. I have a good medium.
No, no, by-pass the mummy, go straight to the living corpse of Scott!
Madame Arcati is a respecter of procedure and protocol. Now to bed!!
Your friend Duncan Fallowell once told me the following: 'Guess who I've just showered with at the Fulham Pools? Dr Kildare. He's in excellent shape for a middle-aged man and the Greeks would have been charmed by his very tiny cock.'
This was in the 1980s. As they splashed and soaped up nudely side by side, Fallowell asked Richard Chamberlain what he was doing there and Chamberlain said he'd been having lessons in the small pool in the use of an aqualung, presumably for some film.
A most fascinating anecdote, thank you. Of course perhaps Dr K was shy or reactive to the cold shower, I always try to think well. Patric I guess had a trunk in his pants, not that I would know. x
Even the Fulham Pools has hot showers
Now you've come out, Madame, you've gone a bit coy. Remember what Wilde said: give a man a mask and he'll tell you the truth.
Victor Lewis-Smith says I was out already so in a sense I have merely come. Coy? I hardly think that could be said of me. I could have claimed that Patric's great cock loomed out of his black, gold dragon embroidered kimono as I nibbled a chicken sandwich, but it wouldn't be true. But he did say, "You can go off somebody quickly just by the way they hold a cup of tea."
I would rather say, Give a man a mask and he'll tell you something else.
Patric did not have a trunc in his pants - more a valise.
And how would you know?
Because he'd just put himself on the bed and open up
Are you the Sneak, Mister Arcati?
Me no sneak
Someone that looks as good in his mid-70's deserves to have a more current photo posted.
MA darling,
If you didn't sneak peak under the black robe with a dragon, then what made you guess? Did the dragon have a bulge? How did he hold his cup - did he not use the handle?
I like your new profile photo. That hat is a scream. It becomes you.
ox
Thanks for the pic link, Chamberlain still handsome in an Indian summer sort of way, or should that be Indian early winter?
I'm glad you like my new profile pic. I took it in a PhotoMe booth with a pastoral backscreen: how I got the hat in I don't know.
As to Patric, I'm a good guesser (foot size is no clue at all).
You're going to love this one, Madame. Coming soon:
Hi Society! The Wonderful World Of Nicky Haslam
BBC4 Tuesday
Nicky Haslam, renowned socialite, bon viveur, wit, best friend to all is also one of the world’s most re respected and highly paid interior designers’. He works for “Royalty, Rock-Stars and Russians” he says proudly.
This sixty-minute film for BBC’s Academy Award Winning strand STORYVILLE, takes the viewer into a world few have access to and most could hardly imagine where apartments cost over $50 million and people think nothing of spending £4 million to do up a house.
The film features interviews with those who know him really well: photographer David Bailley; Editors of Vogue and Vanity Fair, Alex Shulman and Graydon Carter; Actor, Rupert Everett; Polymath and Church Warden, Christopher Gibbs; Russian Oligarch, Natasha Kagalovsky; and of course London’s glitterati.
Shot in fly-on-the-wall style, the film takes the viewer into a world few have access to and most could hardly imagine. Libellous, glamorous and always over the top, the Wonderful World of Nicky Haslam will be seen but never forgotten.
Not the show I wrote about on April 12 - http://madamearcati.blogspot.com/2009/04/nicky-haslam-documentary-by-hannah.html
I shall Sky+ it of course!
The wonders of search engines lead me here. I knew Patric long before he took up Astrology. He was a delightful man and I remember how he still had the hint of his Whitby childhood in his speech. What lay under his silk dressing gown however I cannot reveal......
Dear Tonguetied, why not drop me an email and do an interview anonymously (by email). More info the merrier. x
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