The Notting Hill Gate, where I have lived for the past forty years, is a very different place than the one portrayed in newspapers during the Peter Mandelson affair.
There may be a few stars of politics, stage, screen, radio, TV, the modelling and fashion world who have chosen Notting Hill–often in the hope of a quiet time–but there are also a lot of hard-working, ordinary people just getting on with their lives who are none too happy to see their neighbourhood described as “exclusive. . . chic . . . fashionable . . . trendy.”
My diary for June 8, 1990 reads: “2pm, Inn on the Park hotel. American TV interviewing me for documentary on Rudolf Hess. Allow for three hours’ filming.” Then after this in angry red ink I have written, “Terrible argument over my request for payment of £250 for my interview. Producer says all American TV companies have banned ‘cheque book journalism’. What a joke!”
All that summer, the American documentary producer had pursued me around the world. She had telephoned me several times in London “to pick your brains” on various theories about Hess, Hitler’s deputy, who had suicided–or been murdered–in Spandau prison, Berlin three years earlier. A couple of months after the first call, she rang me twice in Australia, once at 3am–”Sorry, we couldn’t work out the time difference.” The good news was that the programme was definitely going ahead. The crew would be flying to Berlin and then would be coming to London. Could I hold myself free to do my interview some time in June?
