David Bowie

Great loss of a real gentleman today and a great artist who, like me in the kitchen, never liked doing the same thing and re-invented himself permanently.

In the mid 70’s I was working in an art house cinema in Wardour Street, one day we were showing Jean-Luc Godard’s “One Plus One Sympathy for the Devil” when this angel came into the cinema. Her name was Jeanette, she said she was a dancer and she lived in a squat in Regent’s Park.

I saw David Bowie for the first time that year, it was the time he was really playing up the bisexual thing, hanging on Mick Ronson’s arms most of the time.

One night I’m at the Speakeasy with Ted Baker, Phil Lynott, Katy Vaughan and others and I see Jeanette on the dance floor erotically dancing with another girl. I catch up to her at the bar and ask if she remembers me, she says “Oh you just saw me in the papers, I’m going out with David Bowie”, I say “No, the Godard movie in Wardour Street last year…”. She was stunned and became suddenly humble. We talked a long while, then she was gone.
I think Leo Sayer wrote a song about her. (Read more about the encounter with Jeanette by clicking here)

I met David Bowie at the EuroRock Festival in Belfort France in the 1990’s. We had a cup of green tea together and he complained about awful English tea with milk in it, “must be even worse with French milk”, and he was wearing a dressing gown. It was pouring with rain and the stage was slowing sinking into the mud and sliding backwards towards a lake. Bowie went on stage nevertheless and gave a great performance, some songs were included in the TV show I did, it was shown all over the world.

Back then I would pay in the cinema takings to Barclays Bank Regent’s Street every morning where there was also an angel behind the cashier’s desk, Fuzanna Wakhani, I wonder what became of her, and Jeanette of course. Then I met another angel in the cinema….but that’s another ongoing story.