Eddie Sedgwick’s PV «

Eddie Sedgwick’s PV

Thursday 26th January 2017

Last Wednesday Eddie Sedgwick had an opening to mark the 1st Anniversary of David Bowie’s death. Icons from the era were present (Miss Eve Ermine herself) as well as new icons carrying on with the era, namely a tiny ghostly waif, aged 15, who stars in the West End show, Lazarus. As you know, I’m not familiar. Coming in late, someone was playing David Bowie music on an electric piano. It sounded like extruded Rachmaninov. Then a terrifying woman sang that song we’ve all heard of about ‘Ground Control to Major Tom…’ Well… comprehension isn’t exactly the point, I suppose. It’s ‘spaced out’ into a free-wheeling haze. But we mustn’t be superior. In the 70s this was completely new for those starting out as Gay. Ronnie Ronnie (mysteriously not present) set out from Reading circa 1972 with that figure who now does all the shop windows in New York. Their aim was re-invention. They weren’t going to be themselves but whoever they wanted to be. In a whirl of David Bowie they boarded at Reading station for the Blitz Club. They dared not to have jobs and to try out different looks. Heady days. Ronnie Ronnie starred at Blitz Club with Miss Eve Ermine. Marilyn was there and Eddie too. The world had never seen people like them before. They were completely new and free.

I dined exclusively with Eddie afterwards in a fish and chip shop. Robert Nevil had to go home. We picked over the PV. A lot of people’s approach was, ‘What do you do?’ – perhaps because they’re getting older and crosser and David Bowie is no longer transmitting as well as he once did. ‘Ah Dainty Lady TV!’ one such said. ‘You do a lot of caring.’ I couldn’t think what she was talking about. It turned out this same woman had plagued Eddie all the evening that she’d got a present for him. Finally she produced it: a semi-used bag of cough sweets. Set yourself up in an art gallery and anyone can get in! Eddie said that Lionel Moore is astonishing although really only 95, not 96 as he announces when you answer his telephone calls. Recently, after one such call to Phoebe Nicholls, after many digressions, he accepted her invitation to supper at her new home. ‘But where is it?’ his assistant inquired when at last he replaced the receiver. A minor detail. He had no idea. His driver only does theatre people so presumably journeys often have a similar lack of destination. His car found its way to the House of Commons, though, where Eddie’s consort, the MP for Whirly and Lorraine (Labour), was to give a prestigious talk about Clement Attlee, in the Speaker’s House. At the end Imperial Betty Boothroyd rose from the back row and advanced to the front to announce she couldn’t stay long. Frankie-Doreen May once had audience with her re: a possible autobiog and was mesmerised by her swimming costume hanging on the back of the door: it was so stiff with boning as if she’d hung her swimming body there, to be resumed later.