Newt Gingrich, a Republican, was 50th. speaker of the United States House of Representatives from 1995 to 1999. He posted this piece online this morning

I grew up in an era when the New York Times was the greatest newspaper in the world. Throughout my political career, there were plenty of moments when I thought

This complaint was filed in District Court, Los Angeles,  on September 23, 2004. As it contains useful details of my personal story, I post it here again today. Remember, posting dates are for reasons of hierarchical separation, and not necessarily the dates things actually happened. Hopefully, insights will be gained as to how the

John, I see you were born in London in 1932 and attended Watford Grammar School. Given that you started working for the BBC in 1944 you must have planned to be an actor from a very early age. Was that always your ambition? Did you have early training?

Three nos. I had no plan to be an actor, no ambition, and no training. When I went to Kings Langley’s Rudolph Steiner school (locally known as the “do as you like” school), at the age of ten, I was cast in the annual school play, Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, performed outdoors in the garden. But that was it, and I hated doing it, it seemed kind of gay; I was not turned on to acting, and had no thoughts along those lines. 

Your first show on BBC radio was The Will Hay Programme in 1944 where you acted as D’Arcy Minor, the swot of St. Michael’s. How did that come about? And was it fun working with Will Hay?

My family lived in Chipperfield, Herts, in those days, and I was coming home on the bus after school one day in August, when a man came up to me who I recognized, for he lived down the road. His name was Alick Hayes, and he asked me if I was a good reader. I told him yes, and he said could I come over later, meet his wife Zillah, have a cup of tea, and read him something out of the Evening Standard, so after supper I did. He tested me for fluency, to see if I could read without stumbling, and he was pleased that I could. He then explained that he was a BBC producer, and was about to start a new BBC radio comedy series, but the young actor he was going to use had just got sick, and he had an emergency, and maybe I could help out.

The show was The Will Hay Programme (The Diary of a Schoolmaster) and the part was that of a very clever young swot who said very long multi-syllabic words instead of shorter ones whenever he answered the schoolmaster’s questions. Mr Hayes wanted me to play it, just the first show, and he said it would save him from having to find another actor quickly from an acting academy. It was going out live in front of an audience from the Paris Cinema, a basement BBC studio off Piccadilly Circus, in just three days’ time.

I raced home, told my parents, said please let me do it, it sounds like fun, and it pays money. So my mother took me up to London next day, and that is where I met Will Hay and the rest of the cast – one schoolmaster and three students, so-called. Smart was the cheeky one (played by the very professional actor Charles Hawtrey), Beckett the dumb one (Billy Nicholls, on his day off from the RAF), and D’Arcy Minor, the studious swot (me). The joke was that I was the only real schoolboy (eleven years old). Will Hay was repeating the same schoolmaster act he had done in several of his films (Good Morning Boys, 1937, etc). It will be remembered that the comedy came out of the fact that he was a hopeless teacher, and the students took over.

That first day I remember well.
Continue Reading Just William Society Magazine interview

It’s been brought to my attention that the Daily Mail published a piece a few days after the death of my ex that purported to be the result of an “exclusive interview” with me.  It ran under the name of Alison Boshoff (whoever she is) on May 8th, to be accessed all over the world.  It was headlined THE LOVE CHILD WHO BROKE LYNN REDGRAVE’S HEART: In the week the actress died, her ex-husband tells of his shame and regret.  As my readers know, I brought a complaint against them to the British Press Complaints Commission. Daily Mail Complaint detail.
Continue Reading Daily Mail at it AGAIN!

Wikipedia would consider the LA Times to be a “reliable source” in their category “Biographies of Living People”. After all, they were the only ones attending the trial to report on it. So let’s analyze the newspaper’s report, forensically, for the sake of the record, just to investigate whether they are reliable. This is what I wrote immediately after the news appeared:
March 13, 2001
These were the low-lifes that the Los Angeles Times was responsible for concocting this story, although only Roug covered our trial.Continue Reading ANN O’NEILL, LOUISE ROUG, GINA PICCALO

I see that Louise, that Danish pastry of a journalist for the Los Angeles Times, is reporting key facts from Iraq in the trial of Saddam Hussein for war crimes.

I know her, of course, you’ve already seen how she handled my trial:

Sunday, April 4, 2001
Home Edition
Section: Southern California Living
 
Actress