10 NEWS People
THE WEEK 9 April 2022Desert Island Discs returns later on in the springKnown as the King of Bling, Theo Fennell is almost as famous for
his A-list friends as for his jewellery. Yet the 70-year-old designer
finds starriness, success even, a bit distasteful. “Success isn’t funny.
Everybody hates a winner,” he says. Worse, though, are show-offs- showing off, he told Jane Mulkerrins in The Times, was “the most
indescribable crime when I was growing up”. Which may be why his
new memoir is so likeable. I Fear for This Boy: Some Chapters of
Accidents is a hilarious collection of calamitous incidents, most of
them boozy, in which he comes across as hapless, reckless and very
lucky. Fennell’s success has made him rich, but he has never known
anyone, he says, whose life has been made better by immense
wealth. “Because they lose things – friends, family and fun, which
are the greatest currencies in the world.” He says his friend Elton
John is terrific company; they talk about things you can’t buy any
more, like Wagon Wheels; and he loves Elizabeth Hurley because
she also makes him laugh. When he resolved to stop drinking, in
the late 1990s, he worried that if he sobered up he’d seem dull to
his friends. But it worked out well in the end. “It’s transformed my
life,” he says. “I didn’t become a far better designer or a far brighter
businessman... I just had a much nicer life and a family that I could
be with, which is the most important thing for anyone, really.”
Viewpoint:
Happy machines
“What do you reckon Churchill, or any
PM before David Cameron, would have
made of the ‘happy machines’ installed
at No. 10? You see them in public
lavatories: press sad face if you’re not
satisfied with the hygiene; a straight face
if it’s OK; a smiley face if it’s all good. It’s
one of those manage ment hacks that is a
pretty good indicator of a dysfunctional
institution, like those organisations that
go to great lengths to provide mental
health and resilience workshops, while
laying off staff. What employees would
say, given a chance, is that if jobs were
secure, if people were treated properly,
if you knew who to talk to when there’s
a problem, you wouldn’t need resilience
training, or stupid happy machines.
Melanie McDonagh, Daily TelegraphFarewell
June Brown,
EastEnders actress,
died 3 April, aged 95.
Flight Lt. Douglas
Coxell, Albemarle
transport pilot, died
10 March, aged 100.
Patrick Demarchelier,
French fashion
photographer, died
31 March, aged 78.
Flight Lt. Esmond
Farfan, DFC, Lancaster
pilot, died 10 March,
aged 99.
Bruce Page, journalist
who exposed the
thalidomide scandal,
died 11 March, aged 85.
© TERI PENGILLEY/EYEVINEThe real Nicolas Cage
Nicolas Cage would like to
clear up a few misconceptions
about himself. The actor, 58,
may share his house with a
crow, and it’s true that he
once spent $80,000 on a
two-headed snake; but he is
not the wildman of popular
imagination, says Gabriella
Paiella in GQ. For a period
early in his career, he cultivated
that image: in 1990, he
somersault ed onto the chat
show Wogan in a leather
jacket, before delivering a
round of karate kicks at the
audience (“understatement
is the watchword tonight”,
observed his host). And it
stuck: YouTube is full of videos
called things like Nicolas Cage
Ultimate Freakouts, and he is
the subject of countless memes.
But Cage points out that if he
really was wild, he wouldn’t be
employable. “You can’t survive
43 years in Hollywood if
you’re crazy. You’re not going
to get bonded. They’re not
going to work with you.”
Nor is it true, he says, that the
millions in debt he racked up in
the 2000s were down to his out
of control spending: the
problem was that he’d invested
in property, thinking it would
be safer than stocks, and then
couldn’t sell it soon enough
when the crash came. He had
to make a lot of movies fast, to
avoid filing for bankruptcy, but
he insists he never phoned in
his performances: he always
tried. And if he did behave
oddly at times, it was because
he was struggling. His beloved
father had died, and “I’ve got
all these creditors and the IRS
and I’m spending $20,000 a
month trying to keep my
mother out of a mental
institution, and I can’t. It was
just all happening at once.”
Rail workers at war
Some 230,000 people are
employed by Ukrainian
Railways – and
most are still
working because,
remarkably,
trains are still
running, says
Shaun Walker
in The
Guardian.
The
difference
is, they
are now
packed
with
evacuees, travelling for free.
Millions of people have been
taken west to safety by train.
The journeys are perilous,
uncomfortable and slow. “We
turn the lights off around Kyiv,
and anywhere that might be
dangerous,” said Dmytro
Yaroshenko, 36, manager of
the 82 service. “Who knows
who might be hiding in the
bushes.” Tracks have been
blown up; trains have come
under fire, and some workers
have been killed; but he carries
on, seeing his role as part of the
war effort. “It’s painful that our
soldiers, our women and
children are dying. But nerves
and hysterics don’t help. At
these times, it’s better to get a
grip of yourself and stay calm.”Neil Kinnock’s rock
As leader of the Labour Party
from 1983, Neil Kinnock saw
at first hand the impact of
Margaret Thatcher’s policies on
mining communities. He
attacked her often then, and his
view has not softened. “I don’t
think she was doing it out of
wickedness. I think she was
doing it out of doctrine,” he
told the BBC. “And whilst
doctrine can be handy as a
navigation compass, doctrine
applied in an absolutist way
can be very destructive.”At the
same time as battling the Tory
government, he was fighting a
bitter battle to move Labour to
the centre. He knew it would
be tough, he says, but had
I known “it would stretch
out for nine years and then
conclude with narrow defeat
[in the 1992 election], I think
I would have thought twice”.
If there was one thing that
sustained him, it was the
support of his family- and in particular,
his wife, the
ex-MEP Glenys
Kinnock. She was,
he says, “not just a
rock, but a continent
of rocks”.
Now, though,
Glenys has
Alzheimer’s,
and he must
support her.
“I don’t
think of it as
payback,”
he says,
“but if I
did, I still
have a hell
of a lot more
to do.”