Fucking On Fridays: A History of Britain's Most Notorious Casanova Conman

Chapter One

I always knew that my father was a bastard. He had left home before I was a year old. ‘And that,’ my mother always told me, ‘was a great blessing’.

By the time I came to realise that most children had two parents I had a second father. Johannes Kristen had come from Copenhagen with a team of Lipizzaner horses bound for the Blackpool Tower Circus. Soon afterwards he met my mother at a party given by Charlie Cairoli - the most famous clown in the world. They were married when I was five and my mother and I moved to his substantial semi-detached house close to Blackpool’s Stanley Park.

As a circus impresario second father had famous friends. I am told that I was once bought candyfloss and ice cream by Errol Flynn and rewarded him by vomiting on his jacket. I have no recollection of that but I do remember Charlie Cairoli finding a sixpence in his bowler hat which vanished into a handkerchief before reappearing behind my left ear. More than 50 years later I still have that sixpence.

Most of my happiest early memories are of second father. He was a temperate giant who was even better with children than horses. I would ride in the passenger seat of his Lagonda peeping the horn of my own steering wheel which was fixed to the walnut dash by means of a large rubber sucker.

When I thought about first father it was in the sense of ‘disappeared’ or ‘gone away’. There were other children at school without fathers. It seemed to me that ‘missing’ was the much the same as ‘disappeared’. My friend Brian’s Dad had gone ‘missing’ in the jungle of Burma in the final month of the war and a decade later Brian still thought he might turn up.

‘Burma is a long way,’ he explained.

As time passed I thought less and less about first father. There was no sense of loss in his absence. And I imagined I’d be able to find him if I ever wanted to. But my experience of finding things was not encouraging. At some time or other I had turned up a long forgotten a Davy Crockett hat wedged under a drawer. The hole at the front was large enough to mark the accuracy of the fatal bullet at the Alamo and the spaniel’s-ear flap had faded from buckskin brown to squirrel grey. Perhaps I thought that first father would now be similarly faded.

But there was someone who missed him.

My maternal grandmother had a silver framed picture on a dining room dresser that never seemed to be there when my mother was around. ‘He was a bad man,’ she would say as she cut the cucumber sandwiches, ‘but oh so handsome.’

The picture was a backlit studio portrait featuring a shadowy square jaw, a smiling three quarter face and dark oleaginous hair. I particularly noticed the hair.

‘He was a Brylcreem Boy,’ she said.

I did not believe her. In the late 1950’s Brylcreem Boys were heroes. There were twin mirrors at Mr. Bee’s Gents’ Hairdresser featuring Dennis Compton and Stanley Matthews etched in profile under the Brylcreem logo. But my grandmother placed the picture in my hands and scuttled off to return with a faded newspaper advertisement which showed a similarly slicked first father. It made little sense.

Beyond Brylcreem, my total certain knowledge of first father was that he had worked in the theatre. I knew this from two glossy photos in my grandmother’s scrapbook. There was one of him in a sword fighting pose with a bare chested Adonis. In my mother’s hand it was labelled ‘Dennis with Terence Morgan - Laertes in Olivier’s Hamlet. Another picture has Dennis at centre stage with other cast members. This one was labelled, also by my mother, as ‘Dennis in Flare Path. Oldham Rep.’

Most of the rest of what I knew of him came from dreams and shadows. There was perhaps a ‘memory’ of sitting on his knee in my grandmother’s front room. This was connected in my mind to a silver Christening cup, saucer and spoon in the family trophy cabinet. Each item was embossed with a palm tree motif and I was told that these had been gifts from an Arabian sheik.

More than once my mother offered to tell me anything I wanted to know. But I was sure that she didn’t want to. Nobody talked about him. And there was another reason for not asking. My childish misdemeanours were often scrutinised for symptoms of ‘turning out like him’. So it seemed to me that taking an interest in ‘him’ would be like being caught with one of those pages-stuck-together magazines that my friend Brian bought from a North Shore shop that also sold plastic turds and farting cushions. There would be no excuses. I would be condemned by association.

When I was nine years old I got into a scrape serious enough to earn the aftermath of an angry parent on our doorstep. I had never previously seen second father - who had once been a Royal Danish guardsman - lose his temper. But when the word ‘bastard’ with my name attached to it was sounded, he delivered a well targeted right uppercut. Then he turned on his heel as if nothing had happened, walked back into the house and telephoned for an ambulance. He was as cool as frost.

‘Nobody speaks of my son like that,’ he said as he quite literally closed the door on the incident. After that, to think of anyone else as my father would have been disloyal.

During the post mortem I told him that this wasn’t the first time I’d been taunted with ‘bastard’ and ‘bastard brothers and sisters’. I knew it must be an insult but ‘bastard’ was still incomprehensible and anyway I had no brothers or sisters.

This had two immediate consequences. First it was determined that, from now on, I would be known by his surname. Second, I was packed off to boarding school.

The next time first father came fleetingly into my consciousness was several years later when I was called to my housemaster’s study.

I had been dreading this. My housemaster was a Welshman called Halley Thomas - we called him Halley Tosis - whose distinguishing feature was a long leathery tongue. He taught Latin, German and Country Dancing and, it was strongly rumoured (in the fifth form common room anyway) that he had trained as a teacher at Parkhurst and wore ladies’ silk drawers.

A few weeks before the summons to his study there had been an inter-house cricket match for which I felt I had been unfairly overlooked as an all rounder. Consequently I had manoeuvred myself behind him before withdrawing my aluminium-clad, long-barrelled, semi-rifled peashooter loaded it with a dried pea. Moments later, as he leapt from this deckchair, I knew I had scored a high velocity hit on his bald pate. I returned the weapon to my sleeve and sidled away.

Days went by. His enquiries proved fruitless. Avoiding sadism with a slipper (or worse so I believed) depended entirely on those who had witnessed my achievement and their desire to keep it secret. I equally thought that it could only be a measure of how much Halley Tosis appeared to be reviled that the entire school suffered from transient myopia. But I still could not be sure I would evade punishment. So, when the call came to his study, I feared the worst.

But he seemed concerned only with my well-being. More specifically he wanted to know if I had recently been the victim of bullying. I was sure, given his Gestapo credentials, that this was a circuitous route to securing a confession. But when he talked about a newspaper scandal and an American actor called Sanders I knew that I could escape without a blemish on my bottom. I still had no idea where his meanderings were going, but cared less.

But when he mentioned my father I was truly bewildered. His smile was beneficent but I did not trust it.

‘Not your stepfather,’ he explained, ‘your real father.’

‘Oh him,’ I said.

My lack of concern must have been reassuring. He ended the interview by saying ‘If there is any trouble,’ he said, ‘just remember I’m here to help.’

I told him that I would. At the same time I resolved that even if the KGB were removing my trousers in a dark basement he would be the last to know.

Until that moment first father had been pretty much an irrelevance and the only Sanders I knew had something to do with Winnie-the-Pooh. But I was vaguely aware of a film actor called George Sanders. But it couldn’t be him. That Sanders had been The Saint hadn’t he?

I learned a little more from Percy Snaith. He was a former Lord Mayor’s attendant whom my maternal grandfather had poached from the borough after his term in office. Percy now performed light gardening, handyman and chauffeuring duties. He was the very model of ‘shabby chic’ or what Alan Bennett later called ‘my suit and my other suit’ - except that the ‘other suit’ had been regularly cleaned and pressed, but not replaced, in 20 years.

The highpoint of Percy’s year was when he drove the Rolls, at 25 miles an hour, (my grandfather’s instructions I think) from Blackpool to Ravenscar. This meant that the 160 odd miles - coast to coast - took longer than Dan Dare’s voyage to the planet Zog. But I didn’t mind. Percy was an ally. Years earlier he had convinced my grandfather that only a full face snorkel mask and floppy rubber flippers could adequately protect me when swimming with sharks in the Scarborough sea. (Percy knew that my hero was Lloyd Bridges in Sea Hunt.)

For the Ravenscar journey I was invariably ensconced in the front of the Rolls. In the rear were my mother, grandmother and grandfather. Second father always remained behind because of his business.

I was occasionally permitted to press a button that caused a growling motor to perform the miracle of separating front from rear by means of a glass screen. When we were so cocooned Percy would confide in me. At one or another or these times I had learned that his blackened tooth stumps were the result of an addiction to Wild Woodbine cigarettes that began in the trenches of Ypres and that the missing finger joint on his left hand was the result of a ‘misadventure’ with a Mills bomb.

On the last of these holidays Percy and I became audibly separated from the others somewhere around Blubberhouses. After some small talk he turned to me and said.

‘I would do anything for your grandmother.’

I had come to suspect this from the eternities they spent together in the potting shed. I was now sixteen and had read Lady Chatterley’s Lover. I knew it was important to maintain dignified discretion. At these moments, or whenever I had to face the possibility that my grandmother had enjoyed a sex life, a framed picture in my grandparents’ hallway came to mind. It was an oil painting based I think on a photograph. The subject was my grandmother in her late teens or early twenties. She was sitting on a high backed wooden chair garlanded with a crown of red roses with two younger women pressed in close to her like book ends. The caption, on a small brass plate, was ‘The Rose Queen’. She had been a most handsome woman.

Percy cleared his throat and continued.

‘I don’t want you goin’ an’ upsetting her with all this in the papers,’ he said.

This was as close as he had ever come to a reprimand. I was shocked.

‘All what in the papers?’ I asked.

He inhaled vigorously and the hot tip of his Woodbine fell into his lap. For a moment, his good hand flapped round his flies and he lost sufficient control for the Rolls to accelerate to 29 miles an hour. I had no doubt that he was genuinely surprised at my ignorance.

‘Let’s just say that your father has done wrong. He has cheated people. He’ll go to prison. It’ll bring disgrace on us all. So your grandmother is upset. Do you understand?

I understood the logic but could make small sense of it. Unless, of course, there was a deeper seam. Perhaps this had something to do with ‘turning out like him’? It was best therefore to remember Halley Tosis and say very little.

‘I understand,’ I said.

Percy, who was now well past 70, was as gaunt and rheumy eyed as the donkeys on Blackpool’s central beach. My grandfather, though mentally sharp, was now irascible through walking with the aid of two sticks. As the major feature of these holidays had always been the daily nine hole golf match on the Ravenscar course - played between Percy and my grandfather for a shilling a round - it was now like going to Wimbledon just for the strawberries. Everyone was tetchy.

I escaped as often as possible to the rocky shore with my snorkel mask and flippers. On the last day I was splashing around when a lateral wave must have hit at an angle sufficient to swamp me but not enough to push the ping pong ball into the air pipe. I had taken in sand and seawater in similar circumstances before without much effect but this time I was disoriented for long enough to crash into a rock and black out.

Percy had been watching. He called for help. Two men pulled me out and pushed the water from my lungs. After a few minutes I was pretty much OK but was taken to hospital by my mother to have cuts and abrasions treated. When I returned, swathed in bandage, Percy patted called me ‘a lucky boy’, my grandfather called me ‘a plonker’ and my grandmother burst into tears.

‘Is there anything you want?’ She asked.

At moments of crisis I always wanted my father. He just made things better.

‘I wish my father was here,’ I said.

In fact he was already on the way. My mother had spoken to him.

I, of course, meant second father. I would not have asked for first even if I was about to audition for the celestial choir.

But my grandmother decided differently. She sent a telegram to first father in Rome - God knows how she knew where he was - which infuriated my grandfather. His face changed from pale to puce and he went to the bar. My grandmother took her embroidery to the terrace. My mother escaped to her room with a book and Percy took me out for a walk around Ravenscar’s false fortifications. We were in suspended animation waiting for second father to arrive.

When he did he seemed to take everything in his stride. He even pretended to be mildly amused by the comedy of accident and error. It was his way to make light of such things.

He spoke to us all separately - making sense I think of what had occurred. Then he called us together in the cocktail lounge before dinner. It was like a Poirot denouement. The verdict was that nobody was really to blame; there had been an accident followed by shock and confusion. It was all very understandable.

There were some strained expressions but everyone accepted his judgement. Except me. I felt that my desire for a fatherly presence had been wilfully manipulated by my grandmother for a purpose I could not begin to understand.

I was going to say something. Second father anticipated this. He had a way of waving his hand with the index finger pointed. It was a signal between us. It meant ‘enough’. I knew nothing of it then but there was a reply to the telegram. It turned up later in my mother’s Dennis archive.

Addressed to my grandmother it read:

‘Best wishes to the boy. Am relieved accident not serious. Not able to leave Italy until UK enquiry ends. Film nearly finished now. Again thanks for help.’

Dennis

Two months after my eighteenth birthday there was a second national news furore following publication of the Board of Trade enquiry into ‘The Cadco Affair’. Again I almost missed it. I lived only for curries, cricket, Watneys Red Barrel and Morag Macsporron - a tiny apprentice hairdresser with thighs that had the tensile strength of miniature JCB’s and a similar ability to make the earth move.

But a little of the media coverage must have filtered through by osmosis - at least sufficiently for me to talk again to my grandmother. She told me that my father had been involved in a scam with the very same George Sanders who turned out not to be saintly at all. Massive amounts of money had gone missing. All this only slightly engaged my curiosity. But within two years that was all to change.

Chapter Two

As a college student I had joined the British Universities North America Club. The organisation arranged seasonal employment in the USA and Canada for UK students. They put me in touch with a summer camp in the Catskills who, in turn, offered me a camp counsellor’s job. On this basis I booked a flight to Niagara Falls.

I needed a visa. I made the application and waited. I waited until everyone else had their visas and then waited some more. With less than four weeks to go I went to the person I knew I could rely on to sort out the problem.

Second father listened. Then he walked briskly round to the other half of our hefty Blackpool semi-detached which was the constituency residence of our local MP, Sir Peter Blaker. Processes were set in motion and the question of the visa was resolved. Yes, I had been turned down by the US authorities. On reflection, there had been a change of heart. I imagined that the whole thing had been an administrative cock-up.

On the very day I began packing my rucksack there was a second intervention. I was summoned to my grandmother. This was not unexpected. She was always generous to me and I imagined a wad of cash would be waiting to smooth my way through the US adventure. This proved correct but there was also a bombshell. It appeared that she had been in touch with first father, irregularly but continually, for almost 20 years. She also admitted that she had ‘on several occasions’ lent him money.

‘Your grandfather didn’t really approve’, she admitted but things are different since he has gone upstairs.’ She tilted her eyes upwards.

My grandfather had died the previous summer but she spoke of this as if he was still carrying his late night cocoa up to the bedroom. This seemed all the odder to me because they lived in a bungalow.

The sombre note lasted only moments. She smiled and, after pouring and setting down the teapot, clapped her hands.

‘There has been so much in the news, ‘she said, ‘so how much do you know?’

‘Only a little,’ I said, ‘mainly what you told me.’

Dennis has been a very naughty boy,’ she said clapping her hands again , ‘but I expect he was led astray.’

There was something about the pleasure she took from all this made me think of ‘The Rose Queen’. Her smile in that picture was unfathomable. It could equally have been the euphoria of the moment or the recollection of the first kiss of the vampire.

I cannot recall much further detail of the conversation although I am certain she mentioned the names of high profile people - including Charlie Chaplin and Graham Greene - who had allegedly been victims of Dennis’s schemes.

As I was about the leave, she passed me a slip of paper. It contained an address and a telephone number.

‘He’s in New York,’ she said. If you decide to get in touch with him I want to know everything,’ she said. ‘Your mother doesn’t know. There’s no need for her to know. It could be our little secret...’

‘I’m not sure,’ I said.

‘You should meet your father. He has told me that he will see you.’

She set down the tray of tea and the cucumber sandwiches. She smiled, picked up his picture, and gently rubbed the edge of the silver frame. ‘And remember,’ she said, ‘I want to know everything.’

Instinct told me that any meeting with first father would cause ructions. And, as he meant little to me, it was clearly not worth it. But that night I shared a pint or three with second father and broached the subject with him.

‘It’s not that I’m desperate to meet him,’ I explained, ‘it’s just that I’d like to make up my own mind about the kind of person he is.’

He took a cigarette from his gold case, lit up and inhaled heavily. He nodded a couple of times - an indication that the brain cogs were whirling - then fixed me with his blue eyed smile.

‘I understand your curiosity,’ he said, ‘but I