Elizabeth Taylor

Elizabeth Taylor 1932 - 2011

Like many I was saddened at the passing of Dame Elizabeth Taylor today. A great actress and humanitarian she had received the British honour and was entitled to use the style as she was born in Britain to American parents. She first achieved fame at the age of twelve thanks to her starring role in National Velvet but we must also remember that she became a gifted actress with four Oscar nominations and two Oscars to her name for Butterfield 8 and her second Oscar came in 1967 for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, one of 12 films she made with Richard Burton.



She was the highest-paid actress of her time, negotiating a cool $1m for her role in Cleopatra, as well as a share of the profits for the film. This is now the model for many big stars. Cleopatra was however an awful movie which elicited the world’s greatest ever movie review from the famed and feared critic of the New York Times who confined his review to just one line “Last night Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton barged down the Nile and sank!”


“Last night Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton barged down the Nile and sank!”

She was a great believer in marriage, being famously married eight times, twice to her inamoratas’ Richard Burton. By her mid twenties she had been married three times, divorced twice and widowed once; surely a modern day morality tale of sorts. She was extraordinarily beautiful, and was considered an accomplished actress by her peers. That's not true of a lot of celebrities that today's media are obsessed with but in many ways she was the template of the modern celebrity endorsing products and being associated with a “cause.”

Her son, Michael Wilding, made a statement that celebrated his mother’s life.

“My mother was an extraordinary woman who lived life to the fullest, with great passion, humor, and love. We know, quite simply, that the world is a better place for Mom having lived in it.”



Her business acumen extended beyond Hollywood. By creating her own jewellery line and a successful perfume range, she became a pioneer in marketing a celebrity merchandise brand. Stars including Jennifer Lopez, Paris Hilton and Britney Spears all now have personal branded lines.

She was not unknown in this neck of the woods in Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire. The Bell in Aston Clinton used to be one of England’s top restaurants and a straight run out of London from studios at Elstree and Pinewood. It was popular with the luvvies; pictures of the Burton and Taylor used to adorn its walls when it was still a proper restaurant. She and Burton were visitors to that other great movie couple who lived near Thame at Notley Abbey, Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh. They were also visitors to Sir John Gielgud at South Pavilion in Wotton Underwood, Bucks, now the country home of Tony and Cherie Blair.



It is hard today to remember her impact on creating celebrity culture but the photos of her bikini clad on a yacht with Burton in 1962 caused an absolute sensation, such steamy paparazzi photos were unknown in those days and the story ran and ran and probably will continue to run now she is dead. The Vatican at the time accused them of "Erotic vagrancy" and Burton's wife actress Sybil Williams fled the set of Cleopatra and headed back to England.


Notley Abbey


Sir John Gielgud's former home at South Pavilion in Wotton Underwood

In her last interview in this month's edition of 'Harper's Bazaar', when asked about all the husbands and jewellery. Taylor responded: "I never planned to acquire a lot of jewels or a lot of husbands. For me, life happened, just as it does for anyone else. I have been supremely lucky in my life in that I have known great love, and of course I am the temporary custodian of some incredible and beautiful things.

"But I have never felt more alive than when I watched my children delight in something, never more alive than when I have watched a great artist perform, and never richer than when I have scored a big cheque to fight AIDS. Follow your passion, follow your heart, and the things you need will come."

But above all she was a brave campaigner and humanitarian who championed an unpopular cause and made it mainstream. Elizabeth Taylor will be remembered for harnessing her star power to help good causes. In the 1980s, after her friend Rock Hudson died, she became one of the first celebrities to speak out about Aids.



"Why shouldn't gay people be able to live as open and freely as everybody else?... What it comes down to, ultimately, is love. How can anything bad come out of love? The bad stuff comes out of mistrust, misunderstanding and, God knows, from hate and from ignorance."

Elizabeth Taylor

Good for her. Here’s looking at you Babe!


Trailer for "Giant"

The Yellow Press

In Victorian times the expression the "Yellow Press" came from "Penny Dreadfuls", newspapers printed on cheap (hence yellow) paper and full of lurid tales of the lumpen proletariat misbehaving and the latest sightings of Jack the Ripper or his maiden aunt. These were aimed at those the Victorians referred to as the "Feeble minded" - the downtrodden masses who needed to be protected from Gin, gambling, immorality and other occasions of sin. OK, the world has moved on but are the feeble minded and the yellow press not still with us?

How else do you explain the rash of trash celeb mags of which the prime example is the ironically titled "OK" owned by Richard Desmond who made his wealth from titles such as "Asian Babes" and "Bored Housewives" but who would now have us believe that he is a respectable newspaper proprietor as owner of the Daily Express.

The current edition of “OK contains hooks on the cover for articles on Glamour Model Jordan aka Katie Price and of the equally emotionally incontinent Kerry Katona, late of Atomic Kitten and marriage to Brian McFadden of Westlife. Nothing surprising here as there are articles on these two every second week as their tacky lives are charted in excruciating detail. Indeed at between 10 to 20 thousand pounds an article for “exclusive” insights into their dysfunctional lives accompanied by “amazing never seen before” photos over 5 pages of Grade A wallpaper “OK” appears to be the main source of income for these and other “famous for being famous” characters.

But a new low has been reached in the midst of the saga of the missing child Madeline McCann with the innuendo on the "Jordan and Pete" headline "We would never leave our kids on their own" and in case the lumpen proletariat are a bit slow and don’t get it the incontinent Kerry's headline on the same cover is "I would never leave my kids like the McCann's". Can there be a cheaper shot to persuade readers to buy a magazine?

Is it any wonder the UK press has such a trashy reputation when this type of journalism, accurately described by Northcliffe (A previous proprietor of the Express) as "Non news about non people" is in the ascendancy?

For the record I think Madeline McCann's parents are victims both of a crime and of trashy non-journalism. One of our friends on holiday earlier this year had a heart operation carried out by Gerry McCann at Leicester Royal Infirmary where he works as a heart surgeon and his wife is a local GP. By no stretch of the imagination do they meet the profile of people who would murder a child. This is why I was glad to see Sir Richard Branson publicly help them deal with the smear campaign - on this as on so many other things over the years his instincts are surely right.

There is real tragedy here as opposed to the manufactured in – out of Rehab / surgery / court / new lover / old lover/ bankruptcy “tragedy” which “OK” magazine and its modern yellow press equivalents rely on to titillate their remedial readership. There is an innocent child missing and the focus must return to following the evidence to solve the crime and find the missing child. The McCann’s tragedy is no worse but also certainly no less than any other family who has had a child taken from them in any circumstances. What has set this apart is the reaction of the parents, two capable people in caring professions, who have refused to lie down and play victim but who have instead run a superb campaign to highlight what has happened. Whatever the outcome for their daughter, and experience doesn’t lead us to be hopeful, they have made the possibility of future “Madeline’s” being abducted less likely and they have raised awareness of an important issue. For this and the brave example they have shown they deserve our gratitude.

As for the trash world of desperate attention seeking Celebs with no iota of talent or intelligence between them maybe we should bite the PC bullet and officially designate them as "feeble minded" and in need of protection?