Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Painter, designer, and fashion editor known for her notorious hedonistic personal life and bohemian living.
On the island
Eight records
Accentuate the positive. That seems to have been the theme of my life, and I was encouraged to do that by my grandparents, by all my spinster aunties who'd lost would-be lovers, boyfriends, during the First World War. And I believe, however low you go, there's always a little shimmer of light somewhere to concentrate on.
Leanne Carroll is a fellow Aquarian, and Three Sheets of the Wind is to me in the exaltation of drinking in the open air on top of a mountain with friends or on the seashore. And she just captures it, and I love it.
Bert Kalmar, Harry Ruby and Oscar Hammerstein II
Dill introduced me to Louis Armstrong, and I was in fragments with joy, the delirium of hearing this jazz for the first time, and seeing him play and his love of life which came from him. He caught hold of me and he whispered in my ear, you're mine for tonight, honey. And I drew back and I said, I can't do that. I said, I'm going to teach in the morning at Elephant and Castle. I have to go back home to bed now. And he just stopped me with this wonderful satchmo mouth and kissed me on full on the lips. I'd never been kissed like that before. And you know, he set all my blood boiling. I went in a different path. And within a fortnight, I'd lost my virginity.
He wrote this somewhere towards love, and um it was about rejection in love, something I actually haven't experienced, you see, though I have rejected and broken hearts. Sorry about that, perhaps I regret that. But anyway, when he plays it, as he does in uh concerts all over the place, and I'm in the audience, he dedicates it to me, said, You know, Molly is now a hundred and seventeen and my girlfriend.
George and I uh did enjoy a wonderful friendship. I call it a friendship. And um He asked me to go when he was dying with cancer. He said to me, Oh, he said, Let's just enjoy old times and he opened the bedclothes. Now, he was asking me in for a cuddle. He wasn't asking me in for anything more seductive than that, just to hold him. So it was like a need for somebody that they knew very well.
I was asked to fulfil the role of somebody who just died who was a DJ to Lula, a transvestite, wonderful person. And we did it for a whole year. It was based on my Welsh club down in my Welsh Valley, where all ages came. And whenever I I thought it's a bit empty on this dance floor now, I would put on Michael Jackson and Billie Jean right from the beginning. People jump on the dance floor.
And if I've had bleak moments, like the death of my mother, was very, very bleak, and friends, I never forgot how to dance. I would put on something like Michael Jackson and Billie Jean and dance.
Good Golly, Miss MollyFavourite
John Marascalco and Robert Blackwell
Well, this is Little Richard. This is called Good Golly Miss Molly, and he's got such life. I mean, all of these that I've chosen are full of life. They're a reflection of what I love and the sort of person that I love.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:14Is it important to you to feel that you have lived a life that is vivid and full of colour and richness? Is that where the delight comes from?
I think I'm a typical product of my Welsh Valley. I've also got Romani blood, and the Celts are a nomadic race, so I have actually had 54 homes in adult years. And I have been blessed and have made it my business to surround myself with larger-than-life characters. I've learned a lot from them, especially some of those lovers. I was a painter and a writer as well. I've just written Welcome to Mollywood. I'm pleased about that at this stage in my life. It's kind of set me free, this latest memoir.
Presenter asks
2:38Are you somebody who looks back at the times of your life when things were more difficult and regrets that maybe you missed out a bit or you didn't quite play it as you should have?
I don't well, when I say don't harbour regrets, my own mother was an alcoholic, my father was too, and it kind of runs throughout our family in the background. But my grandmother was my role model, so I am a sublime grandmother. I would have liked perhaps to have been well, I was kind, but an alcoholic mother is not what I would wish on anybody. But those two girls of mine, Sarah and Sophie, we're so close, I've made amends and we've come through any lingering resentments which I'm sure would have been there.
The keepsakes
The book
The History of the Colony Room Club
Sophie Parkin
the one that I'm awaiting, it's almost finished now, but it's a book that my own daughter, Sophie, who was introduced to The Colony and all of that lot when she was fourteen, and she is writing The History because she knows it all, and she's the appointed writer of The Colony. That will remind me of all those conversations and everything that I'd be missing.
The luxury
If you tilt this brooch, it's by Andrew Logan, one of my dearest friends, and it's got a sparkly glass a brilliant red around it, and it's small heart, and if you tilt it, it enlarges to fill the whole of that space. I am very heartfelt. Can't I have one of my hats and a cloak to go with it?
Presenter asks
6:32These days, how's the situation with the lovers going? Is that flourishing?
I've lost all the urges. ... The hormones just dropped out of my underwear on top of my shoes. I don't know where they went, but it's gone now. And it's like being unleashed from a lunatic. ... And do you know what? When I was in the throes of all the hedi hedonism, you call it debauchery. I don't call it debauchery. I think it's giving gifts. You know what I mean? And a wonderful thing to do.
Presenter asks
7:14Was [debauchery] an unfair word to use, do you think?
Well, it's it's got uh critical overtones, whereas hedonism is uh a rejoicing in life and debauchery is as if you've gone down the wrong passage, which I never think any passage is the wrong passage.
Presenter asks
17:07For how long did [the sexual abuse and beatings at the hands of your father] last?
That lasted from my earliest memories. But at seven I think I was rescued from that because um I uh developed mastoid and went to hospital and then outbreak of war came in nineteen thirty nine and I I spent the whole of that time down with my grandparents which saved me.
Presenter asks
26:48When did you hit bottom and what was that?
That was uh in the gutter outside Smithfields, having pleasure d I don't know how many of the meat porters, but I was there because the the pubs open at five o'clock in the morning. ... I was lying in the gutter in the gold llama that I'd been wearing for a week, but I had full macchiage on. ... Do you know, I lay there gleefully. There is a gleeful side to drinking well, my drinking and I thought that this is fun. You can't go any lower now unless you get into the ... Sewers, yes, but I looked around to see if there was an opening and there wasn't. I slept for two days and two nights, and then I woke at something like three in the morning, and my granny's voice came to me, said, The party's over now, Molly. You've just had your last drink, Bach, Bach being little one. And uh so I never looked back.
Presenter asks
30:35Have you repaired those relationships with your two daughters?
You can only I I wanted really to write a letter or but I was told, you know, in at the fellowships, No, you don't write a letter, Molly And I said, Well, can't I just ring them up and say I'm ever so sorry for the last thirty years? And they said, No, that isn't good enough. And they said, Uh love is not a noun, it's a verb. It's slowly, slowly catchy monkey with the uh forgiveness and t for me to be forgiven.
“Whatever I put on, it's got to disturb what's there already.”
“I've lost all the urges. ... The hormones just dropped out of my underwear on top of my shoes. I don't know where they went, but it's gone now. And it's like being unleashed from a lunatic.”
“I did end up in uh not uh at boyfriends or anything, but there was violence uh uh within both of my marriages. Now I wouldn't dream of allowing anybody to l raise a finger to me, but then I fought like a cat and dog fight. I fought back, I lost teeth, broken noses, black eyes.”
“I know I'm a painter. I know I'm a writer. I know I'm a poet. I move amongst these people. And to them, they know I'm that as well.”