BUCKING THE TREND . . . AND RECALLING A POP STAR’S GREAT ESCAPE
I had a delightful coffee morning catch-up the other day with Francesca Peterson (nee Hanikova), a trainee reporter under me on the Falmouth Packet in the early 1980s and who, like several others, then left me standing by carving out a stellar career in journalism and PR.
We chose the Falmouth Hotel – where word had clearly spread that the hotel is very much BACK, under its new ownership, after too many years of dull stagnation.
It’s now just one of four hotels left on the seafront and it was so good to see this grand old lady coming alive again and bucking the closure trend.
The lounges were pretty much full well before 11 and the whole place was absolutely buzzing.
All we need now is just a little fine-tuning with the background music, which was a tad inconsistent and occasionally just too loud.
Oh, and we were mortified to learn that they didn’t do CAKES with their coffee (which was excellent)!
Overall, though – also based on an earlier lunch I had there plus word of mouth from friends who stayed overnight – it deserves top marks for a great resurrection.
Among Francesca’s Packet trainee memories, meanwhile, there was the unscheduled visit to this same hotel by pop superstar Simon Le Bon in 1985.
It led to extraordinary scenes – and to Francesca being caught up in it all and mistaken for Le Bon’s “girl.”
Le Bon, leader of top group Duran Duran, had ended up at the Falmouth after his £1 million yacht had overturned in the Fastnet Race. Consequently, more than 40 national press and TV folk descended on the hotel – as did scores of excited young fans.
Children waving autograph books besieged Francesca when she arrived, shouting: “Are you Simon’s girl?” And when she laughed and said “yes” sarcastically, the books were thrust into her face for signing.
Le Bon decided he just had to get away from it all – he was locked up in a private lounge – and so he dramatically leapt out of a window to flee to a more peaceful destination.
Waiting cannily outside that very window, though, was Falmouth freelance photographer David Brenchley. His picture of Le Bon’s “vanishing act” was published in several national newspapers the next day!
BETTER JUST TO STICK YOUR FINGER IN THE AIR!
Just as you can go off people (see Clare Balding, Weekend Break No 6), so you can lose faith in things.
Such as weather forecasts.
Last Friday teatime, the heavens opened and there was the mother and father of a prolonged thunderstorm over Falmouth and beyond.
As I took shelter and waited for it to pass, I checked the BBC forecast, which until then had offered no hint of this.
It had been “updated” all of half an hour earlier, it said, and still there was not so much as a hint of heavy rain, let alone any lightning symbol.
At that point, I lost all faith in the forecast.
(Except that, strangely, I still keep looking at it. Regularly . . . )
YOU KNOW YOU’RE GETTING OLDER WHEN . . .
. . . you eagerly accept an offer of a blanket over your legs at a cold football ground!
There I was, sitting in the new Truro City Stadium last Saturday at the start of the second half, when Wendy Anear, beside me, asked if I would like to share hers.
It suddenly seemed like a cracking good idea, but I checked first: “Doesn’t Ian want it?”
Hubby didn’t, apparently, so half of it was all mine for the duration.
It was (warm) icing on the cake in an afternoon which saw another win for City, keeping them second in their league table and ripe for promotion, and a bumper crowd of 33 short of 2,000. The club, in fact, is absolutely buzzing.
So I’ll be back – especially if I know there’s a cosy blanket on offer!
SAFETY IN NUMBERS
Three weeks into the new refuse collection system (see Weekend Break No 6) and not everyone, it seems, has quite yet grasped it.
On my way home mid-morning on Wednesday, I noticed a neighbour looking up and down the road and then placing his wheelie bin and food caddy outside his gates.
“I always put my stuff out later than everyone else,” he explained, “just so I can see first what they’ve all done; then I can be sure I’ve got it right!”
COULDN’T HAVE PUT IT BETTER MYSELF!
Jack Russell, ex-England wicketkeeper (think floppy sun hat) turned artist reflected in a Telegraph interview: “The world disappears when you paint. (The canvas) is your world. It’s like going to the moon, which means it is somewhere where there is nobody else.
“It helped me totally switch off, which is not always easy when your career is on the line every ball.”
I can so relate to those sentiments – and, in my case, with never-ending gratitude to my teacher, Jeanni Grant-Nelson https://www.visual-awareness.com/
RICK STEIN’S FAIR COP
By my reckoning, it’s now 50 years, give or take a few months, since the birth of the Rick Stein empire (make that phenomenon).
Talk about little acorns and mighty oaks. It all began with the launch of his Seafood Restaurant as a small harbourside bistro in Padstow with his then wife Jill.
The “phenomenon” might never have come to pass, though, but for a brush with the law the year before – as this dip into my archive, for a piece first published here in 2015, shows:--
. . . . In a previous life, I handled PR for Cornwall Association of Tourist Attractions (CATA), which involved working with its popular long-serving secretary Graham Hooper.
Graham told me how, back in 1974, as a police inspector, he led a raid on Rick’s premises, leading to his prosecution for not having the proper liquor licences.
Rick had begun his business life with a mobile quayside nightclub in Padstow, which unfortunately was linked to frequent brawls with local fishermen.
In 1997, with his CATA cap on, Graham said in a letter to Rick: “Having watched a number of your programmes, it is as plain as the nose on my face that you are ‘selling’ the county in a way which we, the ‘experts,’ have been striving so hard to do but, in the main, have failed to achieve. . . . .
“Hearty congratulations from my members and myself. We will, together with numerous other businesses involved in our industry, benefit from your efforts.”
The second reason for writing, Graham explained, was “entirely different and long overdue.” One of his first tasks as a Bodmin-based police inspector, he recalled, was to lead the police raid on Rick’s premises and to prosecute him in court for not having the proper liquor licences.
Graham wrote: “You were, of course, found guilty, and I well recall your comment to the magistrates. You said something like ‘I’m sorry, but I simply cannot run my business without selling my clients drinks.’
“It was not, of course, what they wanted to hear you say, preferring a forelock-tugging grovel, and I only hope it didn’t increase the penalty they imposed to any extent.
“The matter is now off my chest and I only hope that your businesses, which I have watched go from strength to strength (despite my efforts all those years ago) continue to thrive and, by so doing, continue to show those from elsewhere just how much beauty and mystery, plus quality, Cornwall has to offer.”
Rick replied that he was “extremely pleased” to hear from Graham, adding: “I remember you well and remember that extremely low point in my life when we had that dreadful club.
“I used to try and hide the fact that the restaurant began as a rather badly-run disco because it didn’t seem to fit in with the right image for a chef, but I then realised that everybody was so interested in it that I have done very well out of it.
“The police did me a lasting favour in taking away the club licences because it forced me to go into cooking and open the restaurant. Everything has stemmed from that.”
He concluded: “It was so nice of you to write to me. I always thought you were a very reasonable and decent person and never felt you were doing anything but your job and, as I said, you did me a great favour!”
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