Journey of a Lifetime
The iconic broadcasting legend dusts down his suitcase for a final journey around the globe, revisiting locations of significance to his life and career."You might say I'm set in my airways. I'm one of those lucky people whose professional and private lives blend exactly."Alan Whicker, 2007This sumptuous book to accompany the major BBC TV series of the same name, is a glorious celebration of 50 years in front of the camera.For as long as most can remember, Whicker has roamed far and wide in search of the eccentric, the ludicrous and the socially-revealing aspects of everyday life as lived by some of the more colourful of the world's inhabitants.Since the late 1950s, when the long-running Whicker's World documentary was first screened, he has probed and dissected the often secretive and unobserved worlds of the rich and famous, rooting out the most implausible and sometimes ridiculous characters after gaining admittance to the places where they conduct their leisure hours.The great man's legacy contains a number of genuine TV firsts. As well as landmark interviews with figures as diverse as Papa Doc, Paul Getty and The Sultan of Brunei, he was a pioneer, covering subjects like plastic surgery, gay weddings, polygamy, swinging and following gun-toting cops, fly-on-the-wall style, for British screens long before anyone else.This wonderful new book is the end product of a very personal journey. Whicker retraces his steps, catching up with some past interviewees and reflecting on how the world has changed – for good and bad – over the passing of time. Journey of a Lifetime is lyrical, uplifting and peppered with our favourite globetrotter's brand of subtle satire.
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Alan
Whicker
Journey of A Lifetime
For Valerie, of course—who retraced every step
with me and made each one happy…
And for our friends Anne and David Crossland
who joined this kaleidoscope of Whickerwork and spread a lot of happiness we were often lucky enough to share.
Table of Contents
UNKNOWN PLACES FIT FOR EAGLES AND ANGELS
1 - THERE’S BEEN A CHANGE OF MANAGEMENT
2 - A TALK WITH SOMEONE WHO’S NOT TREMBLING
3 - TWO LHASA APSOS AND A COUPLE OF PANTECHNICONS
5 - RELIEVING PATIENTS OF MANY POUNDS—ONE WAY OR THE OTHER
6 - RANDOLPH: AS RUDE TO AMBASSADORS AS HE WAS TO WAITERS
8 - STILL NO DEAL WITH THE DEVIL
9 - IN AMERICA’S SMARTEST SOCIAL RESORT ONLY THE LONELINESS GETS WORSE
10 - YOU DIDN’T LOOK LIKE THAT IN HELLO!
11 - IN MEXICO DEATH KNOCKS MORE OFTEN AND MUST MORE FREQUENTLY BE ADMITTED
12 - EASY TO TEACH WOMEN TO SHOOT, HARDER TO TEACH THEM TO KILL
13 - A POM WHO’S MADE GOOD—IF THAT’S THE WORD
14 - A MOST SIGNIFICANT PINNACLE OF CORAL
15 - THAT’S FOR THE RELEVANT DEMON-GIANT TO WORRY ABOUT
16 - ALL THE TIME YOU HAVE A SENSE OF IMPENDING DISASTER
17 - I’VE ALWAYS WISHED I HAD A BETTER PERSONALITY
18 - THEY FEED THE PIGS ON PASSION FRUIT, THE SHEEP ON WILD PEACHES
19 - TROUBLED SPIRITS, NEVER QUITE COMFORTABLE IN THEIR SKINS
20 - I DON’T MIND A BEATING PROVIDED IT’S BEDSTAKES AFTERWARDS
21 - THEY LIVE IN BAREFOOT POVERTY—AND NEVER SEE A MAN
22 - A FEW LEFT BEHIND WHEN THE TIDE RAN OUT
23 - NO MONEY, NO ENGLISH—AND NO TROUSERS
24 - I AWAITED THE STRETCHER-BEARERS, BLEEDING QUIETLY
26 - THIRTY BODYGUARDS FOR DINNER
27 - THE RIGHT INTERESTS: LADIES, HORSE-RACING—AND TAKING THE LOCALS FOR A RIDE
28 - BACKSTAGE AT THE ROYAL PALACE
29 - NEVER A FRIENDLY ARMOURED DIVISION AROUND WHEN YOU NEED ONE
My first television programme fifty-two years ago involved travel. With a BBC crew of three we struck out for the Near East, and this book recalls the filming of the earliest Journey of a Lifetime. The excitement was intense. Nothing daunted, we arrived in…Ramsgate. Yes, we were considering the livelihood of seaside landladies. Well you have to start somewhere, and they were unflinching.
Mrs Evelyn Stone’s poodle Candy wore a new blue and red coat for the occasion, I recall. Opposite us, overlooking the sea, a sight which surely dates the picture—not to mention me. Across the road in Nelson Crescent, a blitzed building: roofless and desolate.
Now the BBC has asked me to join in this celebration of my first half-century in television with a memory of some thirty Journeys of a Lifetime—a look at the fun, shock and jubilation of half a century spent getting to know interesting people living unusual lives around the world.
The first long-cut of any television film is exciting, the second alarming—for you see and hear where you went wrong. To make the first cut the Editor and Director will have removed the humour, to make room. Jokes are always the first to go. Editors suspect that they take us away from the storyline, or hold up the action. Unfortunately they also take with them much of the elusive flavour we were chasing—our attitude towards the rest of the world.
Then, gradually, later versions of Whicker’s World emerge from the cutting rooms and into my study. Everything slowly comes together, from the first interview to the last frame, which is when we start to believe we’ve caught something special on the screen, whether it’s a person, a place or a moment in time. Once we’ve unlocked the flavour and texture of some people and places, Whicker’s World goes on turning.
Norfolk Island was just such a place, where I first caught islanditis. This pursued me around the world to such an extent that I left a desirable home in the heart of London and went to live on a tiny island in the Atlantic where I knew no one. I had been travelling all my life and was then living happily in a Nash terrace in Regent’s Park, and before that on Richmond Green.
The first different reaction I noticed about Norfolk Island was that whenever two cars passed the drivers always waved to each other. At first I thought my driver had a lot of friends and relations, but then I realized that in an isolated isle of 2,000 people he would surely know every driver, even if he had just missed the last one while those sheep were passing.
Norfolk, a reminder of Switzerland with sea, is about as far as you can go in the South Pacific. It floats in tremendous seas somewhere off Australia and New Zealand—a paradise where nothing bites and nothing stings, where they feed the pigs on passion fruit and the sheep on wild peaches.
The descendants of the Bounty mutineers came to Norfolk when they outgrew Pitcairn. Its towering pines and little mountains stand amid seascapes of deep blue ocean and white water—unknown places fit for eagles and angels.
