Roger Perry (1938-2016)

Roger Perry, an artist, designer, art editor, photographer and writer, who worked in the 1960s on  Eagle and TV Century 21 and in the 1970s on Countdown, died on Saturday, 23 July at 12:30 pm (local time) at his home in the Philippines. A day after celebrating his 78th birthday, he suffered a heart attack, brought on by an infection in his legs.

Roger was well known to the small hardcore of collectors interested in the history of comics. He had written a number of articles for Eagle Times and Roger and I began corresponding heavily in 2013 when I was researching my book on Boy's World. It was due to Roger's volumous notes that I decided that the next book to work on would be about Countdown, on which paper Roger's design influence was very visible.

During the research, on 8 November 2013, Roger – then living in Tacloban City on the island of Leyte – was caught up in typhoon Haiyan, which meant he was out of communication for some time, during which he had suffered the same deprivations of many of the islanders, with no electricity and little fresh water. After a spell in England, he returned to the Philippines where, a few weeks later, he was hospitalized by illness, his treatment including three operations on an infected leg and foot where gangrene had set in.

Despite bouts of infection and illness, Roger enjoyed reminiscing about his lengthy career designing, doing photography for and occasionally writing for comics and annuals. A comment I made that he should "write something about Charles Bowen" led to the two of us writing a multi-part history of "The Men Behind the Flying Saucer Review". More recently, Roger supplied two very lengthy series to Bear Alley ("Perry's Picture Post") and to John Freeman's Down the Tubes ("Eagle Daze", part 1 here). 

His willingness to reminisce about his days working for Eagle and other titles were greatly welcomed by those of us who have fond memories of reading comics in the days when comics entertained millions of kids every week. That said, Roger did not pull any punches in print and occasionally his brutal honesty had to be reined in if we were to avoid crossing the line into libel.

Even in his seventies, Roger embraced technology and his rambling, humour-filled e-mails could arrive with terrifying regularity – two more arriving while you were answering the first. He was not a big fan of Facebook (although he signed up) or the iPad, preferring his PC, which was a source of endless suffering, thanks to the sometimes patchy electricity supply and equally patchy internet access. More than once I received e-mails that had passed from Roger through three or four pairs of hands before reaching a town with a working internet cafe where it could be posted. Snail mail had an equally interesting journey with books sent to a friend who had to collect them – usually only after several visits and words with the manageress – from the post office.

Born at Mount Alvernia Nursing Home in Guildford, Surrey, on 22 July 1938, Roger Prölss Perry was the youngest of three children – the given name of Prölss deriving from the maiden name of his paternal German grandmother. His father, Eric Charles Perry, had been seriously wounded in the Great War having been gassed in the trenches and shot twice—the first through the jaw and the second in the groin. Although doctors gave him a life-expectancy of six months and had said that he would never be able to father children, on leaving Roehampton Hospital they advised him to take on work that allowed him to remain outside in the fresh air. Due to his rank of Major, ex-military personnel returning to civilian life were given assistance by the Government. At the time Roger was born, his father was running a seven-acre small-holding in Tilford (three miles south of Farnham, Surrey) with his wife, Violet Elizabeth Perry (née Appleby) and daughters Erica and April.

School for Perry began with “Miss Murrell’s” in Farnham, but with the Second World War now over, due to Eric Charles’ flawless German he was offered a five-year commission to act as translator at the Nuremburg War Crimes tribunal. The family moved to Broadstairs, Kent where Perry went first to Haddon Dean, run by a Miss Vyse, and then to Cliftonville College School, run by Reginald Llewellyn Freebairn-Smith (later to become Mayor of  Margate in 1962–1963). In his final report, Freebairn-Smith had said: “Roger has no brains ... but he has guts.” In response to that, Perry sat for just two O-Level exams—Art and Maths—passed them both thus giving him the perfect credentials for producing Painting-by-Numbers sets.

From September 1954 to March 1959, Perry attended the Regent Street Polytechnic School of Art close to Oxford Circus, the West End and the BBC, where he achieved the National Diploma in Arts and Design before commencing with a further year of study in commercial design under the guidance of Ley Kenyon DFC, noted for his writing, art and underwater photography, and lithographer Henry Houghton Trivick.

While still at the Regent Street Polytechnic under Principal P F Millard’s leadership, his secretary Miss Angel—having been contacted by Alfred Harwood, Art Editor of Farmers’ Weekly to say that “he was seeking an in-house illustrator to work in his studio”—gave Perry the message, suggesting at the same time that he could use her telephone. Five days later—on Monday, 9 March 1959—Perry commenced  employment on the 7th floor of Hulton House, 161-166 Fleet Street, London W1. Perry had been there for just five short months, but during that time, there had been a six-week-long national print strike and the government decided that Perry had been deferred long enough and needed to carry out his two years of National Service (August 1959 to August 1961).

Perry had been detailed with the trade of Nursing Attendant (Class II), but as he settled in, it became noted that his skills in art had not been forgotten,   It had begun with hand-written name-plates on desks and doors;  signs such as “No Entry” and “Keep Left” on notice boards utilising throat-swab brushes that had been “borrowed” from the medicinal cupboard (until such time the powers-that-be  began to realize that Perry seemed to know what he was doing);  followed by murals for the walls of the Officers’ Mess and on to designing and building carnival floats inside the rarely-used morgue for the two annual sports-day events.

The company (once known as Hulton Press, now called Longacre Press) contacted Perry during his final weeks in the R.A.F. with the offer of work as a layout artist (designer) at Juvenile Publications—the umbrella name for the magazines Eagle, Girl, Swift and Robin. He joined the team of three other layout artists (designers)—Bruce Smith, Ron Morley and John Kingsford—on Monday, 28 August 1961 where he quickly became Larry Line, “Eagle’s Roving Reporter” ... not that he physically went anywhere. He remained with Longacre until May 1966.

On the following Monday, Perry began work as Art Editor at Century 21 Publishing. As he says: “Yes, I suppose I could be described as a 'layout artist' but I commissioned art (Art Buyer), had total control over the art in all the books that went through my hands (Art Editor), kept an eye on Andrew Harrison and Bob Reed (Studio Manager), took photographs as and when needed (Resident Photographer) and generally made sure that everything was present and correct when it required being sent to the printer (Office Boy). Also (with the help of Linda Wheway), I came up with the ideas and photographs for five books (Author?). I remained with Century 21 Publishing from May 1966 to June 1969."

From Century 21 Publishing, Perry then went to Hamlyn Books (July 1969 to October 1970), and it was during the Autumn of 1969 that ex-Editor of Century 21 Publishing (Books) Robert T. ("Bob") Prior came up with the idea of producing photo-strips whereby the individual frames of a story were photographed rather than being drawn by an artist. Utilising the services of two “resting” actors, Perry produced a six-page dummy from photographs captured at the Serpentine Lake in Hyde Park following on from which Prior had touted the work to various publishing houses including Fleetway and D C Thompson’s. With the idea now out, the floodgates had opened and very quickly, dozens and dozens of teenaged magazines had latched onto the idea.

For the next twenty-odd years, through Bob Prior and then through Theodore "Wil" Wilson (formerly with Syndication International), Perry produced hundreds of photo-stories – not only the photography but also the ultimate page design – for the likes of Suzie, Jackie, My Guy, Patches and a host of others. As he has said: “Finding the models was easy enough, having to scour through the mags on newsagents’ shelving to see where my work had been printed was quite another.”

Following his departure from Hamlyn Books in October 1970, Perry went to work for Bob Prior's premium packages for two months before joining Dennis Hooper, ex-Art Editor of Century 21 Publishing and now editor of Countdown magazine, in December 1970.

During his three-and-a-half years with the company, alongside his No. 2, Bill Kidd, Perry devised and became the magazine’s (now TV Action) investigative on-the-spot reporter (about four years before John Noakes did much the same thing for Blue Peter).

Perry remained with Polystyle Publications until November 1973 when he became Art Editor for Purnell Books, remaining with the publisher for eleven years until 1985. From then on, he operated his own public relations business. Due to his growing interest in the art and the close proximity of Bath, the nerve centre of the Royal Photographic Society, he achieved the distinction of Associate Member in 1987 for audio/visual presentations thus entitled him to display the letters ARPS after his name, although he rarely did.

During the final three months of his National Service tour of duty in 1961, Perry married Jennifer Edscer; they divorced in 1991. Perry, having had a life-long fascination for the Far East, moved to the Philippines, where he married Marilyn Gesmundo. He lived for 11 years on Cataduanes before moving a number of times recently following the typhoon. Most recently he was living with Raquelyn Navarro in the city of Naga in Cebu.

He is survived by his daughter, Rae. His son, Marcus, predeceased him after a long battle with cancer.

(* much of the biographical information, written by Roger, was originally posted 29 July 2013; revised 3 April 2016; revised again 25 July 2016.)

Perry's Picture Post part 20: The Epilogue

What do you suppose the connection between 'Chap O’Keefe' and Brian Woodford is . . . a bit unfair of me as you could not possibly have known . . . but I thought I’d ask anyway? It transpires that Chap O’Keefe &ndash or Keith Chapman, to give him his real name – upped and emigrated to New Zealand in 1966; and at virtually the same time, Brian Woodford thumbed a lift and took a slow boat . . . no, not to China but to Toronto, Canada.

Do I hear cries of “So what?”

In the Comments that followed “Perry’s Picture Post – part 10”, Keith posted the following comment:

Roger, I'm enjoying your memoirs at Bear Alley hugely, not least because I've always wondered what I did actually miss by quitting Odhams Books for NZ's greener pastures. When the Hamlyn "rationalization" of IPC's book interests reared its ugly head circa 1966, I trembled at the thought of a daily commute to Feltham from Bishop's Stortford. Amazing that although I don't think I ever met you during those turbulent times, many of the situations, methods and people you describe so colourfully bring back old memories with renewed clarity. In this episode, we have the Heath Robinson-like Grant (often referred to as the epidiascope in offices where I worked) ... not to mention former colleagues like the quietly affable Brian Cullen, who had been George Beal's art editor during my time putting together annuals at Odhams above Covent Garden tube, and the calmly competent Tessa Bridger, who had looked after the romance and schoolgirls' picture libraries for Micron in Wallington and Mitcham while I had done similar for its war, western and detective series.

I was particularly intrigued to learn that Keith had been an editor on Fleetway's annuals and had daily worked at offices only some 200-yards from 96 Long Acre.

For those who have read my ramblings before, you will probably be aware that 96 Long Acre was where Juvenile Publications (i.e. Eagle, Girl, Swift, Robin and Boys’ World) had gone to during November 1963 having been transferred from the Hulton House annex – their home for the previous two years. It was while there that I had got to know Brian Woodford rather better due to the fact that our offices were next door to each other.

You might also recall that in part Eight, I spoke of Brian Cullen and Ron Morley as having worked under the guidance of George Beal in these same offices above Covent Garden Underground Station. But in his brief comment, Keith has already given me valuable information that I hadn’t known before: that sub-editor Tessa Bridger had been employed in a building so close to 96 Long Acre that we might have passed each other in the street during the time I worked on Girl.

I am ashamed to admit that I have said very little about Tessa, for although I knew her while I was employed at Hamlyn Books, my closer contact with the editorial section had been with Chris Spencer rather than Tessa. However, in 1974 – following Purnell Books' move to Berkshire House, Queen Street, Maidenhead – for reasons not explained to me, part of the first floor level where Purnell Books was based was also occupied by a sister company called International Book Publishers (IBP) – a packaging company headed by Mike Morris, where Tessa Bridger was employed as Chief Sub Editor.

In 1978, Tessa took her leave of IBP and, having taken up residence in offices further up Queen Street, had begun her own packaging company whose name had something to do with cats. . . although the exact name escapes me at this present time (Feline?).

In part 17, I spoke of the Bologna Children’s Book Fair, but what I hadn’t explained was the fact that between 1976 and 1979 (inclusive), I had driven out to Bologna roughly one week before the fair was due to open so that I might prepare the pre-booked area in readiness for those staff who hoped to sell the foreign rights of our range of books from an individually-designed exhibition stand.

Prior to my driving out there in 1979, Tessa had made two requests – the first that I transport the books she wanted to exhibit and sell the rights to out there; and the second to take with me her gopher and assistant Andy (?) as an unpaid passenger– a likeable lad of about 20 who was several inches taller than me, wore thick-lensed John Lennon glasses and had bleached and permed his hair into a frizz that went every-which-way. He had also, to my horror, spent £400 on beer while holidaying on the Isle of Wight.

For that year, my creation had been a dark and lusciously salubrious affair with a false black gauze ceiling; floor-to-ceiling chocolate-brown Hessian drapes upon which were hung eighteen pieces of finished artwork and eighteen miniature spotlights that highlighted the art – the result looked like a million dollars. By contrast, the stand next to Purnell Books had been one operated by World Distributors Ltd. and on the fair’s opening day, Michael Thomas had popped his head round so that he could claim: “I got my silver stand at last!” The reason for him saying this was that, while still working at Purnell Books, Mike had repeatedly requested that I design a silver stand . . . something that I had ignored as I knew the results would have all the charm of a tart’s boudoir wrapped in Bacofoil! Interestingly, there were always more visitors to the Purnell Books' stand than to the one run by WDL with glowing congratulations being regularly offered to Charles Harvey by those who visited.

In a way, Michael Thomas was a round peg in a square hole as he had really set his heart on being a Sandhurst Army Officer. But his dreams had been dashed when, following an accident while playing Rugby, he'd had his spleen removed—and with no spleen, you cannot combat the effects of diseases such as Yellow Fever, so an army career was out.

For those of you who are unaware as to who Brian Woodford is, not only is Brian spoken of extensively in Steve Holland’s history of Boys’ World comic (as he was instrumental in producing Boys’ World for almost its entire run) but much of his background can be gleaned by visiting Eagle Daze Part Seven, where he contributes much to the unfolding story.

Brian Woodford immigrated first to Canada in January 1967 and then a number of years later to Salt Lake City, Utah. Having kept in touch, he sent this email in April 2016:

Roger. I am receipt of pieces you are currently writing for Down the Tubes. Much of this is beyond my involvement there but I do find it somewhat interesting. My last working days in the UK were in December 1966 and you may remember I shared an office with you and Bob Prior. From that point, the happening in comics and such became a mystery to me since I was thousands of miles away by that time. With this big knowledge gap it has always been somewhat puzzling to me as to how the comics fell into nothing. TV21 seemed to be doing well...TV21 books also, and new titles coming from Odhams and Fleetway left me leaving the UK thinking all was well. It was only after working back there for three months in 1973 (on Sandie) that I got a sense of decline. How it happened, the process and such, what happened to all the people I knew is still a mystery to me. So your piece adds a few bits and pieces to fill in.
    Your photos have included shots of Bob Prior and Howard Elson. While the shot of Howard is as he is today, I most certainly would not have recognized him. The Bob Prior shots are closer to the time I last saw him but yet he looks nothing like the Bob Prior I knew. He is thinner and long haired so perhaps that is the big change as I recall him somewhat chunkier with very short hair and a kind of short double quiff in the front. Even the picture of Alan Fennell you included does not look like him...far less hair, of course. The pics of Dennis and Todd Sullivan look pretty much as I remember them. Hey ho, the passing of years and our memories eh? Glad I still look exactly the same as I did back them.

And this brings me onto something that perhaps I ought to have spoken of earlier – the overall character of artists and the type of illustration they enjoy doing the most.

Jon Davis was a giant of a man . . . six-foot-something in his socks; not fat but certainly ‘heavy’ and someone of a kind and mild disposition. He enjoyed illustrating elves, goblins and airy-fairy wisps in a dingily-dell environment. Also represented by Linden Artists were Elphin Lloyd-Jones and his wife Kate who, in direct contrast to Jon (although they too carried out dingily-dell illustrations of the Mrs Titmouse-type stories) were themselves both quite tiny people – not dwarves but stood certainly no higher that five-foot-one or five-foot-two. They lived in Hounslow, right under the flight-path of Heathrow Airport, and when an aircraft passed overhead, Elphin and Kate automatically ceased talking (even in mid-sentence) and only carried on with the story when the decibels were at a low enough level for them to be heard.

When Bill Titcombe visited our offices, his attire of mid-blue shirt, sparkling white collar and a smart charcoal suit generally put us all to shame. With what he wore, he could easily have joined in one of the Queen’s Garden Parties with his head held high.

There are, of course, always exceptions to every rule, but when you think of Don Harley, Frank Bellamy, Eric Eden, Keith Watson, Ron Turner and a host of others who illustrated the likes of Dan Dare, The Hulk, Superman and other equally similar dynamic characters, where these artists themselves were fairly small in stature, mild-mannered, and generally wouldn’t say boo to a goose! It was as though they were placing themselves into a light where they couldn’t possibly be in real life. In the Eagle strip “Frazer of Africa”, Frank Bellamy illustrated himself as the lead character in the series. One of his greatest desire was to go on safari . . . but he confided to me that he had never plucked up the courage to go.

Roger Perry
The Philippines

Perry's Picture Post part 19

Whatever the reason, rumour had it that Maxwell’s latest whim was to move the entire staff of Purnell Books back to London again – this time into a multi-story building that he’d renamed Maxwell House. The block was situated at the back of Liverpool Street Railway Terminal.

For four years, I had enjoyed the serenity of living in Somerset and there was no way that, apart from the occasional visit, I would entertain the idea of heading back in that direction again . . . so for the third time in my career, I had opted for redundancy. Many of my co-workers felt much the same way and I believe that, with no staff to speak of, Purnell Books all but ceased to exist.

I’d been with Purnell Books for nigh-on eleven years – with most of them having been great years. But as I have already said, many of those with whom I had enjoyed working were now gone – some had left, some had died – and for this reason, gone, too, was the fun of working there; and yet, there was nowhere else within the world of publishing where I would rather be. If I was honest, I wanted to create as much space as possible between certain individuals and me.

In the lead-up to the intended move, Mike Gabb –  who seemed certain I would be tagging along to London like a meek lamb being led to the slaughter – had sat with one of Maxwell’s Savile-Row-suited bright-boys and – like a well-rehearsed part in a second-rate play – outlined the advantages of moving back to the capital.

When the inevitable question was finally asked, it was to Mike Gabb's utter surprise that I’d said I wasn't going back to London; his face was a vision that I shall remember to my dying day. The next horror for Gabb and bright boy was when they worked out what my severance pay would be. They had assumed that I was on a one month’s notice period, but this wasn’t so: after having been with Purnell for a couple of years, former boss Charles Harvey had amended the contract to six months notice.

At the end of the day Gabb (and his wife) hadn’t gone to London either. The last I heard, he was running Ladybird Books. I wonder if Let's Make Bombs and The Ladybird Book of Hallucinogenic Drugs were amongst Gabb’s ideas?

I don’t intend to speak too much about Robert Maxwell, particularly as there are many sources of information that can easily be accessed via Google. As you may remember, on 5 November 1991, Maxwell – having had his last contact with various members of the crew of the Lady Ghislaine – was found to be missing and it was presumed that he had fallen overboard. It has also been suggested (by Tom Bower in Maxwell: The Final Verdict) that he was probably relieving himself prior to taking a tumble.

The official ruling at a Madrid inquest was that death had been caused by a heart attack combined with accidental drowning (although I thought I read somewhere that the post mortem had revealed that there was no sea water in his lungs. Three pathologists had been unable to agree on the actual cause but murder was ruled out by the judge. However, having said that, have a think about the following list of atrocities that have come to light since:

(a) Without adequate prior authorisation, Maxwell had used hundreds of millions of pounds from his companies’ pension funds to shore up the shares of the Mirror Group to same his companies from bankruptcy. Figures are vague but numbers between £400 million and £700 million have been mentioned (see, for instance, Pension Schemes and Pension Funds in the United Kingdom by David Blake, p.340 et seq.).

(b) It was stated that the Mirror Group Newspapers plc reported a loss of $727·5 million for 1991, disclosing just how badly it had been damaged by Robert Maxwell – its previous controlling shareholder.

(c) Maxwell was under investigation for alleged war crimes at the time of his death. The Metropolitan Police file was released to The Independent under the Freedom of Information Act and shows that detectives were preparing a case for the Crown Prosecution Service.

The incident is said to have taken place in April 1945 when Maxwell’s platoon was trying to capture a German town and by his own admission to biographical author Joe Haines, Maxwell said that he shot dead the town’s mayor. Maxwell was aware that he was under investigation and it was speculated that due to this, he might have committed suicide. However, Tom Bower, in his unauthorised book, has said that this was fanciful as Maxwell had never shown any remorse or regret towards the plight of others.

(d) In a book written by Geoffrey Goodman called From Bevan to Blair: 50 Years’ Reporting from the Political Front Line, Goodman says the possibility that Maxwell could have ended up in the Old Bailey on charges of criminal fraud raised critical questions for a number of countries and was not a prospect that the US, Britain, Soviet Russia, Israel and France would have appreciated . . . the intelligence services in all of these countries were aware of the possible dangers ahead.

(e) Reporting in the Mirror under the heading "British Publisher Robert Maxwell Was Mossad Spy" on 12th June 2002, Gordon Thomas and Martin Dillon revealed that Maxwell had worked as a secret super spy for Mossad for the previous six years. In the article (supported by documents including FBI reports and secret intelligence files from behind the Iron Curtain), it says that Maxwell had threatened his wife, threatened his children, threatened staff of the Mirror, and, finally, that he issued one threat too many – for he had threatened Mossad. He told them that unless they gave him £400million to save his crumbling empire, he would expose all he had done for them.

Oh boy, let’s change the subject.

My plan upon leaving Purnell Books was to set up a small public relations and advertising business and be self-employed. I’d said all my working life that this was something I would never do, but with eleven years service with Purnell together with the six month notice of termination which Charles Harvey had set up for me, it meant that I'd received a lump sum of 17-months money.

The commissions from Wil had continued. I don’t really have a great deal to say about them apart from picking five out from the dozens and dozens I put together over the years and offering you just a morsel or two to chew over.

While working for Purnell Books, I’d had the pleasure of commissioning a variety of art pieces from Edgar Hodges, and during those times when he came down from his home-town of Bolton – a place where he had lived for virtually all of his life – Jenny and I would put him up in one of our spare bedrooms for a few days. But there's always a catch, and for Edgar it was that he had to play the character of miserly Tim Baker in a story called "The Phantoms of Fenwick Street".

In Part Fifteen, you might recall that I spoke of Clive Spong having become involved in the Rev. W Awdry’s books about Thomas the Tank Engine, and it would appear (should you wish to visit the Sodor Island website) that Edgar, too, contributed much to this revitalised and very popular The Railway Series.

One other story that had continued in Suzy for a total of nine weeks had been called "The Nightingales of Nile Street" and, due to its hospital setting, I had been lucky enough to use the facilities of the Mendip Hospital.

Now this might sound a bit grand and highfalutin', but I need to point out that, when it had first been opened in 1848, this complex was originally named the County Asylum for Pauper Lunatics. In 1880 they changed its name to Somerset and Bath Asylum, and then in 1940, it became known as Somerset and Bath Mental Hospital (Wells).

As a teenager, I recall being told by my mother that someone could be committed to an institution for some of the strangest reasons, and the list I recently found goes a long way to confirm all that she  said (though why she should have known about this was never explained). Some, I totally agree with: Novel Reading, Egotism and Falling From a Horse in War are, I feel, quite justifiable reasons for locking someone away for years on end and throwing away the key.

Mendip Hospital was, in fact, in the throes of closing down (which it finally did in 1991), and whether there were any inmates there during the time I was making use of it, I really cannot say although there were some staff in situ – Nurse Jane Wong had certainly worked there as had one or two of the other extras I temporarily employed.

I had been given clearance to draw upon the facilities by the Administrator, who had, in fact, also played the part of the Administrator in the story – he hadn’t been difficult to persuade as his daughter had been given the leading roll of Nurse Jemima Dale for which she earned herself quite a lot of pocket-money.

I was never given any guidance as to how much I should pay my models, but felt that the fairest way was to pay them £1 for each scene in which they appeared.

For that £1, they really didn’t have to do all that much. Guided by the script, I would tell them what they were allegedly saying in each frame, and make sure they were positioned correctly. I mention this because if character A is seen speaking first and character B second, then A needed to be on the left-hand side of the picture and B on the right or there would be a cats’ cradle of speech-balloon tails. It was just a question of thinking ahead prior to pressing the shutter release button.

One story – "The Fairlady Fortune" that appeared over eight issues in Suzy during July and August 1984 – revolved around a girl  named Jane Fairlady who had lost her memory through a horrific crash that had killed both her parents.

The photography for some of these lengthier stories could go on for several weekends as I also had a full-time job to attend to. I was about half-way through this story and was driving the girl back home having spent a couple of hours at the Wookey Hole Riding Stables. When I spoke to her, she had completely ignored me, and this had happened several times beforehand. Having safely returned Jane Fairlady back to her mother, I tentatively asked whether something was amiss with her daughter.

"Ah," said the mother, "so you noticed then?"
"Yes, I did rather," I replied.
"Yes, it’s a mild form of epilepsy – every now and then for a minute or so, her mind just switches off."
"But why did you not think to tell me?"
"I wanted to," replied the mother, "but my daughter asked me not to . . . just in case you decided not to use her in the story!"

In Cathy of Curls & Co. I borrowed a fairly small hair-dressing salon that was tucked away above some shop in the High Street and was only accessible by its own flight of stairs.

Sometimes the planning of these sessions didn’t go quite as well it should have and I’d probably forgotten to book an actor for a part that only appeared one time over the nine-weekly episodes. I’d had two girls with me playing Cathy and Kay and, as only Cathy was in the shot, I handed the camera over to Kay and stood in for the missing actor.

And with that, I shall take my leave of you!

Roger Perry
The Philippines

(* Two of the Ladybird Books pictured above are parody titles. Let's Make Bombs © Richard Littler, created for his Scarfolk Council website. Not sure where Hallucinogenic Drugs first appeared, but the cover was found here.)

Perry's Picture Post part 18

A week or two later, “Wil” sent me another story, this one called “The Scarecrows of Spooky Hollow” – it was again a serial story that would continue over several weeks, but this time in Suzy, a comic aimed at the slightly younger age-group reader.

About halfway through capturing all the necessary frames (a story that spanned several issues would take me several weekends to complete), a police panda car once again drew up outside the main entranceway of the renovated farmhouse I was using.

I was pleased to see that it was Terry Weston – the boy-in-blue who had quizzed me over the swimming pool incident a couple of weeks earlier. When he saw who it was, he had a quick chat with the owner of the farm saying that, as far as he was concerned, everything was above board. However, as I’d had my car with me on that occasion – at least, it was close to hand and not parked in a nearby side-street – I suggested that it might be a good idea if Terry took down its registration number so that if any further anonymous calls to the station came in and that registration number was quoted, they’d have an idea who it was.

It was all above board, but marginally unnerving all the same. So when I received a story called “Juliana” – again a story that was to continue over several weeks in Suzy – I thought to myself: “Sod this for a lark” and organised it so that some of the characters depicted in the story were being played by Wells Police Detective Sergeant Dave Edwards, his wife Pat and their teenage daughter.

Some of the action took place in a bedroom and a bathroom, so we made use of their police-house too. I rather think that, after that, the Wells police really did believe that what I was attempting to do was “all above board”; in fact, on more than a couple of occasions, following a quick telephone call to the station asking for their assistance, Terry and his chums were more than happy to oblige!

“Wil” got in touch once again requesting that I start collecting portraits again. From the feed-back I was getting, it was being banded about by staff and editors of the papers who were using my pictures, that Wells City and its surroundings had more than its fair share of pretty girls. They could never understand how I kept coming up with magnificent-looking girls and boys.

The method was extraordinarily simple. Having found someone I felt was suitable, and having gained his or her permission, I'd take a series of 36 shots – the number of images that could be recorded onto one single roll of unexposed 35mm film. These I usually took somewhere outside and I'd have them doing simple things such as hugging a tree, lolling about on a five-bar gate or some other item that didn’t distract one’s eye from the face I was attempting to capture.

If he or she was under the age of 18, I requested that they obtain a signature from a parent or a guardian on the specially-printed Model Release Form, of which “Wil” had given me a good supply. Once I received the all-important signature – for not one person was photographed without the promise of having the Model Release Form signed – I handed over the £10 to the highly-delighted recipient . . . and, more often than not, I never saw him or her again (not entirely true, but I think you know what I mean).

I tried to come up with between four and six of these new faces each week, and only once did I fail to get the parent’s permission. That was because some bright spark had put it into the single-parent mother’s mind that I would be superimposing her daughter’s portrait onto an already obtained female nude body. To me, that sounded totally illogical, but what was the point of arguing? The girl didn’t get her £10 and I lost the price of one roll of film.

Apart from the up-front model fee, I only got paid by “Wil” when one of my pictures was published, so it was in my interest to (a) find good-looking people and (b) photographed them in places that looked interesting.

You could ask why everyone was so twitchy. Well, although it had taken place roughly fifteen years earlier, the Moors Murders – five children aged between 10 and 17 had been murdered by Ian Brady and Myra Hindley between July 1963 and October 1965 – were still fairly fresh in the minds of the British public. Three years later, in 1968, Mary Flora Bell was convicted for the manslaughter of two boys – Martin Brown (aged 4) and Brian Howe (aged 3). Then, in 1973, David McGreavy (nicknamed by the media “The Monster of Worcester”) killed three small children aged 4, 2 and 8-months and afterwards mutilated their bodies with a pickaxe before impaling them onto the spikes of a wrought-iron fence. And finally in 1978, the body of 13-year-old paperboy Carl Bridgewater was found in the house of a local elderly couple who had been out for the day.

So perhaps you can understand why there was a certain amount of unease attached to meeting up with teenage and pre-teen boys and girls who, until the moment I was taking photographs of them, were total strangers . . . and that unease was often accompanied by a great deal of suspicion from some quarters.

I've included this page of “Sealed With a Kiss” for no other reason than the shop used in the story was a couple of hundred yards from where I worked for Purnell Books in Paulton.

Prior to shooting the story – which appeared in Patches in August, 1983 – the staff must have wondered why I would occasionally come in, browse through a dozen or more of their teenage girls' comics and then buy one or two. Once I'd explained the situation to the shop staff, they expressed such an interest that, when the opportunity presented itself, they were happy to give me a free rein of the shop one Saturday.

Following on from the publication of The Royal Wedding in 1981, in the lead-up to Christmas that year, Robert Maxwell had a special run of 16,000 copies printed, which included a special Festive Seasonal Message, that was given to employees of the BPCC group.

Over the next three years, I was asked to produce several other Royal books. These were Diana, Princess of Wales (1982), Queen Elizabeth & Diana Princess of Wales (1983) and The Royal Children (1984). It was being bandied about that with all the attention he was giving them, Maxwell was fishing for a knighthood.

However, in late 1984, I had given Maxwell good reason to be temporarily in his bad books. In July of that year, he’d acquired the Mirror Group of Newspapers for the princely sum of £113 million – and by all accounts, this had been three million pounds over and above what he had hoped to pay (by way of a note, regardless of whether it was £110 million or £113 million, it’s still way, way out of my reach anyway!)

Until now, invoices had been settled by around the 10th of the month following the month in which they had been received. But in July, Maxwell issued a directive to various Chief Accountants within the BPCC group that, from August, all invoices should be delayed by a further month. By doing this, the interest saved on the overdraft would ultimately recoup the extra he’d had to fork out when buying the Mirror.

I’d been employing the services of a photographic studio in nearby Midsomer Norton and one day, the owner complained to me that his invoice hadn’t been paid – something that was quite unusual. I explained to him about the directive that had come from Maxwell, and the next thing I knew, Jerry had somehow not only spoken to the great man himself but had received what he was owed.

During their conversation, Maxwell asked Jerry how he had come to know of the current policy. According to Jerry, he had refused to name names, but Maxwell had said not to bother, as he was pretty sure that he knew who had let the cat out of the bag.

But that was small fry compared to the ding-dong I had with Purnell's Chief Accountant, David Bailey, some two or three months later.

During my time working on Countdown at Polystyle Publications, I got to know Leslie Branton quite well (albeit via the telephone for Leslie had lived in Hull). Amongst other strips, he regularly illustrated 'Hawaii Five-O' and was being represented by the London-based agency A S Knight Ltd., who represented both artists and writers. I have no idea as to where the offices of A S Knight were located and nor did I never meet Mr or Mrs Knight either. My only contact with them was through a very jolly, over-weight individual by the name of Geoffrey Wake. He had been the art buyer for the Saatchi and Saatchi advertising group; but after being made redundant, he found gainful employment with A S Knight Ltd. and by the time I started working for Polystyle, I had already known Geoffrey for a good many years.

Calling in to see me one Tuesday morning, I saw an expression on his face that I’d never seen before. If ever there had been a time when a man needed a drink, this was it and we left for the pub, which was just a few doors away.

Launching into what had happened, it would seem that his employer – Mr A S Knight – on the previous Friday evening, had taken a tumble down some stairs at the office and died shortly afterwards. This was not so terribly surprising for the old boy was already aged 80. Sadly, his wife – also part of the business (and being also in her eighties) – was so distraught over her sudden loss that she, too, had died about 72 hours later. Geoffrey – not even a partner in the business – had been left holding the bag and didn’t really know what he should do about it. Understandably, he didn’t feel that he had the right to just take over the agency.

Over a glass of vodka and lime, I made the suggestion that perhaps he might like to telephone every single artist and writer on A S Knight Ltd’s books, explain the situation and ask each one point blank if they wanted him to continue representing them. As it turned out, almost every single one did. Unfortunately, in 1979, Geoffrey Wake himself had passed away and as to what became of A S Knight Ltd after that I really cannot say as I’ve never been motivated enough to find out. But I’d had Branton’s home telephone number anyway and, over subsequent years, had commissioned work from him without the intervention of any agent.

In late 1984, I commissioned Branton to illustrate two eight-page stories for one of our forthcoming annuals, and, in November, both the work and his invoice for the first story had come in. Naturally I’d placed my signature onto it and passed it through to the accounts department for payment (which under normal circumstances would have been settled in early December).

Two months later, in early January, I received a memo from David Bailey saying that it was imperative that the book we were working on be ready for press by the 20th. In an attempt to clarify matters, Bailey was not only Purnell & Sons Financial Director but, on the instructions of Robert Maxwell, had been given the role of Managing Editor, thus effectively pushing Mike Gabb into second place.

Consequently, I got in touch with Leslie asking him when the second set of eight pages was likely to come in and his reply of saying that he hadn’t yet even started working on them had naturally horrified me.

“Why on earth not?” I demanded. He told me that the invoice sent in two months earlier still hadn’t been paid and that he’d had no option but to look for other work where the payment came through rather quicker.

I was angry, and immediately wrote a memo to Bailey saying that the book would now not be ready – not on the 20th, and most probably not before February either. Bailey stormed into my office a few minutes later demanding a full explanation, and I told him bluntly that as an employee of Purnell Books, Bailey expected to be paid at the end of each and every month just as I did . . . so why the hell should my artists – who needed the cash to survive – not be paid too?

I told him bluntly: “Send Branton a cheque tonight. I will warn him that it is coming and he just might start working on the strip pages tomorrow.” Bailey left without a further word – for he knew there was little point. He might well have been the Chief Accountant, but it was I who held all the cards.

Bailey had always found me a difficult individual to understand anyway. In 1979 when the Purnell Books’ Sales Manager Number 2 had suddenly died from heart failure, I’d paid my respects by going along to his funeral. There was a point where people had lined up afterwards to offer their condolences to Bob Ridgway’s wife Betty, and although I hardly knew the woman, for some unknown reason, I’d put my arms around her and had whispered gently into her ear: “Have strength, Betty . . . have strength.” In response, Betty had clung onto me for all she was worth for what had seemed like several minutes, and on looking up, I had seen the look of utter disbelief emanating from Purnell’s Chief Accountant David Bailey. Yes, it had been quite a memorable moment.

Roger Perry
The Philippines

Coming Soon: In Part Nineteen, I make the decision to take my leave of Purnell Books.

Perry Picture Post part 17

Within two weeks, Purnell Books had moved lock, stock and drawing board to Paulton in Somerset, and for the following three months or so – from Monday to Friday – I had been allocated a room at the Crown Hotel in Wells’ Market Square. There I lived alongside two other Purnell colleagues, both of whom had been members of the in-house Sales Force.

When Bernie Wroe deserted the sinking ship by joining World Distributors Ltd. in Manchester, Les Wallace had initially stepped into his shoes and had moved with the rest of us over to Paulton. Presumably he, too, was not happy with the situation, as he’d secretly found himself alternative employment elsewhere and was gone by late October or early November.

I’ve said that Les Wallace hadn’t let on to anyone else of his plans, but he must have been in cahoots with the other in-house salesperson staying with us at the Crown Hotel as almost as soon as Les  departed for pastures new, so Melvyn Somebody-or-other (whose name I have totally forgotten) was gone, too. I have to say that the situation at Paulton wasn’t a recipe for being a Happy Ship. So why hadn’t it been?

Firstly, there was Mike Gabb who’d calmly walked in and had taken over Purnell Books – this was when Charles Harvey was ousted by directors of the parent company (as mentioned in Part Fifteen.). The company suddenly seemed to be in financial dire straits, which, prior to 1980, hadn’t been apparent; and it had lost the licence to produce the Scouting annuals. The licences to produce many of the annuals the company had once enjoyed publishing – the likes of Sooty, Parsley and Pony Club – had been lost also, and, reading between the lines, it’s more than likely that the inside knowledge Michael Thomas and Bernie Wroe had taken with them to World Distributors Ltd. allowed WDL to obtain those licences.

Even more serious was the loss of the Walt Disney license and one cannot dismiss the thought that such a heavy loss contributed to why Charles Harvey began drinking neat vodka out of a coffee mug on a regular basis.

Chief Accountant David Bailey (from Paulton) – who perhaps had seen the light over Mike Gabb’s manic activities following Charles Harvey’s departure – had been given strict instructions by Robert Maxwell to take the reins from Gabb despite Bailey (at that time) having been a good hundred miles away from Maidenhead. Another irony was that after the move to Paulton, Gabb had wooed David Bailey’s personal secretary, and eventually – having divorced his first wife and abandoned his son – Gabb had married her.

And now we come to the unhappy plight of David Bailey.

He was a humorless man who, in the five or six years that I worked with him, I’d never caught  laughing or even cracking a smile. At the end of our first week in Paulton, Bailey had persuaded his wife to lay on a welcoming party at his house for the twenty-odd members of staff who had transferred from Maidenhead; only three of us had turned up – Ruth Hall, Martin Lewis and myself, such was Bailey’s magnetic personality. Bailey had said that his wife had been bitterly disappointed (as indeed he had been) and, in a rare moment of letting the barriers down, he told me that his wife – a retired State Registered Nurse – had been diagnosed as having cancer and that her life expectancy was not much more than six months. It was probably April or May of 1982 that I attended St John, the Baptist Church for what ultimately turned out to be the first of three inter-related funerals.

Bailey lived in Keynsham – a satellite town half-a-dozen miles to the south of Bristol. It is infamous for Horace Batchelor’s “Infra-Draw Method” where he regularly advertised over Radio Luxemburg’s airwaves during the Fifties and Sixties; for the Cadbury / Fry Somerville factory that allegedly had broken its promise to the Keynsham townspeople; and for the perennial flooding of the area as the River Avon burst its banks on a fairly regular basis.

It was Martin Lewis – who haled from that area – who divulged the fact that Bailey and his wife had once had two children – both of whom had been killed. While travelling around Canada by Greyhound, the elder boy had been shot and killed as he stepped off the overland bus (I seem to remember that this had been in Toronto or in Ottawa), and then their daughter (who had been around 6, 7 or 8) had been riding her bicycle in the cul-de-sac where they lived and had been knocked over and killed by the Corona drinks delivery truck.

Some six to nine months after his first wife had died, Bailey married his wife’s best friend . . . but on their wedding night – possibly due to the exhilaration of it all (for up to that point, she had been a spinster) – she’d died of a heart attack and so for the second time that year, I had visited the Keynsham church in order to pay my respects.

On or around 1st April each year, the city of Bologna (Italy) stages a Children’s Book Fair, and in his wisdom, David Bailey had decided to take up the challenge of trying to sell the rights of books created by Purnell Books while at the same time taking his third wife with him as a sort of semi-paid-for honeymoon. On the rebound of having lost two wives in fairly quick succession – and thinking perhaps “third time lucky,” he’d married once again . . . although how this latest one had come into the picture, I can no longer recall. On the day Bailey and Wife No. 3 were due to travel, he came into the office telling Senior Editor Sue Hook that she would now have to drop everything and go to Bologna in his place. While getting things together in readiness for their trip, Wife No. 3 had taken a tumble down the stairs and within days of them getting married she, too, had died of a heart attack. A week or so later, I went to funeral No. 3.

As I have already said, I never ever saw Bailey laugh . . . and with the loss of a son, a daughter and now three wives in fairly quick succession, was it any wonder?

While being housed at the Crown Hotel, I was  joined by my son Marcus. Now aged 16, he had been offered two places for a graphics course near to where we had originally been living. But, due to the move to Somerset, plus the helpful string-pulling of Mervyn Sage (Purnell & Son’s unofficial Education Officer), he’d been able to enrol at Brunel College under the same conditions he’d been offered at High Wycombe.

1982

Another book that interested me greatly had been the Purnell World of Fighter Planes. As Wendy Hobson had remained in the Maidenhead area and taken up employment at Foulsham Publishing (where they published Raphael’s Nautical Almanac), I had teamed up for this book with Sub-Editor Debbie Brammer. I had put my all into the design and, about halfway through, the repro house that was putting the films together for Purnell & Sons complained that I was creating so much extra work for them that they were in fear of losing money! I’m afraid I turned a deaf ear and carried on regardless.

It was during April 1982 that “Wil” Wilson sent me “Out of My Depth”—a five-page photo-story that almost got me arrested.

The story appeared on pages 18 to 22 in an August 1982 edition of Jackie magazine. Of the 40-frames, 14 of them needed to be shot at the local outdoor swimming pool, and it just so happened that a pool at Wells, Somerset had opened its doors to the public for the summer season on Saturday, the 1st of May.

I was new to the area; I didn’t really known anyone (the house I had bought was a little over three miles to the west of Wells); and as I hadn’t used him for a story in Jackie before, I opted to employ my son Marcus in the lead role with his girlfriend playing the part of the leading lady. With Marcus and Sally on board, friends of theirs, whom I had never met, seemed keen to play some of the other leading roles.

Having all met up at the pool, I shot the 14 frames needed, using up two rolls of film as I shot every scene shown in the script at least three times to give the designer a choice of shots.

On a roll of unexposed film, the manufacturer pre-exposes a series of numbers that ran from 1 to 36. These numbers could be found between the sprocket-holes that assisted in the advancement of unexposed film into the ‘gate’ in readiness for the next frame and the film’s outer edge. In the majority of cases, these pre-exposed numbers on the film line up with the camera’s own counting system and so, having captured three, four or five shots of a particular scene, I carefully made a note (such as Roll No. 2 – Frames 13, 14 and 15) so that not only did I know where I was in the script, but so too did everyone else who was involved in the assembling of the project.

After an hour or two, we all broke up for lunch with the promise that we would all meet up again that same afternoon outside a certain shop in the High Street so that I might capture onto film the next part of the story.

On the Sunday – the second day of the shoot – we’d all met up after lunch at the Recreational Ground, which was not much more than a stone’s throw from the Bishop’s Palace. The models and I met at 2:00pm and were relaxing on one of the park benches in the early May sunshine. It was while I was outlining what shots we needed to do there, that, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a police Panda car pull up. Bordering the southern boundary to the park was an entrance from Silver Street where the historic Bishop’s Barn had been situated. It was a 15th Century tithe barn inside which Supertramp, Status Quo and Slade had played during the 1970s. (Nowadays it is used for less exotic occasions such as wedding banquets and gatherings of that ilk.)

Two “Boys-in-Blue” got out, donned their flat hats, and made an unhurried bee-line for where I and my chums were sitting. When they arrived, they had come straight to the point.

“Good afternoon, sir, may we enquire as to what you are doing?”

“Yes, of course,” and I proceeded to outline how I was trying to shoot a script for D C Thomson. The bobbies hadn’t been expecting that, and there was a pause as the information sank in. And then:

“Now sir, were you at the swimming pool yesterday morning?”

“Yes. Why?” I tentatively asked.

“Well sir, yesterday, the station received no less than three separate telephone calls informing us that there was a man at the pool taking photographs of young girls.”

“That was certainly me officer, but as you can see by the script, I was actually photographing these two – one of whom happens to be a fellah. He also happens to be my son.” There was yet another pregnant pause while they pondered over what they should do next. While they did so, it seemed to be just the right moment for me to turn the tables onto the two constables.

“As it happens,” I’d said with mounting boldness, “you've arrived at a most opportune moment. May I ask that you turn to the last page of my script and read for yourself what it says for Frame Numbers 39 and 40.”

They did as requested . . . then:

“Ah, erm yes . . . er, would you like me to switch on the blue lamp?”

Towards the end of the story, the leading lad (as played by Marcus) goes on the rampage by throwing stones at street lamps with the aim of smashing them. In the final two frames, the police come along, arrest him, and place him in their police car before driving off. The two cops who’d been sent out to make enquiries about a potential child molester (or even perhaps a child murderer) had suddenly found themselves starring in a D C Thomson Jackie magazine! It was no wonder that ex-Eagle designer Ron Morley always used to call me “Violets Perry!”

Roger Perry
The Philippines

Coming Soon: In Part Eighteen, I come to loggerheads with Chief Accountant David Bailey.

Perry's Picture Post part 16

1979

Towards the end of the 1970s, my old chum Theodore “Will” Wilson – formerly employed as a sales rep by Syndication International, the Daily Mirror's photographic library – gave me a call to ask if I was interested in supplying him with portraits of girls and boys (but mostly girls). If suitable, these portraits would be published alongside readers’ letters in a wide range of teen-magazine “post-bag” pages. There was also the possibility of them being used to liven up various “Dear Auntie Jean” problem pages and to accompany the odd text story. (Please note that none of the above pictures are mine. I did have a scrap-book containing dozens of these little gems, but through typhoons, termites and the odd earthquake etc, sadly it is no more!)

He also asked if I could organise and shoot photo-story strips for a number of Fleetway and D C Thomson teen and pre-teen magazines.

Anyway, I did as requested, but had carried out only a small number before I was forced to take a year-long break, this enforced sabbatical being due to one Ján Ludvík Hyman Binyamin Hoch – better known as Robert Maxwell – rudely encroaching upon my life. In 1980, Maxwell bought up the publishing and printing concern British Printing Corporation (who owned Purnell Books), which he restructured as the  British Printing and Communication Corporation (BPCC).

Maxwell expected his employees to jump when he snapped his fingers, and told the staff of the Purnell Books Sales Force that the annual presentation of the company's list of forthcoming books for 1981 was to be held at his Oxford residence. These “in the field” Sales Reps numbered perhaps a dozen and, as they covered the whole of the UK, this was the one and only time each year when they could get together.   

Headington Hill Hall and 11 acres of land were rented out by Oxford city council to Maxwell's Pergamon Press for an annual sum of £10,0000—Maxwell often boasting that it was the UK’s (if not the world’s) most expensive and luxurious council house.    

The conference began on Saturday with an evening of wining and dining, and continued on the Sunday morning with Mike Gabb and Sue Hook presiding over the presentation of the coming year’s books. Examples were on hand as we often produced covers – some having been bound onto dummy books – well in advance of the books’ inside pages being designed. The reason for this was (a) to show them at these sales presentations and (b), for publicity purposes as in the case of the coming year’s catalogue. I believe the Sales Force also used these ‘dummys’ when pre-selling books to members of the wholesale trade as, in 9 cases out of 10, the latter were only interested in what the cover looked like and rarely had any interest in the books’ content. One member of the sales force gave me a demonstration of how wholesalers viewed books they were being asked to stock: they would look at the cover, then, much like thumbing down the outside edge of a pack of playing cards, would feel the quality of the paper. As for the insides, they really didn’t give a damn.

Prior to the commencement of the evening meal, Maxwell – who was heavily into politics and had great admiration in hearing his own booming, reverberating voice – had started the proceedings off by making a none-too-short speech. Despite the first course of soup having already been served by an entourage of white-jacketed waiters, those in attendance were obliged to stand and listen to what the man had to say for himself.  

After perhaps ten or twelve minutes, we began settling ourselves down . . . only for our host to think of something else he wanted to get off his chest . . . so we were obliged to stand once again. Due to this bobbing up and down, the ends of my tie inadvertently become congealed with fatty particles of lentil, fried onion and curry powder from what had once been piping-hot mulligatawny. Apparently, further up the extraordinarily long table, Martin Lewis from the Production Department had done exactly the same thing.

Maxwell was, of course, flamboyant insofar that he spent a good deal of his spare time on the Lady Ghislaine (named after his daughter) – a 180-foot long (55 metres) motor yacht with a beam of 30-feet (9·2 metres) that he moored in New York’s East River. He also regularly flew by helicopter between Headington Hill Hall and his London office at Maxwell House. A story went around that the caretaker of Maxwell House was late opening up one morning and, by way of an excuse, told Maxwell that he was late because his bus had become stuck in traffic. Maxwell peeled off several hundred pounds from a roll and told the man to buy himself a car . . . and that he should never be late again.

Following his visit to Purnell & Sons' Maidenhead offices and the Purnell Gravure plant at Poulton, near Bristol, Maxwell decided there was ample room available at the latter location for all in one of the complex's vacant buildings. These had become unoccupied when Purnell discontinued the manufacture of printing ink and the production of envelopes a number of years earlier; both products were now created more efficiently by manufacturers elsewhere.

Although Purnell & Sons picked up the tab for all costs, there was still a lot of upheaval associated with the move as staff had to look for new homes and organise schools for their offspring; at least the move had taken place during the long school summer holiday break.

Purnell & Sons were very generous and there was hardly ever any argument when it came to getting one’s expenses paid, although they did baulk a bit over having to foot the bill for moving my 32-foot sailing ketch. And although about half of the Maidenhead staff had opted to take voluntarily redundancy, the remaining half had been offered accommodation in hotels for anything up to six months while they and their families got themselves organised.

However, shortly before all that happened, something else had occurred that was to keep us well and truly on our toes.

1981   

As 1980 tipped over into 1981, the big news was the up-and-coming marriage of Charles, the Prince of Wales to Diana Frances Spencer. There had been a lot of speculation in the press, but from the 24th of February, when their engagement was officially announced, there was hardly a publication in the land that didn’t carry one or more pictures every day to illustrate their revealing articles about the charming bachelor prince and his beautiful blushing bride-to-be.

Like so many other publishing houses, Purnell Books was determined to be the first to produce a book covering the event. In our attempt to speed things along, a good month or two beforehand it was decided that the first 32 pages of the 48-page book would concentrate on the earlier aspect of both Charles and Diana’s lives. Purnell Books' Chief-Sub Editor Sue Hook (née Bodger) had commissioned Brenda Ralph-Lewis to write the text.

While Brenda typed merrily away, I’d driven to some desolate spot on the outskirts of Swindon in deepest Wiltshire with the view to visiting the home of Anwar Hussein. At that time, Hussein was one of the accredited Royal photographers who travelled everywhere alongside the Royal Family.   

Of the 67 colour and black & white pictures that filled the first 32 pages of our proposed book, Hussein had supplied many colour transparencies from his extensive private photo collection. The rather more “historic” shots from the couple’s teen and pre-teen years had come from photo libraries such as Rex, Syndication International and Reuters. 

Taking up six pages (three double-page spreads) within the book were two Family Trees – one for Charles and one for Diana, which were used as endpapers – and, to divide the book into two distinct sections (before the wedding ceremony and after), artist Clive Spong did a brilliant job of illustrating the intended processional route between Buckingham Palace and St Paul’s Cathedral in a light-hearted way.

If you are unaware of this artist’s name or of his work, since 1983 Clive has been illustrating “The Railway Series” – best known for one of its famous characters, Thomas the Tank Engine. Originally written by the Rev. W (Wilbert) Awdry, new stories are still being written by the Reverend's son, Christopher Vere Awdry.

We appeared to have become far more involved in what I call “coffee-table” books. Before leaving Maidenhead, with Wendy Hobson acting as the book’s editor, we’d put together an unusual tome written by Clive Sturman and simply called: Police. As part of the book’s content, Wendy had asked me to drive down to Portland Bill, a narrow promontory on the southernmost point of Dorset as she’d learnt from Clive that on a certain Sunday, a planned “incident” was scheduled to take place.

Every now an again, the UK’s emergency services stage some sort of disaster so that they can rehearse working as a team. In this instance, an aircraft was meant to have crashed, resulting in casualties being spread out over a wide area—not that the authorities had gone so far as to place a plane fuselage anywhere . . . or, if they did, I never saw it. Also unseen, apparently The Flying Squad had checked me out during the days prior to my intended visit, such was the high security of the occasion.

A major part of the exercise is played out by “The Casualties Union”. This is a group of volunteers who were experts at faking injuries both mild and serious, from having chunks of glass embedded in scalps to having an eye-ball swinging down from its socket. Photographically it hadn’t been such a great day out due to the wide spread of the alleged disaster. However, I do recall one casualty having to break his code of silence when he pleaded that I get one of the fire tenders moved. The driver had parked it in such a way that the tender’s exhaust was blowing full onto him and there was a substantial risk that the carbon monoxide was going to turn him into a bona fide casualty.

On 29 July 1981, when Prince Charles and Diana had become man and wife, it was the Government’s wish (or perhaps it was decreed by the Queen), that the UK’s population should celebrate with a day off. For between two and four hours, crowds of an estimated 600,000 people lined the streets along the processional route in the hope of catching a glimpse of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer as they passed by. The wedding ceremony at St Paul’s Cathedral had begun at 11:20, and by 1pm, and for the remainder of the day, London’s Fleet Street and Ludgate Hill area had virtually become a ghost town. I had never seen the place quite so deserted . . . it would have been the perfect day to have shot scenes for the film The Day the World Caught Fire!

Although the Purnell Books' publication might not have been the very first on the bookstalls, our 48-page book could be bought from newsagents’ counters just eight days later. In order to complete the final fourteen pages of the book, all I had to do was to choose enough material to fill them and to find a suitable picture to go onto the front cover.

Like everyone else, I’d had the day off (at least, I’d had the first half of the day off). By mid-afternoon, I’d driven up to London and was visiting photographic libraries in order to choose images that had already been developed, processed and filed in readiness for art editors the likes of me – all of whom were doing much the same thing.

Although I had been presented with the originals to choose from, these could not be taken away, so, having chosen a number of pictures, these were sent off to the darkroom so that duplicate copies could be made, which then took another couple of hours to process and dry.

For the majority of the pictures, I’d gone to a place recommended by Anwar Hussein (probably because they also had him on their books as a supplier of Royal photographs). This I found in the basement under a block of apartments just off Southampton Row. It was to say the very least cramped.

Perhaps the word “cramped” is a bit if an understatement, for the ceilings were just six feet from the floor and I'm almost six feet one. When I came to a light fitting, I had to stoop down even further to avoid breaking the 80-watt tungsten bulb in its metal wire cage. The rows and rows of shelving holding thousands upon thousands of manila files were pretty closely aligned too, so much so that physically passing by someone who happened to be searching for a file was almost impossible – one or other had to move temporarily into a sort of purpose-built “lay-by” . . . either that or engage in some pretty sexy manoeuvring. I am quite sure that working there could have resulted in some very interesting happenings.

I was given a desk to work at . . . or, more correctly, half-a-desk as its front section had all but disappeared into the surrounding shelf system. I noted with interest that there was a special alcove within the shelving where one could place a mug of tea or coffee, for, apart from the transparency viewing light box, there was no space on the desk itself for such luxuries.

By around 7pm, I’d parked my car and had found the repro house that was to carry out the colour separations. They had already completed the first two-thirds of the book and were now on hand to make up the final pages ready for Purnell & Sons to print.  

Their offices were in the Elephant & Castle, south of Blackfriars Bridge. It was on the south bank of the River Thames and not much more than a stone’s throw away from where Bill Kidd and I had spent the day with the London Fire Brigade’s Training Centre when putting together “TV Action Meets the Fire-Eaters”.

When I arrived, Chief Sub-Editor Sue Hook was already in situ with author Brenda Ralph-Lewis who was in the throes of writing-up all that she had witnessed that morning. Also there was Mike Gabb, the new Managing Editor of Purnell Books, who was trying to look busy and doing little more than getting in everybody’s way. By about 10:30 or 11:00 that night, I’d done all I could design-wise and, after gathering up the tools of the trade I’d brought with me, I headed off home.  

I had specified that the cover should be printed in five colours as opposed to the normal four process colours of Yellow, Cyan, Magenta and Black (this was something I had previously discussed with David Westcott – Purnell Books Production Department). The fifth colour was to have been in Gold, but in my absence, someone who shall remain nameless had changed my specific instructions – I don’t know who, but I can hazard at an educated guess . . . for I’d already had several clashes where the man had wanted to cut corners  to save money. Without consulting anyone, his executive decision must have affected sales, apart from which, a later edition had to have new separations made and covers printed – all for having spoilt the ship for a ha’p’orth of tar!

Roger Perry
The Philippines

Coming Soon: In Part Seventeen, a photo-story shoot becomes even more bizarre when two of the models used were the same who came to quiz me over my strange activities . . . and I become Robert Maxwell’s “pet designer” in his goal of becoming a KGB.