Part 79
Rummaging around in the memory bin of my mind, I’m trying to find stuff I haven’t written about before but is nevertheless part of my life, which for better or worse has been the central theme of my blogs. I haven’t written all these anecdotes for self-aggrandizement, but rather as a commentary on people and places I have encountered in my 85 years.
In my last couple of blogs, I’ve spoken about the three billionaires I have known. This time I’d like to feature two remarkable women who crossed my path from very different backgrounds. Their only commonality is that they were born in South Africa but rose to prominence in the UK.
When I was about 17 in 1953, I visited my cousin Penelope Atkins who was a boarder at Kingsmead school in Johannesburg. As a relative, I was allowed to visit “Pepe” at the exclusive private school itself. She introduced me to her friend Janet and I spent a very pleasant afternoon chatting with them. I discovered that Janet lived in Cape Town as well. We agreed to get together over the longer holidays.
Sometime later, I connected up with Janet and was invited to her home. Janet told me that she was determined to become a doctor like her mother, Betty, and she even persuaded me to watch a couple of films of heart operations or something of the sort. I’m not at all squeamish over the sight of blood or bodies being carved up by the surgeon’s knife. It wasn’t exactly the kind of entertainment that I had expected when visiting a pretty girl in the hope that she may become my girlfriend. She was not what I would describe as a great beauty, but she was a lovely person and I felt that we had some chemistry together. In any event, we never met again but I certainly remembered her with affection.
In 1971 when I read a review of the movie “Nicholas and Alexandra,” I saw that the reviews gave praise to the leading female role played by Janet Suzman. She was also nominated for an Oscar. I was amazed. I looked at the photos of her and realized that it could indeed be the same person I had known as a teenager. But what happened to her determination to become a doctor? I read further and it indeed was the same person, the daughter of Dr. Betty Suzman and niece of the famous South African activist and politician Helen Suzman.
Digging deeper, I discovered she already had a huge reputation as a stage actress and as a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, with key roles as Ophelia in Hamlet and Cleopatra in one of the definitive productions of that era. She never forgot her South African roots and did many stage productions back home as well as co-starring in the 1990 movie “A Dry White Season” (based on a classic novel revealing the iniquities of Apartheid by the South African writer André Brink).
Janet was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2011 and, along with many other honors, won the Pragnell Award for Lifetime Services to Shakespeare. I feel honored to have known her even slightly. She is still actively writing and directing at the age of 82.
The next lady I would like to mention was also born in Cape Town with the unlikely name of Myrtle Arbuthnot. She soon acquired the nickname Ziki, which is almost as bizarre as Myrtle but at least it has a modern ring to it. She was a stunning-looking teenager. I met her when my parents and I were invited to dinner by her father, the Honorable David Arbuthnot. Both Ziki and her younger sister Caroline briefly flitted in and out of the house while we were there. As a 17-year-old, I watched them wistfully disappearing on some social activity. However, David then asked my parents if they would allow me to come and “baby-sit” the girls on occasions when he was away on business. I was amused because Ziki was two years older than me and Caroline the same age. So, who was the baby?
Over the next year or so, I did baby-sit on a few occasions. I was under strict instructions from their father that if either daughter arrived home with a boyfriend, that under no circumstances should I let him into the house. One evening Ziki was out on a date under instructions to be back by midnight. She arrived at about 12:30 with a handsome-looking young Frenchman in tow. I met them on the front doorstep and took a deep breath. The Frenchman was probably in his early twenties, slim but athletic-looking. I wondered whether we would end up in a physical confrontation and decided that if we did, I could probably take care of him.
Ziki, looking rather nonplussed, introduced me to the Frenchman. We shook hands and I just stood there blocking the doorway. I made it clear that they were not going to come in the house together. The Frenchman shrugged and left. Ziki went after him and told me she was just going to see him to his car. I nodded and went back into the house, leaving the front door slightly ajar. She soon arrived back in the house. Clearly the Frenchman had decided to call it a night and cut his losses. Ziki gave me a dirty look and disappeared into her bedroom.
That was the extent of my contact with Ziki at the time. The sensible thing would have been for me to concentrate on trying to date Caroline. She was very sweet and attractive, but Ziki was stunning and had an allure of mystery about her.
Time passed and I had forgotten all about Ziki – until one day she appeared on the set of a TV show I was working on with BBC (British Broadcasting Corp.) in London. She was with an older guy whom I recognized as being a senior BBC executive. Ziki greeted me effusively and introduced me to the guy, who looked down his nose at me.
We had exchanged phone numbers and I called Ziki a week or so later. She was pleased and asked if we could meet later that day. We went out for dinner and then returned to her apartment for a coffee. Most of the conversation centered around her upset with the BBC exec who had wanted to marry her but had cooled off. Ziki was a compulsive talker and I hardly got a word in edgeways. As a teenager, I had fantasized over her many times. I even heard that she was an heiress to a fortune estimated at £12 million. We did exchange a few kisses, but I figured that was the end of that.
More time went by until I heard that she had married a musician called Harry Robinson who had written a couple of minor hits in a Scottish vein. They were called “Hoots Mon” and “Wee Tam.” In fact, he was a much better musician than these songs suggested and was at one time the musical director for the show “Six-Five Special,” which I was also working on. I asked him to give my regards to Ziki and we exchanged phone numbers.
A few weeks later I got a call from Ziki asking if I had a driver’s license. In fact, I had, but had not driven a car again since passing the test. I owned a 1936 London Taxi that I bought for £10 but it never really worked, although I sometimes hired it out to movie companies making period movies and was paid handsomely for having it sit in a parking place as the action took place around it.
Anyway, Ziki said that her husband, Harry, did not have a driving license but had just bought a brand-new top-of-the-range Citroën (an innovative French automobile of the time) and needed it to be driven from the dealer to his home in London. Could I drive it for him? I foolishly agreed, never having driven in London before and having no idea how the gears worked on a Citroën, or anything else about it.
I arrived at the dealer, asked about the gears which were unlike British cars, gritted my teeth and set off. My first surprise was the way the suspension went up and down according to the road conditions. I don’t think I’ve ever had such a terrifying drive in my life, but I got to the Robinson home somehow with the Citroën unscratched and undamaged.
They treated me to a slap-up dinner and I never saw Ziki again. However, in later years I discovered that in 1990 she inherited the title of 11th Baroness Wharton through her mother Elizabeth Kerneys-Tynte and not through her father. All very strange. Ziki was one of only 92 hereditary peers who kept their seats in the House of Lords during the Labor Party’s rule under Tony Blair. Most hereditary peers lost their seats for political reasons.
Ziki continued to be active in many fields including becoming a vice president of the RSPCA (Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) before her untimely death in 2000, suffering from Cruetzfeldt-Jacob disease.
Two remarkable women, with a third I’ll mention in my next blog. We are fortunate to also have a number of enormously talented women in our ExoTeam who add an important dimension to our plans for the future launch and expansion of ExoTech.
An ExoTech Ltd shareholder, Chris is currently authoring two of the four books to be published the day ExoBrain launches and has helped to create ExoBrain’s introductory video to the Confidential Technical Briefing. Chris has spent his working life in the film and television industry, starting with BBC Television in London, then ATV in Birmingham becoming, at the time, the youngest Studio Manager in Britain.
Later, in South Africa, he wrote and directed film and TV commercials, having four South African entries at the Cannes Advertising Festival. After a number of years of writing and directing or producing documentaries (eight international awards) and corporate videos, he concentrated on writing feature film screenplays (five screened) and television series (seven screened). He has a novel, ”Pursuit of Treachery,” with a literary agent and is currently obtaining finance for an action adventure feature film he has written and is co-producing. He is a published poet and has given many readings.