Elegant defender of lost causes
Perry Worsthorne was my fairy godfather. By this I do not mean to allude to his exuberant manner and dandified dress — a taste which occasionally bordered on camp, but which he had in common with other colourful (but heterosexual) characters of the age, from Ken Tynan to Barry Humphries. Having been an exhibitioner at Peterhouse, Cambridge, during the war, Perry went on to be the leading journalistic exhibitionist of his generation.
No, Perry really was my godfather. I still have his confirmation present, the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations. Evidently he already had me lined up for a future in the press. But he was a fairy godfather on account of his presence on the night when my parents first encountered one another.
According to his autobiography, Tricks of Memory, it was his first wife, Claudie, who had insisted on bringing a new friend for drinks at the sumptuous Belgravia flat of their barrister friend Billy Hughes. This “marvellous girl” from Methuen, the publishers, was my mother, Marigold Hunt. Claudie, who then worked for a travel magazine, needed female companionship to endure an outing with her husband’s “gang”.
On this occasion the gang comprised the journalists George Gale, Henry Fairlie, John Raymond and my father, Paul Johnson. All were boozers
