A few words on singer/actress Marianne Faithfull who died last week at the age of 78. I have followed her career with some interest because she lived in my home town of Reading in the early 1960s, attending St Joseph's Convent school.
Not an awful lot happened in Reading in those days so us schoolboys were quite excited when she became a household name after Rolling Stones singer Mick Jagger whisked her off to the bright lights of London. As far as we were concerned she was the most famous woman ever to emerge from Reading and she went on to become an icon of London's "Swinging Sixties".
Faithfull was not a stage name, her father being Major Robert Faithfull who worked in British intelligence while her mother descended from Austro-Hungarian nobility and called herself Baroness.
Marianne was very attractive and was regularly spotted by my schoolmates at assorted Reading pubs, including one I frequented, Ye Boar's Head in the town centre. Alas, I never saw her and the closest I got was being informed by pub friends "Marianne Faithfull was in here last night".
Her first song released in 1964, As Tears Go By, was a big hit and written by Jagger and Keith Richards. The American music magazine Cashbox was so impressed it called her the "greatest discovery of the year". The Stones, who didn't initially like the song, went on to record it themselves the following year.
After splitting up with Jagger she went through a terrible time as a homeless heroin addict in London. In a BBC interview she later explained: "It was all too much for me. I really didn't like my gilded cage".
She displayed remarkable fortitude by rebuilding her career to become a highly respected singer, making more than 20 albums.
A final word from Sir Mick who called Marianne "a wonderful friend and a beautiful singer".
The Kates
Of course Marianne Faithfull is not the only female celebrity to have emerged from Reading. For a start there's actress Kate Winslet. You know, she's the one that survived in Titanic. Her first role was as Mary in a primary school nativity play. Winslet speaks in very dulcet tones as does the Princess of Wales who was born in Reading and brought up in the Berkshire village of Bucklebury. As was the case with Marianne, I never bumped into either them in the local pub. I think they mixed in slightly different circles.
Remembering Kilroy
It feels like a good time to lighten up proceedings with a touch of graffiti. There was a time when you saw very little graffiti in Thailand and there is still not that much apart from the spray can stuff from local gangs proclaiming their territorial rights. Even so there is much less graffiti in the Big Mango than in the Big Apple.
"Kilroy Was Here" was the most familiar graffiti when I was growing up in England and at school that strange face with a giant nose looking over a wall was a familiar figure on the classroom blackboard.
I've always enjoyed old-fashioned scrawled graffiti on walls or doors with pithy comments on life like "nostalgia is not what it used to be" or "I used to be indecisive, but now I am not so sure". Then there is the truism "people will believe anything if you whisper it".
I fondly remember a poster at a London station which proclaimed "Jesus Lives!" to which someone had added: "Does that mean we won't get an Easter holiday?" Another with a biblical theme was: "Noah: The only man to float a limited company when the rest of the world was going into liquidation".
Joy of travel
In Britain, posters promoting transport frequently attract graffiti. Back in the 1970s there was a splendid poster by British Rail at Paddington station. With the image of a flashy new locomotive racing along it proclaimed "This Is The Age Of The Train" under which a disgruntled passenger had added "Ours was 104".
Another advertisement for rail travel in England read: "Burgers in Berkshire; Wine in Wiltshire; Coffee in Cornwall". It prompted another dissatisfied traveller to scribble "Sick in Southend".
Seat of wisdom
A lot of graffiti is written in public toilets and many of the examples in this column have been acquired over five decades of dutifully staring at bathroom walls and the like. What a dreadful thought.
In the toilet of an English country pub there was a condom machine on which was written "Approved British Safety Standards" below which someone had written "So was the Titanic".
I also liked: "If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs, perhaps you have misunderstood the situation".
Perhaps the most pertinent message was the warning written inside the stall of a London public toilet which read: "Beware the limbo dancers".
The thinkers
Toilets also seem to be the inspiration for attempts at philosophy. In one London public convenience there was written "Question Everything" to which someone had cheekily added "Why?" For those who like one-liners in another toilet was written: "Karl Marx's grave is just another communist plot".
Finally a thought-provoking offering on a London toilet door carried the deep message: To do is to die: Rousseau. To be is to do: Sartre. Doo-be-doo-be-doo: Sinatra.
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