Some of Harry's Theatrical Friends

When I was a Fleet Street journalist I rented the upstairs flat at 22b Ebury Street, Belgravia, London, pictured right. The blue plaque commemorates the fact that James Bond's creator Ian Fleming lived there from 1934 until 1939 after buying out the lease from Sir Oswald Mosley, leader of the British Union of Fascists. Fleming used the converted 1830 Baptist chapel and non-conformist school to entertain "Le Cercle," a dining and gambling circle of friends. The flat had an all-marble bathroom. But its greatest distinction was my landlady: the red-haired Countess Poulett, who lived downstairs. Lady Poulett, otherwise known as the stage and screen actress Oriel Ross, had appeared on Broadway, at the Old Vic, and in Diaghilev's ballet-oratorio Ode. Oriel was married to Earl George Amias Fitzwarrine Poulett from 1935 to 1941. Jacob Epstein sculpted her bust in 1931, when she was 24. Seven portraits drawn by her are in London's National Portrait Gallery. Often when I passed by, Oriel would fling her door open and call "Have a little drinky, darling!" while majestically proffering a white china cup full of gin. I have missed her sadly since she died in 1994.

Later, as a full-time student at the University of Sheffield, I continued to work in Fleet Street at weekends, so I rented a London pied-à-terre in a flat owned by Ted Downes, a conductor at the Royal Opera House. He was then wading through the Encyclopaedia Britannica at the rate of a volume a month. The foremost proponent of Prokofiev's music, he was knighted in 1991. Today, Sir Edward Downes still brings to public notice rare works by Prokofiev, even though he is almost blind, so that he has to memorize every work he conducts.

(c) Paul Pangaro 1989 Pask Archive

A theatrical producer in his youth, Gordon Pask (1928-1996) M.A., Ph.D., D.Sc., Sc.D., became Professor of Cybernetics at Brunel University. The first of his increasingly sophisticated learning-teaching machines was MusiColour, a light show that adapted to a musician's performance: one of its earliest appearances was sponsored by my cousin the Reverend Patrick McLaughlin: later it was displayed at Churchill's nightclub but thrown out after a week because patrons were so entranced that they stopped buying drinks. Gordon hired me to program another of his machines to teach spelling. At University College London we traded doctoral supervisors in experimental psychology because Gordon's supervisor disliked his eccentricities, such as the opera cloak - and the cigarette lighter that never lit until it had been clicked so often that every head in a seminar room had turned towards Gordon, whereupon he spoke, animatedly tossing out amazing insights. Listeners thought that the incomprehensible remaining 90% of his discourse must be even more profound. In fact Gordon was always (in his words) adumbrating ideas, and they so excited him that he had to share them before they became clear even to himself. In appreciation of his delightful friendship I invite you to read about Pask's Conversation Theory.

At Cheltenham College I was in the Sixth Form with Nigel Davenport ()who always took a lead role in school plays. He later made an impression at the Royal Court Theatre, but after that appeared in film and TV supporting roles, usually as an army officer, a police inspector or a titled gentleman.

When I was doing audience research for TVOntario educational television station, a student  from England, Michael Barnes, was my apprentice. Michael, who was Best Man at my wedding to Liliane, went on to become a senior producer for NOVA. He directed "Medieval Siege," featuring giant rock throwing catapults, which was one highest rated programs of the season for both PBS and Britain's Channel 4. Michael is now is an independent director and series producer based in Boston, USA and Oxford, UK.

My newest friend is one of the world's leading theatre, opera, and television directors, Peter Sellars. He is a Professor in UCLA's World Arts & Cultures Department where I attended his inspiring graduate seminar. It is amazing that this MacArthur Award genius is so open-hearted that he treats as a friend everyone whom he encounters - right-wing politicians excepted. I have been enthralled by his avant-garde productions including Mozart's operas on TV, Stravinsky's Soldier's Tale at Ojai, California, Tan Dun's Peony Pavilion in London, Messaien's St. François d'Assise in Salzburg, and Wagner's Tristan und Isolde in a concert staging at Los Angeles.

We were sna pped backstage at the San Francisco Opera after the world premiere of John Adams's Doctor Atomic, for which Peter was librettist and director.

I made my acting debut aged six in London's Royal Albert Hall where the Church of England Waifs and Strays Society Pageant was held. I had to help a crippled girl in steel leg braces up an agonisingly high staircase at the top of which Charity enfolded us in her billowing blue cloak.
   When I began work, with the Gloucestershire Echo, the Cheltenham Little Theatre type-cast me in The Doctor's Dilemma as the Newspaper Man, whom Bernard Shaw describes as "a cheerful, affable young man who is disabled for ordinary business pursuits by a congenital erroneousness which renders him incapable of describing accurately anything he sees, or understanding or reporting accurately anything he hears. As the only employment in which these defects do not matter is journalism, he has perforce become a journalist."
   I stayed with the Little Theatre, largely out of lust for a curvaceous redhead: in Twelfth Night she took the role of Olivia, who is mistaken for her twin brother, played by me in wrinkled green tights. Later I seriously considered being a comedian, but instead grew a beard and, through absence of mind, qualified as a professor. The picture shows me at Syracuse University giving a poetry reading in which one of my graduate students danced while I declaimed from Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats. One may speculate whether that inspired Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical a decade later.