4 min read
I can’t watch the news anymore and even reading this paper makes me twitchy. The world order is in the hands of megalomaniacs and I do occasionally feel history breathing down my neck. No, don’t stop reading… I am still capable of cheer. The sound of tennis balls gently thudding, strawberries gliding down posh uvulas and Novak grinding his teeth reassure me that all is well and all will be well here in this sceptred isle.
Then I remember that our most famous Jewish tennis star, Angela Buxton, who reached the final of the Wimbledon ladies’ singles and won the ladies doubles final in 1956 with Althea Gibson, was for years refused membership of both the elite Cumberland Club and the All England Tennis Club.
Aside from Gibson – a woman of colour – she was the only finalist ever denied the honour. She was to say that she pestered a coach Bill Blake about the Cumberland membership each year until he finally said; “Look Angela, you’re not going to be able to join the club.”
She asked if it was because she wasn’t good enough and he replied: “No, you’re certainly good enough. It’s because you’re Jewish.”
I am no athlete. My brother Geoff played rugby at a high level. I sang Alma Cogan songs. I have one sport and it is table tennis. Growing up I played a lot – we had a folding table in our garage – and recently, I visited “Table tennis Monday” at South Hampstead Shul.
It was quite wonderful. There were eight tables and a coach and the room was clicking and buzzing. Maurice Rayner and Carole ran a tight ship and if I had more empty Mondays I would be mustard keen and down a full dress size, without fat pills, in weeks.
Sporting success is all about balance. Last week I had some wax removed from my ears in the afternoon, then tripped over in the street on my way to the National Portrait Gallery. There was no damage done to my nice dress and it was only marginally embarrassing that I almost took David with me. All was well, and I do recommend the Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer Portrait Award exhibits. My friend Simon Thomas Braiden has a portrait of the punk rock impresario Philip Sallon in there and it is breathtaking.
I met Simon on a train from Manchester when I got bumped out of my seat and into his.
We got chatting about art and he volunteered to take me around the Whitworth Gallery. It was illuminating to wander round with someone who, though self-taught, is an articulate master of his craft. One day over a jasmine tea he asked if he could paint me.
“Oh no…really?” I said, “I don’t have any… bones… it’ll drive you mad.”
Humphrey Ocean, I told him, once painted me for the Ferens Art Gallery in Hull and although I loved its casual blurry take on my track-suited self – the gallery, it seems, didn’t. I went back there to show it to a friend and it was hanging, corners curling up, in the slightly eggy canteen. Next time I visited it was nowhere to be seen. I made inquiries and was told it was hanging up downstairs in the vault. I could feel the neck pain. When I saw Simon’s finished portrait, Narcissus-like, I fell in love. What Joyce Grenfell called “the sordid topic of coin” was mentioned. He mumbled something arbitrary so I offered him ten grand.
“Oh no… how about two?” was his response.
“Nine” I countered.
“Three?”
And so it went on and on… it was a face-to-face volte-farce. Ultimately, we came to an agreement and it now hangs in the National Portrait Gallery. He painted me in the work clothes I had with me in Manchester, and a striped navy shawl, a present from Julia McKenzie. When the painting arrived, the scarf looked like a tallit and the painting was so real and so like a straight side of myself I have never faced up to, wrinkles and all, that most people who view it in the National Portrait gallery think it is actually a photograph. Since I had paid for it, I tried to get the Portrait Gallery to let my children have it back when I’m cosily ensconced in Hoop Lane, but the gallery said no. So I will hang in another vault further south. Check it out if you’re passing and commission Simon Braiden if you want a portrait painted, because, though he is a naive businessman, he is an extraordinary artist.
Billy Crystal was once asked what was a Jew’s worst nightmare and he replied: “Stairs.” Later on, the night of the exhibition, around 3am, on my way to make hot milk and nutmeg, I tripped down the stairs. It was noisy and a bit shocking. I was incredibly sorry for myself, but it woke no one and the nutmeg was a comfort. Today, I am a bit stiff but T.G. nothing broken or torn. Was it the Jewish fear of stairs or was my balance skewered by suddenly having wax-less ears?
I had been chatting to the audiologist about nature’s worst designs and after we’d covered the ear and birth canals and the appendix, visible testicles, feet generally and breast tissue we were in a merry mood. After the suction, I didn’t have a sudden “whoosh” opening up or suddenly start distinguishing a house martin from a common tit, but clearly it was an improvement. I am only reporting this to you, my reader, because you might have had a similar experience and because the real answer to the Billy Crystal question is not stairs but negotiating ‘em. So, as my granny would say; “Pick up your feet and stop schlurrying.’’
Going back to Angela Buxton, she ran a successful coaching club in Hampstead Garden Suburb for some years. Angela had spent the war years in South Africa and was familiar with the horrors of apartheid, so had no compunction about partnering a woman of colour.
More impressively she championed Althea Gibson in the face of prejudice and racism and when the latter fell on hard times, she published a letter in Tennis Week that brought in enough donations for Gibson to live comfortably for the rest of her life. When the pair won Wimbledon in 1956, the headline in one English paper read: “Minorities Win!’’ If there is such a thing as posthumous membership I call on AETC to put her name up as an honorary member in gold leaf. Game, set – mind.
To get more from opinion, click here to sign up for our free Editor's Picks newsletter.