Fucking On Fridays , livre ebook
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2016
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143
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English
Ebook
2016
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Publié par
Date de parution
27 janvier 2016
Nombre de lectures
0
EAN13
9781849892940
Langue
English
Publié par
Date de parution
27 janvier 2016
Nombre de lectures
0
EAN13
9781849892940
Langue
English
Title Page
Fucking on Fridays
A History of Britain’s Most Notorious Casanova Conman
Clive Kristen
Publisher Information
First Published in 2011 by
Andrews UK Limited
This edition published in 2016
www.andrewsuk.com
The right of Clive Kristen to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998
Copyright © 2011, 2016 Clive Kristen
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Any person who does so may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
The views and opinions expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Andrews UK Limited
Dedication
Dedicated to Bob Davis,
my collaborator who became a good friend.
Author’s Note
I approached the history of my father, Dennis Loraine, first as something that would provide material for a novel. As the research developed however it became clear that the real story was far more interesting than anything I could invent, though I was not sure how to tell it.
I began with a simple chronological narrative of Dennis Loraine’s life but changed this to be more of a narrative as to how these things were discovered. It seemed to work better when I incorporated something of the approach of a novel into it. This gave me more latitude in recalling encounters, events and conversations of many years ago.
But the intention was always the same - to seek out the truth. Much of what I discovered is corroborated by others or well documented in some other way. Where I have included elements which have no basis in fact I hope I have made this clear. Dennis’s claim, for instance, to be Britain’s answer to the Red Baron is fantasy but the refinement of the theme is revealing.
All those whose names appeared in print (most commonly through press or Government reports) are referred to by the names and titles used at the time of the events described. Those who have assisted or resisted research are similarly credited. Those of some celebrity are generally referred to by the name by which they became known to the public. I have, however, used pseudonyms for some minor characters who did not receive public attention in the context of events described here and whose families have requested discretion. I have given similar anonymity to all but one of my siblings, their mothers, and their families.
My maternal grandmother collected a suitcase full of Dennis Loraine memorabilia. One of his sons, Laurence, began and abandoned a biography. Another, Michael, turned up documents and wrote an account of his research. At least three of his daughters embraced genealogy to find their father and, I think, part of themselves. I am sure that the common motivation was the need to know.
Before I began my research I was confident of proving preconceptions. The first was this: With Dennis Loraine what you saw was not what you got. With the benefit of hindsight that was pretty much the only thing I was right about.
I had believed that Dennis was highly intelligent. I also thought that if you sliced him into sections you would find ‘Con-Man’ lettered through like a stick of rock. It also seemed likely that his unqualified amorality meant that he cared about nothing or nobody. I was wrong about all of this.
Dennis used charm to deceive. He was expert at beguiling and bedevilling. How else could he pull off the greatest scam of the sixties and escape the consequences? But again I was wrong. He did pay. Others though, paid more. Indeed the Cadco Affair brought a wake of destruction to almost everyone it touched. The history of these events, though once front page news, has been forgotten. That is in part because at the time newspapers were preoccupied with mining the seam of the sex and spies scandal that was the Profumo Affair to which this is only, most indirectly, connected.
There was another element of Dennis’s career I did not understand. He was at least a competent engineer, a superb salesmen and a creative businessman. Surely it was not beyond the grounds of possibility that he could have built a successful, properly capitalised business empire. But at no time did he attempt to do so. It was only after more than five years of research that I began to understand why.
The account of Dennis’s childhood has been, in part, compiled from anecdotes which may have been reworked several times. My justification for this, given a scarcity of reliable source material, is that it was an attempt to move towards an understanding of his early life. I believe there is at least moral truth here.
It was rather easier to maintain precision through the main body of this history. because of the efforts of Judge Rondle Stable QC and Horace Coulson Esq. who produced not only a most readable report but a framework from which to work. It was Cole Lesley, the friend and biographer of Noel Coward, who much taken by the unfolding Cadco story said that he determined to write a book - ‘The Great Sausage Scandal’. In many ways this could have been my subtitle.
Dennis Loraine was seen as the chief protagonist of the Cadco scandal and this narrative leads to the heart of what happened. But there is much more to him than a single scandal. The greater part of his life was scandalous. Parts of this outrageous history been more difficult to excavate than others. In this context I offer my profound gratitude to Air Vice Marshall Sandy Hunter and Captain Nick Barker RN as my esteemed guides through Dennis’s war.
There would have been no book without the enthusiasm and research skills of my friend and associate, Bob Davis. His interviews with Judge Stable, Dickson Mabon and others have also proved invaluable. It was Bob who saw the possibilities and suggested an approach. It was he who drove me on with new sources and the discovery and interpretation of archive material. For a while it looked as if he was going to be able to make his film. It was the least that his efforts deserved. The hugely successful authors, Francis Wheen and Leo Hollis, generously dedicated their insights to this largely unknown hack. In different, but significant ways, they each helped me to map out a game plan and a methodology. Without that there could have been no book. At a much later stage the lovely Tonia Bevins, recognised where prose needed pruning or developing.
I am also grateful for the assiduous reportage of national and local newspapers and documents released under the 30 years rule. I also believe the taped evidence that Laurence Loraine provided to be substantially accurate. I would further like to thank the many who responded to enquiries. It has taken 15 years to complete the threads of research. With so many lines of enquiry becoming cul de sacs I was many times inclined to give up. In this context I would like to massively thank my wonderful wife, Maureen, for her encouragement, many insights, and proof reading skills.
Clive Kristen
Family Tree
Chapter One
I always knew that my father was a bastard. He had left home before I was a year old. ‘And that,’ my mother always told me, ‘was a great blessing’.
By the time I came to realise that most children had two parents I had a second father. Johannes Kristen had come from Copenhagen with a team of Lipizzaner horses bound for the Blackpool Tower Circus. Soon afterwards he met my mother at a party given by Charlie Cairoli - the most famous clown in the world. They were married when I was five and my mother and I moved to his substantial semi-detached house close to Blackpool’s Stanley Park.
As a circus impresario second father had famous friends. I am told that I was once bought candyfloss and ice cream by Errol Flynn and rewarded him by vomiting on his jacket. I have no recollection of that but I do remember Charlie Cairoli finding a sixpence in his bowler hat which vanished into a handkerchief before reappearing behind my left ear. More than 50 years later I still have that sixpence.
Most of my happiest early memories are of second father. He was a temperate giant who was even better with children than horses. I would ride in the passenger seat of his Lagonda peeping the horn of my own steering wheel which was fixed to the walnut dash by means of a large rubber sucker.
When I thought about first father it was in the sense of ‘disappeared’ or ‘gone away’. There were other children at school without fathers. It seemed to me that ‘missing’ was the much the same as ‘disappeared’. My friend Brian’s Dad had gone ‘missing’ in the jungle of Burma in the final month of the war and a decade later Brian still thought he might turn up.
‘Burma is a long way,’ he explained.
As time passed I thought less and less about first father. There was no sense of loss in his absence. And I imagined I’d be able to find him if I ever wanted to. But my experience of finding things was not encouraging. At some time or other I had turned up a long forgotten a Davy Crockett hat wedged under a drawer. The hole at the front was large enough to mark the accuracy of the fatal bullet at the Alamo and the spaniel’s-ear flap had faded from buckskin brown to squirrel grey. Perhaps I thought that first father would now be similarly faded.
But there was someone who missed him.
My maternal grandmother had a silver framed picture on a dining room dresser that never seemed to be there when my mother was aro
