I remember very clearly seeing Lordship for the first time. He was stretched out in the shady, covered part at the back of his restaurant, Beauchard. All in white, as always, hat over his eyes. We sat down and a local woman brought us some drinks, coke or something. He came up to us with a big unhealthy grin and extended his hand with the palm almost facing upwards. Hello, he said, I am the owner. There was something unusually regal about the way he held his hand out, as if I should lap berry-flavoured water from it like a loyal hound. “I am the owner.” Not in itself an unusual statement, but there was something in the way that he said it. I must have tried to shake his hand. He was wearing mirrored sunglasses on a sort of a string around his neck. He told us about his Wednesday night soiree and that we must come.
I’d heard of him, of course. He popped up quite regularly in Hola! Voici and even, from time in the English tabloids. He was famous for knowing minor personalities – ‘the fritterati’ as I later learned he called them, those who frittered rather than glittered. A lot of them would turn up around the time of the film festival. During the early 70s this had been something of a hit. In 1975 Antonioni’s, ‘The Passenger’ was screened to great acclaim. Now, in the late eighties it had turned into an opportunity for the Office of the District Commissioner to turn an ostentatiously blind eye to works that might have more of a sexual bent than would normally permit. This year it is a retrospective look at the career of Walerian Borowczyk . This proved to be a popular choice for the many unrequoited erections of AlTizourus’ young male population who would gather in the cinema in a grunting mass of collective masturbation, clambering over the seats if an other form of engagement should present itself. Though, in fairness, they did also premier Gatlif’s new work, ‘Are we nearly there yet?’
He saw me with Helen Beck’s book.
“Is that any good?”
His tone implied a certain scepticism. I told him that I thought it was interesting. This seemed to be a good answer.
“She wrote really the most vituperative things about me...”
This remark was clearly a follow-up question, did I agree with Helen Beck? Of course I didn't.
A couple of days later I saw him swanning about in the medina. He’s very tall, very thin, very white and with the white Panama hat and the mirrored sunglasses not exactly difficult to pick out. He seemed to know where he was going and the locals were obviously used to him as he wasn’t surrounded by the usual cloud of flies. I ended up going out to Beauchard quite a bit.