Some 60 years ago, Nancy Spain and Gilbert Harding, two of the most famous personalities in British television and radio of that era, unwittingly found themselves at the centre of a celebrity gossip story which had the tabloids vying with each other in a feeding frenzy more befitting of contemporary media.

The names of Nancy Spain and Gilbert Harding were inextricably linked not only to each other, but to Brighton.

In the 1930s, this immensely popular and confident journalist, broadcaster, novelist and descendent of Mrs Beeton had been one of the more infamous pupils at Roedean School and did little to endear herself to her alma mater: in her memoirs, she referred to it in print as ‘that strictly anonymous dump in Sussex’ and set one of her camper crime novels, Poison For Teacher, in a girls’ boarding school which only the very obtuse would not immediately recognised as being based on Roedean. In the late 1950s, she rented a house in Wentworth St for several months, in a futile attempt to work on a novel that was never completed, due to her propensity for enjoying parties at the homes of Robin Maugham, Alan Melville and her lawyer, David Jacobs (his other clients included Judy Garland, Liberace and The Beatles).

And, of course, she also partied at the home of Gilbert Harding, the former schoolteacher who inadvertently became a fixture on the BBC. Dubbed ‘The Rudest Man on Television’, Harding’s friend Brian Masters, said he was ‘the one person whom everybody in the country knew… truly the first ever Television Personality, a man celebrated for being himself.’ Harding’s own explanation for his brusque verbal style was typically straightforward:  ‘I have no ill-will in me, but when I am fatigued I can’t make the effort to control myself. They make me forget what little manners I have.’ But it was precisely ‘forgetting his manners’ which turned Gilbert Harding into the most-watched man on British television. Another Brighton resident, the writer John Montgomery, observed that in the 1950s, many conversations on trains and in offices began with the question, ‘Did you see Gilbert Harding on What’s My Line?’

From the mid-50s, this most reluctant TV personality divided his time between London and an elegant house Brighton house at 20 Montpelier Villas. As his friend Robin Maugham – said, ‘His personality was brilliant — so brilliant that when he died a light went out in Brighton…it was a light that can’t be replaced. There was nothing like it. There never will be.’

Having written A Trouser-Wearing Character, the first, and only, biography of Nancy Spain, (published in 1997), I have long believed the unlikely yet genuine friendship with Harding – including the long-running and hilarious rumours that they might marry − was a subject worthy of dramatisation. Gilbert Harding was a guilt-ridden and unhappy gay man who loathed his fame. Nancy Spain was at ease with her sexuality and her celebrity status. And yet they cared deeply for each other, despite their differences. Both were kind, generous, witty, impressively literate — and refreshingly frank. But the irony was that these two famous figures, known for their unflinching outspokenness, both harboured a whopping great secret that could have destroyed their careers overnight. And so, when they were in the middle of the Atlantic, Jamaica-bound, they found themselves bombarded with telegrams from Fleet Street reporters who believed the ‘trouser-wearing N.Spain’ and the ‘irascible bachelor’ would be entering into distinctly unholy matrimony, they had to tread a careful line between truth and deceit — lest the ‘steady ship’ in which their reputations sailed capsized and sank with all hands.

Now, thanks to funding from the Peggy Ramsay Foundation and Arts Council England, I have created Not Wanted On Voyage, a new two-hander for the stage, which takes as its starting point the boat journey to Jamaica, during which the infamous ‘wedding’ rumours incident occurred. However, the play explores other themes: the nature of celebrity ­— how it’s changed and how it hasn’t; the risks faced by famous gay personalities in those pre-liberation days — especially men, who faced ruin and imprisonment if their sexuality became known to the public; and how the truth could be hidden ‘in plain sight’, if you were part of ‘The Establishment’.

Revisiting their lives as part of the process of translating the essence of these two extraordinary personalities into stage material has given me an invaluable opportunity to reassess and further appreciate the impact they had on popular culture and, most importantly, several generations of lesbian and gay people who lived ‘in the shadows’, yet could still enjoy weekly appearances by the refreshingly uncompromising Spain and Harding on television, radio and in newspapers and magazines — from the Daily Express to The People, Woman’s Hour to Round Britain Quiz, Juke Box Jury to What’s My Line?

The play will have two ‘script in hand’, rehearsed performances this month, at the Marlborough Theatre, Brighton, and Bread & Roses, Clapham, to which industry professionals, plus some friends and supporters, have been invited, with the hope that a producer or venue will want to stage a full production at a later date.

It is also my hope that, with this play, older audiences will relish revisiting their memories of the defiant duo, while a younger generation will enjoy learning about two pioneering personalities who were as complex as they were celebrated, from an era when, unlike our present age, ‘celebrity’ was a little-used term bestowed on the few who were truly worthy of the title.

For more information, visit

http://www.rosecollis.com/not-wanted-on-voyage-2/

http://www.rosecollis.com/books/a-trouser-wearing-character-life-and-times-of-nancy-spain/