I Wore Baby Doll Pyjamas, But Jeremy Irons Ignored Me
by Ingrid Seward, Daily Mail (London)
August 26, 1995
INGRID SEWARD was born in London in 1948.
In 1965 she met and fell briefly in love with Oscar-winning actor Jeremy Irons when he was still a schoolboy, living in Henley-on-Thames, near her parents' weekend home. In 1983 Ingrid became editor of Majesty magazine and has written six best-selling books, the latest of which is a biography of Prince Edward, which was published last week by Century. She is married to a gossip columnist and they live in London with their daughter Arabella, aged six.
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IT WAS the Easter holiday of 1965 and I was in love with Peter O'Toole and Jeremy Irons in a wild, bubbling, hormonal adolescent way.
O'Toole had almost everything I could have wished for. Blond, handsome, desirable. I had been to see him in Lawrence Of Arabia when I was 14 years old, paying 12/6 in old money for the best seats at the Odeon in Leicester Square, and I had been smitten. Totally.
Afterwards I recorded every detail of his life and career. I would scour the newspapers and magazines for any mention of my idol. Forget the Beatles: I was an O'Toole fan.
One-sided the relationship may have been, but it did help me pass my history exam. I wrote an impassioned essay on the life of T. E. Lawrence, imagining him as O'Toole, gleaming blond hair and twinkly, gin-bright blue eyes, rather than the shadowy, sexually ambivalent enigma of real life. It had been good enough to lift my mark up into the A-grade.
Irons did have a substantial advantage over his then more famous rival and that was the fact that I happened to know him. We both hailed from the Henley area of Oxfordshire. We had seen each other around for months without ever making much of a thing about it. Then, at a party in April that year, we met again.
With breathless schoolgirl enthusiasm I noted in my diary: 'I got off with a fabulous chap called Jeremy Irons and I've wanted him for ages!'
The following day he telephoned me and invited me out to the pictures. We went to the cinema - then the Regal in Henley - for another historical drama of British derring-do - Zulu.
Afterwards we went for a stroll along the river front. We held hands and he kissed me full on the lips - a French kiss - and I knew I was in love. Then we went for supper together, I am not sure where, time has erased the location from my memory and my diary did not concern itself with the mundane details of life. It was a chronicle of emotion and high passion. It was neither an extravagant nor grand evening.
I was only 16, still a schoolgirl, and Jeremy was a pupil at Sherbourne public school in Dorset. But at that age, it seemed to be the most exciting, the most sophisticated thing I could possibly be doing. He really was very handsome - tall, with floppy, blondish hair and the most penetrating brown eyes that I had ever seen.
He was keen on music and we talked about that. He had nice teeth (always a consideration with me, which is why I did not like George Harrison). And when compared to the other boys I had met, he had a worldly air and an easy sense of humour. He had a deep gravelly voice and, unlike most of us, he had a clear idea of what he wanted to be, and that was an actor.
There was nothing too intense or over-serious about him then, though. He was always laughing and, by my light, the life and soul of every party we went to.
My girlfriend Louise Hall also found him rather attractive. What made him particularly desirable was the fact that he played the guitar and sang in that folksy way that seemed so soulful at the time.
He sang rather well, as I recall. He also sprinkled his repertoire with his own compositions which he would dedicate to whichever girl he happened to be with at the time. He composed a couple of songs for me, which I recorded on my father's dictaphone machine.
It was all splendidly innocent. It was the middle of the Swinging Sixties and all we ever heard about was Mods and Rockers and the free-loving, free-wheeling, promiscuous behaviour of the younger generation. That was supposed to be us.
But while it may well have been like that in Chelsea, it certainly wasn't like that in Henley.
Of course, we wore what we thought were the very latest fashions (I had a mini-skirt which went all of three daring inches above my knees, which I wore with a pair of white plastic boots), but I thought that it was more jolly to go boating than to have free love and sex in the age of Aquarius. That we didn't try.
There was a lot of snogging and fumbling and the usual teenage explorations. When Jeremy came up to my house on the Chiltern escarpment behind Henley one afternoon when my parents were out, I noted, with girlish anticipation: 'Hope we don't go too far!'. To my (and, I suspect, to his) disappointment, we didn't. Then Jeremy had to go back to school which meant that for the next few months our friendship was conducted entirely by letter. He was a very enthusiastic writer and his missives were full of the kind of romantic, poetic remarks and observations and declarations which seem too profound and meaningful at that age. I used to think they were the most romantic words I had ever read. I hid his letters under my pillow at night. He would also telephone me from the coinbox at school. It must have been very disappointing for him because he couldn't leave school at weekends while I could. So I was ready to party with the rest of the crowd and at that age, when a week is forever and a month an eternity, letters are not the most fulfilling form of contact.
I am afraid to say that it was a case of out of sight, out of mind and I soon had my John Lennon-style cap set at another young man. He might not have been as good-looking as Jeremy but he was there and when Jeremy telephoned from Sherbourne I was rather vile to him.
We kept in touch and when the holidays rolled round again we picked up more or less where we left off. At that time Jeremy lived in a pretty house called the Old Granary which was just by the bridge overlooking the river. I used to go round, say hello to his mother - willowy, gracious and charming, like her son - before going upstairs to listen to our records (the Beatles and Billy J. Kramer were his favourites)
And, of course, we went to parties. We would meet at the homes of friends, preferably when their parents were out. The lights would be dimmed and we would dance. We drank lager and lime or cheap wine. There was not so much as a whiff of marijuana; drugs had not yet been invented for us. The only smoke was from our Rothmans cigarettes and Jeremy, always the height of sophistication, smoked them with style.
One night we held a pyjama party. In keeping with the clothes, we scattered mattresses all over the floor. Jeremy, however, was more intent on strumming his guitar than anything else and I became rather irritated.
It was a case of the boot being on the other foot. At another party earlier in the summer I had taken a shine to another young chap and spent most of the evening talking to him. That had annoyed Jeremy and he had almost forcibly dragged me out and driven me home.
Now it was my turn to be irritated. I thought I was absolutely wonderful in my Baby Doll pyjamas with my hair piled high on my head and tied with a ribbon. I had just passed my O-levels and was feeling pleased with myself and grown up. Being ignored was not what I had in mind, so I suggested to Louise that we should leave and continue the party at her house. She agreed. I set off in the first car. A convoy followed on behind. But when we got there Louise was nowhere to be seen. As we roared into the driveway her father, who was the Principal of Brasenose College , Oxford, and was usually the kindest and most unassuming of men, came out of the house. He fixed on me and started yelling. Her mother, in near hysterics, came out and joined in. By now the word had got out that there was a party going on and half of Henley was jammed into the driveway, Jeremy among them.
Jeremy handled the situation as only he could - calmly, politely, courteously. The following day he made a point of telephoning Louise's parents to apologise. Out of the dozens of people who were there that night, he was only one who did and I was very impressed by that.
That wasn't enough to keep the romance going, though. Our last date was in September when we went up to London with a party of mates for the last night of the Proms. Summer had given way to autumn and the adolescent passion was spent. But we remained friends. He went on to to become the famous actor he was determined to be.
And by one of those ironies of life, I was employed for a while by the company which handled his PR and I was flattered when he insisted I handled his account myself. He wasn't quite as good-looking as I remembered him and his easy-going sense of humour had got lost somewhere along the way. But he was still charming. And he was a bigger star than Peter O'Toole.
As for Peter O'Toole - well, I got to know him, too, in later years. But that, as they say, is a different story.