Splendid Isolation

I’ve never read any of the late Fay Weldon‘s novels, but I have to say that she was an interesting person.  In a time when 22-year-old “influencers” trade on their bodies and faces to create wealth out of nothing, there’s something appealing about a woman who grew up — and later flourished — during a time when such a life would have been absolutely impossible.  And by being outrageous despite all that, she became a true feminist — the kind of feminist I applaud rather than despise (i.e. the modern feministicals).  And let’s face it, how can you not love someone with these two snippets on her resume:

[Her] first script was rejected as too explicit — no one, explained a man at the BBC, wanted to watch a drama about prostitutes, ‘no matter how well written’.

Her career flying, at a party in 1961 she fell into bed with that man who introduced himself next morning.  For the next decade they were rarely out of bed — sex was the whole basis of their relationship.  ‘I thought the only way to know a man properly was to know what he was like in bed,’ she said, ‘and my appetite for knowledge was formidable.’

Formidable, indeed.  I’m going to get one of her novels and read it.

Our next interesting person also did things his own way.

He started off life as a bricklayer, and then set out to conquer the world.

In his 86 years, David Gold conquered the worlds of retail, property, publishing and air travel and was estimated to be worth a staggering £500m.

What kind of publishing, you ask?   Sex magazines — hitherto unavailable in Britain.  What kind of property?  Four stores called “Ann Summers”, which sold sex toys.  The he made his daughter Jacqueline (who needs her own post, but she isn’t dead yet) the CEO of Ann Summers, and she promptly turned the business into the sex toy equivalent of Tupperware, amassing her own personal fortune of just over half a billion dollars along the way.

And then David became chairman of first Birmingham City and then West Ham F.C. in London, and died recently with a mistress of twenty-four years’ standing, who happened to be nearly twenty years his junior.

Just as formidable, and not at all bad for a one-time brickie with no university degree.

I love life stories that read like this.