Sex madam Cynthia Payne remembered

Cynthia Payne as she appeared on The Dame Edna Experience

Cynthia Payne – ‘Madam Cyn’ – died two days ago. Obituaries were printed yesterday in the Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph, Guardian, Independent and The Times – in other words, all the UK’s quality newspapers.

In 1980, she was sentenced to 18 months in prison (reduced to 6 months on appeal) for running a brothel where “elderly men paid with Luncheon Vouchers to dress up in lingerie and be spanked by young women”.

Personal Services – “from the director of Monty Python’s Life of Brian”

At the time, the tabloid newspapers had a field day reporting this sex case. But I reckoned only the Daily Mail captured the real flavour – that it was not about sex but about English eccentricity.

Two feature films about her were released in 1987 – Personal Services and Wish You Were Here. She stood for Parliament twice.

In the obituaries, a family friend Kevin Horkin described her as “a national treasure” and an “extremely colourful archetypal English eccentric”.

A friend of mine lived in Streatham at the same time that Cynthia Payne was ‘in business’. This is my friend’s memory of her:

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I remember Cynthia well from her frequent shopping forays with her wretched wheeled shopping trolley down Streatham High Road post-prison. She was forever wandering around the High Road with her tartan shopping trolley as boring and common as ever wanting to be noticed. Everyone accompanied Cynthia on her shopping expeditions when they became entangled in that sodding shopping trolley. 

She was a boring, everyday empty vessel whose personality deficit was filled in and manipulated by the male media. ‘The tart with a heart’ has always been a lie that men delude themselves with. The truth is abused/mentally deficient women on drugs/drink. 

Streatham was hell when the story broke, with street prostitutes screeching all night outside my house near the Odeon when the pimps withheld their drugs. They were on the High Road instead of the backstreets and, even when I moved away from the High Road, there was a prostitute in the street – always high and aggressive, until one client destroyed her house after beating her up and so the landlord could finally evict her.

Cynthia was just dull, unlike the real Streatham personality Eddie Izzard, happily strolling the streets in his fringed suede jacket, always intelligent and amiable.

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Cynthia Payne appeared on ITV’s The Dame Edna Experience chat show in 1987 – the other guests were actor Sir John Mills and ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev. There is an extract on YouTube. She is introduced 5 minutes in.

My radio encounter yesterday with the President and a late Nigerian pastor

President Obonjo yesterday in Streatham cafe

Yesterday, I was asked to be on the Anti-Duhring Battalion’s show on London Hott Radio

The radio station is also a cafe just off Streatham High Street in London.

The show featured President Obonjo Obonjo of the Lafta Republic (a UK circuit comedian for the last three years) and religious cult leader Pastor Femi.

I mistakenly believed Pastor Femi was a character act too, but he turned out to be a genuine Senior Pastor in the City of Light Evangelical Ministries.

Their website proclaims:

“The Mandate of the Ministry was received on the 27th of May 2013 and the Word received was Bring Light back into every City through the preaching of the undiluted Word of God by releasing the Light in the Gospel into every sector via businessmen/ women, students, athletes, footballers, singles and married, politicians etc.”

It might have been interesting to talk to the pastor at some length about God’s very specific mention of footballers, but the radio show over-ran somewhat and I had to go home, partly to preserve what little sanity I had left.

The radio show was due to start at 5.00pm and end at 6.00pm. The pastor had not arrived by 5.00pm so – somewhat oddly I thought – we waited for him.

The Anti-Duhring Battalion (man, right, in stripes) supervised the live radio show yesterday at its Streatham cafe home base

When he had not appeared by 6.10pm (he was still apparently on the A3 into London) we started the show.

He arrived at 7.30pm. The show was still on air (or, more correctly, in cyberspace).

The show finished at 7.55.

Somewhere during the course of the three hours, President Obonjo Obonjo observed: “We seem to be working on Nigerian time.”

He is allowed to say that.

He was born in Liverpool. Moved to Nigeria when he was 5. Moved to London when he was 20.

The radio show seemed to mostly involve discussing pies, which took me a little by surprise. I was introduced as a famous author and religious expert. Which took me a little by surprise. And there was a phone-in from a man who sculpted things. Living things. Well, dead living things. Furry animals, it seemed. He had apparently posted one to the radio show by Royal Mail – a sculpted blend of dead furry animal and IKEA sign, it seemed… but it had somehow got lost in the post.

Pastor Femi (in purple) is admonished for his timekeeping

By this time – halfway through the show – I was not surprised.

As I travelled back home in a train with President Obonjo Obonjo (me to Elstree; he to St Albans), he said to me:

“What just happened there?”

I had no answer.