Somewhere out there is a tape of Helen Mirren telling me about when she likes to have sex… and all the drugs she has taken, writes founder of Loaded Magazine JAMES BROWN
I met plenty of famous people during the 1990s, the era when I launched Loaded, the notorious lads’ magazine with the tagline: ‘For Men Who Should Know Better.’ I’ve partied with Robbie Williams, the Gallagher brothers, the Fast Show guys. I’ve bumped into pretty much everyone from Michael Caine to Madonna.
But whenever I’m asked who was the most fun famous person to hang out with, I don’t hesitate. It was Helen Mirren.
She gets the vote ahead of comedians Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer, American rap rockers Beastie Boys and the joyously shambolic New Order, and I’ve spent a fair bit of time with all of them. I spent only a weekend with Helen – and it was the best.
I was going to Los Angeles to do a piece about something else when I saw this brilliant picture of Helen in a glossy magazine shoot, lying on a bed with her legs up against a wall.
It was really sexy and stylish and reminded me of a fashion designer I’d broken up with a year before. I thought I’d like to interview her while there and, despite giving her just a week’s notice, she was up for it.
I was very excited when she arrived for the interview. She looked stunning, and I remember feeling like a kid in her presence, giving her an apple from the reception of Sunset Boulevard’s Chateau Marmont hotel. We hung out at my suite for photographs and then she took me to a load of bars around LA. She drank, I drove.
I never wrote the story because the work experience person transcribing it was hit by a family crisis and I never saw the tape again. But somewhere there’s a tape of Helen Mirren discussing fighting at parties, what drugs she has taken and when she likes to have sex. Pictured: Helen posing in 1996
I never wrote the story because the work experience person transcribing it was hit by a family crisis and I never saw the tape again. But somewhere there’s a tape of Helen Mirren discussing fighting at parties, what drugs she has taken and when she likes to have sex.
The highlight of the weekend was driving her home on the Saturday night, where she couldn’t open the gate of her large rented Hollywood mansion. So she very quickly and drunkenly started climbing over it. It was about 15ft high, but she went up it like the mountaineer Chris Bonington. I remember looking in disbelief as she precariously toppled over the top in heels.
On the other side, she buzzed the gates open and insisted I drive her up to the house itself. There, she ruffled my hair, said something very nice to me and went inside. If I’d spent any longer than a weekend with her, I’d have ended up with a massive crush.
It was an era when journalists were flown around the world to hang out with stars of music, film, football, sport and fashion.
And for the first 20 years of my adult life, that was exactly what I did. From hanging out in Elvis’s Vegas suite with U2 and dancing with Prince in Rio de Janeiro, I made a career of having as much fun as possible.
In 1987, I was barely two years out of school and had propelled myself on to the staff at the legendary New Musical Express (NME).
It was an era when journalists were flown around the world to hang out with stars of music, film, football, sport and fashion. Pictured: A Loaded magazine cover
Pictured: Michael Caine shooting the first GQ Man of The Year cover with James Brown
Before long I was being trampled by Public Enemy fans in San Diego, rubbing shoulders with the likes of George Michael and Bananarama, and taking liquid acid from Beastie Boy Adam Yauch’s stash.
Perhaps the pinnacle was accompanying the Happy Mondays to the Rock in Rio festival in 1991. Led by raspy-voiced hedonist Shaun Ryder and dancer-slash-percussionist Bez, the Mondays were the Mancunian poster boys of full-on narcotic excess. We said we would put them on the cover of NME if we could go to the festival with them.
Backstage at Rio’s Maracana stadium, there was a very clear rock ‘n’ roll class system. Everything was about having more – the darkest sunglasses, the biggest and best security. George Michael’s entourage insisted that no one was allowed in the artists’ corridor when George went to the stage.
Backstage at Rio’s Maracana stadium, there was a very clear rock ‘n’ roll class system. Everything was about having more – the darkest sunglasses, the biggest and best security. George Michael’s entourage insisted that no one was allowed in the artists’ corridor when George went to the stage
The Mondays somehow persuaded the organiser to let them go on after the headliners A-ha. But when the 150,000-strong audience realised they hadn’t heard of them and didn’t know any of their songs, they started throwing plastic bags of rubbish. It was like a riot in a tip.
After a few numbers, the heavens opened. Everyone assumed the band would walk off, but instead they pulled up their hooded tops and carried on in the rainstorm.
This elicited a massive roar, and suddenly the bag bombs ended. The Mancunians had won over the Brazilian audience. Afterwards we went to Prince’s party, where I began chatting to a very attractive and tall Brazilian woman. I asked her to dance and, for the first song, we were the only two on the dancefloor. Then we were joined by another couple and we were doing that four-sided group dance – me, this very tall, good-looking Brazilian woman, a small guy in stack heels and a powder-purple suit, and his date.
Suddenly I looked at him and realised it was Prince himself. He’d been up on his balcony waiting for someone to break the ice and start dancing. The moment he saw us, he wanted in.
When I launched Loaded in 1994, there were so many parties to go to that you just ran into the same famous people over and over again: Steve Coogan, Vic and Bob, Robbie Williams, Oasis, Zoe Ball, Sara Cox, Anna Friel, Martin Clunes, Keith Allen, drugs-smuggler-turned-author Howard Marks and Trainspotting novelist Irvine Welsh. And so on and so on.
When I launched Loaded in 1994, there were so many parties to go to that you just ran into the same famous people over and over again: Steve Coogan, Vic and Bob, Robbie Williams, Oasis, Zoe Ball, Sara Cox, Anna Friel, Martin Clunes, Keith Allen, drugs-smuggler-turned-author Howard Marks and Trainspotting novelist Irvine Welsh. And so on and so on
James Brown regularly saw Zoe Ball at parties he attended in the 90’s after he launched Loaded
I liked Robbie. He was just a cheeky young lad having the time of his life. Oasis and Blur were storming it music-wise, but Robbie was very much the mainstream pop man of the moment
I liked Robbie. He was just a cheeky young lad having the time of his life. Oasis and Blur were storming it music-wise, but Robbie was very much the mainstream pop man of the moment.
At some amazing party at Alexandra Palace, he and I were talking and he said: ‘James, you’ve been at all the best parties I’ve been to since I became famous.
‘But the difference is when you get up in the morning, there’s not a load of paparazzi outside your house waiting to see who you went home with.’ Thank f*** for that.
Just as the phrase ‘lads’ mags’ didn’t emerge until at least a year after I left Loaded in 1997, the most ‘loaded’ afternoon I experienced happened years later.
Interviewing Oasis frontman Liam Gallagher for a monthly music magazine, I had a text from a mate who said he was in a bar with Paul Gascoigne and did we want to come over?
Gazza was many sambucas to the wind, had numerous bags of Haribo sweets and was insistent that Liam sing him something. This wasn’t going anywhere, with Liam replying sarcastically: ‘Do I ask you to do some keepy-uppies or headers?’
Despite this stand-off, Gazza went on to tell the most remarkable array of stories, which involved him dating Liz Hurley, getting caught shoplifting in Spain and insisting he could get Liam a great watch from a mate of his in Newcastle.
Gazza was an amazing storyteller and thought nothing of spilling anecdotes that didn’t exactly portray him in the best light.
I had promised the members’ club we were in that I would vouch for Liam’s behaviour, as he was still banned after previously smashing up the snooker room. When it was time for both of us to go and collect our sons from primary school, we got up and headed down the stairs, only for Liam to say ‘Hang on…’, and run back in.
Interviewing Oasis frontman Liam Gallagher for a monthly music magazine, I had a text from a mate who said he was in a bar with Paul Gascoigne and did we want to come over?
All I could hear was ‘Liam, NO!’ from multiple voices, primarily female, and then an almighty whoosh and loads of shouting and screaming. The Oasis frontman then jogged back down the stairs to catch me up and said: ‘Come on, we better scarper.’
Upstairs, Gazza was dripping wet from a discharged fire extinguisher. The incident cost me £185 on my club bill, and I was asked to inform Liam that he was once again banned.
In 1997, I accepted a lucrative offer to edit GQ magazine for the glamorous Vogue publisher Conde Nast. Early on, I was told: ‘When there’s a problem at Conde Nast, we throw champagne at it.’
These words would soon come back to haunt me. I was only a couple of issues in when a drunken lunch with some journalists ended up back in the wine cupboard at the office, and then the fashion department, where one of our number insulted everyone.
Then I displayed just how badly my judgment is impaired by alcohol. I picked up an empty bottle of champagne and hurled it through the main office window pane, saying: ‘This is how you break a window.’
There was glass everywhere. I looked out of the smashed window and saw that the bottle had travelled over a cashpoint queue and buried itself, neck-first, into the windscreen of a parked minivan.
The next morning, I sobered up to a call telling me not to come in until Thursday, when the MD gave me a written warning that if anything else bad happened, I would be in breach of contract and fired.
The three guilty parties, including myself, were brought in for a scolding from the HR gatekeeper. After warning us about the terrible dangers of alcohol, she asked: ‘Do any of you need help?’
At exactly the same time that the two others said ‘No!’, I replied: ‘Yes!’
Gazza was an amazing storyteller and thought nothing of spilling anecdotes that didn’t exactly portray him in the best light
I was sent to a Harley Street psychiatrist, and the 30 minutes of my first session turned out to be the first step of a long journey that would eventually change, and possibly save, my life.
A few years after that, in 2001, I found myself with famous magazine publisher Felix Dennis. We were on the island of Mustique, looking out across the Caribbean Sea from Mandalay, the traditional Japanese home he’d bought from David Bowie.
Me: ‘These look like the pirate islands from the books I read as a kid.’
Felix: ‘These are the pirate islands from the books you read as a kid.’
Me: ‘What are we doing today?’
Felix: ‘We’re going for lunch with Patrick Lichfield.’
Lichfield was a top society photographer and a cousin of the Queen. It was a measure of just how far I’d risen in the world.
The lunch with Lichfield was pleasant but unremarkable. Yet that’s a day I’ll remember for the rest of my life.
As we set off in a golf buggy down the manicured lanes, past the long bamboo fences that keep the super-rich away from each other, I could feel a nervous, nagging tension that was there so often when I was growing up.
The rehab counsellor who had helped me kick my drug and drink problem explained it was common among addicts – a sense of feeling ‘less than’. As if to amplify the moment, Felix pointed out Princess Margaret’s house
It was the first time I’d felt it in a while, but by then I knew what it was. The rehab counsellor who had helped me kick my drug and drink problem explained it was common among addicts – a sense of feeling ‘less than’. As if to amplify the moment, Felix pointed out Princess Margaret’s house.
‘Does she ever come round?’
‘Yes, but I won’t let her in any more, she’s a nightmare,’ he said. ‘She points at my ornaments and says, ‘Oh, this is nice, can I have it?’ So now when she phones, I just say, ‘No, I have the builders in.’ ‘
Suddenly, despite all the success I’d enjoyed, I felt like the kid on free school dinners in Leeds again. The sort of kid who does paper rounds to buy singles by The Jam.
© James Brown, 2022
Animal House, by James Brown, is published by Quercus at £20. To order a copy for £18, go to mailshop.co.uk/books or call 020 3176 2937 before October 2. Free UK delivery on orders over £20.
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