When Angie Bowie was invited to Hogwarts for wankers by Craig Brown and Nicholas Coleridge
The September 1975 issue of US music/proto-lifestyle magazine Rock Scene contains an absolute curio in the form of a report on Angie Bowie’s visit to Eton College – ‘Hogwarts for wankers where you’re taught Latin and tax avoidance while wearing full evening dress’* – that year.
Bowie was invited by 18-year-old pupils Craig Brown, today Britain’s leading satirist, and Nicholas Coleridge, now the chair of the V&A and formerly a big wheel at Condé Nast.
Coleridge, who preferred to be known by the more rock’n’roll ‘Rick’ at the time apparently, explained in his memoir The Glossy Years that the schoolboys set up a club called The Contemporary Arts Society as a cover for their attempts to become matey with rock stars by inviting them to give guest speeches at Eton. Bowie was the first (her husband had left England never to reside here again in the spring of 1974) and they later enticed Brian Eno and Elton John.
Bowie, who was accompanied by friends Roy Martin, photographer Leee Black Childers and musician Simon Fisher Turner, acquitted herself well.
‘There are enormous advances which must be made to enable the world to last another century,’ she told the privileged audience. ‘We must wean ourselves away from reckless consumer preoccupation, make do with what is necessary, strive to preserve the natural resources of this spaceship Earth and always be aware of the cycle of history.’
During the q&a session a large number of boys raised their hands when she asked how many were set on becoming Prime Minister in adulthood, though it’s worth noting that arch-wankers David Cameron and Boris Johnson were not present; they didn’t start at Eton until 1979 and 1977 respectively.
In the evening the visibly excited schoolboys dined with Bowie and her retinue at local restaurant The Cockpit where they were joined by classmates. The racism of the day rose to the fore when the name of one was deemed unpronounceable so he was designated ‘the son of the president of Nigeria’ (for more on that front read Dillibe Onyeama’s terrifying account of his time at the school, A Black Boy At Eton).
//From my music press book Totally Wired//
Rock Scene was a great, gossipy magazine, where weird events such as this appeared alongside the abiding editorial interest in New York music as glam turned to punk as well as fashion, art, design, clubbing and movies.
Find out more about Rock Scene, its editor the late Richard Robinson and his partner and Vanity Fair music editor Lisa Robinson in Totally Wired: The Rise & Fall of the Music Press.
*Jonathan Pie