Simon Dee

Two men in flat-caps and trench coats are standing in the doorway to a pub.  They are each holding a bottle of beer.

I interrupt their tete-a-tete to ask my question.  'Do you have to guess it?' asks the taller and thinner of the two.  His flat cap is made of black felt and on his upper lip is growing a small grey moustache.  'I can try', I say.  'Go on then', he replies.  I suggest James, Harold and Anthony but to no avail.  'How many guesses you gonna have?' he asks.  I appeal to his companion.  He is shorter and fatter with only one visible tooth.  His flat cap is made from tweed.  'I dunno', he says.  'Sam?'

The taller man gives in and tells me.  'It's after the television presenter, innit?', he says.  'You're probably too young to know who he is'.  I have to admit that I am.  He tells me that Simon Dee had his own chat show.  I promise to look him up when I get home.

'You look a bit like him', he says as an afterthought.  'He could be your dad and you don't know it'.  They both laugh good-humouredly.  He puts his hand out to shake mine.  'Good luck', he says.

(Later I do look up Simon Dee - real name Cyril Nicholas Henty-Dodd - and find that he did indeed host a twice-weekly BBC chat-show, called Dee Time, in the late 60s which used to attract up to 18 million viewers.  The show used to end with the eponymous star  driving off in an E-type Jaguar with a blonde model.  He was, apparently, renowned for his extravagant lifestyle and used to drive up and down the King's Road in an Aston Martin driven by his secretary.  Sadly, with the 70s, and an ill-judged move to LWT, his career fell into decline.  Within a few years he was signing on for unemployment benefit and he eventually took a job as a bus conductor.  He was briefly jailed twice: once for not paying the rates on his former Chelsea home; and the second time for vandalising a toilet seat with Petula Clark's  face painted on it because he thought it was disrespectful to her.  The magistrate on this occasion was his former boss at the BBC.  He died of bone cancer in 2009.

I think there is a lesson to be learnt from this story.  But I'm not sure what it is.)