40 years old: my little red address book

Forty years ago this week I left my job with Michael Forsyth Associates, a London-based PR company.

As I've noted before, Michael (now Lord Forsyth of Drumlean) gave me my first job when I left university in the summer of 1980.

At the time he was a director of another PR company, KH Publicity, and after we were introduced in a London pub he offered me a job as account executive, the lowest position on the executive ladder.

Twelve months later, when he left to form his own company, he took me and another colleague, account director Kevin Bell, with him.

The following year I came to the conclusion that PR wasn't for me and decided to leave, declining Michael's last minute offer of a company car (an MGB GT!) if I stayed.

It was the right decision to go because I wasn’t enjoying the job but instead of getting my hands on my dream car my leaving present in December 1982 was rather more prosaic - a little red telephone address book that I nevertheless still have and use today.

December is the month I use it most because that's when I rifle through its battered ink-spattered pages looking for the names and addresses of friends and relatives so I can send them a Christmas card.

I'm not sure how many entries there are but it must be almost 800, possibly more, most of them added several decades ago when I had friends and a social life.

Over the years I've lost contact with most of the people listed in the book and today fewer than 50 have a current address or telephone number alongside their name.

Those that do tend to have multiple addresses and phone numbers, reflecting their moves and changing circumstances.

For example, one friend lived in Barnes when I first met her in the early Eighties. She then moved to Ealing, got married and moved to Sydney, Hong Kong and Tokyo via Tunbridge Wells. She and her husband now live in Richmond.

All this is documented in my little red book apart from the Richmond address which I didn’t write down and have now lost.

Most of the names will be unknown to you but a handful will be familiar including Andrew Neil, Carol Vorderman, Jeffrey Archer, the late Ludovic Kennedy and the late Hughie Green.

Vorderman was briefly on the board of a membership organisation I worked for, hence her entry, but I can’t remember why I have Ludovic Kennedy's home address. Or Andrew Neil's. Or Jeffrey Archer's. Or Hughie Green's.

Equally puzzling is the entry for Paul Johnson. In the Sixties Johnson was editor of the New Statesman. He was later a columnist for The Spectator for many years but I don’t think we’ve ever met. Despite that I have not one but two addresses for him, one in London, the other in Somerset.

Other entries can be explained more easily.

Christopher Sylvester for example was a contemporary of Ian Hislop at Oxford and when our paths crossed in the Eighties he was also working for Private Eye. I met him around the same time I was being presented with my little red address book so even though our working relationship was brief he would have been one of the first entries.

Sally Farmiloe was an actress and socialite well known to Daily Mail readers. In the Nineties she helped me organise a gala dinner at the Cafe Royal in London. She was a friend of Jeffrey Archer and persuaded him to conduct the after dinner auction (which may explain why his name is in the book).

Surprisingly there are very few politicians in the book. Entries include addresses for Lady Thatcher (after she left Number Ten), Lord Orr-Ewing (d. August 1999) and three Johns – John Carlisle (d. February 2019), John Hayes and John Bercow.

The address I have for Bercow is Mill Hill, London NW7, but I’m not being indiscreet because this was 25 or 30 years ago and he's moved on since then (in more ways than one). I barely knew him but we had a mutual friend who also became an MP.

Long before I worked for Forest my little red book also listed the late Stephen Eyres, Forest's first director, who I interviewed in 1984. My immediate predecessor Majorie Nicholson also features, albeit under her maiden name Marjorie Brady.

The two addresses (and telephone numbers) that appear alongside 'Forest' are Broadway House, Broadway, London SW8 (01-582 4561) and 2 Grosvenor Gardens, Victoria, London SW1 (01-823 6550).

The numbers indicate that both entries were added in the Eighties because in 1990 inner London numbers changed to 071 and outer numbers to 081, becoming 0171 and 0181 in 1995.

The Freedom Association also makes an appearance. The first address I've entered is Avon House, 360-366 Oxford Street, London W1, but that's been crossed out and replaced by 35 Westminster Bridge Road, SE1 7JB.

However the most useful telephone number in my book arguably belonged to the BBC.

Many years ago the BBC had a dedicated number you could ring and someone on the end of the line would give you the number for the agent of almost any artist, musician or celebrity you cared to request.

Artists' Index was a fabulous service and it was completely free, something that astounded me even as I was making call after call.

Eventually some beancounter at the BBC must have demanded to know why they were giving away all that information to any Tom, Dick or Harry without charge but it was great while it lasted and I still have the number although it has probably been reassigned to something far less useful.

On a personal level I seem to have known a surprising number of people with names like Lupita, Elena, Sabina, Schura, Anya and Hermione so perhaps my twenties weren’t wasted after all.

Then there are the flatmates I lived with between 1983 and 1985, the majority of whom I haven't seen since. One returned to her parents in Glasgow for Christmas and never came back. I still have their address though and not only is it in her handwriting, it's the only entry written in CAPITAL LETTERS (which was probably a warning).

Inevitably several people in the book are now dead and there may be more I'm not aware of.

Most, like Ludovic Kennedy, lived to a good age (89) but Karin was only 24 when she died and although I didn’t know her well (I was a similar age at the time) I still pause and reflect when I see her entry.

My old friend George Miller-Kurakin was more than twice Karin's age but still only 54 when he died in 2009.

There are two addresses alongside George’s name – the large family home in Lee, south east London, where he grew up and lived before he got married, and the Beckenham flat he shared with his wife Lilia before the Soviet Union collapsed and they moved to Russia with their two young children.

Sadly, as I have noted before, things didn’t work out as they had hoped and they returned to the UK a few years later, only to divorce.

Some entries are poignant for other reasons but I'll spare you the details.

I do regret having lost contact with some of the people listed in the book but although a handful were once close friends the overwhelming majority were never more than acquaintances and many I don’t remember at all.

Nevertheless, who needs to write their memoirs when they have a 40-year-old telephone address book to rekindle fading memories?

The information it contains may be meaningless to all but the owner but as a shorthand account of your life it’s priceless.

Below: My little red address book, 40 years old this week