Today is the 62nd anniversary of Malcolm Muggeridge sampling the nightlife of Hamburg and finding it “singularly joyless” — even though he “dropped into a teenage rock-and-roll joint” and met the pre-fame Beatles, apparently completely by chance.
He was in Germany to see the editor of Stern magazine, and wrote this diary entry — using language that is, in part, rather… of its time, let’s say.
He appears to choose the “teenage rock-and-roll joint” at random, and finds it full of
ageless children, sexes indistinguishable, tight-trousered, stamping about, only the smell of sweat intimating animality.
Then he spots the four young men on stage.
The band were English, from Liverpool, and recognized me. Long-haired; weird feminine faces; bashing their instruments, and emitting nerveless sounds into microphones. In conversation rather touching in a way, their faces like Renaissance carvings of saints or Blessed Virgins. One of them asked me: ‘Is it true that you’re a Communist?’ No, I said; just in opposition. He nodded understandingly; in opposition himself in a way. ‘You make money out of it?’ he went on. I admitted that this was so. He, too, made money. He hoped to take back £200 to Liverpool. (As it happens it was the Beatles just beginning.)
These are taken from ‘Like It Was’: The Diaries of Malcolm Muggeridge, 1982. The last sentence there shows that he’d edited/revised his diary before publication, but the Beatle quote feels unedited – something about the ‘that’ makes it sound exactly like something one of them would say.
One thing he presumably doesn’t detail in there is that he may have found Hamburg’s saucy nightlife not to his taste, but for much of his time at the BBC “the apparently saintly Malcolm Muggeridge groped incontinently”.
On seeing those allegations published, his niece wrote to the Telegraph to… er, confirm them:
His niece, who is the international president of the Malcolm Muggeridge Society, says he was reportedly nicknamed “The Pouncer” within the BBC and was also described as “a man fully deserving of the acronym NSIT – not safe in taxis”.
She said the society had “never sought to paint Muggeridge other than a man with very great gifts but also some serious flaws. The latter caused much hurt to those close to him, particularly his wife, my aunt Kitty.”
Apparently, the Malcolm Muggeridge Society really existed. I suspect ‘international president’ of having been a self-awarded title, but the organisation did appear to have global reach, counting Conrad Black and David Frost as founder members.
MM’s niece did also tell the Telegraph that his late-life conversion to evangelical Christianity transformed him – although some would argue that this also had its problematic aspects…
Still, if we hadn’t had that, we’d never have had this, so…
