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Private Notes
David Harvey is a cowboy, working high in the Colorado Rockies; until four years ago he was with the Metropolitan Mounted Police and living at Parsons Green in London. Peter Vanson, also once with the London police, is still a policeman - on patrol in Watts, one of the most dangerous areas in the USA. A few hundred miles south in San Diego lives Vikram Khalsa - once Victor Briggs, lead guitarist of the Animals. He is now a Sikh and a plumber, and sings a different song. Ken Crutchlow, an East Ender who was labelled a "smart alec" at school, travelled round the world before settling in the wine country north of San Francisco, where he imports old London taxis and sells them as toys.
Joan Collins is an international phenomenon. She tells Whicker about her life and work in Los Angeles, and about her role as Alexis in Dynasty. Jane Deknatel, a real-life Alexis, produces her own films and talks with passion (and yet with a certain sadness) about the changing role of women in American society. Mike London is a professional poker-player in Las Vegas; he clears $60,000 a year - "Americans love beating the British" he says - "they've never forgiven us for the colonies!" Rachel, Jill and Suzanne are dancers at one of Vegas's vast casino-hotel's shows. They love America - 'but we're not here for the men!' Just along the strip a former GI bride from
Coventry, Mavis Okerlund, is Marriage Director at the Little Church of the West, the ultimate in assembly-line weddings. One client has been back 11 times.
Richard Wrigley has some forthright thoughts on America, and in particular on business and sex. At 38, with no financial background, he's creating in Manhattan a million-dollar brewery as well as a vast ice-rink in New York's Central Park. He has no bank account and no credit rating but says thousands of dollars have gone through his mattress. Brendan Fearon, with a BA from Manchester University, is also working in Central Park - driving a horse-drawn carriage - and experiencing some of the romance himself. When most of the muggers are in bed, Richard Lord, who lives with a pet eel, takes the 4.00 am subway to Wall Street - not to a bank but to the Fulton Fish Market to pursue his obsession.
Ralph Murphy had produced 300 records before making the journey from Saffron Walden in Essex to Nashville in Tennessee. Along with Roger Cook, who's written more hits than anyone except Paul McCartney, and Michael Snow from Liverpool, he's part of the British contingent bridging the gap between pop and country and western. In Palm Beach, Whicker meets Guy and Hilary Wyatt who started a landscaping business; Bill Burt who left the Scottish Daily Mail in 1961 and now edits one of America's outrageous tabloids; and Pam Symes, a widow who tells of the other side of life in the millionaires' enclave.
Dr Geoffrey Stanford is an ecologist from Ipswich who sees himself as "saving Texas for the Texans." Whicker looks at Dallas through the eyes of a butler, Stuart Heasman ("I want to merge, to blend - but with my accent it's impossible"), and David Cotterill, Maitre d' at the Mansion Hotel on Turtle Creek where a glass of champagne costs $25. One Brit has both merged and made money: his Union Jack Stores in Dallas and Houston offer the homosexual market the latest and tightest in jeans and T-shirts - "England's like a foreign country to me now..."
The Rev Hugh Hildesley is Rector at the socially desirable Church of Heavenly Rest on New York's Fifth Avenue. For eight years he was an auctioneer at Sotheby's, USA. He is full of praise for the role ordained women play in America: Tthe sooner Britain catches up, the better." Other successful Brits living in New York include Shirley Lord, a Vogue editor: "you learn not to be a shrinking violet"; the actor Jim Dale; Philip Kingsley, a multimillionaire trichologist - for, by happy chance, eight out of ten Americans have dandruff; and David Lloyd-Jacob, who has borrowed to start a business and now pays interest of $10,000 a day. "More than anywhere else in the world, New York tests you... There is a sense of lurking danger, but we love it."
Mick Luckhurst is the envy of every American boy. He's kicker for the Atlanta Falcons and earns over $200,000 a year: "Here you can't play a good game, and lose." Clive Wilson, Trevor Richards and Chris Burke are keeping traditional jazz alive in the very spot where it was born, New Orleans. Around the corner is the Useful Shop - a hardware store run by Joan Norris; she has an Oxford degree and once worked at the Cheltenham "Spy Centre"; her husband left her and their two children penniless: "There is a charity hospital, so I've somewhere to go..." Dr Paul Buisseret passionately defends the American medical system: "In British hospitals intensive care is the bed next to Sister's desk...!"
Diana McLellan is a Washington Times gossip columnist. "The Ear", as she's called, came from Norfolk in the 50s. A prime target for gossip is the White House - President Reagan's advisor on the Middle East is an ex-Brit from Gravesend, Dr Geoffrey Kemp; and the State Department spokesman came from Wales, John Hughes. At George Washington University the Professor of American History is Englishman Marcus Cunliffe. To complete this group of Washington aliens, the former editor of The Times, Harold Evans - "I feel angry and proud about Britain at the same time; here they think it's a quaint, sleepy country torn by incipient civil war between the classes..."
Dawn Langley Simmons emigrated from Kent as a man, became a woman, and made the first mixed marriage in South Carolina. She is one of the programme's five lone women survivors. A divorcee, Elizabeth Daoust, is Head of Protocol for the House Foreign Affairs Committee in Washington. Hilary Brookes, a GI bride, lives with her son in New Orleans: "It's like living on a volcano - you just get used to it..." Mary Hayes is a black social worker who, after 25 years, wants to go home to work in her native Liverpool; but the former wife of James, Pamela Mason, has no regrets about leaving England - "I'd be shot before I'd go back."
The last of ten films in which Alan Whicker talks to a wide range of Brits who've gone to live and work in the USA. Sir Gordon White has, in ten years, turned $3,000 into a company worth a cool billion: "They only understand excellence in this country, you can't get by with mediocrity." America may be the land of opportunity, but when the axe falls it can be a cruel place - as Colin and Veronica Draper experienced. New York is also the home of a Scot, Albert Watson, one of America's most successful photographers. Vanessa Angel arrived in Manhattan at the age of 17. Three years later, she is a top model with an income of $200,000 a year. But, like many Brits in this series, she still has reservations about life with Uncle Sam: "They don't care about the quality of life - just how many Porsches they have..."
