Fact #158544
When:
Short story:
Yoko Ono is in The Dorchester Hotel, London, England, UK, Europe, for a day of media interviews.Full article:
Johnny Black (diary entry) : It’s a funny feeling on a bright, wet day like this, with silvered sunlight slanting off the pavements, to step out of an ordinary house in West London, knowing that you are about to meet one of the wealthiest, most famous, most enigmatic women in the world.
Yoko Ono is here in London and I’m off to interview her for the Sunday Times. After the tube ride from Shepherd’s Bush, I walk from Marble Arch down Park Lane to the Dorchester, where I have been instructed to ask for Mrs Brown in Room 120. The last time I was here was to interview Abba for Smash Hits.
Yoko’s press representative tells me things are running behind schedule so I’ll have an hour to wait, which is spent chatting to the Sunday Times photographer Duncan Baxter and drinking coffee.
Eventually we are escorted up to meet Mrs Brown. I am thoroughly frisked at her door by a burly bodyguard because she clearly lives in fear of being shot, as her husband John Lennon was.
When I meet Yoko herself, she is charming, very composed, very alert and bright. She spoke at length about John, their son Sean, her impressions of Liverpool, her childhood in Japan, her fears and hopes for the future.
She was polite, helpful, chain-smoked, insisted on wearing dark glasses for the photograph because, ‘At least they cover two-thirds of my face, which is convenient.’
When I asked her to write something in my diary, she wrote, ‘Let’s have a dream, love, Yoko Ono.’
I liked her but when I left, I felt I knew no more about her than I had known when I arrived. Maybe someone like Yoko has a mythical existence, an image which cannot be dispelled by meeting her for an hour, especially under such artificial circumstances.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
P.S. Yoko had her assistant note down my name and address and for a couple of years after doing the interview I received a personally signed Christmas Card from her.
Tweet this Fact
Yoko Ono is here in London and I’m off to interview her for the Sunday Times. After the tube ride from Shepherd’s Bush, I walk from Marble Arch down Park Lane to the Dorchester, where I have been instructed to ask for Mrs Brown in Room 120. The last time I was here was to interview Abba for Smash Hits.
Yoko’s press representative tells me things are running behind schedule so I’ll have an hour to wait, which is spent chatting to the Sunday Times photographer Duncan Baxter and drinking coffee.
Eventually we are escorted up to meet Mrs Brown. I am thoroughly frisked at her door by a burly bodyguard because she clearly lives in fear of being shot, as her husband John Lennon was.
When I meet Yoko herself, she is charming, very composed, very alert and bright. She spoke at length about John, their son Sean, her impressions of Liverpool, her childhood in Japan, her fears and hopes for the future.
She was polite, helpful, chain-smoked, insisted on wearing dark glasses for the photograph because, ‘At least they cover two-thirds of my face, which is convenient.’
When I asked her to write something in my diary, she wrote, ‘Let’s have a dream, love, Yoko Ono.’
I liked her but when I left, I felt I knew no more about her than I had known when I arrived. Maybe someone like Yoko has a mythical existence, an image which cannot be dispelled by meeting her for an hour, especially under such artificial circumstances.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
P.S. Yoko had her assistant note down my name and address and for a couple of years after doing the interview I received a personally signed Christmas Card from her.