RONALD SEARLE INFLUENCED ME IN EVERY ASPECT OF MY LIFE

ONE OF MY FAVOURITE CARTOONS

My whole life, I realise has been based on  Ronald Searle cartoons. The way I dress, think and live. The way I talk, I am told I am witty, very over the top, and look like a cartoon.  I am making my first film, The Gun, The Cake and The Buttterfly, and that has even been influenced too, by the great cartoonist.  It tells of the story of me growing up in Wiltshire, getting beaten and up to no good. In it I only wear black,  a mixture of a school girl combined with "The" Audrey Hepburn  black Givenchy dress.  
Half sexy school girl with the "French Teacher" stamped in my wardrobe. There are whips, rulers and sunglasses. Ties, white shirts, and only mini skirts. I hardly ever wear trousers unless they are jodhpurs. As a fashion editor for Genlux Magazine I have to sometimes break that mould, but it is hard. It was stamped in my brain long ago.  I once remember my Grandfather, Sidney Gilliat say "You look like a funeral gnome"  I can still see him chuckling at my black hats.

A STILL OF ME FROM THE GUN, THE CAKE AND THE BUTTERFLY

Ronald Searle, possibly the most brilliant cartoonist ever, has influenced me without even having met me.  My Grandfather Sidney Gilliat, as readers will well know, wrote the screen play based on Ronald Searle's book on school girls called St Trinian's.  Searle is famous for saying "If it gets popular kill it" He felt a subject only was interesting in it's growth.  My Grandfather felt the same and said to me once "God forbid, I am remembered for St Trinian's" When he died the title of one obituary was "The Master of St Trinian's dies" He would have been horrified as Searle would have been. He had done a body of work which was also incredible. Something funny happened, the morning that the obituary came out, my mother was sitting on the loo where the drawings were, and they flew across the room, she said, and landed in the bath unbroken.

I loved these drawings. I so wanted them, but of course Mummy sold them without telling me otherwise I would have them today. Instead I bought all the collection I could of  posters from Christies in South Kensington, and huge costs.
However both these great men were wrong.  I still receive monies from the films. These school girl stories are still as modern today as they were yesterday, still as watchable. Whilst they are not quite as popular, they are relevant. They tell the stories of little girls and bigger girls up to no good, at boarding schools in England. They are thoroughly English. Harmless good fun. They are light with a not so hidden darkness. 

GEMMARTERTON IN ST TRINIANS

RUPERT EVERETT IN ST TRINIAN's

ST TRINIAN's STREET CREDIBILITY INFLUENCING FASHION

Brought to life now by Rupert Everett who plays the head mistress and Barnaby Thompson who is the producer.
Searle worked for most papers and magazines building his career up from starting it at a Prisoner of War camp in Singapore.  He recorded the daily life there and knew he would survive. He also recorded the trials of Eichmann, a tiny man, who he said did not see that killing 15,000 was his responsibility and that he was just carrying out orders as a Nazi in World War 11.

FIGHT THE GOOD FIGHT
With women as sexy as Joan Collins to Gemma Atherton these tales will continue
Let's have another glass of Champagne to these brilliant men, Ronald Searle, Sidney Gilliat, Frank Launder, Rupert Everitt, Barnaby Thompson, for keeping truth alive.