Marianne Faithfull and Her Minder

In 1976 Soho icon Henrietta Moraes became Marianne Faithfull’s minder during the singer’s comeback tour of Ireland. Henrietta had been working for the Hay-on-Wye bookshop impresario Richard Booth, helping him, in the bicentenary year of US independence, to open an American bookshop in the town’s old workhouse. It was a time when Marianne Faithfull was often a guest of Booth at his home in Hay Castle.

In April 1976, a party was held for the American ambassador to celebrate the opening of Booth’s new bookshop. The day afterwards Henrietta was fired. She recalled the occasion in her memoirs:

I was stunned. “But I’ve never worked so hard,” I stuttered.

“I simply cannot afford you, Henrietta,” he said. And that was that.

Luckily, Marianne was up in arms and when she taxed Booth with it and he said, “I cannot think of anyone who would employ Henrietta,” she replied, smart as a whip, “I will.”

A few weeks later a very nervous Marianne Faithfull, who had not performed in public for many years, began her tour. Henrietta recalled the first gig:

I peered through the stage curtains and was exceedingly glad that it wasn’t me who had to go on. Marianne and I stood in the wings waiting for her cue. As it came up, she turned to me and said, “I can’t go on.” As she spoke, she was sick all over me. I seized her by the shoulders, spun her round to face the stage and firmly booted her on. She arrived centre stage at a half-run and with her arm raised in a Nazi salute, trying to keep her balance. It went down very well with the audience. She sang rather flat but they didn’t mind at all.

The two women developed a strong bond of sympathy, which was evident nearly twenty years later in November 1994 when they shared a stage at the ICA in London to talk about their memoirs – by coincidence, their books were published at about the same time.

Speaking with great honesty, candour and good humour, they both talked their memories of Soho and the Sixties, as well as the struggles with addiction that they both had in common.

It is a good way to remember them both.