David Cassidy On the Web
Emma Freud: David Cassidy, my No 1 dreamboat Santa
David Cassidy was everything to Emma Freud when she was 13. So what happened 20 years later when she met him and asked him to her Christmas party?
Saturday 22 December 2012
By Emma Freud
The Guardian,
www.guardian.co.uk
Emma Freud: 'There was no one, in all of north-west London, who was as devoted a David Cassidy fan as me.' Illustration: Jackie Parsons for the Guardian
I have only ever held one proper Christmas party. It was 1998 and I was living in Notting Hill with my boyfriend and two children. As it was our last year in the house (one bedroom, two kids, son slept in the bathroom as nowhere else to go, time to move), we decided to have a final hoorah that December.
We'd asked one of the hot-dog stalls on Portobello Road to park outside the house to supply the catering (hot dogs, ver ver Christmassy) and we'd done the whole mulled wine, Christmas tree, crisps, dodgy music thing. We'd also optimistically rented a Santa outfit in the hope we could persuade someone to dress up and give out sweets to the dozen or so kids who were coming. But by the morning of the party, still no takers. The added complication was that the day of the party was also the day I was having lunch with David Cassidy. I know!
Major rewind … to me, in 1975, aged 13, putting the finishing touches to my extensive David Cassidy scrapbook, while gazing at the five David Cassidy posters on my bedroom wall (all of which had staple holes in the middle), reading my David Cassidy fanzine, listening to the seminal How Can I Be Sure on my 45s-only record player, while wearing a tank top over a cheesecloth shirt with a teardrop collar in the manner of the cover photo of David Cassidy's Greatest Hits. Donny, yes I loved him too. Michael, he was the man/boy/eunuch for my generation. Marc, I queued along with the rest of the curly haired folk – but David, he was my total and complete No 1 love-boat. There was no one, in all of north-west London, particularly the area between Swiss Cottage and St John's Wood, who was as devoted a David fan as me.
I dreamed of going to one of his concerts, being spotted during the show and afterwards summoned to the dressing room, where David and I would laugh and talk and discuss life and love and fame and family before he asked me to wait for him until I was old enough to be his. I would pause momentarily, just so that he knew I wasn't a pushover, and then passionately agree.
As it turned out, my life didn't follow the predestined route I had imagined. Eventually my first love was an 18-year-old schoolboy – and at the age of 30 I ended up with Richard Curtis, who, while perfectly charming in a ginger/writer/slippers/pyjamas sort of a way, has never sung at Wembley Arena to 10,000 hysterical, hormonal, pre-pubescent, adoring, perspiring, fainting teenagers. But it was OK. I'd totally come to terms with that.
However, five years after I'd started going out with Richard, and 20 years after I'd put the scrapbook away, a letter arrived at our door that was actually from David himself Cassidy. I remember the letter perfectly. Well, we have it framed in our loo so I read it often. He wrote to say he'd greatly enjoyed the moment in Four Weddings and a Funeral [written by Richard] where Hugh Grant said to Andie MacDowell: "In the words of David Cassidy, before he left the Partridge Family, I think I love you." And he thanked Richard particularly for having made reference to the fact that he had left the Partridge Family, therefore reminding his more challenged fans that he did move on from that seminal TV series, and also acknowledging that his career had had length.
It was, still is, the greatest letter there has ever been. And as if that wasn't enough, at the end he invited Richard and me (to be honest he didn't mention me, but he probably would have had he known how good the scrapbook had been) to have a bite to eat with him at some point. I imagine you have thrown the paper down right now in shock, awe and disbelief, but, gentle reader, pick it up again, I promise you this is all true.
Cut to the day of our Christmas party, and we are due to have our much-anticipated lunch with the astonishing 70s legend. We'd chosen a little Italian restaurant that was small without being overly intimate, delicious without being pretentious, but, most importantly, was opposite our house so we went there most days and they knew my name.
I chose my clothes that day with all the care I would have done were I still 13, and when I entered the restaurant at 1pm precisely, there sat Mr David Bruce Cassidy and the luckiest woman in the world, his wife, Sue. I feared I might faint or vomit or scream or clutch him to me, but I did none of these. I sat down gently, and quietly said "hello". And David said "hello" and then David's lucky wife, Sue, said "hello" and we were off. This may be more detail than you required, but you need to know this really did happen.
It was the best lunch I have ever had in my entire life. And to our utter delight, David Cassidy gave great David Cassidy. He told David Cassidy stories, he talked happily about the Partridge Family, and almost broke into song a couple of times. His most poignant tale took place after a sell-out show at Wembley. He'd spotted a girl at the packed after-show drinks party in his massive dressing room. She looked lovely, though was clearly shy and gentle. When she went off to the loo, he turned to his people and said three words: "Clear The Room." By the time she returned from the loo (it was a wee, I checked), there was nobody in the party apart from the man who went by the name of Mr David Cassidy. They sat, they chatted, about love and life and fame and family, and 16 years later he married her. It could have been me. I'm not even making this up.
As the main moved into pudding, and the pudding led to coffee, I began to panic that my perfect lunch was nearly over. Then suddenly, it happened. "What are you doing for the rest of the day?" David asked as his skimmed cappuccino arrived. "Oh, we're having a Christmas party at our house, with a hot-dog van outside," said Richard. Reader, I know what you're thinking right now. And yes, rest assured, I did it. "Ahem," I coughed, "We also have this Father Christmas outfit and we were rather hoping that someone could put it on and give out sweets to the children there. There are only about a dozen of them and most of them are quite well behaved." I'd said it. I'd actually said it.
"Sure," said David. Just like he would do in the Richard Curtis version of this story – only it did happen and he didn't even change his mind and two hours later he arrived at our house where I squirrelled him away into our bedroom and gave him the Santa suit to change into. This meant that two minutes later, David Cassidy was standing in my bedroom wearing only his pants. And yes, you're right – he did have to ask me to leave.
Five minutes later, with the party in full Christmassy flow, we asked our guests to be a bit hush because we had a rather special visitor. The children stopped their squawking. The adults quietened their chatter. All eyes went to the top of the stairs – and slowly down it came a very well preserved middle-aged gentleman, with the full red-and-white Santa uniform on, a pillow (from my bed!) stuffed up his jersey to make him look porky (for David has kept his figure magnificently), and a full massive billowy white beard obscuring every part of his face bar his gorgeous, gentle, brown, dewy-deep, puppy-dog eyes. "Hooray," said some kids. "You have no idea," thought I.
As he handed out packets of sweets to the small and undeserving, I watched in joy, adoring the knowledge that nobody in the room had any idea who was behind the nylon. Halfway through, I sidled up to my friend Mel and whispered: "You see the bloke in the Santa suit, who do you think he is?"
"I know who he is," she said.
"You do?" It didn't really surprise me. Mel is my age and was almost as great a Cassidy lover as me, and therefore well equipped to spot a legend through a wad of cotton wool. "It's the bloke from the hot-dog stall isn't it?"
"No, Mel," I said. "Here's a clue… 'I'm just a [beat] Daydreamer, walking in the rain."
"Eh?" said Mel.
"It's David Cassidy," said I. Mel let out a little scream. When I told Joanna she let out quite a big one.
We left the house a few months later – but not before the director of Notting Hill, Roger Michell, had chosen our blue front door as the location for Hugh Grant's flat in the movie. I pass it most days (we only moved up the road) and lots of people point at it still. I think they are saying: "That's the blue door from that film where the bloke comes out and poses for the photographers in his grey underpants." But I still look at it and think, "That's the blue door behind which David Cassidy stripped to his blue underpants in my bedroom and then dressed up as Father Christmas." The End.
