"It was the tears, I think, that first united us." Photo / Kelly Sikkema, Unsplash
OPINION:
When I heard that the stylish and elegant magazine editor Jo Sandilands had died of bowel cancer aged 79, I was very upset. For not only had Jo and I passionately loved the same man, we bonded after he died and became firm friends.
Six months before his death in 2004, my partner John Sandilands appointed Jo and me co-executors of his estate. He knew he was taking a bit of a risk bringing us together but thought there was a good chance that we would get on well and jointly oversee the smooth execution of his will.
How right he was.
Slightly wary of each other at first, it wasn’t long before we were chatting away like old mates, laughing and crying at John’s quirks and eccentricities and exchanging reminiscences over the witty, talented but often infuriating man who had, at different times, captured our hearts. For there was no overlap in the relationships; Jo and John had been divorced for many years before he and I even met, and Jo had long been happily remarried.
Josephine Brooker, as she then was, had married John, 12 years her senior, in 1965, aged 21. At the time, she was a secretary and he was already a feted, much sought-after magazine writer. They were both then working at King, a doomed attempt at a British Playboy. John immediately spotted Jo’s potential and encouraged her to apply for editorial jobs.
Within five years, she was editor of Honey, a trendy young woman’s magazine and, after that, editor of Woman, then enjoying a circulation in the millions. She had to be tough in these jobs as it was necessary to fight many battles with them upstairs, and John supported and championed her all the way.
Although very attractive to women and with many love affairs in his life, John had remained single since his 1978 divorce, and lived alone in a cluttered house surrounded by his numerous collections, which Jo and I had to sell or give away. They evoked many memories for Jo, particularly when she was confronted with his marine paintings, now to be sold at auction.
“I can remember him buying these,” she said with a wry smile, “and then I had to give them house room. Princess Diana said that with three of them in the marriage, it was rather crowded, but with us, it was the collections of model soldiers, farms, cat pictures, theatre programmes and wooden animals that made the marriage extremely crowded.”
We laughed at the dutiful holiday postcards she had sent to John’s formidable mother, Carrie. “What a good daughter-in-law I was to the old cow!” Jo remarked. Carrie had kept many secrets and it wasn’t until Jo and I went through John’s Filofax that we discovered who his father was: “A British Jew”, as described by Carrie. John had not breathed a word of this to Jo or me, even though we knew he was illegitimate. Nor had we known that he was partly Jewish.
Jo chortled over an article John had written about a horse-driven caravan holiday they had taken together. While Jo was cooking supper in the caravan, John managed to drive the whole caboodle into a hedge, bringing everything to a juddering stop. A grey ooze then seeped out from beneath the caravan door, which, as John wrote: “I at first thought was my wife’s brains. But then there seemed rather too many of them, some might think.”
Yes, you needed a good sense of humour to be John’s other half, and Jo certainly had that, to the extent that she read out the extract at John’s memorial celebration. It predictably brought the house down.
We had to have lots of meetings with banks, estate agents and solicitors and here, Jo displayed her no-nonsense characteristics, which were such a help to me. When the solicitor queried the amount we had spent on John’s memorial event, she snapped back: “He had a lot of friends.”
She was extremely touched that John had left her some money in his will, as she had not expected it. He wanted to show his appreciation of her putting up with him for so long because, while being highly amusing and excellent company, John could also be bitingly sarcastic and sink into dark moods.
Jo thought it was something chemical in his brain that made him sometimes lash out verbally and with often dire consequences. Editors who had enthusiastically welcomed him as a star writer, often sacked him only a few months later, as John had an uncanny ability to bite the hand that fed him.
Over the two years or more that it took to get probate, Jo and I also partook of many boozy lunches and dinners, trying to work out what had made John tick. Jo said that in the end, although she still loved him, she could no longer live with him. I agreed; over the 12 years of our relationship, John and I had never lived together.
Sometimes we were joined by TV producer Lavinia Warner, a close friend of John’s and his co-author of Women Beyond the Wire, the harrowing story of women Japanese prisoners of war that was later turned into the successful TV series, Tenko. Lavinia had also been the one to find John dead at his home in Barnes, south-west London.
It was the tears, I think, that first united us all. On finding John dead, Lavinia got hold of his address book and called us. Jo and I were shocked beyond belief as it was a sudden death, totally unexpected. Thank goodness, then, that John had drawn up his last will and testament only six months previously.
Jo and I also went to view John’s body at the mortuary in Putney. It was the first dead body either of us had ever seen and as we clutched hands, our first thought was: he looks so alive! She was the only mourner at his funeral, which was just a committal, at his request. Lavinia helped us to arrange the memorial service and the hundred or so guests said that they had never laughed so much, as some of John’s funniest pieces and rudest letters to editors were read out.
After the service, I went back to Jo’s house along with a few others and we continued celebrating and drinking until late in the night; perhaps not wanting to admit that this man who had lit up our lives, at the same time as being thoroughly exasperating, had gone forever.
Later, there was the question of what to do with his ashes. We decided that as John had a strong emotional connection to the sea – he had been born and brought up in Brighton – we should scatter them at sea. That meant another celebration, more champagne, and more shared memories.
Once all this was over and John’s bequests finally distributed, Jo and I continued to meet socially. She was a great party giver and I was honoured to be invited to parties at her splendid house in Putney where she lived with her second husband, David Briggs, one of the inventors of Who Wants to be a Millionaire? They had met when Jo was programme director of Capital Radio, the third of her big jobs.
Now that Jo too has gone, I am wondering how alike we were, really. We were exactly the same age, but while Jo was forging ahead with big magazine jobs unencumbered, as there was no issue from her marriage to John, I was a young mother, trying to juggle family with professional life. Jo did have a son, Matthew, when in her 40s, with her second husband. Oddly, he is 20 years younger than my older son Tom, but John had never wanted children and Jo was content to go along with this.
We were both journalists – she as an editor and me as a writer – so we had much in common and spent many hours in cosy restaurants discussing, and sometimes dissing, people we had known in the industry. We got on delightfully, as John had perhaps divined that we would and I’m sure that had we met independently of him, as we might have done, it would have been the same story.
It is often said that we are attracted to the same type of people again and again, and this was certainly true of John. He liked and admired independent career women, especially if they were high-earning, as Jo was, as he was never going to be a traditional provider.
I did not see much of Jo towards the end of her life, as she had been very ill for some time. But I am told that she insisted on leaving hospital to die peacefully at home, and never lost her spirit and sense of fun. I am proud to have known this vivacious and courageous woman who held out the warm hand of friendship to her ex-husband’s later partner at a time when it was most needed.
Kickstart the day with rich slices of brioche with cheesy bèchamel sauce and fried egg.