"You cannot live as I have lived and not end up like this" by Terence Blacker

This spring marks the fiftieth anniversary of the publication in 1975 of a very funny book. 'Both the Ladies and the Gentlemen' was a memoir based on its author's diaries from a time in the early seventies when finding himself with no money, Donaldson took up residence with a former secretary who was now working as a call-girl in Chelsea. He thus sent several years living in a brothel happily playing the role of a 'ponce'. The front cover of the book, understandably from a commercial point of view, strongly suggests salaciousness. In fact that is the last thing this book is. It is more a farcical comedy, in which the joke is always on the author who presents himself as something of a hapless idiot. It is of course now very dated, both in its attitudes and in its many cultural and political references. But it remains a very funny read.

William Donaldson was an extraordinary man who while idiotic in many of the life choices he made, was nothing like as stupid as he liked to make out in his newspaper columns and memoirs. He died in 2005 at the age of seventy having led a life of massive ups and downs. The biography by Terence Blacker entitled 'You cannot live as I have lived and not end up like this' reads a bit like one of William Boyd's whole live novels in its account of Donaldson's friendships and acquaintances with well-known people and closeness to the centre of many social developments of his time, many not so pleasant in retrospect. He was charming, but reckless, and made as many enemies in his life as friends.

He was born into some wealth and was educated at Winchester and Cambridge. By the time he graduated his parents had both died and he inherited a large amount of money. This he proceeded to splash around in the 1960s, largely on theatrical productions that flopped. He did, however, have one massive hit in the form of 'Beyond the Fringe' which kept him going for a years until he found himself bankrupt after financing one flop too many. He lived on Ibiza for a while taking tourists around in a glass bottomed boat, before his early 70s brothel / ponce period. He then made another pile of money when he wrote 'The Henry Root Letters' and it several sequels. Again, like 'Both the Ladies and the Gentlemen', this book of spoof letters sent by a slightly bonkers reactionary businessman to well-known figures, was very much of its time but very funny. I remember rolling about laughing at it as a teenager. William, however, messed up again. He became a crack addict, and despite publishing various humorous books under different pseudonyms, wound up bankrupt again and living on housing benefit. An astonishing life story.