Jack Leslie Interview, copyright Victoria Mary Clarke 2001-10-08 2500 words.

Horror of horrors.  My younger man has dumped me.  He says I’m too old for him and his parents don’t approve.  There’s only one thing for it.  Find a much older man, preferably one with no parents.  Sir Jack Leslie could be the very man.  He’s eighty five and a bachelor and even better, he owns his own castle, Castle Leslie,  in Monaghan.  He’s obviously no ageist old bore, either, because he’s off to Ibiza, to check out Manumission, for his birthday treat.  Manumisson, for those of you who don’t know these things, is an impossibly hip one-nighter, at Privilege, which is the world’s biggest club, according to the Guinness Book of Records.  Apparently Jack’s a regular at the discos in Monaghan, too, since he took up clubbing, three years ago.  To be perfectly honest, I’m thirty five and I have been feeling old, of late, so I would have said my clubbing days were over, but I figure if Jack can do it, I can do it too.
          I’ve arrived in Ibiza, my poor heart is in shreds, and to top it all, it’s pissing rain.  My hotel, where I’m supposed to meet Jack later, is definitely the second worst hotel I’ve ever stayed in.  The worst was in Bangladesh, but that’s another story.  Anyway, my bedroom here is the size of my walk-in-wardrobe, at home, with a nasty little single bed and a view of the karaoke bar, across the road.  When you see Ibiza on telly, it’s always sunny and everyone is always toned and tanned, in sparkly threads and cool shades.  I’m walking down Sunset Strip, now, in the direction of the famous West End and it looks like Bray in February, here.  A few pale, plumpish girls with horrible cellulite are bravely displaying their thighs, under umbrellas, and a couple of Irish lads in baggy shorts are striding towards me, determinedly clutching pints of lager.  I’m too depressed to move, but I have to go shopping for something to wear to Manumission, because I’m going to be on telly.  Jack and his lovely niece, Sammy are being documentaried, by RTE, and I can’t possibly be on telly without getting dolled up a bit.
          The West End is like O’ Connell street, chip shops, amusement arcades and souvenir shops.  It’s full of Britishers, getting tanked up for tonight.  I accidentally just discovered a drug shop, though.  Unfortunately, they only sell legal stuff, made out of herbs, but I’m willing to try anything, at this point.  So I’ve purchased something called an ‘Exciter” which Wolfgang, the owner, has assured me will be just exactly like an E, but perfectly legal.  Afterwards, optimistically, I buy a red, stretchy dress.  In the shop, the DJ plays a song called “This is the True House Music.’  The shop assistant sings along, in a Spanish accent.
          Back at the hotel, I ask the manager if it would be at all possible to transfer to a room with a sea view.  He says it’s out of the question, single rooms don’t have sea views.  I burst into tears and run upstairs to my karaoke view, to bawl my eyes out.  Having pulled myself together, I’m heading down for a lonely buffet dinner, included in the five thousand pesetas room rate, when I bump into Sammy Leslie, who invites me to dine with her and Jack.  I gratefully accept.,
          Jack Leslie walks into the bar and orders a whiskey.  He’s enormously dapper, for a clubber, in a well cut grey suit, with a discreet tie and amethyst cuff-links.  I was expecting a shell suit and Nike trainers.  His eyes are blue and bright, and he shakes my hand firmly, smiling.  ‘Delighted to meet you.’  A wonderfully posh accent. “Do you live here?”  I tell him no, thankfully I don’t.  And compliment him on the fabulousness of his cuff-links.  “Yes, yes.  They are rather lovely, aren’t they?  Had them for fifty years, still haven’t lost them.” 
          We drive to Ibiza town, for dinner at El Devino’s, which is a famous restaurant.  When we arrive, it looks closed, and we drive round and round in circles, trying to find the way in.  Dangerously close to the water’s edge.  “Almost drove into the Thames, one night ,”  Jack says.  ‘My mother was driving.  Have a look, she said, and see if there’s something behind me.  There was three inches between us and the river.’
          Jack lets me sit in the front, with Sammy, while we drive around in the rain, looking for a restaurant.  He says I can chat more comfortably, from there.  Ibiza town is much more glamorous than where we’re staying, full of designer clothes and diamonds.  Kate Moss loves it here and so does Jade Jagger, but we haven’t run into them, yet.  The place we find to eat only does sandwiches, or lasagne, but Jack’s already sat down and ordered, so we decide to stay.  We sit outside, in the pissing rain and order sandwiches and a bottle of wine.  I’m getting wet and cross.  Jack doesn’t mind the rain, or the sandwiches.  “Isn’t it just wonderful, to be able to eat outside?’  He shimmers with serenity.  He was a prisoner of war, in Germany, and they only got a thin soup, twice a day, to live on. So he appreciates  the little comforts.  I notice he eats very slowly.  And very little.  “I  have a mega-colon,’ he says.  “It’s extremely rare.  I have to be very careful to chew my food thoroughly.”  He doesn’t believe  that stuffing oneself is healthy, which could be why he’s slender and energetic.  Me and Sammy stuff ourselves, anyway.
          Today’s Sunday, and the sun has come out.  The RTE film crew have arrived and they’ve set up on the beach, where we’re having breakfast.  “Just act natural,” the director says. ‘Why did we agree to this?’ Sammy asks.  She’s got the shakes, from the coffee.  Jack’s not the tiniest bit ruffled.  Do you like being on television?  I ask.  ‘ Oh yes,” he says, charmingly.  ‘Very much indeed.’  A man after my own heart, I tell him. 
We’re drinking Sangria, now, in the sunshine, people are sunbathing topless and the sound system plays chilled Balearic House.  I pop a herbal ecstasy tablet and lend Jack my sunblock, he looks a little pink. “I haven’t been to the beach for twenty five years,’ Jack says.  ‘It’s not the same, in Ireland.” He’s contemplating a swim, today.  When he was a child, he says, his mother swam in a bathing dress.  Not like these topless ladies.
We have to toast each other, repeatedly, for the cameras.  And make conversation.  “What  shall we say?’  Sammy asks.  “Just have a normal conversation,’ the director says.  I ask Jack to tell me how to stay fit, when I’m eighty five.      
“Dancing  keeps me spruce,” he assures me.  “As long as I don’t do it for long, just in spurts.  I do exercises on my bed, every morning, too.  Bicycling in the air and touching  my toes.  It only takes seven or eight minutes.’
Sammy says he’ll walk for miles, at home.  “We’re  designed to walk,’ he says.  Jack’s father, Shane Leslie once walked the sixty miles from his estate in Donegal to Castle Leslie, in an evening, and got there for breakfast.
The dancing doesn’t tire you?  I enquire.
‘No, I think it’s good for the liver,’ Jack says.  “Shakes your liver up.  They used to ride in Hyde Park, in my grandparent’s day.  They were called the liver brigade.’ 
Sammy agrees.  “Desmond, my father, would go riding, if he felt liverish.  He rode until he was in his seventies.’
“I thought I might live to be seventy eight,’ Jack says.
You seem to have a real enthusiasm for life, I say, impressed.  Perhaps that’s why you’ve lived longer.
“Yes, I do have a zest for life.  You don’t want to rust.”
He’s American, of course, maybe that’s why.  Jack’s mother, Marjorie, was American and he was born in New York.
“ I’m very at home in America,’ he says.
‘But you’re at home in Italy, and in Ireland too,” Sammy says.
“Yes.  I’m international.  A chameleon.  My father and his brother had pet chameleons, you know.  They’re stuffed, up in the Nursery.”  Sammy seizes the conversational opportunity.  “You had a pet chicken, as well, didn’t you?”
“Yes, a great cosy fat hen.  I kept her in my bedroom and trained her to fly out of the window.”
“What  would have happened, if she didn’t fly?”  Jack looks thoughtful.
‘Poor thing, she would have come down with a bump, I suppose.”
‘Did your mother’s monkey not try to throw you out of the window, when you were a baby?”
“Really?  I don’t remember.”
Jack’s aunt Olive kept a parrot, down in the kitchen, with the servants.  “One day, she brought it up to the drawingroom,” he says, “It was such a dear.  It was put on the piano, in it’s cage.  And every time she rang a bell, the parrot would say ‘The old bitch can wait!”
          The director compliments Jack on his beret.  He looks pleased.  ‘Yes, I have quite an affection for it.”  He answers all the questions politely, graciously, but he doesn’t volunteer information.  He glances at me and Sammy, while he’s being interviewed, like a schoolboy, being interrogated by the teacher.  What will appeal to him most, about the clubs in Ibiza?
          “I like the deep, boom boom drumming, that gets in your bones,’ he says. 
“When they sing, I can’t dance.  It brings me back to earth.  Instead of being up in the clouds.  I just like the beat, the boom boom.”
‘Does your heartbeat  follow the beat?”  Sammy asks.
“It’s connected with that,  somehow.  Everything has rhythm, when you think of it, even walking.”
How do you feel, when you’re dancing?  I ask.
‘I feel rather elated.  Drunk, without being drunk.  I recommend it.”
Desmond, Jack’s brother used to run a disco in Castle Leslie.  He called it Annabel’s on the Bog. The director says the noise would bother him.  Jack doesn’t mind the noise.
‘The more noisy it is, the more I love it.  It penetrates you and you practically lose your identity.  You just become part of the noise.  And you can’t talk, which is a great relief.  You don’t have to make conversation, you just wave at people and that’s it.”
“You don’t like to make conversation?’  Jack looks bemused.
‘Not when I’m dancing,” he says, reasonably.
Now we’re at Space, where there’s a daytime club.  There’s a queue of beautiful people outside, in fabulously fashionable clothes.  They stare at Jack.  It costs eight thousand pesetas to get in.  “Forty pounds?”  says Jack.   ‘It’s only six pounds, in Monaghan.”  People cheer as we walk in.  They clap and come up to him and shake hands.  He rushes onto the dancefloor and leaps around, wildly, waving his arms in the air.  The crowd join in.  People glance admiringly at me and at Sammy, as if we’ve arrived with a mega-celeb.  I try and dance with Jack, but I can’t keep up.  I’m sweating copiously.  But when we have to leave, I don’t want to stop dancing.  This is obviously highly addictive.  Either that, or my herbal E is working.
Later, we visit Bar M, which is owned by the brothers who started Manumission, Mike and Andy Mc Kay.  Their family comes from Monaghan.  Jack and I are filmed, having a whiskey at the bar and everyone stares.  Gorgeous girls keep kissing Jack and young men shake hands with him.  They tell him he’s cool. Outside Pasha, the next club, someone’s making a film about a  girl who inherits a night-club.  Everywhere we go, people are filming.  Inside, Jack dances with a girl in a bikini, with a diamante choker.  I dance with a black man, in a sharp suit and stiletto heels.  When I’m exhausted, Jack’s still dancing.  I persuade Sammy we should go to bed now, and we leave.  She says I’m a wimp.
It’s Monday night.  I’m still hungover from last night and I’m still broken-hearted and I don’t want to do anything except lie in bed and be miserable.  But I’m not allowed to. We have to go to Manumission.  Jack’s so excited, I feel guilty for not being more enthusiastic and I force myself to look forward to it.  Outside the hotel, the  RTE man is explaining to Jack about the mike.
“If you need to go to the loo, just remember that it’s there.”
“The loo.  Right.  I’ll remember.”
Are you looking forward to it, Jack? I say.
“Yes.  What’s that?”
“It’s a tape-recorder,’ I say, apologetically.
“Oh, the tape-recorder!’  He giggles.  “I am looking forward to it, yes.  I expect a very loud disco.”
And it’s worth coming all the way to Ibiza for that?
“Yes, for a whole year, I’ve been longing to come.” 
 “They’ve  told us it’s going to be extra loud.” The sound man says.
“Well,  that’s what I love.”
“I worry about my ears”, says the sound man.’
‘Does it hurt your ears?  That’s annoying.’ Jack seems genuinely concerned.
The director yells “Action!”  Jack and Sammy walk towards the car.  Keep it lively, the conversation, he says.
Now we’re at Manumission.  It’s so big, we can’t find the door.  Sammy says it’s like cold water, enjoyable once you get into it.  ‘I love it,” says Jack.
Is Jack the oldest person you’ve had here? I ask.
“No way, “ says Andy.  ‘We’ve had a few ninety year olds. It’s not ageist, here in Ibiza.”
Jack’s going on stage now, with Becky and Clare who are wearing sailor outfits, chewing gum and practicing their moves.  The man introduces Jack as Lord Leslie, who’s eighty five, and the crowd go wild.  He says he hopes they’ll be patient while he dances for them.  The music soars and Jack leaps around, delightedly.  I can’t help feeling good.  It’s impossible not to.  Everyone cheers, when he’s finished.
On the way to the VIP bar, afterwards, some girls are tickling people  with forks made from copper wire.
What are these called?  I ask them.
‘These are Angel fingers”, they say. Jack and Sammy and I sit in chairs and get tickled.  Most relaxingly.  It costs seven hundred pesetas, but they do it free, for Jack.  A cute male dancer asks for a freebie.  “It makes me feel serene,’ he says, and kisses my hand, deliciously.
In the VIP bar, we watch a trapeze artist and a fire-eater.  Then a beautiful man, gets up on the podium and strips down to a g-string.  It has to be stuffed, we say.  That couldn’t possibly be real.  He unpeels the g-string and waves it about.  He has the biggest dick I’ve ever seen.  Unfeasibly large.  “He does have a fine figure,” Jack says.  “So he can get away with it.”
For the finale, millions of balloons are released and the sun comes up, simultaneously.  The good vibes reverberate  throughout the club.  I smile at Jack.  He smiles at me.  We’ve danced until we can’t move, but nobody wants to leave.  There’s nothing now, but the sunrise and the music and the good vibes.  I seem to have forgotten all about being too old and unlovely.  Maybe all broken-hearted lovers should hang out with Jack Leslie.
Castle Leslie tours with Jack available to guests, also regular trips to the local discos.  Tel; 047-88109 email www.castle-leslie.ie