Mr Paparazzi. Darryn Lyons
getting any image at all that night was a miracle. Not only did the film have to be pushed to the end of extremes, but I was shooting on a 600 mm lens, hand-held, on a 15th to a 30th of a second shutter speed. Any photographers reading this will realise just how hard that is. I’ll never forget that job. It was one of the pictures I hit against all the odds.
It was a shame to see the great Nureyev pass, but I won a hatful of awards for my images. The shot inside the theatre was voted into the top of Time Life’s Pictures of the Decade award and I won the 1992 News Photographer and Press Photographer of the Year for the photos, too. Brian did an amazing job on the processing – I owe him those awards. Incredibly, The Mail’s editor of the Night and Day magazine, Christina Appleyard, didn’t use the pictures in the next edition. They have certainly been used a lot elsewhere, though.
Despite the fierce pressure, there were plenty of perks. Probably the cushiest job I ever handled for the Daily Mail involved a trip to the fantastic Eden Roc hotel in the south of France. At the time, it was the most opulent hotel I’d ever seen, and now it’s my hangout when BIG Pictures works the Cannes Film Festival. I don’t know whether the gig was ever intended as a story for The Mail or whether it was an attempt at getting a bargaining chip or even revenge. The renowned British QC George Carman was staying with a woman on Sir Donald Gosling’s boat, Leander, which was moored at Antibes. Sir David English had sent me to cover this.
I spent a month tailing Carman, watching him on the yacht through binoculars from my sun-lounge. Tough gig! None of my material was ever used, and at the end of the month I had to pay a gigantic bill – in cash, which was the only method of payment accepted by the hotel. It was about twenty grand, sterling.
You never know when a great shot is going to appear. On one of my last nights at Eden Roc, I noticed that Sting and his wife, Trudi Styler, were at the table next to me at dinner. Always with my eye on the bottom line, I took half an hour off from Carman the following morning and got some sensational shots of Sting performing his yoga routine. Those pictures got picked up everywhere. It’s important to focus on the job in hand, but I always look for the bonus, the icing on the cake, whatever you call it. I call it cash, or ‘Ka-ching!’
The Mail liked to play a little dirty at times and I covered quite a few undercover jobs that were motivated by shady politics – both internal to the paper and national – as much as by the quest for a great page lead. I was involved with a team that checked out the infamous beauty Pamella Bordes, who was linked to many important people in Britain.
The celebrity side interested me and I wanted to know more, so I befriended the night pap guy on The Mail, Alan Davidson, or ‘Bruiser’ as he was affectionately known. He was the ‘elbows man’ and looked like he’d walked off the set of The Godfather. He was a nightmare, always getting in there, getting in the way and giving everyone the shits. The opposition hated him, but he always got the picture. I used to go around with him in the evenings and just watch, listen and learn. He used to bully and bribe the back bench to get his shots in the paper – in those days he was paid by usage – and would always be either berating them or bringing them gifts.
I became Bruiser’s protégé; perhaps he thought he could take me under his wing and make something of me. Although I was interested in the celebrity side, it wasn’t the kind of thing I ever thought I’d seriously work in. I was a news man, a features guy. The modern celebrity market didn’t really exist at the time, apart for pics from night paps like Bruiser. Most of the images of famous people were wooden, posed-up shots taken at parties. The photography was not at all creative or intrusive and never upset the celebs – they had the upper hand then.
I FIRST LAID EYES on my wife-to-be, Melanie, at the Casanova Club in Mayfair. It was after the Press Photographer of the Year awards ceremony and I was with my mate, Bruiser.
As well as having the sharpest elbows in London, he was a mad casino buff. I was twenty-two and it was my first time in a casino. I walked in and there she was – a gorgeous brunette with eyes to die for. I’ll always remember her long, flowing peach dress. She was the most beautiful thing there, and casinos are pretty glamorous. Her presence seemed to have taken over the whole place. She threw the chips to me at the roulette table, and I guess it was love at first sight. I won 1200 quid – the numbers were 4, 13, 15, 17, 27 and 36 – but I left the casino thinking only about Mel. We didn’t exchange a single word, but I was smitten.
As soon as I had seen this vision, that was it for me. I was back there every night. I got hooked on the gambling, too, and did well. Mel was known as the Hoover; she was the one they brought in to clean out the high rollers when they started winning too much. I should have stayed away from her! I recruited a friendly waitress who helped me pass my phone number to Mel. I think I was a blast of fresh air compared to the ageing, wealthy foreign clientele. I think she found me amusing – the funny Australian bloke who stood out a mile in a Mayfair casino. Gradually I managed to get into the after-hours social circle – for the usual £25 black chip, of course – which was very much against the rules. I left flowers on her car in the middle of the night, romantic notes under the windscreen wipers. For the first time in my life there was a serious possibility that I was in love – whatever the hell that word means.
Though she had my number, Mel didn’t phone immediately. When she did make the call, she turned up at a barbecue party at my place in Muswell Hill with a chaperone, Steve Ward, who wanted to hit me up for information about getting work as a pap. He was a real estate guy who had boomed in the good years and then gone spectacularly bust in the lean years, and now he wanted to get photography work.
I had to win Mel over. I guess it wasn’t love at first sight for her, but she was intrigued. She was from one of the nicer council estates in Bishop’s Stortford and I went up to see her in my XJS, a purple Jag with gold stripes down the side – a fantastic car, until I smashed it into a police car after hitting black ice on the way to a Cliff Richard gig. (Thanks, Sir Cliff. I didn’t exactly love your music, but I did love that car.) I was on my best behaviour and her father and I got on very well. Over the following months we enjoyed several days out together, either golfing or watching the cricket. He would often come down to arbitrate if Mel and I had argued about anything major, but in truth he usually seemed to side with me.
Three weeks after the barbecue, Mel had a key to my flat in Muswell Hill so that she could come and go as she pleased. She introduced me to the world outside newspapers, which was something of a novelty. We had a great social life. There was always something going on. We moved in together pretty much straight away, and Mel would say that – perhaps contrary to people’s expectations – I was easy to live with. I am a very laid-back character, good company and a good cook, which she said was a huge bonus. However, she did find me to be rather messy and used to joke that I would never be seen dead using a vacuum cleaner.
One evening, she finished her shift and headed back to Muswell Hill in her red Peugeot 205. I had been out on a late job in Trafalgar Square and we went straight to bed. That night we got burgled. I have a vivid recollection of it. Even though I was half asleep, I saw the whole thing – a guy with a knife by our bed lifting watches and camera gear. Thank God I didn’t completely wake up.
The minute Mel and I got together I stopped gambling, as she was very hot on observing professional niceties. I was fine with that; I figured I had hit the jackpot anyway. She and I weren’t allowed to converse much while she was working; the laws in the UK are very stringent. After we’d known each other about six months, Mel left the job, which made things easier. The casino had asked her to move onto blackjack, which wasn’t really her thing. She has always been a grafter, just like me. Her next job was selling cellulite-reducing machines, which she lasted a day at before applying for a job at the Shiseido counter at Harrods, which she got.
Just as Mel and I became serious, so did my work commitments. I was eager to learn and so, as well as my normal shifts, I tagged along with people like Bruiser in