God Save Joe Orton

Joe Orton anachronistically wearing a 

Seditionaries Prick Up Your Ears T-shirt

in a photo by George Elam (1967) 

 

'The kind of people who always go on about whether a thing is in good taste 

invariably have very bad taste.'

 

 

I. 

 

Remembered primarily as a playwright who came to a sticky end at the hands of his lover, Joe Orton was a gay, working class English writer who, in a brief but brilliant public career lasting from 1964 until his murder in 1967, outraged and amused audiences with his scandalous black comedies, characterised by a mix of cynicism and sauciness [1].  

 

 

II. 

 

After leaving school, Orton got a job as an office junior whilst also developing an interest in the performing arts, joing a number of am-dram societies in his home town of Leicester. He obviously showed promise, as, in November 1950, he was offered a scholarship at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, which he took up the following spring.   

 

It was at RADA that Orton met Kenneth Halliwell, seven years his senior, and they formed a strong romantic relationship, moving into a West Hampstead flat together (shared with two other students). 

 

After graduating, they collaborated on a number of novels. However, as these failed to set the literary world alight (or even find a publisher), Orton and Halliwell decided it might be best to write separately, scraping by as best they could on benefits and monies earned from part-time jobs, whilst amusing themselves with various pranks; such as removing books from their local library in order to modify them (i.e., deface the covers with comically surreal images and additional text), before returning them to the shelves [2].   

 

They were eventually nicked by the police and charged with larceny and damage to property deemed to be wilfully malicious in nature. After pleading guilty at Old Street magistrates (in May 1962), each received a six-month custodial sentence (and a £2 fine). Interestingly, whilst Halliwell hated being in jail and attempted suicide, Orton seemed to enjoy himself and find inspiration. His career as a powerful and subversive writer arguably has its origins in his time behind bars and shortly after his release he wrote Entertaining Mr Sloane [3]. 

 

 

III.

 

The unduly harsh nature of the prison sentence, which Orton suspected was due to the fact that he and Halliwell were queers, brought home to him the fact that corrupt priggishness and hypocrisy still exercised its power and authority in the UK, even after the Chatterley Trial: 

 

"It affected my attitude towards society. Before I had been vaguely conscious of something rotten somewhere, prison crystallised this. The old whore society really lifted up her skirts and the stench was pretty foul." [4]

 

Orton's next performed work was Loot (1965); a dark two-act work that satirises social and religious attitudes to death, as well as the integrity of the police. It opened to severe criticism, but, after numerous edits and rewrites, a London production in the autumn of 1966 received rave reviews, several awards, and established Orton's reputation. He was even able to sell the film rights for £25,000 (that's over half-a-million nicker in today's money and was a record figure at the time).     

 

 

IV. 

 

Orton's final play, What the Butler Saw, was a clever modern farce that he completed writing in July 1967, one month before his death [5]. It opened at the Queen's Theatre, London, on 5 March 1969 and was met with a hostile audience reaction; boos and cries of rubbish were heard coming from the balcony and some people walked out, protesting the play's raunchy character and obvious contempt for authority.

 

There is, finally, one more work I would like to mention; Up Against It - an unproduced film script written in 1967 for the Beatles, who were then at the height of their fame. 

 

After submitting the script to their manager, Brian Epstein, it was returned to Orton following a long period of silence and without comment. It's anarchic, sexually explicit, and subversive tone was deemed too potentially damaging to the Beatles' carefully managed public image and inappropriate for a mainstream movie audience [6]. 

 

In fact, the dark and chaotic script might have better suited Malcolm McLaren's Sex Pistols ...

 

 

V.   

 

It's not wrong to consider Orton a defining figure (and diarist) of London in the 1960s; his work and lifestyle embodied the rebellious and sexually liberated spirit of the counterculture during that era. 

 

But, having said that, I can't help thinking of him as more of a trickster-punk than a peace-loving hippie - even if he did have a Beatles song played at his funeral. And Malcolm McLaren was a great admirer, considering Orton an inspiration for the punk aesthetic that he and Vivienne Westwood had created in their shop at 430 King's Road.   

 

Thus it is that Orton's name appears on the right side (literally and figuratively) of the 'You're Gonna Wake Up' manifesto (1974). And thus it is that, in 1979, McLaren and Westwood produced the 'Prick Up Your Ears' shirt for Seditionaries, which comes with a quotation taken from Orton's diary (I write in more detail about this shirt in a post that can be accessed by clicking here). 

 

As Paul Gorman notes, for McLaren, Orton was a "remorseless cultural provocateur" [7] and a kindred spirit; someone who drew inspiration (as he did) from the gutter and delighted in the prospect of fucking the rich up the arse.    

  

 

Notes

 

[1] The comparison with Oscar Wilde is often made and it's not an unreasonable comparison to make; both used wit to expose the moral hypocrisies of their respective societies, often focusing on the absurdity of authority. Writing in the more permissive 1960s, rather than the Victorian 1890s, allowed Orton to be more explicitly transgressive than Wilde, though I'm not sure he was more anarchic or provocative.

      For a critical essay on this pair of queer iconoclasts, see John Bull, 'What the butler did see: Joe Orton and Oscar Wilde', in Francesca Coppa (ed.), Joe Orton: A Casebook (Routledge, 2002), pp. 45-60. 

 

[2] In their defence, Orton and Halliwell were protesting what they regarded as an appalling selection of books; endless shelves of rubbish, as they put it. See Ilsa Colsell's Malicious Damage: the Defaced Library Books of Kenneth Halliwell and Joe Orton (Donlon Books, 2013). 

      And see also the excellent article by Jonathan Jones titled 'Joe Orton's defaced library books and the death of rebellious art', in The Guardian (14 Oct 2011): click here. Jones argues that their amusing (if somewhat juvenile) defacement of library books was "a glorious rejection of the austerity and ordinariness that still set the British tone in 1962" and anticipated the manner in which the Sex Pistols scandalised a moribund nation in the following decade.  

      Amusingly, the book covers Orton and Halliwell vandalised have since become a valued part of the Islington Local History Centre collection and some are exhibited in the Islington Museum (i.e., they have been recuperated by the Spectacle). A collection of the book covers is also available online at the Joe Orton Gallery: click here.  

 

[3] Joe Orton (1964) as quoted on joeorton.org: click here. 

 

[4] The three-act play Entertaining Mr Sloane premiered at the New Arts Theatre (London) on 6 May 1964, produced by Michael Codron. Reviews ranged from praise to outrage, with one critic for The Times declaring that it made his blood boil more than any other British play in the last decade. The play was transferred to Wyndham's Theatre in the West End at the end of June and then to the Queen's Theatre in October, and Orton was hailed as a promising new talent. 

 

[5] On 9 August 1967, Halliwell bludgeoned 34-year-old Orton to death at their home in Islington with multiple hammer blows to the head. Halliwell then killed himself with an overdose of Nembutal. It seems likely that Orton had wanted to terminate their relationship (albeit not in such a literal fashion). 

 

[6] The screenplay was filled with what was termed outlaw sexuality and it should be recalled that homosexuality had only (partially) been decriminalised in July of 1967. Paul McCartney would later admit that the Beatles didn't wish to do the film because it was gay and they were not.  

      Interestingly, in 1979, John Lydon initiated a High Court case against Malcolm McLaren and his management company, Glitterbest. While the primary goal was to reclaim misappropriated royalties and the rights to the Sex Pistols name, Rotten also wanted to make clear his objection to the salacious and immoral elements contained in the script upon which the film that eventually became The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (1980) had been based. Arguing that the script portrayed him and other members of the band in a defamatory and harmful light, Rotten also made it clear that he had no wish to be associated with infamous figures including Jack the Ripper, Myra Hindley and Great Train Robber Ronnie Biggs. Nor, indeed, did he approve of any scenes involving extreme sexual and violent content. 

 

[7] Paul Gorman, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), p. 426.  

  

 

To read a sister post to this one - God Save Jean Genet (2 Feb 2026) - please click here. 

 

Bonus video: a short clip of Joe Orton being interviewed on The Eamon Andrews Show (ABC Weekend TV, 23 April, 1967): click here. A decade later, Andrews' co-presenter on the Thames TV show Today, Bill Grundy, would interview the Sex Pistols, who weren't prepared to play along in such a charming manner as Orton.  

 

 

Notes From the Gutter on Joe Orton's Fur Coat and the Seditionaries Prick Up Your Ears Shirt

Joe Orton's fur coat and the 

Seditionaries Prick Up Your Ears shirt [1]

   

I. 

 

In January 1967, Joe Orton's theatrical agent, Peggy Ramsay [2], bought him a dark grey faux fur coat designed by Hardy Amies for Hepworths [3]. 

 

Whether intended as a belated Christmas gift, or simply an act of mid-winter kindness, it's a fabulous-looking thing that I would be more than happy to wear, knowing as I do that twenty years later the coat was worn by Gary Oldman playing the part of Orton in Prick Up Your Ears (1987) [4]. 

 

And knowing as I do too that previously the coat was mentioned on a Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood designed shirt for Seditionaries (one which also borrowed its name from John Lahr's definitive biography of Orton).

 

 

II. 

 

I have to confess, the gay orgy scene depicted - which McLaren adapted from an image found on a T-shirt he purchased from a sex shop in LA [5] - is not really my cup of tea, but, as Miss Brodie would say in her best Edinburgh voice, for those who like that sort of thing - and regard the word 'ears' as an anagram - then that is the sort of thing they like.

 

More exciting to me than the image - to which McLaren added a splash of colour and a few other minor details in order to punk it up - is the fact that underneath the scene is a short text in the form of a dialogue reproduced from Orton's diary which reads:   

 

"'You look very pretty in that fur coat you're wearing', Oscar said as we stood on the corner before going our separate ways. I said, 'Peggy bought it me. It was thirteen pounds fifteen.' 'Very cheap,' Michael White said. 'Yes, I've discovered I look better in cheap clothes.' 'I wonder what the significance of that is?' Oscar said. 'I'm from the gutter,' I said. 'And don't you ever forget it because I won't.'" [6] 

 

As Paul Gorman notes in his reading of this text: "Orton's response to White, thought McLaren, expressed punk attitude to a T." [7] 

 

Wilde was probably right to say that some look at the stars (i.e. aspire to the highest ideals and have the capacity for hope), but others, like Orton, and McLaren, and so many other artists, draw inspiration from the gutter itself and the base materials found therein that are "external and foreign to ideal human aspirations" [8]. 

 

Notes

 

[1] I think I'm right in saying that Joe Orton's fur coat was last given an outing as part of retrospective exhibition marking the 40th anniversary of his death and featuring a collection of his personal belongings. Entitled 'Ortonesque', the exhibition was held at Leicester's New Walk Museum and Art Gallery (March 3 - May 7 2007). The coat was eventually sold at auction, on behalf of the Orton Estate, in June 2022, for £2,295. The image used here is taken from the Bonhams website: click here, but an alternative image can be found on joeorton.org: click here. 

      The long-sleeved white muslin shirt, designed by Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westood for sale at their King's Road store Seditionaries in 1979, known by the title borrowed from John Lahr's 1978 biography of Orton features a graphic print of a homosexual punk orgy and includes a text taken from Orton's diary (9 January, 1967). The shirt shown here was sold by Julien's Auctions, in June 2021, for $576: click here.

 

[2] Peggy Ramsay represented many of the leading dramatists to emerge from the 1950s onwards, including Alan Ayckbourn, Eugène Ionesco, J. B. Priestley, Stephen Poliakoff, and David Hare. 

      After discovering Joe Orton, then living on National Assistance, she persuaded producer Michael Codron to stage his play Entertaining Mr Sloane (1964). Ramsay represented Orton, and then his estate, for the rest of her life. 

 

[3] Hardy Amies was a British fashion designer and one of the first to venture into the ready-to-wear market when he teamed up in 1959 with another iconic British brand, Hepworths, to produce a range of stylish but essentially conservative men's clothing.  

 

[4] Prick Up Your Ears (1987), dir. Stephen Frears, with a screenplay by Alan Bennett (based on the 1978 biography of that title by John Lahr), starred Gary Oldman as Orton, Alfred Molina as Halliwell and Vanessa Redgrave as Peggy Ramsay. 

      The fur coat makes its first appearance in an early scene when Oldman visits Ramsay's office to show it off to her (6:00) and is seen twice more later in the film; once after an awards ceremony (1:18:28) and once in an episode set in a public convenience (1:18:50). Click here to find the scenes and watch the entire film on YouTube. Oldman's excellent performance in this almost makes me forgive his portrayal of Sid Vicious in Sid and Nancy (dir. Alex Cox, 1986). 

 

[5] The store was (and still is) called The Pleasure Chest and is located at 7733 Santa Monica Blvd., West Hollywood. It wasn't the first time that McLaren found inspiration here and borrowed - Paul Gorman's word is hijacked - a design for use on one of his pieces produced in collaboration with Westwood; he visited the original New York store, based in the West Village, in the period when his shop at 430 King's Road was called SEX.  

 

[6] There seems to be some discrepencies between the text on the shirt and the actual diary entry; for example, the first speaker is referred to on the shirt only by his first name, Oscar, and not his full name Oscar Lewenstein (a British theatre and film producer); and whilst the price of the coat is given on the shirt as £13 19s, in the diary it is priced at £13 15s (i.e., four bob less). 

      Readers who are interested can check things for themselves by consulting The Orton Diaries, ed. John Lahr (Methuen, 1986), p. 54. Just to add a little further confusion into the mix, Paul Gorman identifies the Oscar figure as Oscar Beuselinck, the showbiz lawyer, but I'm pretty sure that's incorrect; see The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), p. 426.      

      As for the third speaker - Michael White - he was a prominent theatre and film impresario and a champion of Orton's work.   

 

[7] Paul Gorman, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren, p. 426. 

 

[8] Georges Bataille, 'Base Materialism and Gnosticism', in Visions of Excess: Selected Writings 1927-1939 (University of Minnesota Press, 1985), p. 51.

 

 

For a related post to this one on Joe Orton, click here. 

 

In Memory of Leonard Rossiter (1926-1984)

 Leonard Rossiter as Rigsby in Rising Damp (1974-78)

and as Inspector Truscott in Loot (1984)

 

I. 

 

As a Rising Damp aficianado, I was pleased to find family, friends, and fellow actors - including Don Warrington and Gabrielle Rose - sharing memories of Leonard Rossiter in today's Guardian.

 

As Catherine Shoard writes: 

 

"Four decades after Rossiter's death, his singular style - manic energy, machine-gun delivery, splenetic intelligence - continues to carry remarkable currency." [1]

 

And continues to make laugh. 

II. 

  

Rossiter died from a heart condition (hypertrophic cardiomyopathy), aged 57, whilst waiting to go onstage at the Lyric Theatre, London, where he was playing Inspector Truscott in a production of Joe Orton's dark farce Loot (1965), directed by Jonathan Lynne.

 

As Orton was a scandalous playwright much admired by Malcolm - and I was a fan of Rossiter's - I naturally felt obliged to attend a performance of Loot - which I did on Tuesday 2 October, 1984, just three days before Rossiter's death. 

 

I recorded in my diary at the time: 

 

LOOT: very good; very funny; very well-acted. Leonard Rossiter's performance was particularly enjoyable. I can see why Malcolm loves Orton: virulently anti-authority and all forms of moral hypocrisy; like an angrier (more contemporary) version of Oscar Wilde.

 

And on Monday 8 October I noted (somewhat prosaically, I have to admit): 

 

Distressing news: Leonard Rossiter died backstage a few days ago. A hugely talented comic actor, he'll be much missed.     

Thanks to TV and YouTube, however, we can still enjoy his work - although I smiled to see that Rossiter - who could be a deadly serious and impatient individual, who hated wasting time - had once described the former as merely: 'An advanced technical method of stopping people from making their own entertainment.'

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Catherine Shoard, '"It was hard not to stare at him all the time": inside the remarkable rise and shocking loss of Leonard Rossiter', The Guardian (5 October 2024): click here. 

 

 

Readers who enjoyed this post might like to see an earlier post (dated 15 October 2022) discussing the character of Rupert Rigsby, as played by Leonard Rossiter: click here. 

Passion Ends in Fashion: Notes on SEX

 

Malcolm outside his notorious boutique 

at 430 King's Road (1976)

 

 

I. 

 

When it comes to the band's name, there's an argument to be made that the Sex Pistols should have been stylised as the SEX Pistols, thereby emphasising the fact that their origins lay in the shop at 430 King's Road and Malcolm's penchant for the kinkier aspects of sexual activity and experience.

 

For Malcolm, as for Foucault, sex is best understood not as a natural function, nor as something to be scientifically studied in order to discover an essential truth about human identity, but, rather, as a sophisticated ars erotica - i.e., a form of pleasure which needs to be creatively cultivated and via which the subject might, in fact, lose (or reinvent) themselves. 

 

And for Malcolm, sex always needed to be thought in relation to two other terms beginning with the letter S: style and subversion (i.e., fashion and politics). Add these three elements together et voila! you produce a pair of bondage trousers.      

 

 

II.

 

McLaren's store at 430 King's Road - run in collaboration with his partner Vivienne Westwood - underwent a series of radical transformations and name changes during its history. 

 

It originally opened (in 1971) as the Teddy boy hang out Let It Rock, before then briefly becoming Too Fast To Live Too Young To Die (1973-74), selling a range of fashions for rockers who preferred to wear black leather jackets and biker boots, rather than drape jackets and blue suede shoes.   

 

In December 1976, the shop was reinvented as Seditionaries and it continued trading under that name until September 1980. As Seditionaries, the boutique adopted a brutalist aesthetic and attitude and stocked the clothes that are now considered the epitome of punk fashion (and sell for thousands of pounds at auction).  

 

In late 1980, the store was relaunched under the name World's End and resembled - as per Malcolm's design instructions - a cross between an 18th-century galleon and the Olde Curiosity Shoppe; punks had been superseded by pirates, Apaches, and buffalo gals. 

 

Each of these shops has a unique fascination and history and each has secured a place in the pop cultural imagination. But, for me, it is Sex that continues to most excite my interest ...

 

 

III.   

 

Quickly bored even with his own projects and uncomfortable with the idea of commercial success, in the spring of 1974, McLaren radically refurbished 430 King's Road and rebranded the shop as Sex: '"That is the one thing that scares the English. They are all afraid of that word.'" [1]

 

The façade included a 4-foot sign of pink foam rubber letters spelling out the new name in capitals. The walls of the interior of the boutique were also lined with pinkish foam rubber and covered with graffitied lines taken from erotic literature and Valerie Solanas's SCUM Manifesto (1967). Latex curtains, red carpeting, and various sexual paraphernalia used decoratively helped to create the sleazy (somewhat intimidating) look of an authentic sex shop.

 

Sex sold fetish and bondage gear supplied by existing specialist labels, as well as designs by McLaren and Westwood which were intended to be provocative rather than seductive. These included T-shirts printed with images of a nude adolescent smoking a cigarette; homosexual cowboys, bare female breasts; and - perhaps most notoriously - a leather mask of the kind worn by the Cambridge Rapist. 

 

Lines taken from pornographic texts were also often added to the designs, as were various Situationist slogans from May '68 - Sous les pavés, le plage, etc. - and references to some of Malcolm's heroes, such as the playwright Joe Orton.    

 

Pamela Rooke - known as Jordan - was hired as a sales assistant and quickly became the shop's face. 

 

In fact, Jordan embodied the spirit of the store better than anyone; better than the extraordinary clientele (which included members of the Bromley Contingent as well as the newsreader Reggie Bosanquet); better than members of the band; better even than Malcolm and Vivienne (though it can't be denied how great the latter also looked wearing her own designs) [2].  

 

Sex was far removed from the retro-revivalism of Let It Rock - although arguably Too Fast To Live possessed some of the same sense of danger and fetishistic appeal - and the customers who hung out at Sex were not the ageing Teddy boys who had so quickly bored and disappointed McLaren. They were, as mentioned, kids who had come out of glam and liked to dress up to mess up and weren't shy about challenging sexual and social conventions.

 

Paul Gorman provides an excellent summary:

 

"As an environmental installation, Sex was sensational; it literally assaulted the senses. The hectoring tone of the scawls on the 'soft' madhouse walls, the heavy jersey of the T-shirts showing severe images and text in queasy colours, the lack of natural light which produced a dull shine on the clinical black rubber garments and the powdery looking drapes, the clammy atmosphere, the 1960s garage-punk blasting from the BAL-AMi, all combined to make the experience unsettling, commanding commitment - a big Sex word - on the part of the visitor. When the door was closed, one felt less like a customer than a client entering a well-appointed dungeon, particularly when coolly appraised by the stern-faced Westwood." [3]  

 

Sex was, thus, a truly magical space aligned with McLaren's own artistic, sexual, and political obsessions. Whilst a million miles away from being what we now term a safe space inhabited by those who describe themselves as woke, it neverthless demanded that customers one day wake up and realise which side of the bed they were lying on [4].

Photo by David Dagley taken inside Sex in 1976 featuring (from L-R):

Steve Jones, Unknown, Alan Jones, Chrissie Hynde, Jordan, & Vivienne Westwood

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Malcolm McLaren, quoted by Paul Gorman in The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren, (Constable, 2020), p. 220.

 

[2] As Paul Gorman notes, in 1975, aged 34, Westwood "cut a stunning figure stalking the streets of west and central London, with her shock of blonde hair complemented by such Sex designs as rubber knickers and stockings and a porn T-shirt or a studded Venus top". See The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren, p. 251.

 

[3] Paul Gorman, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren, p. 226. 

 

[4] I'm referring here to the famous T-shirt conceived by Bernie Rhodes and known (by its abbreviated title) as 'You're Gonna Wake Up'. See the post published on Torpedo the Ark on 16 Dec 2012 on the political importance of making lists: click here.