The impresario recalled in this 1984 interview the day he gave up his 'one and only job' as a trainee wine taster
When I offered to fetch or make a cup of coffee for a busy Malcolm McLaren – he had a phone to each ear – in 1984 he replied: "Milk, no sugar, no bromide, no dandelion." Then let out one of his distinctive, lengthy guffaws. It was years before I figured what he'd meant by "no dandelion" (Vivienne Westwood apparently often sent him out at night on to Clapham Common to find dandelion for her dandelion root coffees), but he did personally explain his "no bromide" request.
"Elvira, the wife of Puccini, would spike his coffee with bromide to suppress his urges for their young dinner guests," he noted. "And then Doria, their maid, died of poison, yes, after Elvira accused her of mounting Puccini while he lay ill." McLaren was shortly to release his Fans album, which married opera and R&B.
His office was on Denmark Street, across the road from Saint Martin's School of Art where he fondly remembered entering art education in 1963 – after resigning from his "one and only job" as a trainee wine taster at Sandeman. "I was being blindfolded and instructed by a drunken ex-colonel to describe wine as virginal, needing to spread its legs, or over-ripe, or sexless, or homosexual," he explained of the job.
"Then one lunchtime, after spotted dick at the cafe, I escaped into an entrance on Charing Cross Road, where I'd seen the prettiest girls going after eating their sandwiches in Soho Square. And inside nude models posed for students armed with charcoal. So I gave up the wine tasting and gave myself to art. Everything began and changed then. But still I'll think 'Virginal? Homosexual?' when passed a glass."