London

Part of my drinking career took place in Soho in The Colony Room, and that is where I met Francis Bacon in the early ’70s, shortly after his lover George Dyer had committed suicide. I went to The Colony when I first came to London. The club was owned by Muriel Belcher, a pivotal character in the capital at that time. Muriel attracted free spirits. She was a free spirit herself – a handsome, gay Jewish woman. She and Francis became instant friends the minute they met in 1948, when she opened that club and he wandered in. She gave him £10 a week and free champagne just to bring in like souls – you know, mirror images of himself. Feature continues

Lots of people say Francis couldn’t draw but I’ve taught enough people to know drawing doesn’t matter. It’s the juxtaposition of a colour, a shape, that then induces a response in whoever looks at it. He compared painting to the act of making love – you’re there and yet you’re not there, and unexpected things happen along the way.

Meeting Francis, I saw immediately a kindred spirit. He was the most charismatic man I had ever met. I have chosen to move among charismatic men – people like George Melly, John Mortimer and Bo Diddley – and I learned about jazz in the arms of Satchmo, for goodness’ sake! I would like to have been kissed by Francis Bacon, who was equally attractive to women as he was to men.

I found him to be a fun drinker. Everyone looked up to Francis. He was like a young emperor. He said that if he hadn’t been a painter, he would have been a criminal. He would have liked that. Others have said he would have made a splendid drag queen on stage, a performer, because he did like to get into the fishnet stockings – his father found him at the age of 14 dressed like that. That’s when he kicked him out!

Francis did have a sensitive air and a kindness to him, and there was definitely an aura of fun. He always had a sense that in a moment something totally marvellous was going to happen. He never could give a toss what anybody ever thought about him. He was no respecter of rank either. He was at a gathering and Princess Margaret was jigging around, and everybody was singing and clapping politely until there was this appalling sound and it was Francis booing! He actually had had the courage to do what everybody else had wanted to do, to say ‘Just get off that stage’.

I couldn’t wait to get up in the morning to get over to the Colony to be with Francis. It was like lifeblood to me (before I gave up drinking altogether 21 years ago). This was a divine way to spend a day as far as I was concerned. Francis would go from pub to pub, and then from gambling place to gambling place. One evening we were out in Soho at the Golden Lion, which was a gay rent-boy pub, like a gin palace and very wonderful to go into. Francis loved those boys. I loved those delicious boys, too. We walked onto the street, he linked his arm in mine and said to me, ‘You’d like to come gambling with me, wouldn’t you, Molly?’ Well, gambling was for me a totally forbidden area because my great-great grandfather had gambled away our castle in Wales, and the surrounding mountains! I said ‘No’, and he was astonished.

I didn’t go to Soho again, I didn’t see Francis again. I left him on the pavement and I went.

The Portobello Film Festival (www.portobellofilmfestival.com) is taking place on August 2-21, and Molly Parkin and John Maybury recall their days of ‘Boozing with Bacon’ on Sun August 5 at 7pm-10pm at Westbourne Studios, W10 followed by a screening of ‘Love Is The Devil’.