Simon Blumenfeld - Farewell to an old friend and newspaper legend

Published Monday 18 April 2005 at 14:05 by Brian Attwood

This issue of The Stage is the last one which will feature the byline of our much-cherished columnist, Simon Blumenfeld - alias Sidney Vauncez - who died on Wednesday, April 13.

For many weeks while he was in hospital we had retained his name on the Heydays page, mindful that he had more than once seen off health scares. As his absence became lengthier we resigned ourselves to the likelihood that any reappearances in the newspaper by our old friend would be intermittent at best.

Common sense suggests that none of us should have been surprised when his son Eric broke the sad news of his father’s death. He had, after all, reached the venerable age of 97 (and five months, as he would doubtless remind me). But then Sidney, as we here all knew him, was never the sort of individual one could measure by the standards of ordinary men.

He was born into the world of Edwardian Britain, the Jewish diaspora and the political upheavals of an East End long gone. He became a successful entertainment and sports journalist and a radical young author of some renown. At this point one is usually expected to say of the deceased that they were always modest about their achievements. I shan’t do so for the simple reason that Sidney wasn’t and with good cause. Had he been, then this column would be the poorer for it.

Any new editor falls prey to the urge to innovate in order to justify their appointment. It was not perhaps the wisest tactic to begin my tenure by launching Heydays, which unashamedly celebrates the spirit of showbusiness past. Hiring Sidney, however, was my trump card.

By 1994 it had been two years since Peter Hepple’s 20-year editorship had ended. Sidney had been an inspiration to Peter’s own distinguished and lengthy career. The two had worked closely together but Peter’s ‘retirement’ left Sidney at something of a loose end. New opportunities in journalism tended then, as now, to be somewhat limited for those aged 80-plus. Then again, writers with extensive, first-hand knowledge of the showbusiness names of yesteryear are rare. Moreover, few can distil that experience into anecdotes the rest of us want to read, or have the stamina to keep delivering for decades at a time.

Sidney retained a Luddite distrust not only of the email and the internet but also the electric typewriter and the fax. In time he consented to allow his column to be sent by the latter method. His affection for the manual keyboard remained undimmed, not once undermined by the increasing lack of replacement parts. No matter, for his copy arrived each week, on the dot and always one issue ahead, for insurance.

Writing styles do not always pass the test of time. Not so Sidney’s. Quite apart from his Heydays constituency, he had many self-confessed and very much younger fans in the national press. In a profession where sentiment is at a premium, that ranks as praise indeed.

As the column took off, we saw less and less of Sidney in person at the office, though I earned more than one hangover from home visits. His daily trips to Bermondsey Street became weekly, then declined until eventually the newspaper’s New Year Party at Drury Lane was the first chance most new staff had to meet the legendary Mr Blumenfeld. As he explained, in old age no one stays alive long without conserving energy.

It’s probably fair to say that Sidney’s anti-establishment views had mellowed since his youthful Marxist days. I doubt he would have been averse to a well-deserved official honour or two in recognition of his journalistic achievements. Those never came but almost a year before his death, Guinness World Records established that Sidney’s claim to be Britain’s oldest weekly newspaper columnist was far from the full truth. Much to his satisfaction, investigations revealed he was the oldest in any country.

Sidney was always frank about the odds against his reaching each new birthday but never maudlin: “I’ve had a very interesting life and I’ve lived a long time. The main thing is the mind has to stay active and what keeps me going is my family and this column. Who knows how long it will last. Until then, we carry on.”

Brian Attwood

Editor