This legendary San Franciscan owned the city’s oldest bar, Tosca Cafe, from 1980 until 2013. She loved the regulars as much as the stars and though some describe Etheredge as “curmudgeonly”, this “grand dame” truly ran her bar with great grace and style. Her only rule was “don’t bother anyone” and as a result everyone from Sean Penn to Christopher Hitchens to Hunter S. Thompson flocked there.
Category: CREATIVES
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Jeannette Etheredge
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Byron Bradshaw
This New York based graduate of the University of Texas has worked with GQ and Cameron Silver, Inc. Bradshaw likes whiskey, beer and Zac Efron and had a pet cow named Angus as a child. -
Michael “Chalky” White
This Scottish producer’s life was immortalised in the 2013 crowdfunded film, The Last Impresario. Jewish and educated at the Lyceum Alpinum Zuoz, White moved from being a Wall Street runner in the 1950s to the pinnacles of showbusiness in the 1960s and 1970s. Known for working on projects as diverse as Monty Python, The Rocky Horror Show, Enigma and White Mischief, this legendary playboy “can’t think about one good thing about growing old” and considers beautiful women to be “like living pictures”. White’s “Icarus-like downfall” into drugs and excess are well documented but, as he’d no doubt say himself, “the party must go on”. -
Mary Berry CBE
This cookery writer morphed into Britain’s favourite baker as the judge of BBC Two’s The Great British Bake Off and in the process amassed a fortune of some £15 million. Buckinghamshire based and married to a retired antiquarian bookseller, Berry has published more than 70 cookery books since 1970 and began her career working in Bath’s electricity board showroom demonstrating to customers about how to use their electric ovens. She was voted one of the fifty best dressed over 50s by The Guardian in March 2013 and is considered by many “a real national treasure”. -
Philip K. Dick (1928 – 1982; AKA Richard Phillipps and Jack Dowland)
This Chicago born novelist, short story writer and essayist explored deep themes through his own personal experiences of drug abuse, paranoia, schizophrenia and transcendental experiences. Married five times, Dick published 44 novels and 121 short stories yet spent most of his life in poverty. Ten popular films based on his works have been produced including Blade Runner, Total Recall and The Adjustment Bureau. His fans – who laud his foreshadowing of postmodernity – have recreated him as a remote controlled android designed in his likeness. -
Nubar Gulbenkian (Armenian: Նուբար Սարգիս Գյուլբենկյան, 1896 – 1972)
This Harrow educated eccentric, Santa Claus lookalike and playboy had two Austin FX4 Hackney carriages converted to his own specifications and considered the best number for a dinner party to be two (himself and “a damn good head waiter”). (more…) -
Susan Bennett (AKA Siri and Tillie The All Time Teller)
This voice actor provided the voice for Apple’s Siri and First National Bank’s Tillie the All Time Teller. She lives in suburban Atlanta, Georgia and finds hearing herself “creepy”. -
Emilia Wickstead
A talented lady with a knack for being in the right place at the right time. When the founder of The Steeple Times first encountered her, Wickstead was a little known fashion designer who was part of a charity fashion event in Chelsea organised by a Russian with a boutique in Essex. This Auckland born designer, however, had actually also studied at Central Saint Martins and went on to become a favourite of Samantha Cameron and The Duchess of Cambridge. She’s never looked back and her path to stardom is secure. -
Seamus Heaney (1939 – 2013)
“The most important Irish poet since Yeats”, Heaney’s books accounted for two thirds of the sales of all living poets in the UK during his final years. The recipient of the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature, this gifted storyteller was undoubtedly “the greatest poet” of our age. “The squat pen rests. I’ll dig with it”. -
Jake Shears (born Jason F. Sellards)
The co-founder of the Scissor Sisters was born in Mesa, Arizona and decided he wanted to marry Christopher Reeve when he was four. Shears, who doesn’t especially like wearing shirts, himself suggests he’s “not the easiest person in the world to be partners with” but that this singer has been with Chris Moukarbel since 2004 speaks volumes. Aside from music, he states: “I would’ve been a porn star”.