‍Lovers: Monkhouse and Diana Dors

‍“THERE were no half measures at my parties … off came the sweaters, bras and panties. It was a case of off with everything – except the lights!”

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‍This is what movie star Diana Dors, England’s answer to Marilyn Monoe, told the News of the World in 1960. And one man who knew the party rules well, was comedian Bob Monkhouse.

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‍Diana was talking about the wild sex parties at her mansion home in Berkshire where the rich and famous gathered in the 1950s. Celebrities such as West End actors; MPs, Sportsmen, Lords and TV personalities enjoyed her and husband, producer Dennis Hamilton’s hospitality which was widely reported in the Press.

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‍But another intriguing story buried deep in the archives emerges later from the history book of The Guardian of 25 years ago when journalist Lynn Barber joined comedian Bob Monkhouse at his retirement home in Barbados for an interview about his past.

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‍Monkhouse, who died on December 29, 2003, aged 75, was mentioned in the original News of the World story as a regular guest of the party-loving couple at their home, where celebrities were filmed having sex without their knowledge, and copulating couples were watched through a two-way mirror.

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‍He and Diana held strong affections for each other after meeting on the radio show Calling All Forces in the early 1950s, on which he was a script writer.

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‍According to TV’s favourite ‘mum’s boy’ Monkhouse, obliging girls “were provided for single gentlemen to enjoy.” He added that: “The lights were always kept dim for the continuous showing of blue movies.”

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‍Monkhouse, then aged 24, noticed a pattern. “An amorous couple would get the nod from Hamilton and follow him out of the room.”

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‍Hamilton would return alone, he said, but leave again with Diana, before coming back around 15 minutes later, upon which they would give the nod to another pair of lovers.

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‍One evening, Hamilton and Diana called Monkhouse’s name, and he and the woman he’d been set up with, followed the couple down a corridor festooned with pornographic photos into a bedroom that looked “like a knocking shop in Marrakesh!”

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‍“I’ll lock the door so that no-one can interrupt you,” Hamilton told the comedian. “You’ve got about a quarter of an hour, so make the most of it!”

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‍Fast forward to the Guardian and the Lynn (Demon) Barber interview many years later in Barbados. Lynn didn’t take to Monkhouse. “You’ve got to like him; he wants you to so much. But boy, it doesn’t come easily,” she said.

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‍We discover Monkhouse the Man as she takes away the grinning TV mask on Celebrity Squares and Family Fortunes and opens the door to his murky world of sex parties and his appetite for pornography.

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‍“In the flesh, he seems older, meeker, smaller, more tired than on screen, said Lynn, “he drinks like a fish two bottles of wine and half a bottle of malt whiskey a day. Before he goes on stage, he likes to have ‘a large one’ and I mean a sodding great whiskey! When he comes off stage he goes back to the booze because that’s his reward.’’

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‍We learn that Monkhouse, who began his career writing scripts for Beano and Dandy, was wildly promiscuous during his first marriage, and went on fantastical sexual adventures; orgies with showgirls and handcuffs.

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‍He became notorious in showbiz for his collection of pornography and his appetite for blue humour. He was known for having ‘the dirtiest mouth in entertainment’ and had slept with hundreds of girls, including one transsexual, not to mention an affair with actress Diana.

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‍When her husband found out he got hold of the comedian and held a cutthroat razor to his neck, telling him: “I’m going to slit your eyeballs!”

‍The comedian escaped after he kneed Hamilton in the groin and ran away – but he spent nearly six years fearing repercussions.

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‍In her interview Lynn reveals: “This is a man who used to keep more than 1,000 tins of food in his house because they made him feel safe.

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‍“What he mainly collects now, of course, is jokes, millions and millions of them, and has them all written down in 11 ring binder files.”

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‍She added: “He carries them all in his head. If someone tells him there’s a table of firemen to his left, he can mentally flick through his files for the section on firemen to recall that “a miniature village in Bournemouth caught fire and the flames could be seen nearly three feet away’’.

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‍Bob Monkhouse was awarded the OBE in 1993 for his services to entertainment.

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‍DID YOU KNOW?

‍Henry Morton Stanley, the reporter for the New York Herald, remembered for his famous question in the jungle: “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?” was dumped in a London workhouse as a boy, after his uncles refused to pay for his upkeep?

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‍When his close workhouse friend and classmate died after a beating by their headmaster, Stanley sneaked into the morgue to find his pal’s body covered in cuts and bruises from the punishment and swore to get even.

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‍Shortly after, the head started to beat the entire class because of some marks on the surface of a new table. When it was Stanley’s turn, he fought back and managed to kick the master in the face.

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‍Grabbing a blackthorn branch, Stanley then beat him bloody and fled … heading for the freedom of the ocean, America and ultimate world fame as the journalist who found Livingstone.

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‍THE GREATEST CHILDREN’S PARTY EVER

‍THROWN ENDS IN TRAGEDY AND TEARS

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‍THE PRESS called it ‘Sunderland’s biggest Children’s Party of the Year and 2,000 youngsters from all over the city, aged between four and 11, were excited about tucking into jelly and ice cream and being entertained by clowns and acrobats.

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‍There would be prizes too during the event on June 16, 1883, at the city’s Victoria Hall. But the highlights would be a magic show of conjuring tricks and illusions, talking waxworks, and living marionettes.

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‍The party, staged by The Fays, entertainers from the Tynemouth Aquarium, sold out within days, following publicity in the newspapers.

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‍Sunderland Echo reporters even bagged some tickets for their children.

‍But joy turned to tears when it finally came to an end … with 183 of the excited partygoers crushed to death and “the greatest treat for children ever given” became the greatest tragedy for children in England that century.

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‍Disaster struck at the end of the show, when it was announced that prizes would be given to children with certain numbered tickets as they left.

‍At the same time, prizes began to be handed out to those children on the ground floor. Word spread. Not wanting to miss out, many of the 1100 children in the gallery streamed down the stairs to claim their prize.

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‍At the foot of the staircase, the exit door had been opened inwards and bolted to create a gap of only 20 inches that would allow just one child at a time to leave, to control the flow of children.

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‍But with few adults present and no one organising an orderly queue, the children simply rushed for the door. The gap was not large enough to cope with the flood of youngsters, and the narrow stairwell was immediately blocked.

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‍As more youngsters surged down the stairs, they were pushed forward by those behind, who were unaware of what was happening ahead. The children at the bottom of the stairs were crushed and suffocated by the weight of the crowd above them.

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‍It soon became eight layers deep. Eventually, adults in the hall realised that children were trapped and began to pull them one by one through the narrow gap. Too late, the crushed were dead.

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‍Caretaker Frederick Graham had tried in vain to disentangle the pile-up, then ran up another staircase and waved 600 children to safety by another exit. As he did so, two men wrenched the bolted door off its hinges.

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‍Everyone was in tears as more adults came to help and within half an hour all the children had been removed from the stairwell. But 183 were lying piled on top of each other. An entire Bible Class of 30 children from a local Sunday School suffocated and many families lost all their brood.

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‍One boy who was rescued, William Codling, Jr, aged nine, said: “We were squashed but still going down the stairwell when suddenly I realised I was treading on someone lying on the stairs and I cried in horror to those behind ‘Keep back, keep back! There’s someone down.’

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‍“It was no use; I passed slowly over the wriggling body and onwards with the mass and before long I trod over others without emotion.”

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‍The nation was shocked by the tragedy and services took place up and down the country. Queen Victoria sent a message of condolences to the grieving families and donations sent from all over Britain totalled £5,000 (£640,000 today).

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‍It was used for the children’s funerals and a memorial in the city which was eventually vandalised and stood wrecked for years. But in 2002, the marble statue was restored for £63,000 and moved to the city’s Mowbray Park with a protective canopy.

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‍Newspaper reports of the disaster triggered legislation for public entertainment venues be fitted with a minimum number of outward opening emergency exits and led to the push-bar emergency doors we have today.

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‍Victoria Hall was finally destroyed by a parachute bomb in the Second World War.

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‍LUNAR LUNACY

‍IN August 1835, the New York Sun circulation rocketed when it published a sensational series of six news stories reporting the discovery of life on the Moon, with winged humans, temples, vast forests, single-horn goats and tail-less beavers.

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‍It lied by saying the reports were reprinted from the Edinburgh Journal of Science and were the findings of British astronomer Sir John Herschel and his new super-strength telescope, 42,000 times more powerful than any other on Earth.

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‍One article said: “In one of the noble valleys at the foot of a mountain the scientist found a very superior species of Vespertilio-homo (bat-men). They were of infinitely great personal beauty and appeared in our eyes scarcely less lovely than representations of angels by the more imaginative schools of painters.”

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‍The story was a hoax of course but travelled all over the world. Sir John Herschel at first accepted the fake news with a sense of humour, saying: “It’s too bad my real discoveries won’t be that exciting.” Even though the story was made up by a reporter, many people believed it was covered up by the government until their dying day.

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‍TERRY MANNERS

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‍6 October 2025