Monocled Alchemist

Article from Intro magazine: 14th October 1967

From the day she won that top spot on Ready Steady Go, Cathy McGowan has hit the headlines many times. Her opinions are outspoken, but she knows what she wants out of life

Cathy McGowan media sensation: Rumoured to be earning four-figure sums each week, Cathy is certainly doing all right, thank you—yet her chatter is as light and friendly as that of any other girls in shops, offices and factories through-out Britain.

The main quality that sets her irrevocably apart from millions of other girls is the shrewd streak of business sense that she has, a commercial instinct that has given her a kind of Midas touch.

She designs shoes, clothes for her own postal boutique, has a range of cosmetics sporting her household-word name, and has the pleasant ability to wave a kind of magic wand over all sorts of manufactured products; the golden spell of Cathy McGowan’s approval will ensure their success.

Cathy wears. the responsibility lightly but is aware of her position.

“People like me,”? she says over her Hilton Hotel tea-cup, “are more instant than newspapers.

I can talk on telly about things, say I don’ t like something or that a particular style isn’t in any more, and everybody immediately sits up and takes notice.

It’s frightening. I mean, if I’m in a bit of a mood or tired, and say things I don’t quite mean, it’s too late.

“A kid came up to me once hiding her hands, and said: ‘Oh, you’ll hate my nails. I read that you don’t like red nail varnish.’ ’ Honestly, when you stop to think that every word you say . . . Words fail her, but not for long. “You start out being a craze,” she says cheerfully, ‘‘and end up as part of the furniture; you know, you just go on for ever and ever.

Cathy McGowan media sensation

Her stage debut

Earlier this year she spent six one studying part-time at RADA. “I went there to learn to talk more slowly. I’ve always talked too fast. I loved it there.”

She had recently returned from Derby, where she made her stage début as Maria in School For Scandal for six weeks.

“I didn’t like the play,” she says decidedly. “It was too much like hard work. I’d much rather do film or television work. I rely on lights and cameras, and if you do something wrong, it can be filmed again and again. But on the stage, you’re out there all alone. And the costumes! They were all low-cut and busty, and I’m so thin. I just took one quick look and I said: “You must be joking!”

She eats like a horse, but doesn’t put on weight, sticking at an ethereal seven stone. “I nearly blow away in the wind on Brighton sea front!”

Logical simplicity

With her second cup of tea— “I’m a tea addict” – she accepts a cigarette. She only smokes one a day: “What’s the point of smoking a lot if you don’t enjoy it?” She doesn’t drink much, but laughs at a newspaper quote labelling her as teetotal.

“I like white wine, but, I just don’t drink a lot of spirits, I don’ t like the taste. They’re like medicine to. me.” Cathy McGowan sense has a logical simplicity.

She still lives at home in Streatham with her parents, and is surprised at the thought that other people should find this surprising.

Likes living at home

“My parents live their own life, and I can come and go as I please. I don’t see the point of leaving home when ‘I’m hardly ever there anyway. Besides, it’s only twenty minutes out of town, and I like living at home. Lots of my friends live at home: Hywel Bennett lives just up my road with his parents.”

Young actor Hywel is classified among her close friends, together with Cilla Black and Dave Clark. Her favourite night out is to have dinner with a crowd of friends in a small restaurant, unless she goes out alone with her boy friend.

Yes,” she admits, “there is someone special, but it’s all a lovely secret at the moment.”

Marriage seems to be one of the few things she’s not quite sure about. “I’d like to have children, I’d like to have them sitting round the table, but I’d go mad going through all the business of having them.”

extremely busy

‘Though work keeps her. extremely busy— “honestly, I just don’t know whether I’m coming or going half the time”—her pleasures are simple.

“I lead the same kind of life as you. and like going to see my sister, or taking the dog for a walk, or going to the sea for the day.

I hate dressing up or having dinner in big places.”

She waves a hand round the sleek splendour of the Hilton Hotel room. “I’d never eat here. Dressed up in gold and silver, I just feel like a Christmas cracker! I go out in whatever clothes I like, just comfortable things.

I don’t see the point of these hippie clothes. It’s all right in California, where people are tanned and flowers are real, but you see them down the King’s Road in the rain all white and skinny – ugh!”

What Cathy wears

Her own clothes are designed by Barbara Hulanicki at Biba, and the clothes she designs for her postal boutique are the kind she wears herself. “I don’t like long skirts at a moment, but thirties stuff is fantastic, I love it”

Her shoes are by Charles Jourdan, her make-up by Estée Lauder; no mention of the products bearing her own name. When her old title, “Queen of the Mods,” came into the conversation, she shuddered. “If I saw myself I used to be, I’d cringe,” she laughs.

She has certainly changed a good deal since the first months of Ready Steady Go: her hair, particularly, is now a smooth, heavy brown fall, copied by thousands of girls as was her shorter page-boy style before.

Cathy McGowan media sensation

Cared for by Leonard, her hair is trimmed every three weeks; she washes it twice a week. One of her trademarks, her hair is insured. And when we met her, Cathy was wearing a check, cape-shouldered coat over a brown wool dress, neat and slim, with chunky shoes.

“Aren’t they super? I got them in France.”

After a few weeks in America hosting a radio show, she has a part in a film to come (all doors are open to Cathy McGowan).

Asked whether she prefers living in a city rather than in the country, Cathy says:

“I like London best, and would rather be in big cities. I’m a city girl. I feel more at home in Paris than I do in the north of England. And I’d go mad if I lived in America— everyone there seems to eat peanuts and gum.”

She refuses to concentrate on any particular activity in the future. “I’m just going to do what I like. I’ve never had to do anything I didn’t want to, and if I think something might bore me, I refuse it.”

What a delightful life, for a girl who patently enjoys every single minute of it.

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