Dan Farson's obituary was published on 28 November 1997. It was sub-titled "Television
interviewer, writer and photographer who turned into a monstrous drunk
in his beloved Soho". The following is lifted from this obituary.
Daniel Negley Farson was born on 8 January 1927. His father, Negley
Farson, was an American-born journalist who would bring the boy an
elephant's tooth or an embryo alligator from his trips abroad. During
one trip on which little Dan accompanied him, the boy was patted on the
head by Hitler as a "good Aryan boy". Negley resigned suddenly from the
Chicago Daily News in 1935, but then made money from his
autobiographical books, The Way of the Transgressor being the best
known. Dan Farson wrote of his father, "He was a stronger man than I
am."
In 1940 Dan's prep school, Abinger Hill, was evacuated to Canada.
During the holidays he was sent to stay with various unsuitable
relations and friends of his father's in the United States. In 1942
young Daniel sailed back to wartime England and was sent to Wellington.
He landed a job at the Central Press Agency where he was a lobby
correspondent at Westminster. He served in the American army and was
sent on a journalism course. He went, with the army, to Germany where
he discovered the possibilities of photography in the ruins of Munich.
He then went up to Pembroke College, Cambridge, aged 21. He took a
degree.
He spent a short time with an advertising agency and in 1951 joined
Picture Post as a staff photographer. In the 1950's, Francis Bacon took
to Farson. Farson's next bright idea was to join the merchant navy and
he joined the crew of 634 on the 30,000 ton Orcades and sailed 50,000
miles around the world, crossing the equator four times. He next found
work on the Evening Standard and the Daily Mail. He persuaded Colin
Wilson, the author of The Outsider, to speak unguardedly, and published
the damaging interview in Books and Art. Then he was persuaded to
interview Cecil Beaton for This Week on television and a new chapter
opened.
Farson was ideal for television of that period, he was quick-thinking,
still handsome, with enough charm to beguile interviewees. He drew out
Dylan Thomas's widow in a live broadcast that had to be faded out when
he provoked her to fury. He went from strength to strength. He caused
outrage with a programme, Living for Kicks, about coffee bar teenagers.
He produced a series Farson's Guide to the British (in which he included
his famous piece on 'Jack the Ripper). His series Out of Step dealt
with oddities from witchcraft to nudism. In 1962, with money left to
him by his parents, Farson bought the tenancy of a pub on the Isle of
Dogs on the Thames in the East End of London. The pub was given a boost
by a television documentary Farson made called Time Gentlemen Please!
The venture lasted a year, in all he lost around £30,000, enough in 1963
to buy a row of houses. His days in television were numbered and a
documentary he made, Courtship, proved "dull". Farson thought he had
gone stale and threw in the towel. He moved to Devon, living in his
parents' house near the sea and made an income from journalism and
writing books. He still travelled much.
Farson knew he was dying from cancer when his autobiography Never a
Normal Man was published just after his 70th birthday. At the same time
he held an exhibition of photographs in a Mayfair gallery and went on
Radio 4's Midweek with such a hangover that his voice sounded as if it
came from inside a wardrobe.
