Today, I hear many young people talk about making memories and creating memorable moments that they will treasure for years to come. It’s something I have done all my adult life. But, it was different.
My memories were kept in boxes at the basement. I have a large room full of them — more than 100 boxes in all, stacked in piles 8 ft high and arranged in chronological order. My 2021 memories will also be in two boxes that I’ll be packing for Christmas.
They are all of my pasts. They contain everything. Everything. All things. School reports, bus tickets. Wedding cake wedges wrapped in tissue. Christmas cracker riddles. Old menus.).
Old theatre programmes, starting with Frankie Howerd’s bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream in 1957 at the Old Vic), my first Sooty now that he’s quite worn out. Toys and trivia.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, my wife took me and our three children with us to Berlin. Yes, there’s a bit of the Berlin Wall in my boxes — and a Christmas card from Margaret Thatcher.
My memories were kept in boxes at the basement. I have a large room full of them — more than 100 boxes in all, stacked in piles 8 ft high and arranged in chronological order. Two more boxes will be packed this Christmas, filled with my 2021 memories.
It’s all the things I have ever known, everything from my childhood teeth kept in cotton wool and kept in a matchbox by a loving mother to my final teenage girlfriend who sent me a box of hair in June 1968.
It was a bittersweet souvenir of our break-up and it arrived by post on the very day I happened to meet another girl — the one who, 53 years later, is my long-suffering wife, Michele.
As a teenager, I was romantic and kept all the love letters that girls sent me. There are hundreds in my collection — all kept in foolscap ring binders, with coloured paper dividers separating one girl from the next.
While writing my autobiography last year, I contacted one of these girls to ask if she kept any letters I wrote. “Sorry Gyles,” she replied, “I threw all of them out years ago.”
My life as an hoarder has been kept a secret. Truth is, I don’t want to throw out anything. Most of the rubbish is garbage, I’m sure.
Paris Metro Map from 1959 – Who would need it? All of it to me is valuable. That Rolo wrapping was important to me. A yellowing certificate from Broadstairs Urban District Council Entertainments Department is a special treasure: ‘Gyles Bandreth was a ten-year old who placed first at the Broadstairs Bandstand’s Children’s Talent Competition on the 18th of July 1958.
My memory box is my living diary. The memory box can be used as a time capsule. In this year’s container, I will pop the card I received when I had my first Covid jab. (Date: 31/03/21. Vaccine: Pfizer. Batch: EN1185). This is just like the plastic identification tags that each of my children wore around their ankles at birth.
They are everywhere: birth, death and life. Since the 1970s when I was 20 and many of my friends were getting married I’ve had lots printed invitations. Today, I keep a lot more service sheets that I received from funerals of friends.
While I do not intend to make any sales, some items I own might sell for a small amount on eBay. As a young boy I was obsessed with stars and wrote fan letters to my idols. Surprisingly, they responded. If you look deep in my memory cards, letters will be found from many people including Sir Laurence Olivier and Harold Macmillan.
Paris Metro Map from 1959 – Who would need it? To me, all of it’s precious. That Rolo wrappedper was my reason for keeping it.
When I was in my teens, I wrote Field Marshal Montgomery to ask him about his views on what qualities a successful young man should possess.
I was sent back by him a simple postcard signed ‘Montgomery, FM’.
‘1. Moral courage — always do what you believe to be right.
‘2. Complete integrity — no lies, no deceptions, honesty and transparency.
‘3. Your hard work will never stop.
I have got lots of postcards, from aunties and godparents and the poet John Betjeman, among others — and telegrams, too. I asked Sir Michael Redgrave to appear as the prologue in a university student production that I was producing.
Telegram reply: “WHAT FUN. ACCEPT WITH GREAT PLEASURE. REDGRAVE.’
I have got lots of postcards, from aunties and godparents and the poet John Betjeman, among others — and telegrams, too. I asked Sir Michael Redgrave to appear as the prologue in a university student production that I was producing.
The telegram that informed me of my scholarship was kept by me. I have also kept my university and school revision notes. I also have my first pay-slip. This mania is where it all began. My father. Everything was also kept by him. Looking through his memories boxes, which were stored in metal crates at the garage, I discovered one sad secret about his life: his worries over money.
He kept all his bills — from his first car (a Morris Cowley that cost £8 in 1937) onwards — and the notebooks in which he kept reworking the family accounts, trying to make ends meet.
Although my dad was not as bad as Richard Goolden, another hoarder that I know well, Richard Goolden was a wonderful actor. The role of Mole, in the 1929 original stage production of Wind In The Willows was his claim to fame. He continued to play the role until his death in 1981 at age 86.
I once went with my friend to lunch. When I mentioned how much I enjoyed the chicken soup, he ran away to the kitchen, returned empty handed, and waved a Swiss Knorr soup package at me.
After lunch, he took me into the kitchen and showed me his collection of empty Swiss Knorr soup packets — scores of them. He didn’t throw anything away. He led me upstairs to the upper room of the house. It had no floorboards, and was littered with cardboard boxes and old suitcases.
I am not as bad as that — but almost.
My psychiatrist friend told me that the main reason I do this is to try to avoid death by holding on to my previous life. His friend says that I place everything I care about in boxes to ensure I can control my destiny.
His observations were that I arrange my bookshelves in an orderly fashion, with alphabetical author orders and spines aligned along a straight line.
He said that I was wasting my time. Gyles says that life is messy. “You cannot pin it down. Death is certain. Nothing lasts — and that includes you and your memory boxes.’
A friend of mine in psychiatrists says that my reason for doing it is because I want to prevent death from happening by keeping hold on to the past. His friend says that I place everything I care about in boxes to keep control over my destiny.
My wife, I’m sorry to inform you that she is supporting the psychiatrist. She is determined to get the basement back. I have already had to get rid of all the teddy bears. These were not mentioned. They now have my Sweep and glove puppet Sooty of Sooty in their boxes. However, I gave away all my other soft toys.
I admit there were rather a lot of them — more than 1,000, in fact, including the original Fozzie Bear given to me by Jim Henson, who created The Muppets, and a tiny Paddington Bear given to me by Paddington’s creator, Michael Bond.
They found me a home at Newby Hall, North Yorkshire. It is a Christopher Wren designed mansion. The owners built a log cabin for my bears in their garden.
My wife and I both know that I’m not an easy person to live with. I also know that I take up a lot of space in our home. There is a second room that houses my jumpers, in addition to the one with my memories. There are dozens.
Since I was a child, I have collected fun jumpers.
Michele said, “At the very least you don’t wear those jumpers.” ‘But those boxes, Gyles, please…’
According to my wife, she keeps the number for the skip company in her phone and she will call them when she dies. Her words are true. She will get rid of everything. She believes you cannot live in the past.
Of course, she is correct. But I do not live in the past. I do not. They are very rare. They’re just there for me.
- Penguin Michael Joseph publishes Odd Boy out, Gyles Brandreth’s childhood autobiography.