News Letter man who interviewed Beatles pens extraordinary new book on Toto Koopman and Coco Chanel

It’s hard to imagine in hindsight, but back in 1964 the News Letter sent its most junior reporter to interview The Beatles.

Alan Frame joined the paper straight after leaving Methody and having gone on to carve out a distinguished career in journalism, he treasures his two years with the world’s oldest paper.

Of his beginnings in journalism with the News Letter he said: “I was down to go to university but I thought, ‘sod this’, I fancied getting into the world of work.

“The first (job) interview I had was with an old Methody boy, Jack Sayers at the (Belfast) Telegraph. He was the most wonderful, wonderful man. He’d been in Churchill’s war rooms and things.

“He offered me a choice of the East Antrim Times in Larne or the Tyrone Constitution. I didn’t want to work in Larne and I certainly didn’t want to work in Cookstown so I wrote to Cowan Watson who was editor at the News Letter and he gave me a job – somehow, I don’t know how.

“That was 1964. I was working before most people were born.

“I was their most junior reporter. Once they knocked me into shape – though I’m not sure they ever did – they gave me all the young people’s stories.

“I got to interview the Beatles and Mick Jagger because they thought, ‘well, he’s 18 he must understand all this newfangled music’.

“I interviewed the Beatles at Aldergrove when they came for their first gig in Belfast, I think it was in the Kings Hall.

“I went to that. You know they stopped touring because they couldn’t hear themselves. I think it was John Lennon who said that they didn’t bother singing, they just played the instruments because everybody was screaming so much. That’s what it was like in Belfast, it was terrible.

“I was standing near the front, you couldn’t hear anything because all the girls were going mad, screaming their heads off. It was the same with the Stones as well.”

Alan Frame is an English journalist, broadcaster and author with roots in Northern Ireland.

He started out with the News Letter and has worked for the London Evening News, Daily Mail and Daily Express where, until 1995, he was executive editor.

He also had a weekly news review show on LBC. From 1995 to 1998 he was CEO of Liberty Publishing, a division of Harrods Holdings.

He continued to reminisce: “The funniest one of the lot was Fenella Fielding. She was in all the Carry On Films, she was a very, very attractive, voluptuous actress. She had a lovely husky voice.

“She was coming over to Belfast to do a play and I was going over to London. I gave her a buzz to see if she’d do an interview when I was in London.

“I rang her up, this must have been ‘65, I said, ‘Miss Fielding, this is Alan Frame here’. She said ‘Oh my darling, how wonderful, you’re so clever’.

“I thought – what the hell is she talking about? She thought I’d said ‘Georgie Fame’. He’d just toppled the Beatles off the top of the chart.

“Anyway, I still got my interview, she was lovely. I wouldn’t say she was the greatest actress of all time but she certainly filled the screen.”

He recalled the ‘old school’ ways of journalism: “When I was with the News Letter I used to go at least once a day into the Duke of York (pub). Gerry Adams was the barman there. It was very different in those days. As for Fleet Street, well...

“A very good friend of mine at the Express said, ‘how come when we were always p****d we were selling four million copies a day, now we’re supposed to be always sober we’re selling one and a half million?’”

He added: “I loved the News Letter, I had such a good time there. It was based in Donegall Street when I was there, hence we’d all go to the Duke of York.

“I was at the News Letter for two years only then I went over to the Express in Manchester.

“Two of my friends who had been at the News Letter at the same time they went to the Express and they rang me up and said there’s a job going if you want.

“I stayed for three years in the Express in Manchester then came down to London to the old Daily Sketch. That merged with the Daily Mail so I ended up in the Daily Mail then back to the Daily Express and went up the greasy pole there.

“I loved my time at the Express but there’s something about your first newspaper.”

He told the story of his first News letter front page: “I was the only one in the office at lunchtime. David Kirk, the news editor, said there was a PA, or AP, or Reuters story – a school teacher in Belfast who has been killed on a mountain in Europe, Mont Blanc I think it was.

“He told me to scoot up to such and such an address and try and take away a picture.

“I knocked on the door and it suddenly became very clear that the new widow, the way she answered the door and was all chatty, didn’t know. I had to break the news.

“The neighbour came in and started making tea. She called the parish priest, he gave me a picture and filled in all the gaps. They weren’t long married either.

“I got the splash in the News Letter. That’s going in at the deep end but it was good.”

He commented: “I don’t miss newspapers as they would be now. I’m very lucky, I was there in the good times of newspapers. We got paid very well, had big expenses. I made a lot of very good pals, there was a very good camaraderie.”

In 2018 Alan wrote his first book - Floreat Collegium – the official history of Belfast’s Methodist College.

His new book, which has just been released, explores the extraordinary lives and friendship of Toto Koopman and Coco Chanel, who became entangled in a story which proves that sometimes the truth really does outdo fiction.

Alan was introduced to Toto’s story by the Aitken family, the descendants of Lord Beaverbrook – with whom Toto had an affair. Toto also was in a relationship with Beaverbrook’s son Max.

With the help of Beaverbrook’s granddaughter, Laura Aitken, Alan was able to access a treasure trove of letters from Toto and Max and Beaverbrook.

Alan said: “No work of fiction could have actually done the story justice, that’s the incredible thing.”

Toto Koopman and Coco Chanel were the toast of Paris and London high society in the 1930s.

Alan’s story about the two women chronicles a world of power, money, fashion, turmoil and ultimately war.

It takes place in an arena populated by Winston Churchill and his greatest ally, the Machiavellian newspaper genius Lord Beaverbrook, on the one side, and Hitler, Himmler and Mussolini on the other.

This compelling true story details how Java-born Toto became a fearless and heroic British spy and the self-absorbed fashion designer Chanel, a Nazi agent.

Toto paid the price of her bravery and was sent to the hell of Ravensbruck concentration camp.

By stark contrast Chanel lived through the war in the luxury of her Paris Ritz suite with her Gestapo lover.

Alan Frame says: ‘My research into Toto kept bringing up another name, that of Coco Chanel. It became apparent that their one-time friendship diverged in the most dramatic way.

“The icing on the cake were the letters to and from Toto, Beaverbrook and Max. This is a story about remarkable people at a time when the world was at war and freedom was at stake. In the end Toto and Coco were united by just one thing, their all-consuming will to survive.”

Toto & Coco reveals the very best and the very worst of what can happen when the human spirit is taken to the edge.

It is available on Amazon as a paperback, Audible or Kindle and at major UK bookstores.

Alan’s roots are in NI though he began school in Cambridge before coming to Methody in 1961.

He said: “I count myself very much as a Paddy. I spent every single summer holiday from about the age of six until 12 with my great aunts. We had a boat – we used to go sailing and fishing. I had a great, great childhood.”

“I still come over a lot. My sister lives just outside Carrick. I’ve got a very ancient aunt down Bangor way. Most of my extended family is still there.”

Working on a book about his old school gave him a great excuse for an extended stay in his spiritual home: “I was rung up by a woman saying Methody was raising £23 million for major repairs, would you like to be part of them London fundraising? I said, ‘yes, as long as you don’t expect me to come up with £23 million.’

Alan ended up writing the official book on the 150th anniversary: “I spent quite a bit of time in Northern Ireland going through old files and school magazines. I really enjoyed that. I met a lot of old friends who I hadn’t seen for donkeys years.”

Alan lives in London with his partner from Mayo. He has two grown up daughters.

He said: “I’m 74, I feel like I’m still 30, badly behaved and all the rest of it.”

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