Zack Matalon

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How did I meet Zack Matalon?

I no longer recall.   Did someone introduce us?  Possibly this was another of my impetuous gestures following a casual meeting in a pub.

All I can be sure of 60-plus years down the line is that he arrived at my Hornsey home in the second half of the 1950s, together with a lovely young woman named Julie, and a somewhat deadbeat character named Jack with an antiquated, barely playable, upright piano.  Three musicians and a musical instrument. 

Julie was Julie Felix, a folk singer and guitarist.  She did not stay very long.  Jack was next to go.  He decamped without paying his rent, but the piano he left behind stayed with me for several years and gave me a great deal of pleasure, being disposed of only when my friend Sasha suggested I replace it with an excellent pianola, plus hundreds of musical rolls, that was costing him a small fortune in storage charges at Harrods.

But Zack stayed with me for a long time.  I used to spend many evenings boozing it up and dancing at a club in Kensington, the Exhibition Club in Harrington Road, near South Kensington station.  And I managed to get him a singing engagement at the club.  Ron Moody's prediction at LSE had achieved its solitary success!  He recorded one of my songs on the "A" side of a 45 r.p.m record.  Spike Hornett had arranged the music and found a pianist to accompany Zack.  The song was Just Think of Me written as a tribute to departing Wife number one, Naomi.  The "flip" side was a duet between Zack and a lovely young woman named Juliet (her surname lost in the mists of time!) who had been introduced to me by friend Russell Cooke, who subsequently also introduced me to the lady who was to become the third Mrs Sinclair.  Well, you can't win them all.  [That's a joke!]  The song the pair sang was Let's Osculate, which I later used in the revue I co-wrote with Malcolm Knight.

My memory of Zack's departure is as hazy as my memory of his arrival, but I was amazed to learn some years later that he had married the internationally famed dancer Elizabeth Seal.  They had apparently met when he had a minor role in the Broadway production of Irma La Douce in 1960 in which Elizabeth Seal had played the lead to much acclaim.