Great suit
Sir: Reading Joan Collins’s piece on Doug Hayward (‘An Actor’s Life’, 17 May) reminded me of the brief but happy time I spent working for Doug in his Mount Street shop. My job was to answer the telephone, chat up the customers, and rip up the tacking on the suits after fittings, a menial occupation but made memorable by Doug’s wit and good humour. Only once did I see him nonplussed.
A tiny American woman came into the shop to ask him how much he charged to make a suit. On being told the price for the usual size by Doug, she said, ‘OK, I’ll go get my husband’, and returned with the tallest, broadest man any of us had ever seen. Clothing his gigantic frame would require yards and yards of expensive material, wiping out any profit for Doug. It was probably the neatest scam anyone had ever pulled on him and, to his credit, left him shaking with laughter.
Sarah Bradford
London SW6
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