The invention of Barney Tabasco

You really should have known Barry McIlheney. Maybe you did.

Barry McIlheney (right) and old salts.

Barry McIlheney died suddenly this week. I first met Barry when he turned up at my house one Sunday evening in 1986 to talk about his being the next editor of Smash Hits, I worked with him on and off for decades and I’ve just noted that the final contact I had with him was on May 14th on WhatsApp. From this I see he and I and a couple of other old salts were swapping gossip about other old salts, gently competing in waspish asides about showbiz personalities and indulging in airy reflections on the passage of time. The latter have now acquired a weight they never sought.

In the wake of Barry’s passing I’ve spent a lot of time exchanging fond reminiscences of the man who was known to the legions of people who worked with him over the years and probably loved him as much as I did, variously as The Big Man, Baz and Barney Tabasco. I happen to know how the last name came about because I was there when it happened. Almost. The year was 1989 and he and I had gone to the United States to schmooze the film fraternity in order to scare up some interest regarding the imminent launch of our movie magazine Empire. Contacts had we none but that didn’t discourage Barry, in whose persona the skills of a brilliant editor could, when the occasion demanded, be joined by the “big smile, short memory” reflexes of one of God’s politicians.

At the time our personal styles had temporarily diverged on account of him not yet having children and as a consequence being still capable of sleeping in until noon. Hence on this trip we were on two different time zones. I would be up at five in the morning and fast asleep at nine in the evening, no matter where we happened to be. Barry on the other hand kept what were known at the Melody Maker (where he had previously worked) as “gentleman’s hours”. I soon learned that in the mornings, when he was wearing a baseball cap, that meant he was not yet open for business. Around noon the cap would be put aside and we would sally forth to see people in big offices, people who neither knew nor cared who we were and didn’t think it was likely that our magazine would last long.

The afternoon he went to Disney (or, in his words, “to see the Mouse”) he was flying solo. He presented himself at reception, said the name of the executive he had an appointment with and then gave his name. Barry McIlheney. The young woman at the desk unsurprisingly asked him to repeat it. This he did a few times before feeling it might help if he added “like the Tabasco sauce”. By then she was connected to the office Barry was supposed to be visiting and, temporarily flustered, could only summarise her impressions of the conversation recently finished in “there’s a Barney Tabasco to see you”.

Because Barry had a writer’s ear he immediately recognised that Barney Tabasco had a Runyonesque ring to it. Being in addition a raconteur of genius, he would see how this would work as one of the bits in which he played the part of the hapless rube but the egg ended up on the face of the condescending sort behind the big desk. It was, of course, the first thing he told me when we met up afterwards. Like all great storytellers he would in all probability have sanded down the raggedy corners of the original raw experience on the way out of the mouse’s lair, may well have spent the cab ride back back identifying the three key points on which every anecdote depends and, once in the bar of the hotel, wished to launch directly into an inaugural workshopping of the incident, at the culmination of which it was clear that he would be henceforth known to one and all as Barney Tabasco and ultimately his legend would only increase as a consequence.

Nobody was thinking of that of course. It was sufficient amusement to keep the bright red ball in the air for another couple of days. Clearly we didn’t for a moment think that the receptionist’s mistake would eventually be familiar to a network of people all over the world who were to become his friends over the next thirty-five years or that I would be recounting it here. That doesn’t happen with most people’s nicknames. Then again, most people weren’t as loved as Barry. I’m sorry if you didn’t get to meet him. Your loss.

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