Travel safe, Jim Haynes

A being who really did break the mould

If you never met Jim Haynes, you missed a real treat. But it’s too late now. He has just died. 

An ex-pat American instrumental in the development of Britain’s 1960s counterculture scene, he’d arrived in the UK in 1956, on military service in the US Air Force stationed near Edinburgh. He stayed, and co-founded the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, the Traverse Theatre, and Britain’s first paperbacks-only bookshop in Edinburgh’s George Square - located by the rhino head on the wall outside. 

In 1966, he moved to London, co-founding alternative newspaper The International Times and Drury Lane’s ground-breaking Arts Lab. It was a mixed media centre cum crash pad in an ex-fruit warehouse. Three years later, he moved to Paris, his base for the rest of his life, to teach Media Studies and Sexual Politics at the University of Paris. 

I met him because Chicago broadcaster Studs Terkel, for whose ‘Division Street: America’ I was the fresh-out-school publicist, wanted to interview him. Thereafter, I spent all my free time at the Arts Lab. 

Its all-night cinema was spread with mattresses from which you watched scratchy and provocative movies. Its gallery hosted shows by Yoko Ono and John Lennon. There was a theatre, and a vegetarian restaurant. Noticeboards offered rides to Europe and beyond, and astrological readings. Jim lived above it all, up a ladder, in a loft space of more wall-to-wall mattresses.

For the two years before it was shut down, the Arts Lab mattered.

In 1968, when London was erupting in demonstrations against American involvement in Vietnam, Jim and Black comedian Dick Gregory worked on a "Dick Gregory for President" campaign, possibly the only two people on it. In the evenings after work, I acted as secretary. At least, I think that’s what I was. 

Our office was Dick’s table at the Playboy Club. Dick sported denim overalls and explosion of beard. These represented his platform: If American men could be persuaded not to shave nor wear anything but overalls, US barbers and tailors would go broke and vote against the Vietnam war. 

London high society in all its satin finery was captivated. Every night, the three of us showed up after dinner at some taffeta dress/smoking jacket event in posh London, and Dick and Jim would dazzle the diners into writing amazingly generous cheques.

I never knew anyone like Jim for making a difference. He never stopped. Everything he did was boundary-breaking. 

But none of his public achievements are what he was best known for among his friends. A one-man embodiment of the spirit of the United Nations, he wanted them all to know each other. He came up with a simple idea. He would feed anyone who wanted to come at his 14th arrondissement atelier in Paris every Sunday night.  

Across the world, hundreds of people can talk about Jim and his kindness and generosity from the first-hand experience of one of those regular Sunday dinner parties. Over 200,000 people at the time of his death, in fact. They became so popular, After Eight Mints courted him to film one of them for an ad.

The fee earned sponsored subsequent dinners. And a kitchen upgrade.

In the early days, you might have squeezed in next to John Lennon or Indira Gandhi. These days, the 50-plus people who showed up for a simple but hearty three-course meal, cooked by a changing run of friends with all the wine and beer you could drink, were likely to be less familiar. And not at all to one another. They came because somewhere on their travels someone had said, "If you're ever in Paris on a Sunday, you should go and eat at Jim's." According to Natalia Antelava, the Georgian journalist behind the courageous investigative platform CODAstory - http://www.codastory.com, "It was the highpoint of our trip to Paris." 

The suppers began when a ballet dancer from Los Angeles who had taken shelter at his books-and-videos-lined studio wanted to repay his hospitality by cooking a gourmet meal for his friends. The suppers became a regular fixture. And grew in size.

Eventually, Jim was forced to ask his guests for contributions toward the food. But there was never anywhere in Paris you could eat and drink to sate yourself for roughly Euros 30. And nowhere else to find yourself so easily in the mixed company of world travellers and Parisians.

Jim may not have met the diners before. But once given their names he remembered them, and was able to introduce them, one to another by country, or occupation, or interest.

His dozens of address books were grouped by country. Borders and boundaries meant little to him. He and a friend once produced Citizen of the World Passports, containing photograph, physical description, and the signature of the holder over a postage stamp. For a brief period in the ‘60s, a number of baffled immigration officers accepted it as valid. 

In the Soviet Union during the 1980s, when permits were essential to internal travel, he arrived in our Moscow flat with a gaggle of girls from Leningrad he had managed to smuggle onto the train. And successfully smuggled back home again.

His biography, ‘Thanks for Coming!’ (Faber), had probably the longest acknowledgements section ever published, running to several pages. It was a census of many of the key figures of the 1960s, as well as ordinary Jacks and Jills. 

No recipe would do Jim justice. Just pick your own favourite dish. And as soon as you’re free to do so, invite as many friends as you can to supper to demonstrate your affection for them.