Surprise Surprise

We have said it before, and I am afraid we will say it again. Whenever you think that the Iggy well has been dried up, she will surprise us with something new.

July 2023 confronted us with 32 new Iggy pictures, take by Feri Lukas in the mid-seventies, and found in a Viennese antiquity shop by art collector Kevin Geronimo Brandtner. More about that a bit later when we present you our annual overview of our Tumblr sister-blog, aptly titled The Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit.

And guess what? In December, we were confronted with another new Iggy picture, but that is for a new article to appear in a couple of days.

Happy New Year!

It’s a new year and before we thank all our friends who participated in the Church in 2023 we’ll have a quick overview of that mad place that is the Tumblr edition of the Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit. It is ridiculously popular, compared to its original. Make your own comment using the terms ‘pearls’ and ‘swine’.

The Church wishes to thank all our friends, collaborators and some old enemies whom we can’t live without: ‘Georgie Boy’ Lukàc, Alexander, Alien Brain, Antonio Jesús Reyes, Aubrey Powell, Benji, Birdie Hop, Chapter 24, Dillharris1953, Drkrazee, Ebronte, Eleonora Siatoni, Elizabeth Joyce, Eternal Isolation, Ewgeni Reingold, Feri Lukas, Göran Nyström, Hipgnosis Covers, Iain Emo Moore, Iggy Rose, Jackie Orme Ward, Jenny Spires, Kevin Geronimo Brandtner, Libby Gausden, Mark Blake, Mark Cobley-Jones, Mark Lawton, Mimi Hnamte, MluciferSam, NO TIME TO ROCK, Petra Eder, Peudent, Psych62, Ramenastern, Rich Hall, Rino Di Lernia, RJBuffalo, Roddy Bogawa, Sean Beaver, Simon Matthews, Stanislav, Suzie, SwanLee, Syd Wonder, Thana Hnamte, Vanessa Flores, Wolfpack, Younglight, Zeebo… and all the others we have forgotten.
♥ Libby ♥ Iggy ♥

Iain Emo Moore

We don’t have to introduce Emo to vintage Pink Floyd scholars. Apart from an incredible memory, he seems to have an almost infinite Floydian picture archive. At regular intervals, he posts these on one of his (many) Facebook pages.

New Iggy Picture Found?

In December 2023, Emo posted a (censored) picture of a topless woman sitting next to a man in a garden, claiming this is Iggy in the early seventies.

The picture is cracked in many places and has faded after all these years. It shows a skinny woman looking at a man on her left. At first sight, one can doubt that this is Iggy. 

Iggy look-alikes

Over the years, we have received pictures of people thought to be Iggy. For instance, the pictures of Sheila Rock that were shot by her then-husband, Mick Rock, in Syd’s garden, were once believed to be Iggy. (See: Rock around the Blog, 2009.)

Other examples are a woman walking on King’s Road, taken by John Hendy (see: King's Road Chic(k), 2013) or a famous picture, taken at the Speakeasy (see: Little old lady from London-by-the-Sea, 2010). Not Iggy.

Pros and cons

We have had the ‘Iggy or not’ discussion with almost every new Iggy picture that has been found in the past.

The new picture shows a pretty skinny woman, and this isn’t really how we remember Iggy from other images from that era. But pictures can deceive. The quality is such that the woman’s face is partially rendered invisible by some shadowy patches.

The story

What makes us believe this is Iggy is the background story told by Emo. According to him, the picture dates from the early 1970s and was taken in Brighton. The man sitting next to Iggy is a certain Geoffrey, whom we know nothing about. Emo explains:

I can’t remember Geoffrey’s second name. There are other pictures in the garden. I’m going to look for them. There are a couple of friends, a sister and brother, John and Sally...

Pete Brown got some in Spain, I think; that’s where he is now. And he has got some of Syd as well, in Wetherby Mansions. He’s going to try and find them. He’s got some of Syd, I think, on the market square in Cambridge, which would be 1964. He took them when he was fifteen and Syd was eighteen. Syd was sitting on the fountain.

But he does have several of Iggy, walking through the garden. And a couple of her laughing, if we can find them. She looks really thin here, doesn’t she? Let’s see how many people will tell, that’s not Iggy! If you zoom in on her face you’ll be able to see her features.

At this point, Emo added some details about Iggy that we won’t publish. These details (known to us) make his testimony more than believable. In a chat from many years ago, Iggy remembered having met Pete Brown in Brighton.

Someone described me as a loose cannon, never knowing what might come out of my big mouth or when I might explode, like a dormant volcano. That was from Pete Brown, whom I met in Brighton, where I went after London. He used to hang out with Syd and the Cambridge set.

Mark Palmer

Back to Emo:

It's the early seventies, and she looks as if she has lost a lot of weight. Not how chubby she was when she was at that hippy farm, with Henrietta [Garnett], a real go-getter, and Sir Mark Palmer, with his horses. I know about most of her life; Jenny Spires told me most things, and I heard bits from Syd [Barrett] and Duggie [Fields] as well. She got really thin by the time she was with Syd.

Emo is referring to aristocrat Mark Palmer, who organised a horse and wagon quest to Port Eliot in St. Germans, searching for UFOs and mythical Arthurian places along the way. Iggy, who hung around the English Boy agency at that time, joined the caravan and can be seen in a documentary from that time.

Next to Iggy, there were a lot of underground celebrities participating in the wacky adventure. Emo Moore further explains:

Henrietta [Garnett] was incredibly beautiful in the sixties, an upper-class English lady. She died a couple of years ago [2019]. Mark Palmer was a really sweet guy; he was so gentle, a true hippie. He made my stomach go funny because he was so laid back, and I started to go laid back. 1967, 68, 69. Because I was always in Chelsea, so was he in that period.

When I worked for Ossie Clark, I saw him all the time. He passed through to go to English Boy. He was still involved, but he wasn’t as involved as when he started it.

English Boy

Sir Charles Mark Palmer opened the English Boy modelling agency in 1965. It was located above the Quorum store, owned by Ossie Clark and Alice Pollock. They asked Iggy to model for them, but she refused. Although a loudmouth, she was very shy. But she kept hanging around the English Boy agency. Iggy explains why:

I had such a crush on Mark Palmer, lovely Denzil, and all the pretty boys and girls from the English Boy agency. Denzil was THE Ultimate Cool. He was an unrivalled leader. The sharpest dresser in hand-made Italian silk suits and the finest Italian shoes. Denzil epitomized style and elegance. He was the dandiest of the dandies. He made Beau Brummell look shabby.

It’s still a mystery to us who this Denzil character was, but here is a sample of the fine specimen that English Boy contained.

Hippie world

The 1960s were a wonderful time, if we may believe Emo:

It was a bit hippie-jive. All these groovy places. Groovy pubs and clubs and rock ‘n’ roll dance places. Bookshops and all these clothing shops and underground meeting centres. Lots of things were going on, and normal people wouldn’t have known what happened in a lot of the bookshops. The films were in the basements and the backrooms, sometimes in the main shop when it was a big movie with a lot of people.

It started in 1964 when I was passing across these amazing, unique places with ‘Hey man, what’s up, man’ [Emo imitating Neil from The Young Ones]. That type of vibe...

Henrietta Moraes

Henrietta Moraes was a muse of the London art (and drugs) scene in the fifties. Known for her hedonistic lifestyle she effortlessly entered the kippie underground of the sixties, where she hung around with Mark Palmer and his crazy followers. She wrote a book 'Henrietta' where she describes Palmer's quest through England and Wales. Although Iggy claimed they knew each other, there is no trace of Iggy in these memoirs, but neither is there of the other Henrietta (Partridge).

This probably proves that Mark Palmer organised different caravan quests in different years and with different people. One that was documented in the 'Hippies at the Port Eliot Estate in St Germans' documentary, with Iggy and Henrietta Partridge. Another one (probably) without Iggy, but with author Henrietta Moraes taking notes to appear in her autobiography. Emo:

I don’t know the other Henrietta [Moraes]. I have never seen her. If I had seen her, I would have recognised her. It sounds like it would’ve been a wonderful place where they were all hanging out with Mark Palmer. He had a couple of those gipsy caravans. I think he was riding around one in London when he was going to court or something.

Mark Palmer (2)

Palmer was once arrested for cannabis possession and showed the judges he was a real British aristocrat, with a flair of eccentricity...

Palmer left the courthouse in a horse-drawn cart bedecked in chrysanthemums; ‘the metamorphosis,’ said somebody who knew him as a somewhat straighter fellow, ‘was so complete as to transcend mere affectation.’

In the book ‘Ready Steady Go!’, author Shawn Levy describes these aristocratic upper-class hippies:

Some of the most high-born among the Stones’ new pals would soon take on new lives as caravaners, travelling through the countryside in horse-drawn carts, dressed in hippie-gipsy gear, smoking dope, practising free love in the fields, and attempting to make contact with UFOs, which they believed still followed ancient ley lines - magnetic landing strips, in effect, built into the landscape but lost to centuries of ignorant civilisation.

The youthful Sir Mark Palmer, who had attended Eton and Oxford and served as a page at Queen Elizabeth’s 1953 coronation (his mother was a lady-in-waiting), was the most celebrated of the lot. Although he ran a modelling agency - English Boy Ltd. - from his home in Radnor Walk, Chelsea, he joined up with a posse of itinerant rich folks who eschewed baths and roofs and responsibility for a life of giddy freedom, caravaning about the countryside in a movable commune of like-minded spirits.

Mark Palmer and his friends started different journeys around England. According to Henrietta Moraes, he travelled for four years before settling down and starting a horse farm. By then, Iggy had long left the hippie brigade, for reasons she explained in her typical style:

I’ve done the Hippy commune with the lentils and mantra, bongo bashing, and tuneless flute playing. There were lots of plonk and unspiritual drugs. I just craved the bloodiest steak. I’m not a diabetic!

Sally, Emo, Syd and Iggy

Emo Moore:

I only met Iggy twice. She looked really cute, though. At Syd's during those two weeks. Once with Sally and Syd, and another time with myself and Syd. Syd looked completely somewhere else, and I didn’t get introduced to her. Otherwise, I would’ve spoken to her. Because they were both deadly silent, sitting apart in Syd’s room, I left after ten minutes, both times, I think.

Iggy, deadly silent? Now that’s a weird behaviour for her. Both must have been pretty high that day, silently floating above that bi-coloured floorboard.

Other Mark Palmer & English Boy articles on this blog:
Paint Your Wagon: Iggy movie unearthed! 
A Tale of Two Henriettas 

The Church wishes to thank: Iain Emo Moore, Iggy Rose, Miss Peelpants.
♥ Libby ♥ Iggy ♥

Sources (other than the above-mentioned URLs):
Levy, Shawn: Ready Steady Go!, Broadway Books, New York, 2003, p. 235-237.
Moraes, Henrietta: Henrietta, Hamish Hamilton, London, 1994.