SUN, SEA AND STIFF UPPER LIP

The glamour has faded; California's British immigrants have never known such

bad times, reports William Cash Los Angeles 'WE DON'T WANT any poor Englishmen hanging around Hollywood,' noted Sir Ambrose Abercrombie in Evelyn Waugh's acrid satire on Los Angeles, The Loved One. 'We Limeys have a peculiar position to keep up . . . I often feel like an ambas- sador. It's a responsibility, I can tell you, and in various degrees every Englishman out here shares it. You never find an Englishman among the under-dogs except in England, of course. That's under- stood out here, thanks to the example we've set. There are jobs that an English- man just doesn't take.'

Matthew Anderson, aged 28, from Walthamstow, east London, who has been living in LA for the last five years, is one of

'My imaginary friend is a solicitor.' many thousands of British people living in LA today who have little respect for such remarks. Each morning, he slips into his undertaker's outfit shortly before setting off — or at least hoping to — on his `Death-Styles of the Rich and Famous' tour of Hollywood in one of two 1960s, 18- foot- long, silver Cadillac hearses — modified with aircraft-style seating for eight• Requiem music is piped out of quadro- phonic speakers. His tour costs $30 and includes the restaurant where James Dean ate his last hamburger, the hotel in which John Belushi overdosed on drugs and a faked copy of Alfred Hitchcock's death certifi- cate. Despite having been acclaimed by the Wall Street Journal and dozens of British newspapers, business is exceptionally bleak. Following the riots, tourism in LA has fall- en by almost half. Mr Anderson's cars have started to break down, and worse, when it rains, the roof of the hearse leaks — so he has been sued by angered customers. His only competition in LA is, in fact, from another British entrepreneur, 33- year-old Dennis Smith, from Ilford, Essex. Smith offers a chauffeur-driven Marilyn Monroe tour — including such sites as the West LA apartment where her naked body was discovered — in a glinting 1959 Fleet- wood presidential limousine that once belonged to a Belgian diplomat who had it fitted with bullet-proof doors and a mid- night-blue crushed velvet interior. After buying the car for $7,500 and investing another $25,000 with a partner rebuilding it, Smith is faced with the prospect of sell- ing up, as demand is down to an average of

just one passenger a week. 'I'll be frank with you,' he told me. 'Business is bloody terrible.'

Like so many British lured to LA there are now estimated to be almost half a million expatriate British, roughly equal to the population of Leeds — he has found that California falls far short of his expec- tations. This is hardly surprising. The state is plunged in a deep recession with unem- ployment having just reached a record 10 per cent — compared to an average of around 7 per cent in the United States as a whole. More companies and professionals moved away from the Golden State in 1991 than in any year in its history. Eight out of ten new businesses are folding with- in 12 months.

Yet the number of British flocking to the West Coast with Dick Whittington- style hopes is ever increasing. The invasion of the West Coast by small businessmen and get-rich-quick entrepreneurs wishing to escape the economic misery of London has a close affinity to the expatriate exodus to Spain in the early 1970s. Southern Cali- fornia is, indeed, turning into the Costa del Sol of the Nineties, bringing its inevitable share of shady characters. The example of Ian Spiro, a self-styled `International commodities broker', who worked out of a bedroom in his family's expensive ranch in the San Diego hills is

not untypical of the entrepreneurial expa- triate type attracted to southern Califor- nia. He bought the Daily Telegraph at his local newsagent and gave the quiet impression that he was always about to strike a million-dollar deal on the phone. Exactly what he sold nobody was ever quite sure. No one knew his French house had been remortgaged, his flat in Swiss Cottage repossessed, together with a boat moored in the Cote d'Azur. As a close friend commented: 'He was the kind of man who was financially up and down all the time.'

It was intriguing to observe the contrast- ing ways that his death, and the murder of his family, were covered this week by the US and British media. The Americans blandly and briefly reported the case as if it were a straightforward murder and sui- cide, probably rooted in financial prob- lems. The British press seemed to appear almost glamour-struck by the fact that he lived in California — reporting in the cliched style of a provincial weekly. Despite the fact that Spiro had nothing whatsoever to do with Hollywood, the story was quickly invested with all the ele- ments of a Tom Clancy novel — spy rings, poolside parties and a desperate search for celebrity neighbours. Reality was doubt- less less exotic. He probably couldn't afford to pay his $4,000 a month rent. Forget the likes of P.G. Wodehouse and David Niven who came to Hollywood in the 1930s. The numbers of British in LA began swelling in the 1960s when giant aerospace corporations like McDonnell Douglas employed thousands of British- trained engineers at their Long Beach fac- tory, an hour's drive south of LA. Having often been recruited though large ads placed in British newspapers, many ended up settling by the ocean in rent-controlled Santa Monica.

When the centre of the world's enter- tainment industry transplanted itself from New York to LA in the Seventies, the British colony expanded with an influx of creative 'talent' — if that is the word scurrying away from, in particular, the sink- ing ship of the British film industry. Yet few of the army of actors, producers or directors who have descended on LA are so naïve as to imagine that the streets of Hollywood are paved with gold, knowing that the likelihood of becoming the next Michael Caine, David Puttnam or Ridley Scott are practically nil.

It is often assumed that most of the British in LA are involved — or want to be — in the film industry. But the turnover in small businessmen with get-rich-quick hopes is far greater than that of aspiring movie stars. Perhaps the worst hit by the recession has been the legion of now ruined British property developers who swarmed over to LA in the 1980s. Com- mercial property in California has slumped in value by up to 50 per cent in the last three years, and residential property by around 30 per cent.

I was recently invited along to the Colo- nial Club, an all-British collection of estate agents and property speculators who meet together once a month in the VIP section of a trendy pool hall on Sunset Boulevard. The night I went, the small gathering was relegated to the public bar — sitting hud- dled in a corner sipping glasses of mineral water. A typical member is David Philp, formerly lead singer and guitarist with the punk group The Automatics, who is now a senior account executive with the Pacifica Mortgage Company. He wears a double- breasted suit and has sleekly groomed hair. `Shouldn't ask too many members what they are actually doing,' I was flatly warned beforehand. 'Most are probably bankrupt or about to lose their jobs.'

To anyone brooding over their unpaid credit card bills in drizzly England, the superficial allure of LA is obvious. Petrol is around 80 pence a gallon, swanky restaurant meals and BMWs are roughly half London prices, taxes are comparative- ly low and the sun is always shining, not forgetting the idea of a gaggle of Californi- an swim-suit calendar girls rubbing sun-oil into your back by a David Hockney-style swimming pool. Over the summer, hordes of British flocked across the Atlantic to start new lives in LA when the exchange rate was around two dollars to the pound. Suddenly, since devaluation America, is 25 per cent more expensive to an incoming Briton.

W.B. Yeats advised that anyone about to step on somebody's dreams should, at least, tread softly. Yet it only takes the most cursory of looks at the British colony in LA now to see that the days of pool-side paradise are long over. Santa Monica, with around 18 per cent of its 92,000 population British, has the flaky and washed out feel of off-season Marbella. Its bay is polluted and in its huddle of half-empty and air- conditioned British bars you can keep up, via satellite, with the European Cup soc- cer. A man was recently knifed to death, in broad daylight, close to the door of the King's Head, the best known British pub in the town. Another nearby, the Mucky Duck, was closed down after a series of British-inspired football hooligan fights.

Many people arriving in LA have scant idea of how long it can take to become successful. The career of 48-year-old British actor Clement von Franckenstein, an old Etonian whose father was Austrian ambassador to London from 1920-39 and whose mother is Scottish, is not untypical. Having come out to LA in the Seventies, after a disastrous start to his career as an officer in the Scots Greys, followed by fail- ing to make it as an opera singer, it took him nearly 20 years of television soaps, commercials and violent kick-boxing films to get his break into major Hollywood films (most recently Death Becomes Her). `I've known a lot of English actors who just didn't work at all,' he told me in his cluttered bedroom decorated with dusty school photographs and curling old film posters. 'They usually last about six months.'

The problems facing the small business- man setting up in LA are compounded by the difficulty of obtaining a Green Card. The vast number of British working ille- gally in LA has significantly increased since the mid 1980s when the US tight- ened their immigration laws. It's a subject that is not talked about — unlike the num- ber of illegal Mexican immigrants who fuel LA's black economy. The hordes of often hoity-toity, superior-than-thou, middle- stump-please-umpire British also working illegally is one of California's lesser known secrets.

A sense of the beleaguered plight of the British colony can be gauged by the classi- fieds appearing in the British weekly local newspaper, which has a circulation of 75,000. They range from the pathetic to the absurd. 'British Psychotherapist spe- cialising in relationship counselling — Self Esteem/Personal Growth/Dream Work' or `House for rent in Southern Spain. Man- sion with staff. Fishing. Close to ten cham- pionship golf courses. Perfect for tired executive, writer or artist.'

It is now considered almost bad eti- quette to inquire as to how somebody's (especially if that somebody is British) business is doing in LA. Take, for exam- ple, Barry Harvey, who came to LA in 1970 with Rolls-Royce and founded Har- vey Titanium, which supplies titanium to the US defence industry. Turnover has dropped from $23 million to $10.7 million in two years with 30 per cent of his work- force laid off.

Whilst he will probably survive, count-

less smaller firms are falling by the wayside each week. Demand for thick English pub- lic schoolboys masquerading as butlers is now zero. Last week saw the folding of the Royal Crown Sausage Company, which produced British farm-style sausages, after various British produce shops in LA which it supplied went out of business. Last Wednesday night I attended the grand opening of the most recent new British business to start up in LA — a tacky Seventies nightclub in Santa Monica called the British Disco Inferno. It's the brain- child of a pony-tailed Scottish entrepreneur called Douglas Timmins. On his flecked shiny silver card he describes himself as `The Entertainer'. His former business activities include introducing swim-suit beauty contests to pubs across Scotland. Evelyn Waugh would be choking in his grave.

William Cash is the Times' Los Angeles cor- respondent.