Chris Denning - who was once a BBC Radio 1 DJ - today pleaded guilty to 21 historic child sex offenses, relating to the Walton Hop, a club in Kingston-on-Thames. I made a documentary about the Walton Hop a while back, and wrote about it in my book Lost At Sea. Given the events of the day, I thought I’d reproduce my Chris Denning interview here.

Just before Christmas 2001, a few weeks after the Guardian published
my story about the case, I had a telephone call from the former Radio 1 DJ
Chris Denning. Back in the seventies, Denning and Jonathan were best friends
and business partners. Denning had, days earlier, been released from a
three-year jail sentence in Prague for child-sex offences. The night before his
deportation from the Czech Republic, I met him at a down-at-heel hotel off
Wenceslas Square. He wouldn’t say which country he was going to. (It turned out
to be Austria.) He faced a number of similar offences in Britain, and he told
me he’d be arrested if he ever returned here.

           He turned
up with a boy. He introduced him as one of the boys he’d just been in prison
for, and he said he brought him along to prove they were still friends. The boy
had flu, and throughout the interview he sat on the bed, sniffing, and looking
bored and ill.

           I asked
Chris Denning if Jonathan King had learned how to pick up boys from him.

           That’s
possible,’ he said. ‘He did steal some of the things I did.’

           ‘Like
what?’ I asked.

           ‘I would
make funny remarks,’ he said. ‘I’d be walking down the street with a couple of
my younger friends and I’d say something absolutely absurd to a passer-by. I
remember one joke I had. I’d say to a passer-by, “Excuse me, do you know where
so and so street is?” And they’d say, “No. I’m sorry, I don’t.” And I’d say,
“Oh, I can help you! It’s just down there on the left … !” And for young people
– for somebody like me to make a joke like that, it was hilarious.’

           Chris
Denning – despite his various jail sentences and the fact that he’d been
sleeping rough in a Prague cemetery for the past week, on and off – still had
the looks and voice and demeanour of an old-style Smashy and Nicey type of
Radio 1 DJ.

           ‘But
Jonathan’s humour always had a streak of cruelty,’ Denning added, ‘and I’ve
always tried not to do that. I hate that kind of thing. Once I was going along
in his car to Brighton. He’d invited a couple of young people I knew. He’d
said, “Why don’t you bring them along for the trip?” He had a chauffeur. He
said, “James! To Brighton!” I was sitting in the Rolls-Royce with my shoes half
off and he grabbed them and chucked them out of the window. I said to the
chauffeur, “James. Can you please stop? I want to get my shoes.” Jonathan said
to him, “If you stop, you’re fired. Drive on.” ’

           ‘What did
the boys in the car think of it?’ I asked.

           ‘I don’t
think they liked it,’ he said. ‘It was funny, you see, but it was cruel.’

           We got onto
the subject of whether I’d been unfair to Jonathan in my story. I said the
thing that swayed me was that all twenty-seven men who came forward said they
had been emotionally damaged.

           Chris
Denning sighed. ‘Well, they have to say that,’ he said.

           ‘There is no way that
twenty-seven men were doing it for the compensation,’ I said.

           ‘OK,’ he
said.

           He paused.

           ‘Maybe they
are damaged,’
he said. ‘But there is no way of knowing – proving – that it had anything to do
with one particular origin.’

           ‘But they all say
they were damaged,’ I said.

           ‘There’s no
reason why they should
be damaged as long as it is consensual,’ he said. ‘Why? What
difference does it make between sixteen and fifteen and a half, or fourteen?
It’s so easy to just excuse your failures in life. “Oh, that was the cause of
it.” It’s a guess.’

           Lots of
Jonathan’s friends had said this same thing to me. Many newspaper commentators
had also raised this point in columns and editorials at the time of his
conviction. Carol Sarler wrote in the Observer, ‘The man they call Victim Two
set much of the scene for the rest with his heart-tugging description of the
disaster that his life has become: a rotten lousy mess of drugs and alcohol and
crime – and all because he met Jonathan King! [Did the jury] really believe he
might otherwise have been Einstein? … One gave evidence to the effect that
he had not greatly enjoyed the sex, but that King gave him £40 – about two
weeks’ wages then – and he had gone back the following week for more; well
sorry, M’Lud, but in the real world that’s called trade. Consensual, low-rent
trade.’

           In the
hotel room in Prague, Chris Denning asked me if I wanted to know the worst
thing about being attracted to underage boys.

           ‘Sadly,’ he
said, ‘they grow up. They disappear. The person you were attracted to has gone.
He doesn’t exist any more. You can never have a lasting relationship with them.
It’s very sad.’

           In August
2005, Chris Denning returned to London from Austria. He was arrested at Heathrow
Airport, and in February 2006 was convicted of child-sex offences, dating back
to the seventies and eighties. He was sentenced to four years in prison. That
same week, I received the following email:

Dear Jon,

I was abused by King’s
mate Chris Denning who, as you know, has just been banged up. I recently sent
this email to King. You may find it amusing.

Dear Jonathan, I see
your old mate Chris Denning has been given another serve of porridge. Hardly
seems fair that he only got four years and you got seven, but then again you
are an extremely repulsive and smarmy cunt and one can’t really blame the judge
for wanting to shaft you.

                       You are no doubt aware that your ex employer
the Sun has published a piece linking you to Denning as members of a ‘paedophile
ring’. May I make a suggestion Jonathan, this could be a blessing in disguise,
an opportunity to restore your tattered reputation. Why don’t you sue the Sun
Jonathan? How dare they link you to that vile pervert Denning! After all you
are a wronged man, a ‘victim’ of your own celebrity. A modern day Oscar Wilde.
And after all it’s not your fault that twelve year old boys are so damn sexy,
and of course they all wanted it, why wouldn’t an adolescent boy want to be
pawed and fucked up the arse by a slavering, fat, ugly pig like your good self
I expect they were beating down your door Jonathan, how unfair that you should
be persecuted for providing these boys with a ‘service’. Such a cruel world.

                       My dear sweet Jonathan I am not sure what
lies beyond the great divide, I try to live a good life and I hope to die with
honour. I am however sure of one thing. That is this. When you die you will be
met by them and welcomed, the suicides, and the ones who chose to die slowly by
bottle and by needle. And they shall take you in their arms dear Jonathan, and
embrace you for all eternity.

                       Your friend,

                       Simon