DJ: The fifth one is the one of the couple dancing, he’s kind of kissing her neck and there’s a statue behind them. Luciana Martinez and Deryck Healey in 1981. Luciana was an artist and sadly died very young, ten years after that photograph was taken, maybe twelve. She was very beautiful.

FB: That was at the beginning of your time at Tatler, so was that one of your first dos?
DJ: Yes. I was a prize winner in a photography competition and Tina Brown gave me some freelance jobs for this magazine. She said if I moved to London she’d give me a contract to photograph features and parties. And she was very young hersel, she was about 28 or 29. The magazine had very few staff, it had this wonderful brief to photograph parties but Tina didn’t want the type of party coverage that had previously been appearing in the magazine. She didn’t exactly know what she wanted but she knew she didn’t want that.

They were still working out how to have access to these parties when there was a little story in Londoner’s Diary about Terence Conran having his fiftieth birthday that weekend and what an amazing do it was going to be because he’d just sold his company. This was pre-mobiles so I phoned up, I think it was the Friday and the party was next day, and managed to get through to Terence Conran’s secretary who said, “Yes of course, come and take pictures”. She told me to come after dinner and gave me the address. I got there and photographed for an hour and a half, and took the images back to Tatler’s office on the Monday. Unknown to me, Tina had seen the same article in the Diary called Terence Conran and he’d said no, he didn’t want a photographer coming. I’d probably called the wrong person who’d said yes. So anyway, the magazine ran the pictures and I think Terence Conran was annoyed… But I’d had permission.

Dafydd Jones: The Last Hurrah is on show and available for acquisition at The Photographers’ Gallery, London from 3 August. The book by same name will be published by STANLEY/BARKER on 2 August 2018.

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