British writer and broadcaster, strongly identified with the early days of commercial television in the UK, when his sharp, investigative style contrasted with the BBC’s more deferential culture. Farson was a prolific biographer and autobiographer, chronicling the bohemian life of Soho and his own experiences of running a music-hall pub on east London’s Isle of Dogs. His memoirs were titled Never a Normal Man.
Farson was the son of American journalist Negley Farson; his childhood was mostly divided between Britain and North America. He visited Germany with his father while Negley was reporting on the Nazi regime, and was patted on the head by Adolf Hitler, who described him as a “good Aryan boy”. He briefly attended the British public school Wellington College, whose militaristic regime was not to his taste; Farson had become intensely aware of his homosexuality, which would sporadically cause him great emotional strain. As a teenager he worked as a parliamentary correspondent, and was pursued in the House of Commons by the Labour Member of Parliament Tom Driberg.
Farson joined Associated-Rediffusion, the first British commercial television company, in the mid-1950s. Here he took risks that few television interviewers would dare to take. In his series Out of Step (1957) and People in Trouble (1958) he dealt with issues of social exclusion and alienation that most of the media at the time preferred to sweep under the carpet.
Farson’s Guide to the British (1959–1960) took a critical eye at a nation in transition and was the first public expression of his long-term quest for the true identity of Jack the Ripper. Other series included Farson in Australia (1961) and Dan Farson Meets … (1962), which usually featured popular singers of the time.
By the end of 1964 he had resigned from Associated-Rediffusion (by then renamed Rediffusion London) and would keep a lower public profile for the rest of his life. He moved from London to live in his parents’ house in Devon (his father had died in 1960), but continued to visit the pubs and drinking clubs of London’s Soho on a regular basis.
He remained, however, a prolific author and a prominent figure in the art world. He produced several volumes of memoirs. Soho in the Fifties recalled his participation in London’s west end Bohemia. Limehouse Days (1991) recalled his disastrous East End pub venture. These and other books were illustrated with his own photographs.
He wrote a number of studies of artists and authors, and the authorised biography of his friend, the painter Francis Bacon. He also wrote travel books.
He died at his house in Georgeham in Devon on 27 November 1997, aged 70.
Link to Wikipedia biography