Happy birthday John Wayne

Iain Johnstone celebrates the centenary of the ‘Duke’ and recalls a memorable holiday off the Mexican coast with the toupee-less Hollywood legend

Had he lived, John Wayne would have been 100 on Saturday. I knew him. In the spring of 1976 he invited me to go on holiday with him on the Wild Goose, his converted minesweeper. The plan was to cruise up the Pacific coast of Mexico.

He told me to go to the Acapulco Hilton and he would call me when the ship was ready to sail. It was a heady time in Acapulco: Howard Hughes, who had been bed-ridden in the penthouse of the Princess Hotel, was rumoured to be dying and there was a chase on as to whether the Mexican police could get the body and the death duties or whether Hughes’s henchmen could smuggle it out of town. They did.

My chum Alan Riding, the New York Times man in Mexico, had flown down to cover this and there was the usual mordant humour among the American and Mexican correspondents at dinner: ‘Howar Hugh?’ ‘Very well, thank you.’