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The Bogus MI5 agent, and Gus Dudgeon Record Producer

In 1949 by chance, Paul Doyle met Gladys Davies on the Underground and they both got off at West Hampstead station. Gladys worked as a secretary in the West End. Over time, they developed a relationship and Paul visited her home at 31 Lyncroft Gardens. He said he was an MI5 army major undertaking highly secret work with the Special Branch. He left her house punctually at 10.00, telling Gladys he had to take a car from West Hampstead police station (then near the Underground station), on a regular journey to Scotland Yard where he was working on attachment.

They planned to get married and Gladys lent him money which he needed to contest his mother’s will. He said he would get between £7,000 and £12,000 when the case in the High Court was resolved. He received over £4,000 from Gladys and her friend Ada Webster who lived in the same house. By 1955, Gladys had only £3 16s 11d left in her bank account when she went to the police.

After investigating the ‘major’, Chief Inspector James Marr from Scotland Yard found that Paul John Doyle was in fact a married man with two young children living nearby in Flat 3 King’s Gardens, West End Lane. He had been an adjutant in the army but had been court martialed in 1949 for stealing cheques in Malaya. 

Doyle had made up the MI5 story to impress Gladys and as a convenient way to stop her finding out where he lived. In fact, he was working as a secretary. Gladys was completely overwhelmed by him and both she and her friend Ada believed the story about his secret work. So much so that she could only contact him by writing a letter to his bank.

In September 1955, 37-year old Doyle was given two years imprisonment. At the Old Bailey his wife Esme and the two women he defrauded, all burst into tears when they heard the judge announce the sentence.

Kings Gardens (Dick Weindling, June 2021)

The Record Producer 

By coincidence, the same flat in King’s Gardens was home for the engineer and record producer, Gus (Angus) Dudgeon who lived in Flat No.3 from 1967 till 1973.

In 1962 he started work as an engineer at Decca Studios in West Hampstead. During his 5½ years there, Dudgeon recorded the Zombies’ hit ‘She’s Not There’ (1964) and John Mayall’s ‘Bluesbreakers with Eric Clapton’ (1965) known as the ‘Beano’ album because Eric is reading the comic on the cover photo.

After leaving Decca, Gus worked closely with Elton John and in 1973 they formed Rocket Records. He produced David Bowie’s first hit, ‘Space Oddity’ in 1969, and later albums by artists Joan Armatrading, Chris Rea, Lindisfarne, XTC, and many others.

Elton, Gus and Bernie Taupin

The record world was shocked in July 2002, when Gus Dudgeon and his wife Sheila were killed in a car crash on the M4 while returning home to Cobham, Surrey after a party in Newbury.

 

 

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