Christine Nicholls’ Blog, 5 December 2012

Who remembers ‘Miranda’s Merrier Moments’ in the Sunday Post?  It was a gossip column, at one time written by ‘Mugs’ Muggeridge, a secretary working for Shell. She had a lively social life and so was well placed to write the column. The column concerned itself with naming those attending social events and describing their clothes. In the 1940s people wore long dresses, even for a drink in the evening. People wanted to be named in the column but the newspaper got into trouble sometimes, and was sued for defamation of character. Mugs called the newspaper the Sunday Pest. For £10 a month Mugs lived in Torr’s Hotel in Delamere Avenue (now Kenyatta Avenue), almost new in 1930, when she arrived in Kenya. Nobody would use the hotel lift because a cheetah was kept in it. Delamere Avenue was then made of murram and was full of holes – people needed chains on their cars to get along it in the rainy season. They came to Torr’s for the nightly dances, where Micky Migdoll and his band played. The Claremont was another dance floor at the time. As for the New Stanley, it was a much staider hotel than Torr’s. Torr’s closed in 1958, when the building was taken over by the Ottoman Bank. Does anyone know what happened to Mugs? In 1987 she was she was eighty-eight years old and living in her flat in Muthaiga. And can anyone help with enquiries about Henry Murrell, of Motor Mart in Eldoret? He died in 1948. What sort of a man was he?

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