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Madeleine Kasket obituary: publicist who brought stars to Classic FM
When Classic FM launched in 1992, its programme controller, Michael Bukht, realised that regular appearances by famous cultural figures would help to cement the new broadcaster's reputation. Around the same time, he received a letter from a middle-aged, unemployed classical music publicist asking if there might be opportunities for secretarial work at the station. Bukht asked Madeleine Kasket to come and meet him, and told her that, if she could guarantee the regular presence of big names, she had a job.
It was an inspired appointment. Over the next few years a steady stream of well-known guests made their way down the glass-and-wood staircase that led to Classic FM's basement studios in Camden Town, north London. Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, Yehudi Menuhin, Sir Colin Davis and Andrew Lloyd Webber were among those welcomed by interviewers including Susannah Simons, Margaret Howard and Paul Callan. Kasket was soon spreading her net wider, inviting writers, businesspeople and fashion designers. Those who at first declined were worn down by persistent rounds of telephone calls and letters; when the designer Sir Hardy Amies eventually came in, he described Kasket as 'imperious, but delightfully bloody-minded'.
Madeleine Kasket was born in London in 1934. Her father Maurice was a violinist, whose band was resident at the fashionable London nightclub Ciro's. He would play a summer season in Bournemouth, where his aunts kept a Kosher hotel. Her mother, Fay, encouraged her to study hard at Maida Vale High School. When she was 13 her parents moved into a flat adjacent to the school in Morshead Mansions. Later she took over the lease of the rent-controlled apartment, and lived there continuously for more than seven decades.
After school came a spell working as a secretary, then in 1956 she was spotted by the society photographer Baron, who included her in his 'Top Ten Beautiful Profiles', a series he was shooting for the Evening Standard. 'He was obsessed with my neck,' she recalled, 'making me balance awkwardly on a piano stool, pushing my head forward so as to recreate Queen Nefertiti's famous pose.'
Relishing the taste of fame that publication of the pictures brought, she decided to try her hand at acting, following in the footsteps of her older brother Harold, who was to enjoy a long career on stage and screen. She made her debut alongside Harold in Clive of India, an episode of Sunday Night Theatre broadcast on BBC Television in December 1956, in which she played 'the Indian fruitseller'.
More prominent parts in The Avengers, Danger Man and the children's series Garry Halliday followed; she also appeared as a contestant in the ITV version of the American quiz Dotto, hosted by Jimmy Hanley. She was in demand as a date for balls, parties and dinners. On Dotto she wore what the Daily Herald described as a 'dazzling nine carat-gold sari', a gift from one of her consorts, the handsome and hugely wealthy Maharaja of Baroda, Sir Pratap Singh Rao Gaekwad.
Her acting career having stalled, in the 1960s she worked for the fashion designer Mary Quant (obituary, April 14, 2023), combining occasional modelling with the role of assistant to the sales director. Kasket was a confident French speaker, having been taught as a child by an émigré Romanian neighbour, and soon found herself making regular trips across the Channel couriering Quant's pret-a-porter lines to the boutiques of Paris.
In 1969 she moved into public relations, joining the classical division of the record label RCA. With a generous expense account, she was able to entertain clients at her favourite restaurants and fly critics and journalists on trips to Europe to watch recording sessions. The roster of artists she helped to look after included the pianist Van Cliburn, the singers Leontyne Price, Sherrill Milnes and Plácido Domingo, the guitarist Julian Bream (obituary, August 15, 2020) and the flautist James Galway. 'She always had the strongest contacts with the company's artists,' recalled the late critic Edward Greenfield in an article marking her 60th birthday. 'Never one to fawn, she treated them all with a refreshing directness.'
She recalled that the Polish-American pianist Arthur Rubinstein was always formal: 'It was years before he would call me Madeleine rather than Miss Kasket.' They were at the Savoy Grill together when she spotted Ava Gardner dining alone, and quickly realised that Rubinstein's presence gave her a golden opportunity to meet the actress. 'I went over to Gardner and asked if she would care to meet my guest. She said yes and a jolly fun lunch followed.'
Kasket was in the RCA offices in Curzon Street in the mid-1980s when the harmonica virtuoso Larry Adler dropped by. He had been asked to present a classical music programme on Capital Radio, and needed some recordings. After an hour or so browsing the shelves, he left with a bag of albums and a date for dinner in his diary. Adler and Kasket went on to live together for a decade; he moved into her Maida Vale flat, and the pair travelled widely, often on cruises where Adler would perform and talk about his friendships with stars including George Gershwin, Fred Astaire and Vivien Leigh.
In 1994 Bream, Galway, the cellist Julian Lloyd Webber, the soprano Lesley Garrett and the actor Fenella Fielding (obituary, September 13, 2018) were among those who took part in a gala benefit concert in Kasket's honour at the Palace Theatre. She retired from Classic FM a few years later. Her last three years were spent in a Jewish care home in Golders Green. She had shed most of her possessions on leaving Maida Vale but kept close at hand a radio, a fridge stocked with champagne, a family menorah and several of Adler's old mouth organs.
Madeleine Kasket, actor, model and music publicist, was born October 10, 1934. She died on May 30, 2025, aged 90
