Mark Ronson shares bizarre ‘earliest memory’ of family friend Robin Williams

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Mark Ronson has recalled meeting his parents’ many famous friends as a child.

The music producer – whose father Laurence was a music manager from one of Britain’s wealthiest families, and whose mother was the writer and socialite Ann Dexter-Jones – told The Guardian that his parents “liked to party” with the stars.

He revealed that one of his earliest memories is of the late actor Robin Williams, at the peak of his Mork & Mindy fame in the late 1970s, tucking him into bed and peering out the curtains in “some kind of cocaine paranoia”.

Recalling meeting Williams two decades later, and telling him about the encounter, Ronson said: “And he goes: ‘Wait, your parents lived in the house on Circus Road? Man, they threw some incredible parties.’”

Ronson also recalled walking downstairs one morning, schoolbag in hand, to find his father with the singer Daryl Hall, “each with a snifter of something, playing a really intense game of chess”.

He added that it was only when he discovered drugs himself, in his early twenties, that he “put it all together”.

“That’s what the f*** they were doing, that’s why we weren’t allowed to wake up my mum till 3pm on Saturdays,” he said.

In the same interview, Ronson spoke about working with Amy Winehouse and admitted he “didn’t love” how he behaved around her.

Ronson is promoting his new music documentary Watch the Sound, which premieres on Apple TV+ on 30 July, 2021.