All The Fictional Killers We Love

When I wrote Walking Shadows, it was with the intention of creating a totally dysfunctional family, a psychological dark thriller, a noir set in a very successful household in Richmond, Surrey. I fully intended that there would be no likeable people in this horrendous family. Many readers were drawn to this dark drama, and it received some excellent reviews on Amazon. With one exception; a person who gave it only two stars, and although the person’s review said it was a good dark thriller with plenty of twists and turns, they would have preferred a bit of light in the darkness and some likeable characters. And that set me thinking about the darkest thrillers starring killers with no redeeming features, both in books and films. So I decided to make a few suggestions of how they might be given just a little nudge into amiability and virtue.

     The most amoral character is Ripley in Patricia Highsmith’s series of crime novels, a man who has no conscience and gets away with murder, time and time again. He murders Dickie Greenleaf without a qualm. For readers to like Tom Ripley (and I suspect they really do like him, despite him being a cold-blooded brute), it might have redeemed his character when following the murder of his friend for financial gain, he rescues a cute little puppy dog from drowning. Audiences and readers love it when murderers have a softness for cute and cuddly animals. Snakes or other reptiles would never do. It has to be the cute ones.

    And what about the noir films? In Double Indemnity Walter and Phyllis murder her husband so they can collect on the insurance. Perhaps viewers would like it if they agreed to give a hefty proportion of their ill-gotten gains to a children’s hospice.

    Further suggestions: Edward G. Robinson as Little Caesar saves a blind woman from being run over while crossing the road. And in White Heat James Cagney holds a Christmas party and entertains children with a brilliant song and dance, After all, Cagney was a talented song and dance man. And in Fritz Lang’s M, Peter Lorre, a child murderer, perhaps when he pleads his case to the kangaroo court, he is given a monologue in which he describes his crimes as an evil compulsion which cannot be helped. Oh hang on! That actually happens in the film when he tries to gain the audience’s sympathy. Silly me.

     There are dozens of noir thrillers with hefty unredeemable characters who could be made more sympathetic. Here are some suggestions. An evil killer should love cooking and gift a beautiful gateaux to a women’s group. A serial killer might donate a kidney to save someone’s life. A psychopath buys expensive moisturising cream and gives it anonymously to underpaid nurses. Oh, but wait a minute. That might not work. That might be the detective’s clue to the murdered nurses scenario.

     But, when all is said and done. We like our villains to remain villains, Especially when they are as attractive as Michael Corleone the true hypocrite who renounces the devil and all his works as his baby is being christened and his enemies are being shot. And I am looking forward to the next new series of Ripley, with Andrew Scott as the titular murderer, to be shown on Netflix very soon. And please, I beg of the producers, don’t give him redeeming qualities. We like him to be totally amoral. That’s the fun of it, after all.

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Between Please Sir!

A little bit of relief financially towards the end of February when I was interviewed by television director John Glenister, and the producer of Thirty Minute Theatre, Innes Lloyd. I was offered the part of Gunther Goettling, a young East German student. The play was called Frontier, written by Don Shaw, based on a true incident when Peter Fechter, a young East German was shot trying to escape across the Berlin Wall. In Frontier, my character attempts an escape across a minefield and has his leg blown off, and while he lies in no-man’s land slowly dying, neither the East nor West German military attempt to rescue him.

   I was pleased to reacquaint myself with my old friend Larry Dann, with whom I attended Corona Academy Stage School in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s. We had already worked quite a few times together, and he was playing Lieutenant Klein, an East German border guard. Larry went on to have a successful career and had a long stint in The Bill as Sgt Peters.

   Having rehearsed in the usual west London church hall for three days, on Thursday evening we were taken for a night shoot at a remote Army training ground, about an hour’s drive from Television Centre. We the actors were ferried out to the location by mini-bus. When we got there, apart from the outside broadcast vans and unit vehicles, we saw that this no-man’s land looked authentic with its thick forest trees and high barbed wire fence through which I would use my wire cutters to escape across the minefield until my leg was blown off. An observation tower manned by a sentry rose out of the ground in the gloom, and scenic designers had built temporary huts for the military, both East and West Germans, to discuss the problem of who should risk going into the minefield to rescue the student. The O.B. cameras were positioned in the distance, as if they were covering sporting events, almost hidden behind the trees. Most of the scenes would be performed without a break, and we could see which cameras were shooting by the red lights glowing in the dark. Strange how this drama based on a true event became so very real as the recording progressed. Suddenly we were hit by a blizzard and the snow came down heavily. I lay for hours on the freezing ground while things went wrong because of the extreme conditions. Light bulbs exploded from the cold, and a technician had to climb a twenty-five-foot ladder to replace them. The cameras froze, and Innes Lloyd, the producer, came out of the O.B. vehicle to help unfreeze them. Someone managed to get me a wetsuit, and I changed into it in the Portaloo. There were no portable dressing rooms of course, because the dressing rooms were back at Television Centre in White City where we had changed into our costumes. Despite the wetsuit I was still frozen, my teeth chattering and my body trembling with the cold. But the most discomfort I suffered was because I needed a crap, and there was no way I was going to undress again in the unheated Portaloo. I clenched my buttocks tightly and ended up being constipated for the next three or four days.

   Now, what should have been a night shoot ending before midnight, went on into the early hours of the morning. And because cameras were still freezing as the blizzard raged, and light bulbs popped melodically, the production dragged on, and I was told I would have to suffer the same torturous performance the following night.

   Occasionally I was able to grab a hot drink and watch the other scenes, as Larry Dann as Lieutenant Klein discussed the problem of rescuing the student with Corporal Schabe, played by Tom Baker.

   After the shoot, when taxis were summoned to take us home from Television Centre, they discovered Tom Baker lived in Archway, just a stone’s throw from Highgate Village, and we shared the ride home. We chatted and became friends, and Tom often came up to the Village for a drink. While we waited for the pubs to open, we walked round Highgate Cemetery. Tom pointed out that opposite Karl Marx’s tomb was the grave of a man named Spencer.

   At first, I looked blank, until Tom grinned and said pointedly, ‘Where do you buy your underwear?’

   ‘Oh,’ I said as the penny dropped. ‘Marx and Spencer!’

    Two extracts from The Film Buff’s Guide: A Humorous History of Cinema

Between 1908 and 1910, sunshine was discovered on the west coast of America and Hollywood was born. The light was perfect for filming and soon movies were big business, earning fat bucks for all concerned, except maybe cinema usherettes. Out of work musicians found employment thumping the ivories to heighten the action of the films and got a pain in the neck. Cinemas sprang up everywhere like wildflowers, though they smelled nowhere near as sweet, except to the burgeoning Hollywood moguls, who could smell the heady scent of the green and folding stuff.

    The Great Train Robbery, made by Edwin S Porter in 1903, was one of the first westerns. It told the simple tale of bandits being shot after successfully robbing a train. To date, there have been 2,000 remakes of this western using a different title!

    What was almost ahead of its time in this picture was the way a character breaks the fourth wall. At the end of the picture one of the bandits, who has been shot and killed, is in a head and shoulder shot staring at the camera lens as he raises his revolver to shoot at the audience, and as it was one of the earliest moments of cinema storytelling, the audience would have been unnerved and shocked by that.

    In 1915, D. W. Griffith made Birth of a Nation, a racist epic which justified the actions of the Ku Klux Klan, and became famous for making the first non-politically correct film. If you were to make a comparison with his racist epic and making a film these days, it would be like making a costly feature film honouring the National Front or BNP. But as far as Griffith was concerned, his devotion to cinematography was instrumental in making him the first director to use a dramatic close-up, tracking shots and cross-cutting.  He was famous for many reasons, everything from using montage (see glossary) to wearing funny hats to discovering actresses. Two of his discoveries were Dorothy and Lillian Gish. Although both sisters were equally famous in their day, it is Lillian most people recall. This may be to do with the fact that in England she has become cockney rhyming slang for the famous British food that is served with chips.

     Most people working in Hollywood were migrants, mainly from Europe and Russia. Charles Chaplin, escaping a childhood of poverty, came from England, and with his rags-to-riches rise he soon became the highest paid screen star of his time. He appeared to walk extremely fast. He was probably dodging the tax inspector.

    From Mexico came one of the great romantic screen idols, Ramon Navarro. His father was a dentist so at least he came equipped with a good set of teeth. He took charioteering lessons and drove one as Ben-Hur (the 1925 version).

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Groucho, Harpo, Chico and Zeppo made five films for Paramount, the greatest being Duck Soup, directed by Leo McCarey, with a screenplay by Bert Kalman and Harry Ruby, and it was released in 1933, but strangely enough this was the least successful film as far as box office takings were concerned. Paramount cancelled their contract, and so they then made films for MGM, including A Night at The Opera and A Day at The Races. A classic line from the latter has Groucho saying, ‘Either he’s dead or my watch has stopped.’

    But what was it that audiences missed at that time that has made Duck Soup the most memorable and funniest of their films, and is listed by so many film critics as one of the top ten comedies of all time? Perhaps it was because of its very surreal satire at a time when several European countries had become fascist states. Benito Mussolini banned the film in Italy because he took Groucho’s role as dictator Rufus T Firefly as a personal attack. Nothing could have pleased the Marx Brothers more.

    Louis Calhern plays Ambassador Trintino who wants Firefly’s state of Freedonia for himself, and hires Harpo and Chico as his intelligence agents, which leads to some hilarious comedy set pieces between the three comedians, especially when Groucho dons a nightgown and nightcap and meets himself played by Harpo, dressed identically complete with cigar and painted on moustache, and they try to catch each other out in a brilliantly staged mirror routine, tagged by a third Groucho played by Chico.

     Zeppo had always been the straight man and wasn’t involved in much of the comedy, and Duck Soup was his last movie with his brothers. But the dignified and upright Margaret Dumont remained the perfect foil for Groucho’s outrageous putdowns (‘Remember you’re fighting for this woman’s honour…which is more than she ever did.’).

    When a town in New York called Fredonia complained about the close use of its name in the film, the Marx Brothers shot back: ‘Change the name of your town, it’s hurting our picture.’

    Although they had some brilliant writers like S. J. Perelman, Groucho’s wit was excellent.

He wrote to a club once, ‘Please accept my resignation. I don’t want to belong to a club that will accept me as a member.’ And when the scandal magazine Confidential, that published exposés of celebrities, published a scurrilous article about Groucho, rather than threatening to sue, he responded by writing to them: ‘Gentlemen: if you continue to print slanderous articles about me, I shall feel compelled to cancel my subscription.’

            If you enjoyed reading these extracts, why not treat yourself to the book?

In The Beginning

I had wanted to be an actor for as long as I can remember, but it was difficult to know how that entered my spirit, for in my childhood there were few theatres to visit growing up in North Wales, But when my family moved from Bangor to Amlwch, a small town on the most northern part of the island of Anglesey, there was the Royal Cinema, where I spent treasured time there and devoured everything I saw on the screen.

    I can remember seeing, aged nine, a young Marlon Brando in Viva Zapata, with a screenplay by John Steinbeck, and films then didn’t get much better than that. I do remember visiting a theatre once, when my parents took me for a long weekend to Liverpool and we saw a post-West End tour of Carousel. I recently discovered that Gerry Marsden was born in 1943, the same year as me, and it set me wondering that perhaps his parents might have taken him aged nine to see that show, and ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ stuck in his mind until it became a huge hit for him in 1963 and eventually became an anthem for Liverpool F.C. But we will never know if it was because he saw Carousel, because Gerry sadly died over two years ago.

    My parents came to live in Richmond, Surrey, when I was ten, I failed the 11-plus, and was sent to Mortlake Secondary Modern School, a place I hated with every fibre of my being. I had to travel by train from Richmond to Mortlake, and on several occasions I pretended to accidentally get on a fast train and this eleven-year-old ended up at Waterloo station. Someone then had to phone my mother, put me on a train going back to Richmond, and she would phone the school, to tell them what had happened. But at least I had got out of that hateful place for one day. But just like John Wayne and the 7^th Cavalry coming to the rescue at the Amlwch cinema, rescue came for me when my parents were doing amateur dramatics, Emlyn Williams’s The Corn is Green at a Welsh society in Twickenham. I played the part of the Welsh-speaking schoolboy Idwal, and Richard Palmer, an English boy, joined the amateur company to play one of the other schoolboys. He attended Corona Academy Stage School, and had already appeared in a feature film. I pestered my parents to send me to this school, but it was fee paying and my parents couldn’t afford it. But they decided to investigate and we traipsed along to the Corona offices in Chiswick. They took one look at me, who at the age of twelve looked about nine, and they told my parents  they would find enough work for me to pay all the fees, as they also had a child actors’ agency.

    And bearing in mind, it was easier to obtain a licence for a child of twelve to do eight shows a week in the theatre. Under that age, at least two young children have to be employed for the same role, and perform in alternative shows.

    Corona managed to get me a role in the summer prior to starting at the stage school. It was in a play at Windsor Theatre Royal, an American play called Life With Father, which holds the record for the longest running non-musical show on Broadway. Then when I began at Corona in September, my first television was a non-speaking role in The Bob Monkhouse Show at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire. I had to keep a deadpan face while he told me a string of gags after which I cracked an egg on his head.

    My first TV drama was in an American play called Three Empty Rooms, set in a New York tenement, and directed by Alvin Rackoff, a young Canadian. I guess, because I had sat through so many American films at the Amlwch cinema, I could probably cope with the American accent.

    Television in those days was broadcast live. And Three Empty Rooms was broadcast the day after Boxing Day. The play had the offstage birth pangs of a woman in labour, her screams getting more frantic. The BBC switchboard was jammed with complaints. Imagine that. How awful! A woman giving birth around Christmas time!

FORGOTTEN STORY

When I wrote the Please Sir! book there was one incident I should have put in but I forgot, until recently when on the news there was talk of the Holocaust Memorial Day, and I suddenly remembered a brief meeting with a Holocaust survivor in 1972, prior to my starting on the second series of The Fenn Street Gang, which should have gone in the book in Chapter Six, titled ‘The South Bank’.

    I was about to play Young Frank in Forget-Me-Not Lane, and this was fairly early in the year and we were not about to start the Fenn Street series until October, and because the play I was about to appear in was set during the 1940s, I needed to get shorn of some hair. Prior to my arrival at Bath Theatre Royal, I found a barber not far from Bath Abbey.

    I was in the barber’s chair when I noticed the barber had numerals tattooed on his wrist. When I asked him about this, he told me he had been in Auschwitz Concentration Camp, and I asked him how he had managed to survive. He didn’t seem to mind being questioned or of talking about it (I’m sure many survivors want people to know).

    What he told me was horrific. He said he was a classical musician and there was a Jewish orchestra in the camp, and they survived simply because the monstrous Nazi guards and officers liked their music, and they often sat down (no doubt after a hard day’s cruelty and barbarism) to listen to the orchestra playing some of their favourite classical symphonies. No doubt Beethoven, a German composer, was a popular choice.

    Later on, this got me thinking about art, which is supposed to be civilizing and uplifting, but if those Nazi monsters indulged in listening to the art of music without giving a thought to their obscene behaviours, then surely art must be reassessed as perhaps no more than another pastime. After the firebombing of Dresden might Churchill have relaxed by oil painting some beautiful flowers in his garden?

    And as I recalled the barber/musician in Bath in 1972, I thought of more recent times when several well-known performers downloaded child porn from the Internet. The first was actor Chris Langham who, although he protested he was doing it for research purposes, got a three year prison sentence. And then came Pete Townsend of The Who. He gave the same reasons for downloading these awful images of children being sexually abused. Research. And he got away with it.

    But has anyone ever seen the details of these performers so-called research? I know when I research a book, there will always be some scribbled notes in a notebook for my advance research. And when I wrote Before They Die a thriller about sexual child abuse in the Establishment. I wouldn’t ever have considered downloading child porn. I used my imagination and details of reading about certain events in the newspapers. Which brings me to murder. Would I have to download a snuff movie, see somebody being murdered, to know what it was like. No, I use my imagination.

    And that brings me finally to the audience at Glastonbury, the thousands who saw The Who onstage, waving their arms ecstatically, not giving a thought to the Pete Townsend downloading of child porn. Does that make them complicit in the download, just like those Nazis as they laid back and enjoyed their Beethoven.

    I know what I have just written is pretty controversial, but I’m not sure that I care. Alteration. No, it’s because I do care that I wrote that last paragraph.

Producer Power

After Harvey Weinstein had fallen from his powerful perch, I couldn’t help wondering if my friend Malcolm McFee, who played Peter Craven in Please Sir! would have joined the Me Too Movement if he was still alive.

   Of course, the Casting Couch has been around since the early days of silent films, but it might be worth sparing a thought for young male actors targeted by gay producers. It happened, or almost did, to Malcolm. He was quite open about relating the incident, so I know he wouldn’t have minded my talking about it on this blog were he still with us.

   It happened like this. About a year before we began working together in the school sitcom, Malcolm played one of the Smiths in Richard Attenborough’s film of Oh What a Lovely War. He wanted to follow this up with a part in Virgin Soldiers which was to be filmed in Malaya by the renowned theatre director John Dexter, who was one of the most successful theatre directors and became an Associate Director of the English Stage Company at the Royal Court Theatre and also at the National Theatre. Malcolm’s agent arranged for him to meet the director who took him to dinner at the Ivy. Following dinner, Dexter took Malcolm back to his flat for a nightcap, where he suggested they go to bed together. Malcolm, still thinking he could handle the situation, and wondering if he might still be in with a chance for a part in this major film, gently pointed out that he liked John Dexter but that he wasn’t himself gay. ‘That’s all right,’ the director said. ‘We’ll just wank.’ Which was when Malcolm made an excuse and left. The next day Malcolm got a call from his agent who told him that John Dexter had telephoned in a rage, saying, ‘Who the fuck does Malcolm McFee think he is? If he thinks there’s a part for him in Virgin Soldiers he can go and fuck himself.’

   Malcolm, when he told us this story, did admit that perhaps he had been naïve. But he was only eighteen-years-old when it happened, so his naivety is perfectly understandable. The blame lies with all the Weinstein-like shits who use and abuse their power for sex. Now, had John Dexter not held a grudge because of Malcolm’s rejection of his advances, and still cast him in his film, he might have been less despicable.

    I told the story about Malcolm and John Dexter in Please Sir! The Official History on page 22 in Chapter 2 'When Is a Contract Not a Contract?

Writing Horror Stories

Did the horror and ghost stories in my book just materialise from my imagination as I sat down to write? Well, yes…up to a point. But many of them started out from something very realistic and then the horror and the bizarre took over.

   One of my stories ‘Slugs’ came from a memory of when I lived in a ground floor flat in the village of Rusthall, which was surrounded by an enormous garden. Often slugs somehow got into my flat, sometimes two or three and I used to put down salt to deter them. They revolted me, so no wonder these slugs inspired a story, which sends the central character mad and…well, I won’t write a spoiler here just in case you get round to reading it.

   A review on Amazon: ‘Not a book to read before bed and I will now never look at a slug in the same way again! Good fun read.’

   In 2007/8 I worked as a Writer in Residence in Aberdeen. One day I took a party of school children to the art gallery and we made up stories based on the paintings we saw. One of them I remembered was of a winter scene, with an enormous tree, and pristine snow on the ground, not a footprint in sight, and I suggested to the children, what would happen if there was someone in the painting hiding behind a tree, and this has become a dead serial killer story called ‘A Delicacy[.

    And when I heard of the draconian laws in Saudi Arabia, that if they catch someone stealing they chop their hand off, this led to ‘Evil Answers Evil’, which starts off in an unnamed country with a man who stands before three judges and is sentenced to have his hand cut off. After that, he cannot find employment, and ends up killing his wife and family. But his hand lives on, and this beast with five fingers goes all out for revenge. Not one for the squeamish this story.

    When I used to get the bus from Tunbridge Wells to Rusthall, it used to pull in at Sainsburys, and very occasionally the driver might use this as a comfort stop and disappear for a few minutes to use the supermarket toilets. Often, if I caught the bus in the afternoon, it was full of schoolchildren, many of whom remained seated while some adults stood, this led to heated arguments, with some of the little brats protesting that as they had also paid for a ticket they were entitled to sit down. This led to the humorous horror story, ‘A Cautionary Tale for Ill-Mannered Children, where a pensioner commandeers the bus, while the driver is in the toilet, and drives the bus recklessly and takes them all to purgatory, where they are indeed taught a very bloody lesson in this Hieronymus Bosch hell.

     It reminds me of the film In Bruges, where Colin Farrell’s character stares at a Bosch painting of purgatory, doesn’t get it at first, and then he does, and says, ‘Oh, I get it. It’s where you go to when you’re not really good and not really bad. Sort of like Tottenham.’

    Apologies to Tottenham supporters but I couldn’t resist inserting that one.

    Ghosts, mainly in people’s imagination seem to be making something of quite an appearance in TV crime dramas these days. In the excellent Netflix series Ozark, Ruth, who lives in a trailer by the lake, has learned of her cousin being shot by the cartel, and she now gets glimpses of him. Is he a ghost or is this her imagination?

    The BBC series The Pact, also has an imaginary ghost. Christine who has a dodgy past, and a man who turns up saying he is her son, also turns up dead, and she begins seeing him in the background.

    I can’t help wondering, though, however clever these ghosts, or figments of characters’ imaginations are, whether this device may soon become as much of a cliché as the car chase that goes through the fruit and veg stall or the wedding party.

    Probably the first person to invent the ghost in a scene that only one person witnesses was Shakespeare. In Macbeth the ghost of Banquo appears in the banquet to haunt Macbeth, because he hired medieval hitmen to murder him, and now the ghost, or probably his imagination because of the guilt, has the desired effect of spooking him. Of course, no one else sees Banquo’s ghost which makes you think that this is in Macbeth’s imagination.

    I mentioned it was probably Shakespeare who first used this haunting device, but there may well have been others in lesser-known plays. Or even Greek tragedies, though I can’t think of one.

   Happy Halloween!

SUMMER SEASON

Who would have thought summer in Aberystwyth would have had sizzling hot, Mediterranean weather? In 1983 I was engaged to play Bob Phillips in Alan Ayckbourn’s How The Other Half Loves at the University Theatre in that small Welsh seaside resort. One of the cast members, James Cormack, had brought his wind-surfing gear with him, and we spent our days basking on the beach, having picnics, in between learning to windsurf. It really was a long hot summer. The only difference between Wales and the continent was not the temperature but the fact that the pubs shut at 2.30 p.m. and didn’t open again until six.

   We also met some folk on the beach who had a speedboat and water skiing equipment. This was when I learnt that it is always advisable to wear a wetsuit when water skiing. Because when I had a go, which I thoroughly enjoyed until I reached dry land again, when I discovered that the waves bouncing up my backside had given me an enema. I had to find a public convenience double quickly, where I discovered all kinds of marine rubbish was expelled from my arse – including a few starfish!

    It was an enjoyable summer. I shared a flat with Jeremy Gagan, the director, and he had a gentle giant of a dog, Finbar, an Irish Wolfhound. One night, after we’d been to a party and had had quite a bit to drink, we got back to our flat, where I collapsed on my bed, flat out. Jeremy told me the next morning what had happened. He had taken Finbar out for a walk, and when he got back to our flat, he discovered three youths burgling the place. He made them sit on the sofa in the living room, and told Finbar to guard them while he checked the rest of the flat to see if anything else was missing. Unfortunately, gentle Finbar lay down and went to sleep. But he was asleep between the sofa and the living room door, and not one of the would-be burglars was gong to risk stepping over him. Jeremy made sure we had all our stuff and sent the youths packing, telling them that if they dared to return he would set the dog on them.

   Another event during that summer was when Pat, my wife, visited for a week, with our daughter Emma, who was then about 14 or 15 months old. We were having coffee in the theatre green room one morning when Emma took her first steps. She began walking in that green room and elicited a huge round of applause from the cast and crew.

    It was during this season that we, the cast, were able to drink after closing time one night. This was thanks to an Aberystwyth visit by Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales as he was then. The chief constable of the police asked the landlord of our pub if he would allow the Prince’s protection officers to drink after hours, and so we were also invited to join the lockdown.

    In this same pub on another Saturday night, filled with what looked like beefy rugby supporters, one of them heard me speaking a few words of Welsh. He said to me something like, ‘You don’t sound Welsh, but you spoke the language perfectly.’

   I’d had a few drinks by then and decided to go for a mischievous wind-up. I told him, putting on a slight what I thought sounded like a Dutch accent, that although I now lived in England, I was from the Netherlands, and believed I ought to learn a bit of the language for wherever I happened to visit. Before I could stop this chap, he shouted to his mates, ‘Hey! This guy’s from Holland and he’s learnt to speak Welsh. Let’s buy him a pint!’

    Suddenly, they were all congratulating me and buying me pints. ‘My God,’ I thought, ‘If they ever learn the truth, I’ll never get out of here alive.’

    Fortunately, my ruse wasn’t exposed and I drank free of charge that night.

    Charles Hawtrey would have been proud of me.

Creating the Supernatural

Halloween is almost upon us, and don’t we love the ghostly bumps in the night, the evil spirits sent to haunt us? I loved writing the book of horror stories but I know these supernatural beings do not exist, and when I feel spooked walking down a dark street at night, my fear is from other humans not ghosts or other world monsters.

    Which got me thinking about the creation of our other worldly spirits. I read this excellent book recently, Sapiens, A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari, who begins the early chapters of the book with humankind’s cognitive revolution. When people began to think, they became creative and needed to understand the world about them as well as the heavens above. And one of Harari’s book’s illustrations is of an ivory figurine, half human and half lion discovered in a cave in Germany and believed to be over 32,000 years old, As Harari says: ‘This is one of the first indisputable examples of art, and probably of religion, and the ability of the human mind to imagine things that do not really exist.’

     And with many people in our contemporary world, there are still many who haven’t moved on from the half lion/half man gods and do not accept scientific fact. A recent visit to Charles Darwin’s house near Orpington, showed there were many religious people then who believed the earth had been created exactly as it was told in the Old Testament, and was only 10,000 years old. In the USA today, apparently there is huge percentage of the population who don’t believe in evolution and choose instead to believe in creationism and intelligent design, ignoring the fact that there are 50,000 species of spiders. So did a supreme being design each one separately? A bit time consuming I would have thought, and what would the point have been for a divine entity to design so many different spiders?

    In 1925, John Scopes, a schoolteacher in the state of Tennessee, was accused of violating an act which made it unlawful to teach human evolution. He was put on trial, which drew huge national publicity, and the prosecutor, William Jennings Bryan, went head to head with the defence lawyer Charles Darrow. This trial was made into an excellent film Inherit the Wind, (1960) directed by Stanley Kramer, starring Frederic March and Spencer Tracey with Gene Kelly as a cynical reporter. It has since been made several times, and in 1999 there was a version with Jack Lemmon as Darrow. I saw the stage play at the Old Vic, with Kevin Spacey as Darrow.

    Of course, there are many people in this country who still do not believe in evolution. As Bush did in America, so Tony Blair announced that faith schools could teach creationism in biology classes, as well as evolution. Clever, eh? Appeal to both sets of potential voters.

    The thing that strikes me most about the difference between creationism and evolution is the fact that the former is far more simplistic. After all, supernatural beliefs are far easier to swallow than many scientific subjects which demand a great deal of hard work and intellect.

What would the person who believes humankind just suddenly appeared, designed by a supreme being, make of quantum mechanics? And if the creationists don’t trust science and evolution, how come they pick and choose which sciences are acceptable, as they get in their cars, drive home and switch on the lights, cook meals on gas stoves and switch on the TV?

    Okay, so science isn’t always right, but it has more chance of being right than theories of unscientific superstition.

    Of course, charlatans have made mega money from publishing crazy theories, especially when it comes down to aliens. Remember Erich von Daniken, who wrote books like Chariots of the Gods, claiming extra-terrestrials visited earth thousands of years ago and taught Ancient Egyptians how to build the pyramids, and other such bizarre claims? Nearly all scientists and academics dismissed his theories as poppycock. But his books sold in millions, because a reader could grasp his theories far easier than something as complicated as Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle or quantum gravity.

    I couldn’t help wondering, though, did Daniken believe his own theories? Or was it just a way of conning millions out of gullible readers? Hmm. He did, after all, write one of his books while he served a prison sentence for fraud.

    But when I look at that picture below, of half human and half lion, I can’t help thinking of the great creations that came later. All the ancient Greek and Roman stories with their devious Gods and adventures, many of which found their way into some of Shakespeare’s plays. And I guess these have also been the inspiration for many sci-fi TV and films, from Doctor Who to some Ridley Scott pictures.

    I embrace these horror, mystery and science fiction stories and I know if it cannot be proven it is fiction, or at the very least a theory. One of the most fertile minds in mystery fiction is Stephen King. A book of his I really found fascinating was 11/22/63, about a man who discovers a portal which will take him back in time, and he attempts to travel back to the book’s titular time to stop Lee Harvey Oswald from assassinating JFK.

    A great idea, but patently untrue, although a great deal of research would have gone into it.

    Finally, yes there are such things as time machines. They are called brains, and our memories can take us back to some great times and places. And speaking of the aforementioned Clarence Darrow, I can clearly remember the first night of seeing Henry Fonda in his one man show about the great lawyer at the Piccadilly Theatre.

    That’s time travel for you!

Spanish Adventure

I met Henry Holland at Gatwick airport around 1.30 p.m. on Monday. Mark Andrews would be along later as he had to drive from the Isle of Wight. Henry and I went through security in about 15 minutes, which has to be some sort of record, and then we hurried to Gatwick Wetherspoon’s for lunch and drinks. Mark joined us soon afterwards, and we set off for Almeria on time at 4.20. We were met at the Spanish airport by Chris, our taxi driver, and driven about 80 kilometres. Little did we know as we were greeted by Carol at nine p.m. that night that this would all go horribly wrong, but that would come much later. For now, it was an idyllic week, with laughs, reminiscences, and plenty to eat and drink.

    We saw the wonderful myriad stars at night, like a glistening carpet of silver jewellery, and one day an eagle soared above Carol’s lovely villa, and when we had had too much to drink we sobered up in her pool. It was a great week, and one day we visited Albox for a tapas lunch. So where did it all go wrong? I’ll be coming to that. But first a great laugh which came from Carol’s lips.

    We were due to fly out of Almeria at 8.10 p.m. on Saturday, and Chris was picking us up at quarter to six, so Carol suggested that she drove us into Albox for a brunch/English breakfast at lunchtime. On the way to the bar, Carol met Johnny, a friend of hers and a lovely bloke. He joined us for brunch, and then he asked how we all met Carol.

     Henry and Mark confessed to having looked after her at celebrity conventions, and admitted they were something of ‘fan boys’. Then Carol added, ‘Yes, they are typical raincoats.’ When someone corrected her, and said she meant ‘anoraks’, we have never laughed so much. Thank you, Carol, for that one. It made our last day perfect, because we hadn’t stopped laughing all week.

    After brunch it was back to Carol’s for drinks until it was time to hug and depart. And this was where it went wrong. Arriving at the airport after seven, we were sitting in the departure lounge when we saw on the noticeboard that out flight was cancelled. We then had to return through security to find the easyJet section, but by now we were at the end of a very long queue. Eventually we managed to speak with the Spanish easyJet representative, and she told us we had to book our own hotel in Almeria, and take a taxi there, and book another return flight by easyJet, but the first one which wasn’t fully booked was the following Tuesday, which meant a three night stay in Almeria. The airline rep told us to keep all receipts for a reimbursement. Mark, though, managed to book a flight for the next day on another airline, so he stayed at the hotel for just the one night.

    The hotel had one star, was very basic, but at least it was clean and comfortable. By now it was gone nine-thirty, and we were hungry. Fortunately the hotel was close to the main street, and we found a burger joint and got some food and pints of Heineken. At least when we returned to our hotel rooms Henry and I could have a drink. He had bought a bottle of Jameson’s whiskey in Duty Free, and I a bottle of brandy. These would have to be drunk over the three nights as there was no way of taking them back through security, which only allows 100ml bottles of liquids.

    On Sunday morning Henry and I went in search of coffee and breakfast, and he gave me another great laugh. Neither of us spoke Spanish – we had always relied on Carol to do any ordering - so when Henry found a waitress who could speak a little English, he pointed to a croissant and asked her, ‘How do you say croissant in Spanish?’

    ‘Croissant,’ she replied.

    After Mark joined us we walked down the main street towards the ferry. Mark then bade us goodbye as he was nervous about getting to the airport to catch his flight, and he didn’t mind having to wait three hours before the flight was due.

    Henry and I had the hardship of finding a bar by the promenade and beach, and spending the afternoon watching the Sunday families enjoying leisure time at the seaside with children roller skating along the prom, adults whizzing along on electric scooters (which seemed to be an acceptable and legal way of getting around there), and many cyclists.

    Later that evening we went in search of tapas. But the only tapas we could find seemed to be cakes and pastries. We then discovered – and we don’t know if this is exclusive to Almeria or not – that the tapas or dinner menu comes out at 8 p.m.

    So we returned to one of what had become our favourite bar/restaurants, sat outside, and ordered from the menu when it arrived at eight. And on Monday, the same routine, the same beach bar and the same evening restaurant.

    What I did notice at this restaurant was a great difference between Spaniards and Brits, even with younger people. Hardly anyone was using a mobile phone (see photo below) while they were obviously out to socialise. In Britain young people would be too busy texting to socialise with their friends.

    I manged over the three nights to drink two thirds of the brandy, and left a third in the hotel room. Then a cab to the airport and fortunately the plane left on time.

    So, quite an adventure. As a few of my friends said, ‘You could have been stranded in worse places.’

The Lads From Fenn Street

Liz Gebhardt, who played Maureen in Please Sir! was married to actor and director Ian Talbot, who for many years was Artistic Director of Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre, and he and I wrote a sketch show, The Lads from Fenn Street. We had talked about this during the last series of Fenn Street, and as we needed permission to use the television characters, we approached John Esmonde and Bob Larbey, creators and writers of the Please Sir! series, who happily gave their consent. Malcolm contacted Peter Denyer, who was doing his summer season in Bournemouth, but he wasn’t interested in either performing or directing it. We asked Christopher Timothy to direct and he agreed, adding some great ideas and sketches to the script. At that time, Chris was contracted to do hard sell television commercials for the Sun newspaper, and he wrote one of the sketches, a spoof of himself, with Malcolm playing him.

   As Malcolm, Peter and I met for the first time at Stonebridge Park, where London Weekend Television was based, we decided to call our production company Stonebridge Productions. First, we played some small halls in the suburbs of London to try our show out initially before taking it on an 18 week tour, a tour which varied from one- and two-night-stands, and some eight performance weeks in a few prestigious theatres. One of these small halls was actually a swimming pool which was boarded over. I think we may have joked about casting Esther Williams in our show!

    When performing in this 18 week national tour, the three of us were like-minded, and never enjoyed hanging around in the dressing rooms for half an hour prior to a performance, and so we lounged around with a pint in the nearest boozer. After all, this was our own company, and so we could please ourselves, wait until the last minute, dash backstage, grab a costume, and walk onstage. Our warm-up had been chatting and joking in the pub. Often Laurence, our stage manager, would come into the pub ten minutes before curtain up and ask sarcastically, ‘Do you think you might like to come into the theatre now as the curtain will rise soon?’

   And we would retaliate and say jokingly, ‘Laurence, you’re sacked!’

   One of our weeks in a Number One theatre was for eight performances at the Grand Theatre, Swansea. This became one of my favourite venues, run by John Chilvers, who watched our show several times, and told us his favourite sketch was the Crossroads spoof with Malcolm as Meg Richardson and me as Amy Turtle. When I mentioned working in Roy Plomley’s Just Plain Murder in which I toured the previous year, he told me the radio presenter kept submitting terrible plays to him which he always turned down.

   One of the notable features backstage at the Grand, which has disappeared since the theatre was revamped, was a ladder halfway up the stairs leading to the dressing rooms. At the top of the ladder was a hatch, and if you knocked on this door it would slide open to reveal a barmaid’s ankles. The hatch was on the floor behind the counter in the dress circle bar and it enabled performers or stage crew to purchase a drink, but only during the running of the show when the audience was seated in the auditorium, never during the interval. It would be disconcerting for a member of the audience to see an actor’s face peering from a hole at shoe level like a wee timorous beastie.

   We three were never able to make use of the hatch as we rarely left the stage, except for quick costume changes.

    Another feature of this theatre was Sir Henry Irving’s signature on his baggage label, encased in glass on the door of the number one dressing room. John Chilvers told us about a touring rock ‘n’ roll show visiting the theatre. He showed the lead singer around backstage and explained about the legendary actor’s signature. ‘This is Sir Henry Irving’s signature,’ he said. ‘The Grand Theatre Swansea was his penultimate performance. After that he went up north, where he died.’

   ‘Well,’ replied the rock singer, ‘don’t they all in those northern clubs?’

   During the week in Swansea I had to catch an early train back to London for a half day’s filming – a religious film made by Churches Television and Radio Centre. The film was called Support Your Local Poet and I performed a voice-over poem while sitting opposite Caroline Munro at a candlelit dinner. Caroline was hugely familiar from the Lamb’s Navy Rum campaign and also became a Bond girl as Naomi in The Spy Who Loved Me. As I sat opposite her, playing a rather smooth young man who wondered where this dinner would lead, my voice-over suddenly revealed to me a spiritual truth that I was being rather shallow, and I suddenly saw the light and was saved. And if you believe that…

If you would like to read more about The Lads From Fenn Street on tour, read the chapter which begins on Page 67, Ánd Then There Were Four, in my book Please Sir! The Official History.

What the Dickens!

Thinking back to some old data and statistics about writing screenplays for TV, I think I remember reading that out of something like 40,000 submissions only 40 get commissioned, in other words a writer is paid to write a completed script, and out of that 40 about only four make it to the screen. So there are dozens upon dozens of writers who are often commissioned, but their creations rarely go into production.

    In 1980, I wrote three episodes of the Thames comedy Keep It In The Family. And not long after these were broadcast, I heard that Humphrey Barclay, who was then head of Light Entertainment at LWT, was looking for six sitcom pilot episodes for Channel 7 in Australia. Because of my success with the three episodes I had written for Thames, I wrote a short idea and synopsis for the Australian series. I then got a call from Humphrey Barclay to go in and discuss my idea which was set in a family run tenpin bowling alley. The very affable Humphrey liked the idea, commissioned it, and I wrote the script and sent it off to him. Weeks later I got a call from him, saying the Australians liked the script, but there were no tenpin bowling alleys in Western Australia. Humphrey very graciously said it was their fault, but if I could think of another setting for my script and rewrite it with the same or similar characters which the Australian channel liked, he would recommission it, meaning I would earn a double fee.

   This paid for our deposit on a mortgage for a flat in Tunbridge Wells. And then I heard that Channel 7 had scrapped all six commissioned scripts by various writers without giving a reason for it.

   Later in the 1980s, I submitted a sitcom about seaside photographers to Alan J W Bell at the BBC, Alan was producer of The Last of The Summer Wine. Not a series, I have to admit, that I particularly liked, mainly because I thought a lot of the slapstick with characters in a runaway bath hurtling down a hill and going over a hedge was extremely unfunny. But Alan liked my script, and I was paid the commission for writing it. We had a meeting about my script, and Alan said why don’t we sit in my office and read it aloud. This we did, and then he made suggestions about certain characters degenerating into slapstick along Summer Wines lines, suggesting my police constable chases a car which brakes suddenly and he flies over the top of it. I didn’t like his ideas but made the changes. And then the script fell at the final hurdle.

   Months later I got a call from a BBC Wales producer who said my script had landed on his desk, he liked it and asked me if I could rewrite and reset it in Wales. He came up to London to talk about it and took me out to lunch. He agreed to commission the Welsh version of my script, and then said he had a few hours to kill before he had to catch his train to Paddington. So I took him to the Kismet Club in Soho, which opened at 3 p.m. and shut at 7 p.m. to circumvent the licensing laws at that time. The Welsh producer loved this seedy dive, and thought this was really living, rubbing shoulders with mainly actors and villains, and was thrilled that I had taken him there.

   I was commissioned to write the script, but again, nothing came of it.

   Another script I was commissioned to write early on in that decade was Mr Micawber, which I wrote as a two-page synopsis and gave it to a commercials director I knew, who passed it on to his agent. Five years later the agent, Terence Baker, who was actor George Baker’s brother, got me a commission to write the script for a production company, who were happy with my script, but were looking for an Australian co-production. Unfortunately the Australians said they weren’t interested because they had already had a Dickensian spin-off with Magwitch about the adventures of the Great Expectations convict, and this wasn’t successful. So that was that as far as my Dickens character was concerned.

   Incidentally, Terence Baker represented Jeffrey Archer, and it was he who provided an alibi for his client when the writer denied paying a prostitute money to keep quiet, saying he had taken Archer to lunch at Le Caprice, even though Baker could produce no receipts for that client lunch. Years later, when Archer unsuccessfully sued a newspaper, and received a three year sentence for perverting the course of justice, fortunately Terence Baker – or unfortunately, depending on which way you look at it – had already died, otherwise he too may have been given a custodial sentence for the false alibi.

   Life’s rich pageant, eh?

   As for Mr Micawber, I eventually wrote it as a novel, and decades later it was published as Mr Micawber Down Under in hardback by Robert Hale Books in 2011. Unfortunately, a few years later this publisher wrapped up their company, having been around since 1936. Maybe they decided that enough was enough. There were some of my hardback books left over from the print run, and I had to buy them in order to secure my copyright, as Hale had reassigned my books to another publisher; one that I wasn’t happy with.

   I also wrote it as a theatre play, in which I toured to a few venues in the south east with a company formed of Kent Equity members, and the play was eventually published by Lazy Bee Scripts, publishers who provide much material for amateur drama companies.

   And now I am pleased to say that my novel Mr Micawber Down Under is being published by my current publishing company AUK Ltd in paperback and e-books, and this will be available shortly.

Stage Fright!

In 1956 I had my first important theatre audition, walking on to a West End stage to give a reading for the part of a Mexican Boy in Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory, adapted for the stage by Denis Cannan and Pierre Brost. The play was to be directed by Peter Brook. As soon as I walked on to the enormous stage, the director bounded up from the auditorium and put me at ease with patience and encouragement. I must have done all right with the reading because I got the part.

   My hair, then, was dark brown, which tended to lighten up in the summer sun, so now it had to be died jet black and I was taken to a hairdresser for the dyeing. My hair was also quite long, and on the way to school when I got off the Piccadilly Line train at Acton Town to change for the District Line, often a train driver would shout out of the window: ‘Get your ‘aircut!’ as the train moved off.

   Before a limited season of eight weeks at the Phoenix Theatre in Charing Cross Road, the play would open for a week at Brighton’s Theatre Royal, and I would be sharing digs with the other three children in the play. Anne Cooke, who had played my sister earlier in the year in Space School, played Brigitta, the daughter of Maria, played by Patience Collier. Ramon and Lola were two other children, played respectively by Barry Martin and Ann Maureso. We were all looked after by a chaperone, of course, and once the play opened we spent many of the days either just mucking about in our digs and taking occasional walks along the sea front.

   The play was set in Mexico in the 1930s, following a revolution where religion is suppressed. It was based on true events that happened in the Tabasco region, and concerned the hunting of a priest. It was a near-perfect performance by Paul Scofield, shuffling about in his shabby outfit, his voice cracked and tremulous as he fears exposure to the authorities. The opening scene took place in a dentist’s surgery, where Tench the dentist, played by Brian Wilde, is secretly helping the priest, who is an alcoholic, to flee the country. There follows a cat and mouse questioning of Tench by the police lieutenant, a memorable supporting role from Harry H. Corbett, and just when the audience think the priest is about to make his escape, I enter to plead with him to visit my mother who is dying, to administer the last rites. So, I was a catalyst in the action, stopping the priest from fleeing, where things would now get deadly serious and dangerous.

   When the play opened in London, our days became long and exhausting, because we now had to spend our days back at school, the mornings stuck behind a desk working on academic subjects. After school one evening I arrived on the Hammersmith station platform to meet our chaperone and catch the Piccadilly Line train to Leicester Square. One evening I arrived early on the station platform and was suddenly hit by a fist in my stomach, the pain growing like a rock deep inside me.  Someone called an ambulance, and I was carted off to the nearest hospital. When I was examined for suspected peritonitis, the doctor pressed hard on my stomach, and I cried out in agony, but he seemed calm and unsympathetic. I lay there in terror, wondering what would become of me. A nurse shoved a tube up my backside and ordered me to relax. My stomach churned angrily, and she snapped at me to hold it while she reached for the bedpan.

   When my parents arrived, they were lectured about my diet, but it wasn’t their fault I squandered my dinner money on chips and illicit cigarettes every day. Following this horrendous incident and fearing the ignominy of turning up at the theatre the next day having to admit to constipation and an enema, I almost wished it had been a burst appendix. I vowed I would eat healthily in future. But my fears of humiliation were unfounded. As I stood in the darkened wings backstage the next night, Paul Scofield tapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘Good to have you back.’ And everyone avoided any mention of what had been wrong with me, for which I was more than grateful.

   During the run of The Power and the Glory, my parents bought me a hardback copy of Graham Greene’s novel, which I had read during the run of the play, and just before the last night I got the entire cast to sign it. When Harry H. Corbett signed my book, I asked him what the ‘H’ was for. He replied, ‘It’s so you don’t get me muddled up with the man who shas his hand up Sooty.’

   Another member of the cast, Gareth Jones, was a fluent Welsh-speaker, and when my parents came to see the play, they conversed with him in Welsh. Then in 1958, I and my family became interested to see Gareth Jones playing a leading part in an Armchair Theatre play. These television plays were hugely popular, broadcast live after Sunday Night at the London Palladium, and we often used to watch them. The drama in which Gareth Jones had a leading role was called Underground, about the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust and took place in the London Underground where surviving Tube travellers have become stranded. The character Gareth Jones played had to crawl from one Underground station to another, then discovers the tunnel is blocked. There was a dramatic cliff-hanger before the commercial break, but when the drama resumed, Gareth Jones had disappeared. It didn’t make much sense. The tunnel was blocked, so where did the character go? A drama which began with a straightforward narrative suddenly became confusing and we soon lost interest in the play, although we stuck with it until the end, just in case Gareth Jones reappeared.

   My father, who was always an early riser, banged on my door the following morning and entered, excited and distressed. He showed me the headlines in his newspaper. Gareth Jones had dropped dead during the commercial break, suffering a massive heart attack. I imagined the chaos in the studio. Less than three minutes until they were back on the air, minus one of their leading actors, distributing his lines to the other actors as best they could, and Ted Kotcheff the director having to improvise camera shots. It’s a wonder there weren’t any more heart attacks in the TV studio. What a way to go. No time to grieve, that would come later. The show must go on!

Interviewed by the Understudy

I have worked a great deal with Misty Moon, which is run by Stuart and Jen Morriss. Last year for Jen’s birthday I bought her an encyclopaedic gardening book by Monty Don. Birthday or not, there was no way I would have bought her one by Alan Titchmarsh.

What have I got against this particular gardening presenter? Well, it’s like this:

    In the mid-eighties I got a call from BBC Radio 4 who invited me to go on the Gloria Hunniford Show. It was a paid appearance, and I seem to remember the fee was around £50, which in today’s money would be over £150. Normally, when one does a radio interview one doesn’t get paid, because you are there to promote something. At that time I had nothing to promote, so it was great to be offered a paid interview. I discovered this came about because Please Sir! was one of the BBC researcher’s favourite programmes. Radio researchers are usually fairly young, but I guess, as our comedy was still only around 15 years old in the eighties, the researcher may have fondly remembered it from his or her teen years, or perhaps even younger, And so I was really looking forward to meeting Gloria Hunniford, who I really liked.

     Unfortunately, when I got to the studio, I discovered the presenter was on holiday and the substitute was Alan Titchmarsh. And I can truthfully say it was the worst interview I have ever done. His inscrutable gardening face just stared at me across the studio desk. He probably hadn’t heard of my comedy show, and didn’t know who the hell I was, and furthermore had no interest in me whatsoever. I don’t think he even had any notes, other than my name and about one very short paragraph.

     This was a disaster. He asked me hardly any questions and I had to do all the talking, and I knew I had at least twenty minutes to fill. And so I ploughed into a very long story, one that is now in my book, Please Sir! The Official History, when I worked with Penny Spencer and Malcolm McFee in a touring play called Just Plain Murder. The story involved a prop gun jamming, and the ridiculous stage manager, instead if simulating a gunshot, threw the gun onstage at Penny, And then when Malcolm and I ran onstage, and Penny had this speech which was supposed to end with her saying, ‘And then someone shot at me with a gun!’ Instead, Penny ended her speech with, ‘And then someone threw a gun at me!’ And we all fell about.

    When I got to the tag of this story, I expected at least a glimmer of amusement from this radio presenter. Nothing. The light was on but there was no one home. No, let me rephrase that. There wasn’t even a light on. Perhaps he had inadvertently poisoned himself with weedkiller or he had been the subject of a zombie invasion. His inscrutability was disturbing in the extreme. I should have woken him up with a sudden zap from FA’s spud gun. Now, if you think I am exaggerating, I promise you I am not. And when I thought about this interview on my journey home, I thought about how unprofessional Titchmarsh had been. There must be many instances of radio presenters interviewing guests and not knowing much about them. Part of their job is to do some homework and find something out about their guests.

    On the other hand, I could be wrong. Perhaps Gloria Hunniford’s understudy wasn’t Alan Titchmarsh after all. She had been replaced by a cardboard cut-out of the gardening presenter.

Yes, that was it. The gardening presenter wasn’t real at all. They had used a life-size model of him. They may as well have done for all the good it did me, as I had to interview myself!  

Sure As Eggs Is Eggs...

...someone, somewhere, right at this very moment is using a colloquialism.

    My first Swansea-based Inspector Lambert novel Each Man Kills, his Chief Superintendent I have replaced in the soon to follow sequel The Wrecking Bar. Harry Lambert’s superior officer will now be DCS Marden, with whom he has a rather testy relationship. But Marden has a weakness which always amuses Lambert. He speaks in clichéd jargon.

    This idea came to me from the time when I wrote diversity training scripts for public sector organisations, scripts in which I often appeared, usually playing the typical bullying boss. What I observed during these sessions, when we spoke to the office personnel, was the amount of clichés being bandied about. If someone had to ask for an approximate estimate or figure, it was invariably a ‘ballpark figure’. Of course, I know ballpark means approximate, but I didn’t really have much of an idea what a ballpark was and had to look it up. I believe it refers to a baseball stadium, and someone in this vast arena tries to guess the attendance figures of the spectators and comes up with an approximate figure.

     Many other phrases flew around the offices I attended during the course of my work. Blue sky thinking or thinking outside the box were used a great deal. And another favourite was thinking outside the silo. Many of these silly phrases were used in an attempt to encourage staff to work more creatively. So why not use plain English? Well, of course, someone must have been responsible for these phrases, which at the time may have been inventive and creative. But now that people use them thoughtlessly, like tribal badges of recognition, they have become annoying clichés.

     Do you agree with me? Good. I’m glad we are all singing from the same hymn sheet or singing in the same choir.

     A friend of mine in the nursing profession, but in quite a high-up managerial position, attended pharmaceutical seminars, and she knew of some drugs representatives who often played a game to stifle their boredom. They filled in bingo-like cards, but instead of numbers the cards contained boxes, and the boxes had inside them phrases like: ‘Flag that up’, ‘In real terms’, ‘At the end of the day’, ‘Reach a glass ceiling’, ‘Ring-fenced’, and those two old favourites, ‘Singing from the same hymn sheet’ and ‘Blue sky thinking’. Once one of these salespeople had got a complete line of clichés, they had to stand up in the seminar and shout ‘Bingo!’ The game was named Bullshit Bingo. Sounds like fun, eh?

     Politicians, too, have overused phrases, especially buzz words. How many times have we heard them saying ‘unprecedented’ or ‘robust’?

     One time, when we spoke to a staff member at the Department of somewhere or other, she explained to us the actors why we should never use a word like ‘brainstorming’. When we asked her why, she said it was upsetting to stroke victims. What word could we use instead? we asked her. And what she told us I have used in my forthcoming DI Lambert novel. Here is that short extract:

Lambert perched on the edge of a desk and said, ‘Okay, let’s all take a seat and do some brainstorming.’

     As Wallace slid into a seat, he said, ‘The killer’s already done a fair bit of that.’

     Lambert indulged him with a brief smile. He understood the need for a team to resort to gallows humour occasionally, which seemed to be a release valve. And he also understood the need to break the ice before embarking on the arduous and often tedious task ahead.

     ‘Maybe that woman on the diversity training course was right,’ he said, pausing for effect. ‘She said it might not be politically correct to use the word brainstorming anymore.’

     ‘I think that was because of stroke victims,’ DC Jones offered.

     Kevin said, ‘So what we supposed to say instead?’

     DS Hazel smiled, as if he already knew the answer.

     A glint in his eye, Lambert replied, ‘Thought showering.’

     Wallace pulled a face, stuck two fingers in his mouth and mimed gagging.

Lambert chuckled and shook his head. Then, ice broken, it was down to business.

     I hope you enjoyed that little extract. Now don’t forget to think outside the box, and whenever you can, avoid cliches like the plague

WE'LL MEET AGAIN!

In 1953 I failed the 11-plus and was sent to Mortlake Secondary School, an institution I loathed with every fibre of my being. But, as I had witnessed on many a night at the Royal Cinema in Amlwch, north Anglesey, the analogous John Wayne and the 7^th Cavalry came to the rescue.

   My parents, keen amateur actors, joined the Whitton Welsh Society, not far from Twickenham, and they became involved in a production of The Corn is Green by Emlyn Williams. I was given the part of Idwal, a youngster who was required to speak Welsh, and, because there were not enough Welsh-speaking children to fill the other roles, an English boy, Richard Palmer, stepped in and learnt the lines. He attended Corona Academy Stage School and had already appeared in several films.

   I pestered my parents to send me to this school. But it was a private, fee-paying school and my parents couldn’t afford it. However, knowing how unhappy I was at the Mortlake school, they decided there was no harm in at least making enquiries at Corona. We went along to their office in Wellesley Road, Chiswick, and when they spotted this twelve-year-old who looked like a nine-year-old, they realised it was a distinct casting advantage and assured my parents that enough work would wing its way in my direction to cover the school fees. Which was exactly what happened throughout my time at Corona.

  My first TV appearance was with about a dozen of us Corona schoolkids, and we were taken to the Shepherd’s Bush Empire to appear in The Bob Monkhouse Show¸ which was  televised live. In rehearsal, Monkhouse and the director wanted one of us to listen to a string of gags told by the comedian but keep a perfectly straight face. When Monkhouse went through his routine, some of the kids snorted and giggled, but I didn’t crack so much as a smile. Maybe the quick-fire gags went straight over my head. And so, because of my blank expression, I was given the non-speaking role of listening to Monkhouse’s jokes deadpan, and when he desperately got to the end, going down on his knees pleadingly with one almighty joke, I took from behind my back an egg which I cracked on his head. It got a great laugh from the studio audience, and then Monkhouse was whisked away to change and clean up while a performer called Yana sang a number.

   My second TV part came around Christmas time, in a drama, and I played an American lad. Three Empty Rooms was set in a New York City tenement, and the play was produced by a young Canadian director, Alvin Rakoff.  I was one of three youngsters in the play, and my older sister was to have been played by a genuine American girl, Jenny Hecht, who was coming over from New York to play the part but was refused a work permit by the Ministry of Labour, and the part was taken over by 18-year-old Lynette Mills.

   I will never forget one of the actors in the small part of a removal man, because he was so tall and striking, rather terrifying until you spotted the warmth in his eyes, and when he wasn’t needed in rehearsal, he and other actors who hadn’t a great deal to do in the play, retired to a corner of the rehearsal room and played cards, with what seemed to me a great deal of money changing hands. This removal man was played by Bernard Bresslaw, and I recognised him a few years later when he played Private Popplewell in The Army Game.

   Three Empty Rooms was broadcast live, as most television was in the ‘50s, and well into the mid ‘60s. The play had the offstage cries, the birth pangs of a woman in labour, and when it went out live on the 27 December, the BBC switchboard was jammed with complaints from viewers who found the screams of a woman in labour distasteful and upsetting. Imagine that! A woman giving birth around Christmas time!

    I never worked again with Bernard Bresslaw, but I did meet him in 1979. I was appearing at the Alexandra Theatre in Birmingham, and just before leaving for the Saturday matinee, I bumped into him at my digs, and we had a brief chat before he left for his matinee at the Hippodrome.

    When most actors work in the provinces, usually they drive home to the south east following the Saturday night show. And usually, to keep the tiredness at bay before the last lap of the journey, they may pull in to Hoddesdon services on the M1 for a strong coffee, with just another twenty minutes or so to go before reaching London.

    On my way from Birmingham that night, I pulled in to Hoddesdon services, drank a strong coffee, and was just leaving when who should I bump into but Bernard Bresslaw arriving. I bade him good evening, and he replied, ‘We can’t go on meeting like this!’

Theatre Digs

There have been many actors with stories to tell of theatrical digs, some good, some bad. Actors’ Equity now is mourning the disappearance of many of these establishments, as they provided a lifeline for so many actors, the ones who are not stars and big earners, unable to afford hotels.

    My first ever experience of digs was staying at Mrs Sewell’s in Birmingham when I was sixteen, playing at the Alexandra Theatre in a Noel Coward play. The landlady was a real fox firs type of landlady and charged £4.00 per week for breakfast and an evening meal late at night following the performance. I was earning £8.10s per week less my agent’s ten per cent.

    But this was my first unchaperoned job, and I loved it. Especially the evening meals, because the guests were all variety artistes appearing at the Hippodrome and I loved hearing all their ribald stories.

    Once, Malcolm McFee and I stayed in a very respectable Hull neighbourhood, but we were cautioned by the landlady that she wouldn’t tolerate us sneaking back any young ladies, as, she said, ‘I don’t want to get this neighbourhood a reputation as a red-light district.’

    Of course, most theatrical digs don’t have en-suite bathrooms, the ablutions are usually shared, and sometimes the bathroom is several floors down. But it’s always useful if there is a wash basin in the room for when you might need a quick pee. After all, most actors are used to peeing in their dressing room wash basins.

    Once in some digs I stayed in, I woke up very late one night dying for a pee. The bathroom was two doors down. So, knowing my room was at the back of the house, where there was a garden, I quietly opened the window and began my beery torrent of urine into what I hoped was the back lawn. But I hadn’t reckoned on their being a lean-to below, with a Perspex roof, and I was sure the noise from this unstoppable waterfall would wake the entire neighbourhood.

    When I toured in One For The Pot with Bob Grant, and we were appearing at the MacRobert Centre in Stirling, we stayed in the same digs above a pub. Of course when we got back after the show, because we were residents, we were allowed to drink after time had been called. Not only that but most of our drinks came free, as the landlord was a real piss-artist, and would ask Bob to do a bit from On The Buses. So Bob would say in his normal voice something like ‘Any more fares, please?’ and be rewarded with a malt whisky. Then I was asked also to perform and would give the landlord a few words that Frankie might say, but in my normal voice. For a whole week this went on while the measures of Glenmorangie kept coming.

     Occasionally, landlords set electricity meters so they can make extra from their tenants. When I worked in Porthcawl I knew the meter was rigged, and it was a freezing cold winter, and becoming hugely costly to keep warm, until I found a way of burgling the box that kept the money in, and I would just recycle all the coins back in the meter.

    Some other South Wales digs I stayed in also had a rigged costly meter. Then I discovered in the kitchen area there was an unmetered gas cooker, and so I stopped using the electric fire and just turned on the gas oven, leaving it on all night. After leaving this accommodation, I could picture the landlord’s apoplectic fit when he received his gas bill.

    The most theatrical of theatrical digs I ever stayed in was Villa Novello in Leeds and the landlord of this house was called Basil Hartley. When I phoned up to book a room for the panto season, I was informed by Basil that it was a reasonable cost of £50 per week, or the de-luxe room that Danny Le Rue always took was £60. So I took Danny’s room. When I arrived on Sunday evening, prior to starting rehearsals early Monday, Basil offered me a cup of coffee, took me into his kitchen, gestured to a comfy-looking chair by the fire, and said, ‘Sit there. That’s Danny’s chair.’

    Sometimes I did earn enough to stay in two- or three-star hotels. When we were touring in The Lads From Fenn Street we booked into a time-warp hotel in Buxton. Malcolm McFee and I were in the empty and spacious lounge one morning, and this archaic chamber was a throwback to the 1940s. The two of us suddenly caught on, the same wavelength sweeping us into a routine. Malcolm came at me with a wrestling forearm which I parried, and suddenly we were having a James Bond type of stage combat, hurling ourselves over the furniture, which went on for about five minutes until we were doubled up with laughter.

    Finally, I heard this story from an actor. It may be apocryphal, but it’s worth telling. Like Birmingham’s Mrs Sewell, the landlady put on an after-show evening meal for her actors, and they always shared a bottle of sherry, having bought several. But as the liquid in the bottle seemed to go down rather rapidly, they suspected the landlady was also knocking it back. And so one evening, when there was about a third left in one of the bottles, one of the actors was chosen to piss in it. That would serve the landlady right for knicking their sherry!

    But on the last night she made them a splendid dinner, finishing off with trifle. She then told them that as she knew they were fond of sherry, she had taken the sherry from that last bottle and used it for the sherry trifle!

Lost Performances

My memories of past TV appearances have faded into scraps of vague images with the onset of the years, and all I have to remind myself that I was there, standing in front of a camera and delivering lines, are some Radio Times cuttings which I have kept throughout all the decades. And yet, when I was writing the Please Sir! book, I could remember details, even snatches of conversation. Of course, I appreciate that this comedy came about when I was in my mid-twenties and is far more recent. But it wasn’t like that with the Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh book when I worked with them aged fourteen. Again, my memories of that Titus Andronicus production are crystal clear.

    I guess there is a very good memory fermentation as to the reason for remembering some performances and a mischievous imp for forgetting others. Perhaps the main reason was that whenever I appeared in a one-off production, it was those proverbial passing ships. I didn’t get to know anyone, so the memory faded rapidly until it almost ceased to exist.

     One of my earliest television appearances was in a children’s TV soap, which also became popular with adults, called The Appleyards. Nope! Gone! Can’t remember a single thing about that one, and I don’t even have a Radio Times cutting to stimulate a single image. All I can remember is the title and the fact that I was in it. When I looked it up online, I discovered nothing of it exists, a total BBC wipe-out.

     I can vaguely remember playing a bell-boy in an episode of Hotel Imperial, which starred Vic Oliver. He was a musical director and orchestral conductor who was born of Jewish parents in Austria. Although he and his family left there in the 1920s, it didn’t stop the Nazi party including him in the notorious Black Book, so that in the event a successful German invasion of Britain he was on the list of people to be arrested and killed immediately.

    What I can remember of the episode I appeared in was that it may have started off with Oliver, playing a hotel orchestra band leader, and once he finished conducting, he would narrate to camera the start of a story which would then be followed by a dramatization. The episode I was in was titled The Star in the Penthouse Suite, guest starring Bonar Colleano and Diana Decker, and also credited in the cast was Elizabeth Fraser, who years later shortened her first name.

    If any of you quizzers are ever asked who the first Castaway talking to Roy Plomley on Desert Island Discs, it was Vic Oliver.

    I seemed to play a lot of Bell-Boys when I was in my early teens. I was one in Who Killed Menna Lorraine and also an uncredited one in an episode of Four Just Men, starring Dan  Dailey. And I played a character called Fred in Francis Durbridge Presents in an episode titled The World of Tim Frazer, starring Jack Hedley. Who or what Fred was I have no idea.

    I have more of a memory, however vague, of an uncredited appearance in The Arthur Haynes Show. The episode I was in was probably written by Johnny Speight as it was very much about the little working-class man’s finger up to authority. Which was where I came in, playing the actor’s non-speaking son. When the rent collector called, played by Nicholas Parsons, all I was encouraged to do was hurl a brick at him. (A rubber one, of course.)

     Oh yes, I was once in an episode of Emergency Ward 10, but like the BBC and many of their recordings, my memory has wiped it.

     I appeared as Peter in Educated Evans from stories by Edgar Wallace, and this starred the ‘Cheerful Chappie’ – no, not Max Miller, he was ‘Cheeky Chappie’ – Charlie Chester, and I can remember how pleasant he was. I recently discovered that Deryck Guyler was in two of the episodes, and it would be another 11 years before I worked with Deryck.

    Charlie Chester was a hugely successful comedian, and it seemed he could turn his hand to almost anything. He even opened a casino in Soho, which was often frequented by artist Francis Bacon, and journalists Dan Farson and Jeffrey Bernard.

    I don’t know who compiles the IMDb online database, and how they do it, but they tend to get it right. With one exception in my list of credits. I don’t ever remember being a Coach Driver in The Legacy of Reginald Perrin episode 7. And this was a more recent credit.  The only explanation I can think of is that a real Coach Driver was hired for the filming and his name happened to be David Barry. Whoever he was, he couldn’t have belonged to Equity because they don’t have members with the exact same name.

    Often when they repeat a series, a residual payment is sent out by BACS (British Actors Collecting Society), so if they happen to repeat this series and episode 7, I may get the repeat fee instead of the Coach Driver. But the fee will not be very much, just enough for a glass of wine perhaps. So, I will accept the money and raise a toast to the other David Barry, saying ‘Cheers!’

Celebs & the Classics

In late 1967, about nine months prior to playing Frankie Abbott in Please Sir! my agent got me a job playing Ariel in The Tempest at the Tower Theatre Canonbury in London. They were an amateur company but with a very high standard, and my involvement came about because the only young performer left in their company who could play the part was over 15 stone. And so I was the only professional in this amateur company who was being paid the Equity rate. But the memory of this production set me thinking about tackling the classics like Shakespeare.

     Lenny Henry has done it. He started off doing impersonations of characters like Frank Spencer and comedians such as Tommy Cooper when he won the New Faces TV talent show. And decades later he has played Othello in the West End and received rave reviews for his performance. So does this mean that most intelligent people can be taught to perform the classical roles?

    And comedian Ken Dodd was apparently an excellent Malvolio in Twelfth Night and Tommy Steele played Tony Lumpkin in She Stoops to Conquer at the Old Vic, but these two were already-well established performers, albeit not in classical theatre.

    So could you do this with some of the Reality TV celebs, such as Love Island and The Only Way is Essex?

    I thought an idea for a fun TV series might be to take Reality TV celebrities, ones who are merely famous for being famous, and have a talented Shakespearean director attempting to coach them into giving decent performances. We the viewers could be watching car-crash TV as some of them struggle to understand what is being asked of them. But on the other hand, one or two might manage to give credible performances in the classics and perhaps start a new career.

     And as I considered this bizarre idea, it reminded me that I have seen some professional actors in Shakespeare who should have been shot, especially those that put on that holy high-pitched voice that they think verse speaking is all about.

    Much as I love Judi Dench, I heard her choosing some discs on Desert Island Discs once, and she chose her brother’s recitation of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18. It was ghastly, with elongated vowels like the distant cries of peacock hens, and as the sonnet progressed it became so holy I imagined angels carrying her brother up to meet St Peter. And Dench is so very talented, how come she fell under the spell of her brother’s hammy performance? Perhaps it was family loyalty.

     I did think I might try and copyright this idea of getting Reality TV stars trying to perform the classics, so that viewers might be entertained by some very dreadful performances. Is that a bit sick, I hear you ask? Yes, probably. So I won’t bother to take it any further.

    Although I think I could be tickled by the idea of seeing all the stars of Love Island giving a performance of Macbeth. Especially if they did it live in a theatre. That might be even better than seeing The Play That Went Wrong.

    Or have I taken leave of my faculties?

Shakespeare’s Globe

Shakespeare’s theatre was reconstructed on the South Bank twenty-five years ago, and I always intended to visit and see a production, and only got around to it for a matinee on Thursday.

     I wrote in my latest book, Laurence Olivier & Vivien Leigh: The Final Curtain, in which I played Olivier’s grandson, Young Lucius, that the cast of Titus Andronicus discovered a replica of Shakespeare’s Globe Playhouse in a park in Krakow, during a visit on this European tour. Everyone in the company said how sad it was that in Poland they had a Globe Theatre but that we didn’t have one in London. Sadly, the two famous actors didn’t live to see the rebuilding of the Globe on the South Bank.

     When I saw The Tragedy of Julius Caesar there, I couldn’t help wondering what Olivier and Leigh would have made of it. I am sure they would have been overjoyed as I was with the building itself, and the atmosphere that was created by the surroundings and letting one’s imagination take flight, thinking about the jostling of the groundlings in Elizabethan times, and the participation and reaction of the crowds back then. The only trouble was the slight disappointment with the contemporary production.

     I know the play quite well, and still I became confused. Brutus and Cassius were played by females, and referred to one another as sisters rather than brothers, and the pronouns were changed, but sometimes Antony’s observations to ‘honourable men’ only added to the confusion. The play at the Globe I discovered was soon to go on tour and so it had a cast of only eight, with much doubling and trebling of roles. Of course, this is one of Shakespeare’s plays with the most characters, more than thirty I think, so in this day and age there would have to be a certain amount of doubling, but this was so confusing, and the change of gender didn’t help, especially when Brutus’s wife Portia appeared, and Caesar’s wife Calpurnia. As one young schoolkid said on the way out at the end of the play, ‘I didn’t understand a thing of what went on.’

    I did quite like some of the characters mixing with the groundlings and getting them to participate as Roman citizens. But even that wasn’t entirely successful as it sometimes created moments of farce. For instance, near Cassius’s death, when he – or she, in this case – says, ‘It is my birthday,’ there was a sympathetic ‘Aah!’ from the audience, so we had quite a few giggles when we should have been heavily involved in the tragic events.

    Also, the choreographed fights were abysmal and certainly gave a farce-like feel to the afternoon. And I thought the use of guns was pointless because none were fired. If you have a gun on stage, surely at some point in the play one must be fired.

    Which sort of summed it up for me somehow. There were many threats in the play, but none of them were really intimidating.

    I went to see the play hoping, especially as it was in modern dress, that we would see some relevance to what Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, and Donald Trump’s bid for power, showed us in the action, but it rather descended into a Joan Littlewood type of pop theatre.

    And in the stabbings, much stage blood was spilled onto actors’ hands, costumes and the stage itself. It reminded me of just how great the recently late Peter Brook made of Titus Andronicus, Shakespeare’s most bloodthirsty horror story, where not a drop of stage blood was spilt. Lavinia, played by Vivien Leigh, after having had her hands chopped of at the wrists, had a costume with red ribbons running down from the sleeves.

    Guess which one works better, the real stage blood or the representation? Here is a photo, which is in the book.

Drinking Clubs

I am reading about one of Soho’s most infamous drinking clubs at the moment, a book written and compiled by Darren Coffield, Tales from the Colony Room: Soho’s Lost Bohemia. The Colony Room Club was in Dean Street, and it was not one I ever frequented. Which was maybe just as well as this club was the most notorious, and if you weren’t witty and kept up with all the celebrated artists like Lucien Freud and Francis Bacon, you were likely to be insulted in the most profane way possible.

     Most of the drinking clubs that sprang up after the war were catering for alcoholics and the heavy drinkers who liked a taste of forbidden fruit when the strict licensing laws forbade afternoon drinking and the pubs shut at half-two and opened again at six.

     I belonged to the Kismet Club in Great Newport Street, which was regularly frequented by actors and villains. It opened at three p.m., after customers were chucked out of a pub, and it shut at seven, an hour after the pubs were open for business again. The Kismet was in a dingy basement, and the linoleum on the floor was pretty sticky from spilled booze. Even the juke box was a relic from the past as the songs belted out old favourites like Kay Starr singing ‘The Wheel of Fortune’. Another well-played favourite I seem to remember was Sinatra’s ‘My Way’.

     One time a script of mine led to a commission from a BBC Wales producer, who came up to London to discuss it with me and took me to lunch at a restaurant in Queensway, conveniently near to Paddington for his train back to Cardiff. But his return train journey wasn’t until six, and there were no pubs open. So I suggested the BBC could afford a taxi to Great Newport Street and we ended up at the Kismet. I wondered how a BBC producer would take to this seedy dive, but he loved it. Perhaps it was because he came from a rather rural and sheltered south Wales existence, but he adored the Kismet. For him this was living in the fast lane, mixing with obscenity-lipped actors and suspicious characters.

    I also belonged to Gerry’s Club, which was a club for mainly actors, although membership also consisted of directors and other media types, including the ex-wartime double-agent Eddie Chapman, who popped in from time to time. But it was mainly actors, and I would often sit chatting to John Hurt or Kenneth Haigh, and many was the time that actors I had worked with Like Tom Baker or John Alderton would be there.

    The club was originally opened by Gerald Campion, who played Billy Bunter. When I joined I had no idea who actually owned it, but it seemed to be run by a succession of actors like Mike Pratt, who was in the original Randall & Hopkirk, Deceased. A friend of mine, Peter Childs, who played DS Rycott in Minder was drinking in Gerry’s when it was run by Bunny May, an actor, and Peter was drinking with Michael Elphick. Peter and Elphick apparently had an argument which almost led to fisticuffs and Bunny May barred them both. Peter sounded most indignant when he told me this. He said apparently he and Elphick had made it up, but it didn’t cut any ice with Bunny May, who still barred them. ‘And he,’ Peter said scornfully about Bunny May, ‘was nothing more than a jumped-up little extra!’

    I almost got myself barred from Gerry’s which was then run by Sean Lynch. And yet I was quite innocent of any wrongdoing. What happened was this: I was performing in a fringe theatre, playing the clown in Calderon’s Life is a Dream, and I had invited two people to see it, Anne and John Wright, who I knew from my local pub in Crystal Palace. John Wright was a prison officer at Brixton Prison. After the play, I took them to Gerry’s for a drink, and Sean Lynch must have overheard our conversation and clocked that John Wright was a prison officer. The next time I visited Gerry’s he went berserk. ‘You’re a fucking actor and you bring a fucking prison officer in here!’ I explained that they had been to see a play I was appearing in and managed to smooth it over. But what I later discovered was that Lynch had served time at Brixton nick for dealing or possessing drugs.

     Once I moved from London, and was married and had children, I let my Gerry’s membership lapse, although I still kept my Kismet membership, which was useful  if I attended an interview and met someone I knew, and we could have a few drinks in the afternoon. I remember one such bleary outing spent at that club in the company of Julian Holloway, Peter Childs and Bryan Pringle, and keeping up with those three drinkers was no mean feat.

    And then in 1988 the licensing laws changed, pubs were allowed to open throughout the day. And so the Kismet closed its doors for the last time, although I believe Gerry’s is still going strong.  

Fenn Street School Staff

Bernard Hedges who taught 5C                       Cromwell the esteemed headmaster

Was a teacher who could never see                Always courted disaster

Whenever for kids he went out on a limb      Whenever Doris spoke an amorous word

They’d pull the rug from under him.                Cromwell dropping bricks was all we heard

Cynical Pricey – first name Vaughan                Norman Potter, desert rat

Found teaching horrors one big yawn             Always used philosophy that

From science he dreamt a golden rule            Ever since his troubled birth

A way to blow up the bloody school.               Said, ‘It’s more than my job’s worth.’

Doris Ewell assistant head                                  Old Mister Smithy – wife’s name Madge

Was not so very easily led                                  Whose name he wore just like a badge

And not one to suffer fools so gladly                And to prove he was an ancient academic

She always came out of it rather badly            He always fought with grave polemic

The Fenn Street Gang

Leader Eric Duffy                                             Dunstable, a boy named Dennis

Could occasionally appear scruffy.                  Nothing like Beano’s Menace

If anyone mentioned this                                  Class 5C were very astute

They were guaranteed a Glasgow kiss.            Knowing his love of animals – Hoot! Hoot!

Maureen Bullock the Pope did bless                Dapper Peter Craven

Relieving her of stress                                      Whenever out raving

But her lust became cuter                                 Always wore flowery shirts

When she fancied her tutor                               Known in London as Dickie Dirt’s

Sexy Sharon of 5C                                            Frankie Abbott – little soldier

On the telly you could see                                Never does get any older

That she was far from dumb                             Stuck in a rut

Despite her tarty mum.                                     He remains a nut!

Dirty Jokes? Oh No There Aren’t!

After we opened in Aladdin at the Pier Pavilion Porthcawl in 1978, with John Judd playing Dame and me as Wishee Washee, the Western Mail gave us a good review. But we were not long into our run when the same newspaper put the boot in with the headline on page three TV STARS IN SEX JOKE PANTO.

   The report went on to reveal that a local councillor had been told there were inappropriate jokes in the show, jokes more suitable for adults, and he had received several complaints about it. Another councillor said she had brought a party of underprivileged children to see it, and she couldn’t recall hearing anything inappropriate. But the damage was done. People only remember the headlines.

   I discussed this with John, and we both felt it was grossly unfair, as the one thing we wholeheartedly agreed on was that it should be a good wholesome family show, with no smut. And we were understandably the angriest in the cast as we were both billed above the title and had been singled out for blame in the headline. We complained to the theatre manager and he said he would make one or two phone calls to find out who was to blame for this slur.

   After the matinee, we trooped into his office, along with other members of the cast. The councillor who had brought the underprivileged children to the show had brought along the Western Mail reporter, so that he could put his side of the story to us. I wondered what he was doing there, because reporters don’t usually contact their victims to justify their stories. Perhaps, I thought, it had something to do with the councillor who organised this meeting, trying to do her bit as an independent arbiter. She flapped about with a worried expression, organised coffee for us all, and was clearly trying to please everyone.

   But whenever John and I raised our voices, she tutted and sighed disapprovingly. The theatre manager sat behind his desk saying nothing, watching the events unfolding with interest. There were not enough chairs in the office, so we stood in a semi-circle, glaring down at the reporter who sat to one side of the desk. While the councillor fussed around like a querulous hen, censuring our arguments by saying the reporter had written her side of the story as well, I could feel my anger building. The reporter added his own excuse in mitigation of the libel, protesting that he only reported what he was told. I angrily pointed out that the headline was not in quotation marks and this was something either written by himself or a sub editor. Not only that, but the councillor who made the disparaging remarks hadn’t even seen the show. ‘I’ve worked in Cardiff many times,’ I ranted, without first putting my brain into gear. ‘And at the Grand Swansea. And now I come to piddling Porthcawl to have the boot put in.’

   I watched as the reporter scribbled my comment into his notebook. Now I knew why he had come along to meet us, to get a nice juicy follow-up story. And I had just provided it.

   Oh well, I thought. I’ve got nothing to lose now. ‘If you want something to report,’ I said. ‘Report that!’

   I let him have it with the full cup of coffee. There was a stunned silence in the office. The reporter’s tweed jacket was soaking wet as he fumbled for a handkerchief to wipe his neck and face. He stood up and I was relieved to see he was shorter than me.

   ‘I don’t think I can stay here and continue this meeting,’ he announced.

   ‘No, I don’t blame you, Glyn,’ said Miss Querulous Hen, following him out of the office. John Judd was beaming, as was the rest of the cast.

   On my way to the evening show later, I bumped into the theatre manager, who asked me to step into his office. Here we go, I thought. Here comes the tirade about my bad behaviour. But once behind the closed door of his office, he grinned hugely and thrust out his hand for me to shake.

   ‘That was one of the most splendid things I’ve ever seen,’ he said. ‘It really made my day.’

   It must have got around most of Porthcawl because the very next day as I passed a youngster on a skateboard, he called out, ‘I hope that coffee was hot!’

   Following my careless criticism of Porthcawl, chucking coffee over the hack turned out to be the best thing I could have done, because there was no follow-up story in the paper.

   And after every performance, John and I asked the kids to write to the Western Mail on their Paddington Bear notepaper, saying how much they enjoyed the show. To be fair to the newspaper, they printed a few of the letters, with an addendum saying they had received a number of such letters. They also printed a retraction of the original story.

Plague of the Zombies

It’s the Platinum Jubilee as the Queen celebrates 70 years on the throne. And yet every city and town in the United Kingdom has been possessed by a plague of zombies. You can see them in every high street, park, country lane and promenade, walking with their eyes glued to their mobile phones. This is what is called FOMO. Fear of Missing Out. Oh dear, I might miss something important. More than likely something excruciatingly trivial. And all the things going on around the zombies will be missed. Now everything on the hone must be photographed, and there is no real connection with anything, because it’s more important to see how many likes the photo of a cream cake or coffee gets on Facebook or Twitter.

   The first mobile phone I ever saw must have been in themid to late 1980s, in a coffee bar at Charing Cross. I met the Creative Director of a production company who was about to commission me to write a funny interview between the Finance  Director of Castrol GTX and Noel Edmunds. When I saw this jaw-droppingly enormous phone, which must have weighed a ton, shaped like a brick, I thought this will never catch on. How wrong could I be as they got smaller and smaller until at last they have become a respectable zombie size.

    Thinking of mobile phones brought back all the small writing commissions I got over the years. There was also one I remember for Vax vacuum cleaners, which I wrote and also appeared in as the vacuum cleaner in question. The Vax sketch I wrote was a This is Your Life spoof where the Vax, played by yours truly, was the ‘life’ subject.

    The man from the production company also wanted me to co-direct it with him, and when in rehearsal it was the Finance Director’s turn to do his speech, he was dull and dreadful. I said to the man from the production company that I was having difficulty in getting anything like a performance from the Finance man. The production company chap made a suggestion. He said why not stand in the wings and wave his P45 at him?

    But on the night the Finance man shone brightly. It was his arrogance that stopped him performing in rehearsal, as if to say, ‘I know what I’m doing and I don’t take direction from actors.’

    Another small writing commission that came my way in the nineties was for the Royal Mail. It was to be for a children’s exhibition at Birmingham NEC, showing children what happens to a letter after it has been posted.

    I was to meet the guy offering me the job in a pub in Marylebone High Street, and I was very soon about to learn the very important value of a pause. It happened like this:

   It was to be a script no longer than five minutes, so I asked my then literary agent what I should charge for it. He told me that a good rule of thumb was to charge £100 per minute of script. Fine, I thought, that’s an easy £500 earned for a script I could write over the weekend.

   Then, when I met the man in the pub and we reached the nitty-gritty of finance, he told me they could only offer me £700 for the script. And there was me thinking of £500. A momentary confusion, and during this pause, in which the man commissioning me thought I was reluctant to do it for that price, he then sighed and said okay, they could up it to a thousand. Of course, I agreed on the spot.

   But that taught me the value of the pause. Something Harold Pinter discovered many years ago!

Ready Steady Go!

In 1963 I appeared with The Beatles, The Animals and Lulu, to name but a few. Well, put it this way, I was on the same bill as them, although I never got anywhere near them, or even the London Kingsway Studio from where the pop TV show Ready Steady Go! was broadcast. I appeared in the opening titles for one series of this show, for which I was paid £10 for my contribution to popular culture. How did this come about?

    At the time, aged nineteen, I was at Corona Academy Stage School, and the school had its own agency run by Hazel Malone, the sister of Rona Knight, the school’s principal. One morning I was contacted by Hazel Malone, who knew I had passed my driving test for a motor scooter, and she asked me if I was available for one day’s work, driving a motor scooter. The trouble was, I had to supply my own scooter, which I didn’t have, because I had passed my test on my brother’s scooter, and he was now using it to get to work.

    However, all was not lost. I had a friend at Corona, called Mike Carter. Mike was American, and we often discussed Hemingway and Steinbeck and liked similar books. Mike had no hesitation in lending me his scooter for one day, even though I wasn’t insured to ride it. But the ten pound fee for the day’s shoot was all that mattered.

    Early one morning I was called for filming in Kingsway, near to where the pop show was broadcast. Now I may be wrong about this, and I have no way of checking, but I thought my pillion passenger for the filming was Judy Geeson, who later went on to star in To Sir With Love, Three Into Two Won’t Go and many other films and television series.

    When we began filming, to start off with they wanted a close-up of my foot kick starting the bike, and then I had to zoom off down Kingsway and stop at some traffic lights. Which was when I stalled it, and then had difficulty starting it again. A policeman, who had helpfully been directing traffic for us, came to my rescue and pushed me up the road to bump start the bike again. I don’t suppose he would have been so accommodating had he known I was driving without insurance. But we managed to get the shots in by lunchtime, and I headed back to Chiswick to hand Mike back his scooter, and I was ten pounds richer, minus Hazel’s ten percent.

    Then in the mid-eighties I became forty pounds richer from the programme, with no agent’s percentage to be deducted. It happened like this: I saw a large advertisement in The Stage newspaper from British Actors’ Equity asking anyone who had been in Ready Steady Go! to contact them. Dave Clark, of Dave Clark Five, had purchased the series and planned showing it on Channel 4. I contacted Equity, told them about my contribution to the programme, and weeks later a cheque arrived for £40, three times more than the original fee.

    The first episode I watched on Channel 4, was the series featuring my scene in the opening titles, and the Beatles starred in it and sang ‘Twist and Shout’.

    And there was I thinking, ‘Hey, I have worked with the Beatles.’

    I did work with them, didn’t I?

    Hmm.

Hidden Persuaders

Years ago I appeared in many booze commercials: a Guinness ad, a Midlands bitter,  Heineken Lager, Watneys Stag Bitter, Borzoi Vodka, McEwen’s Export and Harvey’s Bristol Cream Sherry. The reason for this was because when I was in my late twenties and early thirties, I still looked quite young. There was a rule that no one under the age of 24 could advertise alcoholic drinks, as it was encouraging young people to booze. And so I did quite well with the alcohol ads because if there were any objections from the Independent Television Authority accusing the advertising agencies and their clients that by employing me to sell their products it was tantamount to influencing young people, the excuse could be given that I was way past the age of twenty-four.

    So I put my hand up and plead guilty for encouraging young people to drink. But then as I am fond of a drop myself it would be disingenuous of me to get on my high horse and turn down those commercials for sanctimonious reasons. That’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it. In any case, they paid the bills.

    But we are all being manipulated by the advertisers. I guess if ads were ineffective they wouldn’t get made. Not so many beer and cider commercials are being shown nowadays, whereas in the not so distant past there were hundreds of them, aimed mainly at men.

    Now we have dozens of confectionery adverts, aimed almost entirely at females. Look at any ad for sweets and chocolate and you will find a woman or a young girl is being targeted. I watched a Lindt Chocolate commercial, where an attractive young woman sensuously nibbles a gooey chocolate, and her eyes cloud over – I am almost tempted to shout, ‘I’ll have what she’s having!’ – and you can read the yes, yes, yes in her eyes. Then cut to a male chocolatier pouring runny chocolate into a receptacle, and you don’t have to be Sigmund Freud to work that one out. All of which prompted me to write this poem.

Sweet Persuasion

An adman having studied the demographics

Found ladies succumbed to sugary treats.

‘So,’ he said, ‘we’ll need campaigns with a teasing seraphic,

Angelic little misses coveting chocolate sweets.

I can see it now

Biting chocolate bunnies - a delightful spasm;

Yes, yes, yes! Lindt Easter rabbit! Shed loadsa lucre.

And better still what about a female orgasm?’

‘Are you mad?’ said the ITV censor turning a whiter shade of pale.

(Which is a song, but that’s another tale.)

‘I can see it now,’ the adman says

‘She gives Magnum Caramels a sensuous lick

And drooling, drooling this attractive filly

Discovers the taste is quite orgasmic

And this creamy thriller sends her silly.’

The adman wets himself with vanity

As he thinks up loads more hidden persuaders.

‘I was the one,’ he boasts, ‘when you told me it was insanity

And I became something of a confection crusader

Selling Ferrero Rochet -  that over hyped candy

Showed an attractive woman taking delicate bite

Her husky voice sounding ever so randy.

And what about our Baileys campaign?

I can see it now,

Female figures won’t be the same again

When sickly drink pours into chocolate egg

After eating mountains of calorific content

Elephantiasis epidemic in every leg

So let us forget an abstemious Lent

And televise images of chocolate runny

Think of all that money, money, money!’

After that I could fancy a hot chocolate with a slug of brandy in it. Try it sometime. It’s great!

Make ‘Em Laugh

New Year Birthday Honours have always been sparse when it comes to comedy, as though making people laugh is culturally unseemly. The powers-that-be seem to have higher regard for the ‘artists’, the opera singers, musicians, ballet dancers and dramatic actors. I admit that in more recent years there have been many comedian knighthoods such as Billy Connelly and Ken Dodd, and many others, but in the past honours seemed to be conferred on the funny folk who spent much of their time involved in charitable work.

    Two great comedians who got no honours at all were Les Dawson and Tommy Cooper, yet many of us agree that the way they made us laugh was truly therapeutic. And Morecombe and Wise were awarded MBEs, not top of the range awards.

    Perhaps those who compile the honours lists overlook some comedians because they may not be to their taste. After all, I have to admit, what makes many of us laugh is purely subjective.

    I was talking to someone about Laurel and Hardy recently, and they admitted they didn’t like them and preferred Abbott and Costello. Really?

    I must admit that what makes me laugh also leaves many people cold. If ever I am feeling down, I come home and put a Father Ted DVD on, and it’s guaranteed to cheer me up, although I have also heard a couple of people say they don’t find it funny. And Dad’s Army was brilliant, appealing to any age group. Who can fail to find it funny when Philip Madoc as the German officer demands, ‘Give me your name.’ And Arthur Lowe responds, ‘Don’t tell them, Pike!’? These great episodes were classics of comedy with perfect casting.

    I happen to love The Office which took off in the early noughties, yet many people I know found it cringemaking, which I must confess is what I liked about it.

    Of course, a lot of comedy is universal, especially when it comes to slapstick and clever silent comedies. Even those in more recent years such as the films of Jacques Tati, and even more recently the Mr Bean comedies, which can be viewed and appreciated in any country worldwide, they are highly inventive and of course funny.

     My favourite in British comedy was always the Ealing Comedies, and I rate The Ladykillers as one of my top ten of all time, and I also love Passport to Pimlico, The Titfield Thunderbolt and The Lavender Hill Mob.

     And for other go-to classic comedy films, I always laugh loudly whenever I see Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau in The Odd Couple, written by Neil Simon, who received something like 17 Tony Awards, and at one stage had four shows running simultaneously on Broadway. Yet he is not acknowledged with a single film in my book 2001 Movies To See Before You Die. Other great American comedies have been written and produced by Woody Allen and Mel Brooks, and Steve Martin has contributed many side-splitting comedies.

    Now I have a comedy confession to make. Carry On films. I must confess I am not that keen. To me they are like that curate’s egg, good in parts. I would sooner see a Carry On compilation with all the best bits, rather than sit through an entire film; a bit like watching highlights of a football match which excites you with the goals and cuts the boring bits out.

Now feel free to disagree with me regarding the Carry On films, because I did mention that comedy is subjective. And I know that comedy historian Robert Ross loves those films, as so many others do.

     In 2016, sadly Terry Jones suffered from Alzheimer’s and he was due to direct Robert’s play Jeepers Creepers about Marty Feldman at the Leicester Square Theatre. I used to love Marty Feldman, especially all those Round the Horne episodes he wrote with Barry Took. Robert asked me to co-direct his play, to help Terry out, which I did. And what a lovely chap he was. And I nominate his line from his film The Life of Brian as my all-time favourite. ‘He’s not the Messiah he’s a very naughty boy.’ I am laughing even as I write it.

    So, whatever tickles your ribs, Robert Ross’s Write On Comedy is on at the Museum of Comedy on the 11^{th of} June, kicking off at noon, and many of us will be there to celebrate comedy writing and signing books. It will be a great day out for everyone, with a few interviews, no doubt conducted by Robert himself.

So  Long Repertory Theatre

The old theatre repertory system hasn’t disappeared entirely but I guess you could say it has been decimated. Yet it is where most actors learnt their craft. And this was true of almost everyone in class 5C (the actors, not the characters!), and also John Alderton.

    John was brought up in Hull and attended Kingston High School, the same school as Tom Courtney. He was due to take his ‘A’ levels but, despite his parents’ disapproval, he left on a scholarship to attend RADA. After spending two years there he joined York Repertory Company, then quickly found television fame playing Dr Moon in Emergency Ward 10.

    Liz Gebhardt, who played Maureen in Please Sir! probably had more repertory experience than anyone else in 5C. She attended Guildhall School of Music and Drama, even though the local authorities didn’t award her a grant. ‘My family are hard-working,’ she said. ‘And it galled me to see girls with lots of wealth behind them getting grants and my family having to make sacrifices to buy me clothes.’ Her first job after leaving drama school was as assistant stage manager with Farnham Repertory Company. Before long she was their juvenile lead and went on to perform in more repertory seasons at Watford, Leicester and Bromley. When she auditioned for the part of Maureen, and had the audition been 24 hours later, she would not have got the part as she had booked a flight to New York and some strong instinct told her to cancel the flight. I think that lost trip was television’s gain.

    Born in Dartford, Kent, Peter Denyer played the rather simple Dunstable, but the actor was

far from stupid having obtained nine ‘O’ levels and three ‘A’ levels. His first professional experience was in the small part of the Porter in Ibsen’s The Doll’s House at Bristol Old Vic, followed by 18 months performing work at Sheffield Playhouse, and a term reading Drama at Manchester University, which was impressive for someone who would soon be playing the uneducated Dennis Dunstable.

     Now a theatrical agent, Peter Cleall, who played ringleader Eric Duffy also began life as an actor in the theatre. After attending E.15 Drama School he spent two years at Watford Repertory Company and was in Harold Pinter’s The Caretaker with Tom Baker at the Watermill Theatre, Newbury, then did several Shakespeare productions at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre. During one season he was struck down by a terrible bout of hay fever, just one of the problems of working in the open air – apart from rain stopping play.

     The only true Cockney in our cast was Malcolm Mcfee, who came from Forest Gate, who said, ‘When the wind was blowing in the right direction you could just about hear the Bow Bells.’ Malcolm studied drama at a young age, and his drama teacher got him his first job in The Philanderer at the Mermaid Theatre, and after drama school in Colchester he joined Ipswich Rep. I can remember auditioning alongside Malcolm for the part of Abbott.

     Because I began life as a child actor I worked in many stage productions. My first repertory theatre experience was in a thriller, Speaking of Murder, at Queen’s Theatre, Hornchurch. My first real repertory experience came two years before Please Sir! at Butlins Repertory Theatre in Pwllheli, where we performed six plays every fortnight.

    Penny Spencer, who played Sharon in the TV series, appeared on my Channel Radio show, and when I asked Penny how she began her acting career, she told me that some talent scout spotted her in a Wimpey Bar and offered her a job. Not all of us went to drama school it seems.

    However, Carol Hawkins, who took over as Sharon for the film of Please Sir! and the spin-off series The Fenn Street Gang, I discovered had been trained at the same school as I attended, Corona Academy, where she said she played everything from Noel Coward to Greek tragedy. Our paths never crossed at Corona, because I am that much older than her, but we became great friends. She now lives in Spain and I regularly visit her.

    There are many entertainers who have never been to drama school, or worked in repertory theatre, but are still able to give great performances, both in comedy and more serious fare. Just think of some of Billy Connelly’s performances, such as his role in Mr Brown, and you can appreciate that perhaps acting doesn’t require training as much as intelligence.

    But the advantage of attending drama school is the fact that you may get to play parts that will never be offered to you in the big wide world. And you are able to experiment, because you have the time to do it. When you work in television for instance, the directors and producers want you to just get on with it, and not take up their time.

    As I wrote in my book Please Sir! The Official History, when I asked producer and director Mark Stuart, ‘What’s my motivation for this line, Mark?’ He replied, ‘It’s because you get fucking paid to say it!’

From a Welsh Play to Please Sir!

On Wednesday, I went with a friend to see Emlyn Williams’s The Corn is Green at the National Theatre. I particularly wanted to see this play mainly for nostalgic reasons, because it was this drama that was instrumental in my becoming an actor, going from a Welsh speaking role to that of Frankie Abbott more than twelve years later.

    I had wanted to be an actor for as long as I can remember. When I was a child I never related to toy trains and cars. For me it was always dressing up or reading, but in my childhood in Amlwch, the northernmost part of Anglesey, there was the Royal Cinema, and I practically lived there. I can remember seeing at the age of nine, a young Marlon Brando in Viva Zapata, with a screenplay by John Steinbeck. Things didn’t get much better than that.

    The only time I remember going to the theatre was when my parents took me for a long weekend to Liverpool, and we went to see the post West End tour of Carousel. I have often wondered, as I share the same age as Gerry Marsden, whether his parents took him at the age of nine to see that production, and perhaps that song ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ filtered into his brain, stayed with him, and later became one of his biggest hits and the Liverpool FC anthem. But we may never know because sadly Gerry died last year.

     We moved to Richmond, Surrey, when I was ten-years-old, I failed the 11-plus, and was sent to Mortlake Secondary Modern School, an establishment I hated with every fibre of my being. But like the 7^th Cavalry and John Wayne coming to the rescue at the Royal Cinema, rescue came because my parents were doing amateur dramatics at Whitton Welsh Society near Twickenham, and they needed a Welsh-speaking boy to play the part of Idwal in this play about an English teacher, Miss Moffatt, who starts a school to educate the miners in a Welsh community, and also some of the young children. They couldn’t find anymore Welsh-speaking children, and so another boy, Richard Palmer, tried to learn a smattering of Welsh phrases and he joined us, sitting behind one of the school desks. Richard attended Corona Academy Stage School and had already appeared in a feature film! I pestered my parents to send me there, anything to get out of that hideous Mortlake School where the young thugs picked on me because of my Welsh accent. But this stage school was a private, fee-paying school and my parents couldn’t afford it. But they felt there was no harm in going along to see the school administrators. They also ran an agency attached to the school, run by Hazel Malone, sister of Rona Knight, who was Principal of the school.

    When they saw me aged 12, but looking no more than about 9, they promised my parents that they could find me enough work as a child actor to cover the school fees, which is exactly what happened. I got enough work as a child actor to not only cover the fees but also pay for all the extras such as school uniforms et cetera.

    Prior to starting at Corona, they got me a part at Theatre Royal Windsor in an American play Life With Father, which holds the record of being the longest non-musical play to run on Broadway. I was one of three brothers, the other two were played by Vernon Morris and Richard Palmer. On the first night my parents bought me a black cat mascot (see photo) which I still have.

    After the run at Windsor I started at Corona that September in 1955. What a relief to be away from those Mortlake thugs, and now becoming friends with young actors like Richard O’Sullivan, Carol White, Francesca Annis, Larry Dann, Frazer Hines, Jeremy Bulloch, Paul Cole and many others too numerous to mention. And this was all down to Emlyn Williams’s semi-autobiographical play.

    It brought back a few memories when I saw it at the National two days ago. Miss Moffatt was played superbly by Nicola Walker. As I watched the plot unfold about her ambition to educate the occasionally drunken miner Morgan Evans to a sufficiently high standard to receive a scholarship to an Oxford university, I vaguely remembered sitting behind the desk performing the part of a miner’s son. Little did I think then that I would within a few years sit behind another desk in an uncredited role in Carry On Teacher, and years later behind a desk as one of 5C in Fenn Street School.

    So, I could never have imagined that going from the am-drams at Twickenham in 1955, I would be regularly  visiting Carol Hawkins in Spain each year, along with friends Mark Andrews and Henry Holland, During my first trip we happened to see my easyJet seat number was 5C, and now whenever we go to Spain, Henry always books me seat 5C!

The Legacy of Ealing Films

Fatigued and recovering from a cold, yesterday afternoon I took myself off to my Tunbridge Wells Odeon Cinema to see Phantom of the Open, which starred Mark Rylance and Sally Hawkins. And what an enjoyable experience it was. A good British film, with a stunning performance from Mark Rylance as a Barrow-in-Furness crane driver who in his middle years, fancies taking up golf, which he does badly, and then is inadvertently accepted as a professional golfer in the British Open, which is when the fun starts as he tees off to a two-yard start! And this is the true story of Maurice Flitcroft which beggars belief of how he managed to play badly in the British Open so many times.

    And to give the film its full titles: Phantom of the Open: Maurice Flitcroft the World’s Worst Golfer.

    Although it was an afternoon show, I and two other people sat in this 300-seat auditorium. Which seems such a shame. Do people now just want car chases, plenty of CGI where humans do the impossible, crash through the air amid megaton explosions and miraculously survive? I am not saying blockbuster films are bad, and I have enjoyed many, but if our diet consists of nothing but pasta or fish and chips, shouldn’t we vary it a bit?

    And what I love about smaller, cosier, British films is that great homage they owe to the great Ealing comedies. My very favourite has to be The Ladykillers, which I have watched countless times. Danny Green as One-Round, is fabulous, and it has taken me years to realise the cleverness of his character’s name. The screenwriter probably thought of him as an inept boxer who earned the nickname because he was always knocked out in the first round! Great stuff, and halfway through the film following the robbery there is a wonderful cameo from Frankie Howerd who tries to fight off a horse munching its way through his fruit and veg. A great film that stands the test of time.

    And two other brilliant films from the Ealing Studios were The Lavender Hill Mob, which starred Alec Guinness, and The Titfield Thunderbolt, both of which were directed by Charles Chrichton. Chrichton directed his final feature in the 1960s, but then in the late eighties, when he was doing some corporate work for John Cleese’s Seven Arts Productions, Cleese offered him A Fish Called Wanda to direct. He was aged 77, and to get round the insurance company stipulations, Cleese offered to take over the direction should Chrichton be unable to continue. But Cleese, apparently, left the entire direction in the capable hands of Chrichton and the end result was stunning, and got them both Oscar nominations, although the only actual Oscar win was for Kevin Kline as Best Supporting Actor.

   One of my favourite British comedies was made by Bryanston Films starring Peter Sellers as a Scottish tweed producer called Battle of the Sexes. I remember seeing it when it first came out and I caught up with it recently. I was surprised to see my old chum Noel Howlett in it, playing a cameo role as Mr White. And there is a brilliant set-piece in the film when Peter Sellers attempts to bump off the brash American woman who is trying to modernise the methods of the tweed company, played by Constance Cummings. This was also directed by Charles Chrichton. It’s no wonder John Cleese picked him to direct A Fish Called Wanda.

    Hopefully we will get more films like Phantom of the Open, although sadly I think we are more likely to get films like that made for television as they probably don’t make enough money at the box office. But hopefully, when this one is released in the USA in June, and because of the popularity of golf, it might stand a good chance of huge box office returns. Although I don’t have an interest in golf, I thoroughly enjoyed Phantom, which was more than just a sports film and was also about family and loyalty. And I also think Sally Hawkins is an excellent actor, and it seems a shame that we haven’t yet had on TV (unless I missed it) that brilliant Nova Scotia-based film about a folk artist which she starred in as Maudie.

   But for now I will keep my eyes peeled for some TV repeats of Ealing comedies, and I think I could fancy watching A Fish Called Wanda again. Perhaps I will forward this to Talking Pictures as a great big hint!

Why I Hate Onions

Usually, if I’m in a restaurant, I ask the waiters if a certain dish has onions and explain that I have an onion allergy. But this is far from the truth because I don’t know what would happen if I inadvertently ate one. No, it is a phobia which came about during childhood, from when I was about five or six-years-old. If I had one of those early childhood illnesses, such as mumps or measles, my mother would force upon me an antispasmodic medicine called asafoetida, a hideous mixture of onions, chives, shallots and leeks. It is often used in Indian cooking. Of course I never as a child, or even as a young adult, made the connection between my phobia of onions and this asafoetida which, incidentally, is where we get the word foetid.

    I attended a private school in Bangor, North Wales, at the age of six, and by then this medicine that was forced upon me had given me a strong hatred of onions, and when confronted during a school dinner with onions, and pushing them to one side, a teacher stood over me and forced me to swallow the ghastly vegetable, which made me physically sick. That was when the trauma happened; since then a complete hatred of onions, shallots, chives and leeks.

    In a recent conversation about this phobia with Tain, my daughter’s wife, she suggested that because my mother gave me this awful concoction of mainly onions and some of its family when I was very ill, I now associate it with illness.

     But until the late 1980s, I never knew about the asafoetida connection to my phobia. I discovered it in hypnosis, when I was regressed by a GP who practised as a therapeutic hypnotist. He did explain to me that the sessions were unlikely to make me like something I hated. And he was right: I still can’t eat them.

     He did, however, teach me a form of self-hypnosis which works at relieving stress and is a form of meditation. And he was able to help my actor friend Peter Childs to give up smoking. It also revived my interest in mesmerism, practised by Franz Mesmer in the 18^th Century, the precursor of hypnotism.

     In 2019, fascinated by the subject, I wrote a play about Mesmer, and this was published by Beercott Books towards the end of that year. Unfortunately, we all know what happened next, don’t we? So, with no theatres able to mount a production during the Covid pandemic, the play had to be put on the back burner. Which is a shame, and so many well-known actors read it, commented favourably on it, which the publisher has included in the play script. I am grateful to those actors, including Graham Cole, Linda Marlowe, Linda Regan and Hugh Fraser. And Hugh Fraser’s quote sums up the play beautifully.

    "David Barry takes us into a rehearsal room where a late run through of a play concerning the life of Franz Mesmer is about to begin. As the fascinating story of Mesmer’s life unfolds, moving between the Imperial Court of Vienna and Revolutionary Paris, the frequently strained and often combustible relations between the cast begin to unravel and the interplay between epic narrative and thespian skirmishing proves truly mesmerising."

    Hopefully, now that theatres are up and running again, The Franz Anton Mesmer Show may find a venue, whether it be professional or amateur, and like any production a licence to perform is required, which any company may obtain from: licensing@beercottbooks.co.uk

    Now back to the onion phobia. Whenever I mention to anyone that I like garlic they seem astounded and mention how it is surely one of the onion family. Maybe garlic was not one of the ingredients of that filthy medicine my parents unwittingly tortured me with. And growing up in North Wales in the forties and fifties, I don’t think I ever tasted garlic.

    So, bring on the garlic and sod off the rest of the onion family!

Look Out for The Priests!

In 1962, when I was still a student at Corona Academy Stage School, I became involved in playing a small part in the Jean Genet one-act play Deathwatch. The play concerns a homosexual ménage a trois between three convicts and I played the prison guard. We performed this play along with The Lesson by Eugene Ionesco and Hello from Bertha by Tennessee Williams at Corona’s own theatre for one night. Rona Knight, the principal of the school and a passionate Shakespeare buff, came to see them, but I don’t think she was impressed by the subject matter of any of these plays. However, the director, Fiona McCleod, arranged for us to present them as part the Dublin Theatre Festival, at a tiny fringe venue, The Pocket Theatre, situated down some steps in a basement at Ely Place in central Dublin. As there were seven of us performers, we would be lucky to receive anything other than copper coins as our share of the box-office, but we were offered accommodation at the home of one of the actors, Declan Harvey, whose parents lived in a large house on the outskirts of Dublin.

   My strongest recollection of this trip was of handing out flyers for our show on St Stephen’s Green one sunny afternoon. And then I saw a man in black gliding ominously towards me, his hand held out for a leaflet. It was a Catholic priest. Now, bearing in mind that back in the sixties the priests wielded so much power, and we had heard that priests en masse attended a showing of the Tennessee Williams film adaptation of Suddenly Last Summer, starring Elizabeth Taylor, and on the cinema’s opening night they stood up, declaiming how disgusting the film was, and the audience – or should I say congregation? – had no option other than to walk out after their spiritual leaders. The film closed after the first showing.

   So, it was with great trepidation I handed the priest a flyer. He took his time reading it, clearly trying to intimidate me with his theatrically unhurried examination of the leaflet. ‘Hmm,’ he rumbled like the distant threat of thunder. ‘Tennessee Williams, eh? I think we shall be along to see this.’

   When I mentioned this incident to the cast, Declan Harvey threatened to kick any priests in the balls if they tried to disrupt a performance. And he meant it. He hated them with a vengeance bordering on psychotic. His mother, who was an alcoholic, had a reputation in her parish for inviting young curates into her study, and then she would lock the doors to prevent them escaping, and lecture them at length on atheism. Which only partly explained why Declan, who came from this rather unconventional Catholic family, had a long history of priest hatred, and we all hoped the clergy might attend a performance, and speculated on what great publicity our plays would have if Declan attacked any of them. Of course, they never attended a performance, knowing that actors in the theatre can answer back. Films were an easier target.

The Bloodshot Boys…

…in other words, the actors who were heavy drinkers – or worse. And is there a good reason that actors especially are susceptible to alcoholism? Is it a case of addiction, nerves or something deeper? Perhaps hidden in an actor’s subconscious there may be something telling them that they are not that talented and they have just been lucky enough to be cast in the right role.

    I wrote about two actors with a drink problem in my book Please Sir! The Official History. First was Bill Simpson who played the title role in Dr Finlay’s Casebook who drank himself to death and almost did it when I toured with him. He certainly brought the set down one night, and I mean that literally. I could see how limited Bill’s talent for performing was. But he was a very likeable chap and I got on well with him.

   Unlike Rodney Bewes who I toured with in Funny Money, who may never have spoken to me had I not spoken to him. He never, in all the 12 weeks of performances could get through the play without many cock-ups, and it was all down to the demon drink. Although I enjoyed The Likely Lads and thought the two leads complimented each other perfectly in that relationship, it soon became apparent that James Bolam was the better of the two actors and was offered better roles after Likely Lads ended. Was that the psychological reason that Bewes turned to drink? We will never know, because perhaps it was too latent.

    But there are many stories of hellraisers in the acting profession, the heavy drinking brigade, and some are very funny, which is maybe why they still worked and were tolerated.

   W.C. Fields was possibly the most famous drunk of all time, and while he was never a falling down drunk, except when he once fell downstairs while carrying a glass of Martini. Legend has it that he never spilt a drop due to his juggling abilities for which he was renowned. But alcohol didn't help his disposition. He was notorious for carrying a flask on movie sets, claiming to interested parties that it contained nothing stronger than pineapple juice While he was performing, a fellow actor stole it, emptied the contents and poured real pineapple juice in it. Fields unwittingly took a swig and almost choked. ‘Who's been putting pineapple juice in my pineapple juice?’ he spluttered.

    One of my favourite performances was W C Fields as the famous florid-speaking character Mr Micawber. Apparently, when they had a read-thru and script conference prior to shooting David Copperfield, Fields wanted to know where Micawber's pool shooting scene came in the script. ‘Mr Fields,’ began the director, ‘Dickens didn't write a pool-shooting scene.’ ‘Ah, exclaimed Fields. ‘Maybe he forgot.’

    The recalcitrant comedian would go out onto the lawn of his Hollywood home and shoot birds. When a neighbour complained, Fields replied: ‘I'll shoot the little bastards until they learn to shit green.’ Another time well-known film director Cecil B De Mille, on finding Fields had a great golf handicap, got a minion to telephone him to ask him for a game. Fields's response was: ‘Tell him if I want to play with a prick, I'll play with myself.’

    One of the most notorious drunken British actors was Wilfrid Lawson. He went out boozing with a friend, and they ended up in the circle bar of the theatre where he was performing that night. The curtain had gone up on the show, and they both stood at the back of the circle and watched some of the show. Suddenly Lawson turned to his friend and whispered: ‘It's very good this bit. It's where I come on.

   Lawson was appearing at the Arts Theatre, London, in Maxim Gorki's Lower Depths, the classic play about the Russian underprivileged. He was about to exit a scene, and he had of course been drinking, and was supposed to leave the stage singing a Russian hymn. Instead, he turned full-on to the audience and sang: "Some enchanted evening..."

    It may have been Wilfrid Lawson and Robert Newton who were appearing in Richard the Third, one of them as Lord Hastings and one as the Duke of Buckingham, and both had been out drinking during the day and were inebriated for the night's performance. Several members of the audience spotted Hastings was clearly drunk and complained loudly. The actor playing Lord Hastings stopped his inebriated Shakespearean speech, turned to the audience and said: 'You think I'm drunk. Wait till you see the Duke of Buckingham!'

    Because of his alcoholism, Robert Newton, found it increasingly difficult to get work. His friend David Niven was to star in Around the World in Eighty Days, produced by Mike Todd. Niven had a word with the producer, and suggested Newton for a part. When Todd met Newton, he said, ‘You're friend Niven says you were a big drunk.’ Newton replied, "My friend Niven is a master of understatement.’

   Richard Burton once claimed: ‘I was so drunk I thought I was Peter O'Toole.’ And Peter O'Toole, as reformed alcoholic reminisced about the days when he was a hell-raising heavy drinker, confessed he missed situations like the time he was in Paris, and woke up to discover he was in Corsica.

   Finally, the dying words, came from these unrepentant drinkers: Richard Harris lived in the Savoy Hotel in London. When he collapsed and had to be stretchered out of the main entrance, he called out: ‘It was the food.’  Dylan Thomas collapsed in the White Horse pub in Greenwich Village. His dying words were, ‘I've had 18 straight whiskies, I think that's the record.’ Another fond of a drop actor was Humphrey Bogart who shuffled off this mortal coil with the words, ‘I should never have switched from Scotch to Martini.’

Fringe Benefits

By the mid-fifties commercial theatre had become monotonous, giving audiences star-studded casts in well-made plays in box sets. The excitement dwindled as theatre became a social occasion rather than an artistic experience. Time for a radical change.

   In the early days of alternative theatre, performances were usually held in an attic or musty basement. The attitude seemed to be that if you were the sort of weirdo who craved avant garde theatre then you had to suffer discomfort in the cause of art. It was a period of adjustment as well as one of experiment. People began to re-evaluate the role of theatre in society. Suddenly plays began to stimulate audiences’ imaginations again, and the theatre entered another golden period, producing plays by Pinter, Becket, Osborne, Wesker – and many others too numerous to mention – many of whom startled theatre audiences by challenging convention, but who finally became accepted as part of our theatrical heritage. Many new plays were premiered at the Royal Court Theatre, under the initiative of George Devine, and the English Stage Company.

        Their third production, Look Back In Anger was anti-Establishment and rattled the cages of many critics and was lambasted by many. Sir Laurence Olivier saw a performance and said he hadn’t liked the play but confessed that his rhythm of work had become a bit deadly and felt a change was necessary. He was looking for a challenge and he found it in The Entertainer.

     He had undergone a mental strain directing Marilyn Monroe in his film The Prince and The Showgirl, partly because she wanted to be thought of as a serious actor, not a sex symbol, and since 1954 she studied acting under the influence of the cult figure of method acting, Lee Strasberg. On 14 July 1956, Marilyn arrived in London, accompanied by Strasberg, his wife Paula, and her new husband, playwright Arthur Miller. When filming began, there were problems from the start. Marilyn relied on her acting coach Paula Strasberg for direction and Olivier had been warned well in advance to keep the acting guru’s wife well away from the set. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out that way. When Olivier started to give Marilyn direction, she walked away to consult with Paula Strasberg. And she was often three or four hours late arriving on set. Dame Sybil Thorndike, who played the Dowager Queen in the picture, said, ‘Marilyn is the only one of us who knows how to act in front of a camera.’ Despite that flattery, Marilyn still kept the elderly actress waiting for two hours on set.

    It was during this horrendous experience that fate intervened, guiding Olivier towards one of his greatest performances in modern theatre. Arthur Miller advised him to go and see Look Back in Anger again and reassess Osborne as a talented playwright. Heeding Miller’s advice, Olivier returned to the Royal Court to see another performance, then attended a  meeting with John Osborne, to which Arthur Miller went along, who was surprised to hear Olivier, asking a pallid Osborne, who looked as if he’d just got out of bed, ‘Do you suppose you could write something for me?’ As it happened, Osborne was halfway through a script about a washed-up variety artiste called The Entertainer and it wasn’t long before Sir Laurence Olivier was tap dancing, singing and making vaudevillian jokes at the Royal Court in the playwright’s second play. It became one of his most magnificent performances, as he really captured the seedy vaudevillian comedian on his last legs. I didn’t see the play at the Royal Court but I saw his great performance when it was made into a film and released in 1960, directed by Tony Richardson, who also directed the play.

   The Edinburgh Festival played an enormous part in establishing alternative theatre and provided us with the word ‘fringe’ to denote this optional extra to commercial theatre. Gradually the fringe has become accepted and respectable over the years and has changed the course of theatre. The term ‘small’ or ‘small-scale’ when applied to a production no longer meant inferior, because fringe theatre had become so popular by the late-sixties/early-seventies, new theatres and arts complexes started to incorporate small studio theatres in their designs, and many existing repertory theatres began to look for extra space in which to accommodate a studio theatre. And in recent years many so-called fringe productions have actually transferred to West End theatres or undergone national tours.

     As an actor for almost sixty years, having started in professional theatre as a child actor, I had never worked the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, not until 2016, when Stuart and Jen Morriss of Misty Moon produced A Day in The Lives of Frankie Abbott, which I wrote and appeared in, first of all touring to small venues in the south-east, playing opposite Linda Regan, and then for two weeks at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival with Anita Graham (where we received a 5-star review in the Edinburgh Evening News), before returning for two London dates with Marie Kelly playing Abbott’s carer.

    Although taking the play to Edinburgh was hard work, it was rewarding, and at least I can say that I have worked at the Edinburgh Festival and can now cross it off my bucket list!

   Now I have written, with a slight change in title, The Lives of Frankie Abbott, and this Misty Moon is presenting live at Phoenix Arts Club in front of an audience on the afternoon on the 26 March and it will be recorded for audio downloads and CDs.

   I have expanded the cast, and we now have five actors in Episode 1, with Graham Cole, Suzanne Maddock, Felicity Dean and Judy Matheson, and Larry Dann will join us for Episode 2. Anyone who hasn’t been to the Phoenix for a while will be bowled over by the improvements. This is one of London’s premier cabaret clubs, and it will be great to do this live and recorded show, much as the BBC used to record Round the Horne.

Only Act Who You Are

Russell T Davies, who wrote that terrific It’s a Sin, the TV drama about aids, went on record as saying only gay actors should play gays. And I heard of someone in the business saying that so-and-so is playing a Jew who is not Jewish and doesn’t look like a Jew. I think it’s become silly. I mean, we all know that David Baddiel is Jewish, but if we didn’t know that, and he was a master of different dialects, what is to stop him playing a Welshman for instance? And even knowing that he’s Jewish, does it really matter if he is capable of playing different nationalities? And how many actors who are gay have played heterosexuals, and even had bedroom scenes with actresses? For me, acting is all about stepping into someone else’s shoes and giving good performances and convincing people that you are not always the same, that you have become someone else for a short period of time.

    In 1975 I played Michael in The Boys in The Band at Cardiff New Theatre, and became a great friend of Peter Childs, who played Hank in the production. Peter would go on to give a great performance as DS Rycott in Minder. Following our two week run in Cardiff, the production was scheduled to go to the MacRobert Centre at Stirling and Norwich Theatre Royal. The former theatre was on the university campus, and again we had concerns about some sort of moral backlash. According to some of the cast members, the homosexual bill had never been ratified in Scotland, and sexual relations between consenting members of the same sex was still against the law. Mind you, to say we were concerned was probably an exaggeration. I mean, who in the theatre doesn’t like a drama? And so we looked forward to anything the Scottish audiences might throw at us, either metaphorically or literally.

   But the trouble in Scotland came from an unexpected source – the Scottish Gay Liberation Front. They reckoned the play was an insult to gays, and audiences were merely being entertained by ‘laughing at poofs’, and the play didn’t deserve to be taken seriously. When we arrived in Stirling, we were shown all the newspaper cuttings condemning the play by the Gay Libs, and the chief in charge of this minority group would be attending our first night.

   The show went brilliantly on its first performance. We knew some of the Gay Lib members were in the audience, and thought they probably squirmed as Barry Howard’s Emory minced and camped it up. In the bar afterwards, the Gay Lib chief introduced himself, and immediately launched into an argument about how clichéd the play was, with stereotypical, limp-wristed gays giving out the wrong messages.

   Most of us in the cast pointed out that Emory was the only effeminate character, and the play showed an entire cross section of the gay community. But he was so intent on getting his point across, he didn’t accept or listen to our arguments. He charged in bitterly with a diatribe on all limp-wristed gays like Larry Grayson and John Inman, who were a disgrace and a pathetic travesty.

   Knowing Barry had once been the long-term partner of John Inman, I saw him bristle, and I waited with eager anticipation for the explosion. Instead, he decided it was time to buy an enormous round of drinks. ‘David, what’ll you have, love? And for you, Peter?’ He went round the entire cast, and there were nine of us, plus the stage management. Finally, he came to the Gay Lib bloke at the end of the row, looked him right in the eye, and said, ‘I’m not buying you one, because you’re a c**t!’

   It was a costly round of drinks, but I guess Barry thought it was worth it to make a point.

   Finally, I played an East End schoolkid in Please Sir!, although I am a Welshman born and bred. In fact, the only true east-ender was Malcolm McFee, who played Peter Craven. So, when it came to casting the other five members of 5C, should the casting department have given first choice to genuine East Londoners? According to some people who think that only gay actors should play gays, then yes they should.

    Hmm!

The Lives of Frankie Abbott

When I wrote and appeared in A Day in The Lives of Frankie Abbott at the Phoenix Arts Club back in 2015 and a year later following two weeks at the Edinburgh Fringe, where we got a five star review, little did I think I would be returning to the Phoenix this year after hospitality venues have suffered lockdowns. In the earlier version of the comedy there were just the two characters, Frankie and Marion, his carer of the residential home where the comedy is located. Now I have written two episodes and changed the title to the shorter version of The Lives of Frankie Abbott and increased the cast to five in one episode and six in another.

    And what a great cast it has turned out to be, thanks to the Stuart Morriss’ Misty Moon casting. Graham Cole, who was PC Tony Stamp in The Bill is hilarious as one of the Beechwood Home’s residents, Charlie, who gets irritated by Frankie’s incessant bad behaviour. And Judy Matheson, who made some great horror films, including Lust For a Vampire is stunning as Grace, another resident not exactly enamoured by loony little soldier’s conduct. Felicity Dean, who stared in the films Whistle Blower, opposite Michael Caine, and Revolution, opposite Al Pacino, will be playing Marion, Frankie’s long-suffering carer. His other night-time carer, Sarah, will be played by Suzanne Maddock, who was PC Cass Rickman in The Bill. And another actor joining us from The Bill will be Larry Dann, who was Sgt Peters in the police drama.

    The other characters will be the audience, because although this is a live performance, it will be recorded as an audio comedy, just as the BBC recorded Hancock’s Half Hour in those golden years of radio comedy. But this will be performed and recorded with a slight difference. The audience will be seated at tables, cabaret style, and will be able to enjoy a drink or two while we perform. And what a great cabaret club the Phoenix has turned out to be now.

    Not so long ago I went to see Robin Askwith performing his one man show there, and later on I saw Tyler Butterworth’s show about his parents. Both shows were excellent, produced by Misty Moon, but what really impressed me was the quality of the venue now. The club has a great atmosphere and has improved since I was there in 2016. And where else can you be entertained in the heart of the West End by a show costing far less than twenty pounds?

    The show on 26th March, with the doors opening at 2.00 p.m. for a 2.30 start, offers an audience the great opportunity to meet and socialise with the cast afterwards. And as there are at least three regulars from The Bill performing, it will be like a Sun Hill Police Station reunion.

    The tickets are up to at least sixty per cent sold now, and so as not to miss out on seeing this great comedy with a fabulous cast, please follow the link below to purchase your tickets!

(You may need to copy and paste the link in your browser)

https://phoenixartsclub.com/whats-on/eventdetails/?id=13001AJPBLLHQGJTKKHRRTDNKLLTSKVVJ

Or go to:  www.phoenixartsclub.com

The Next Book

In 1957, aged 14, I played Young Lucius in Titus Andronicus, starring Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh. It was to be a glittering tour that enabled the first European theatre company to cross the Iron Curtain at the height of the Cold War and use culture as a positive force to cut its way through an otherwise impenetrable political impasse. It’s a story that has simply been overlooked, and over 80 years on from the marriage of Olivier to Leigh, and many decades on since both left us, it’s a story well worth sharing.

     In the early eighties, ten years before Olivier died, Melvyn Bragg met him, preparing a documentary about his life and career. Olivier had been ill for quite some time, but still participated and opened up quite honestly about himself, and some of the other actors he loved and cherished, and also the problems he had during the latter part of his artistic directorship at the National Theatre. It had been a difficult tenure in which he had to contend with bureaucracy and meddling, leading to all kinds of disputes, until he eventually resigned from the company he had been instrumental in establishing, working tirelessly as a director and performer, sometimes pushing himself to the limit.

    Following the making of the documentary, a book about Olivier (also by Melvyn Bragg) was published, with dozens of great photographs. But what struck me as odd was the absence of any mention of our European tour, which has to be historically one of the most important theatrical events of the 1950s. I wondered then whether Olivier had expressly asked Bragg not to mention the tour? Was the memory of his failing marriage to Vivien Leigh just too painful to recollect? And during that tour had Olivier perhaps made up his mind that he would soon leave her because he couldn’t take any more of her manic behaviour?

    I also checked up on other biographies and discovered scant details about the Titus tour. Tarquin Olivier’s biography of his father only gave the tour about a page and a half. Alexander Walker in his biography Vivien gives it half a page, and Olivier himself barely a paragraph in his autobiography. Yet the European tour, however painful it may have been for them both, regularly showered them with great adulation, a popularity they both deserved as crowds cheered wherever they went and bouquets by the dozen hurled on stage. And fifteen or twenty minute curtain calls for a rarely performed Shakespeare play has to be some sort of record. All of that was overlooked by biographers across the board, and even Olivier himself.

    I guess the book that I have been working on, titled Laurence Olivier & Vivien Leigh – The Final Curtain, is both a biography and an autobiography. An autobiography because it is a memoir about an eventful three months of my life as a teenager, but also a biography about the famous couple who starred in so many theatre productions together and won memorable Academy Awards for their films. They may have shared a glamorous image, but they were also hugely talented and I was so privileged to have worked with them in a most spectacular production, the last time they worked together.

    Of the many biographies written about them, none have ever captured those final months of their professional and private lives as they worked towards their final show together. As I joined the production and got to know them personally, time was clearly running out in a marriage that had been extensively shadowed in the media, a media that preferred to write about a glamorous husband and wife team as a sort of perfection, a dream if you like.

It ended with the Titus Andronicus production, and I was there, on stage and backstage with them every single night, and accompanied them in breathtaking excursions in stunning European capitals when I witnessed moments of strife, but also triumphs of love and passion. It was a wonderful experience and a great memory.

     The biography is not only theatrical history but a document of a time when the USSR had not only closed its borders to visitors but also to prevent many Russians from leaving the country. A time when most Eastern European countries were ruled by Moscow, and Yugoslavia was recovering from Stalinism when the Russian dictator had attempted to have Marshall Tito assassinated many times.

    When we visited Poland, we were shown a Cannes Film Festival winning film, Kanal, about the Warsaw uprising, when the Polish Resistance took to the sewers. One of the Polish actors in the film, I later discovered, was Vladek Sheybal, who was himself in the Resistance, was captured and incarcerated in a concentration camp, from which he escaped on two occasions. In the early sixties he came to live in Britain, became a naturalised British subject, and made a name for himself as a TV and film actor, appearing in dozens of dramas, everything from The Saint and Danger Man to playing chess grandmaster Kronsteen in From Russia With Love (see photo below).

    And this was just one of the surprises that hit me as I was writing the book. I also discovered that Erik Chitty, who played Smithy in Please Sir!, was one of the cast members of The Devil’s Disciple, the Bernard Shaw play I went to see in 1957 which starred Tyrone Power, with whom I had worked in 1956.

    It’s a small world, as they say!

Weekly Rep Again

In 1974, Arthur Lowe played Mr Micawber in the TV series of David Copperfield. It’s a version I sadly missed, simply because in the early seventies I seemed to be constantly touring. I think he would have made a spot-on Micawber, a character which has vague similarities to Captain Mainwaring, his brilliant Dad’s Army portrayal.

   Arthur Lowe died in 1982 while on tour in R.C. Sheriff’s Home At Seven, suffering a stroke in the dressing room at Birmingham’s Alexandra Theatre. His wife, Joan Cooper, showing what a ‘pro’ she was, continued in the play, performing opposite her husband’s understudy, and also continuing for the rest of the tour. The show must go on!

   When I heard that Lowe had died whilst appearing in Home at Seven, I can’t say I was surprised, even though he was only 66-years-old. That play was enough to kill anyone. I know, because I played the same role as Arthur Lowe in a weekly rep production in 1992.

     I had worked for impresario Charles Vance in the early ‘80s and was not enamoured with him. He was flamboyant, tight-fisted, and when he directed, if there was anyone in the cast he thought was giving a mediocre performance, he would bully them unmercifully. Not a great way to get a performance out of an actor. He was doing a season of four plays, performing over a fortnight, at Harlow Playhouse and Weston-Super-Mare. I accepted the engagement mainly because I happened to be out of work at the time, and also because I would be appearing in only two of the plays, directing one of them, and not involved in the fourth one. One of the plays I appeared in was The Unexpected Guest by Agatha Christie, and the other was the aforementioned Home at Seven, in which I played David Preston, which was directed by Vance, who during the week’s rehearsal picked on the actress playing my wife and bullied her, almost with great relish. When it was my turn to direct the comedy Bedside Manners, I managed to get a much better performance out of her by encouragement, which she appreciated and thanked me by saying that she much preferred my direction to Vance’s.

    During the first week at Harlow, Vance approached me and said he had booked The Opera House at Buxton for a week to perform in only two of the plays, Bedside Manners and Home at Seven, but this was three weeks away, which would mean a week out at home before going to Buxton. A separate contract Vance stressed, because he didn’t want to pay a retainer for the week out.

    Fair enough, I thought. I was only in one of the plays and I knew it. Or at least I thought I did. Unfortunately Home at Seven  had long complicated scenes between myself, suffering from loss of memory, and the young recent drama school leaver playing the doctor, who had the line, ‘Your husband was telling me he was feeling a little queer on Charing Cross station, Mrs Preston.’ During our run, this line never got an unwanted laugh!

    After our week out we arrived in Buxton, and on the Monday I rehearsed the Bedside Manners cast for one day, as they were due to open the same night. Then on the Tuesday and Wednesday during the day, we rehearsed Home at Seven due to open on Thursday. And guess what? Mental wipe-out. The dialogue in that play was so turgid, my brain had wiped it clean.

   There are plays which stay with you. Even now, I can remember entire Shakespeare speeches, and certainly the entire six minute First Voice speech from Under Milk Wood. Because when plays are beautifully written, the memory retains them and treasures the dialogue. But when the dialogue is boringly ordinary as the one we were about to perform at Buxton…

    Raymond Eves, the young actor playing the doctor, I took him for a drink and told him – based upon Joan Littlewood’s advice to actors – as long as we were familiar with the plot, and knew the motivations of the characters, we could improvise most of our scenes. And that is what we did. For our four performances we could relax. And for half the week, while most of the cast went out into the hillside to commune with nature and some lovely scenery, myself and another actor spent a few days playing snooker at a snooker hall on the main street.

    But having been confronted by this total wipe-out of dialogue, simply because it was so turgid, I often wondered whether this rang the death-knell for Arthur Lowe as he waited in his dressing room to speak perhaps the most uninteresting lines ever written.

    We will never know!

This story, Self-Portrait, is the shortest one from my book Frankie Abbott’s Great Big Book of Horror Stories and it is also the one that is least horrific in the anthology.

SELF-PORTRAIT

Starts to rain as I walk along The Strand. Turn my collar up. Can’t face the crowded train tonight, crammed in tight and smelling of damp clothes, faces with obscene mouths and sniffing noses. Last night’s journey another nightmare. The man opposite asleep, mouth wide open like a scream, reminding me of that horrendous painting. Can’t face another journey like that.

   Rain heavier now as I walk through the arches of Somerset House, heading for the Courtauld Gallery before it closes. Hand over my money just before 5.30 and head straight for Vincent. And there he is, in his green jacket, cap and bandaged ear. The gallery will close in half an hour, so I stand and stare at poor van Gogh, seeing despair in his eyes, wondering yet again how he painted his portrait, confronting the mirror-image torment of his soul, sucking it out then smoothing it out with bright brushstrokes. And was there anger in the paint? Or did the colour soothe his savage disposition?

   A tourist passes in front of me and I struggle to suppress an irrational rage. Get out of my way. Don’t come between me and the man I’m trying to understand. And although the gallery is busy, and there is a smell of dripping raincoats mingled with sweat, the power of van Gogh’s brushstrokes and bright colours means I can smell the paint. But I know it’s an illusion, like the portrait. And then the announcement comes, and I know I must leave and head for the station. Slowly. To miss the overcrowded cattle-truck I caught last night and avoid those menacing cadaverous faces.

   I walk along the Embankment. Rivulets of rain running down my neck beneath my collar, but I don’t mind. This is physical and real, and nature can do its worst as far as I’m concerned. Cross the road to stare at the murky Thames, current swirling like a whirlpool, and again there are echoes of The Scream. Catch myself out in a shiver that has nothing to do with the reality of the cleansing rain but the thoughts of commuting. All that hostility in the stares of the commuters.

   Missed three trains so far. Wander slowly up the hill to Charing Cross to catch the next. Should be fewer passengers by now.

   Tomorrow is Friday. Soon have two whole days free before I do this stone-rolling penance again. But first the early morning commute to London with those vacant screaming faces, thoughts of the return journey tunnelling in my brain like a diseased worm.

   Friday travel much worse, the morning train delayed by twenty minutes. More time spent shifting uncomfortably in my seat. Sitting next to overweight, broad-shouldered man who encroaches on my space. Can feel his elbows digging in my side. I want to scream, like the painting. I know how that fear paralyses you, just as I know what Vincent went through.

  Glad to get to work. Left alone in the bowels of the institute, logging and collating. Alone, thank God. They leave me alone to get on with my work. Occasionally, they try to engage me in conversation. I’m never rude, but I make it clear that I’m not the sociable type. For lunch I don’t move from my workstation, eat my sandwich, then get on with my collating. Finish work at five, and then comes the Friday rush to get home. Would like to visit the gallery again and see Vincent but I can’t afford it. Been twice already this week. Will treat myself on Monday. But now I need to kill time to avoid the rush hour. No use trying to find an uncrowded pub. A pub in central London on a Friday evening is just as bad as the packed trains. Perhaps worse. So now I visit second-hand bookshops in Charing Cross Road, browsing until they shut at six. Need to kill time until seven at least, when the trains not quite as bad. After the bookshops, wander through Leicester Square and watch the buskers from a distance. Starts to drizzle, and I shuffle back past Leicester Square Tube station and see the Salisbury pub in St Martin’s Lane is not overcrowded. Find some space at the bar and order a large Pernod with ice, then realise that for just a few pounds more I could have done the Courtauld again. But the gallery shuts at six, so there would still be the problem of what to do until seven. Think I made the right decision. Although I would have liked to see Vincent again.

   Later train tonight just as bad. Crammed in next to woman who keeps coughing. Staccato coughs just seconds apart. Feel my nails digging in to my palms. Try to control myself, stop myself from screaming. All the way to Northfleet would drive me mad. But she gets off at Crayford. Northfleet only another five stops, and although the coughing woman has gone, I still can’t relax.

   Deep depression strikes me when I get home. I hate my stodgy flat. Immediately confront my easel. Glare at my latest painting. An amateur effort. I tell myself for the umpteenth time that serious artists do not live in Northfleet. Making excuses. And that excuse is confirmed when Jeremy visits. We met at art school. He stares at my painting. Expecting bad criticism, he confounds me. Tells me how good it is. We quarrel. I tell him what I think of his own efforts and he departs, slamming the door. Says we are finished as friends.

   I know what I must do.

   I go into the bathroom and stare at the mirror for a long time. Just like Vincent and Gauguin, we are no longer friends but enemies. And just like Vincent I pick up the cutthroat razor. I’m right-handed like him. What was he thinking, I wonder, as he stared at his mirror image, his left ear bandaged? I open the razor, slide the blade out of its sheath. I do it angrily, like he did. Hack suddenly, blade slicing into flesh. Blood spurting across the mirror and dripping into the basin. The only pain I feel is his despair.

   In my left hand a large chunk of my ear. Blood keeps pouring, running down my face and neck. Start to regret my volatile action. Blood won’t stop. The chunk of my ear feels unreal, like someone else’s ear. Catholics believe in transubstantiation, the very real flesh and blood of Christ. Not a symbol. Reality. Believe hard enough and it becomes a reality. Perhaps this really is van Gogh’s ear in my hand. But the blood won’t stop, so I wrap a towel round my head and call for a taxi.

   It being Friday night, A & E is crowded. A policeman wants to know how I lost my ear. I lie. I tell him I was attacked in the street by a knife-wielding gang. He asks for a description, and I say they wore hoods.

   Five hours later, my head bandaged just like Vincent, I go home. Stare into the mirror for a long time, wondering if I will ever see my friend again. And if he sees me like this, will he understand?

   But I know who helps me to understand, and I will return on Monday evening to admire his portrait. Poor Vincent van Gogh. Just like me in so many ways. Did you ever smile? Did you ever laugh at a joke?

   Or was life too harsh?

Eyeballs to Abbott

In my book Please Sir! The Official History I didn’t mention that my audition for the part of Frankie came about because of a prior TV play I did in 1963. I played the small role of Eyeballs in the ITV Play of the Week A Nice Break for The Boys, which was set in an approved school. The television company was Associated Rediffusion, and the casting director was Martin Case. Five years later when LWT won the franchise to broadcast from Friday evening to Sunday nights, Martin Case transferred to the new company, and when they were about to cast Rough House, which was our sitcom’s first title, he remembered me from the previous drama, got in touch with my agent and invited me to audition for one of the 5C kids.

    In the 1963 play, I worked with a few of my school friends, including Richard O’Sullivan, Barry Halliday and Hugh Halliday (the two Hallidays were not related). The three of us by then had left the Corona Academy School proper, and we were now students, concentrating solely on theatre studies. I had previously worked with Hugh Halliday on a large budget feature shot at Elstree Studios. This was the controversial film Lolita, directed by Stanley Kubrick, starring James Mason, Shelley Winters, Sue Lyon in the title role, with Peter Sellers as Quilty.

      Making the transition from child actor to young adult had been difficult for me recently. The work was starting to dry up. I had reached an in-between age, and paying the school fees was becoming a worry, so I was relieved to be offered any acting work, however small. Even a one-day shoot as a walk-on. But appearing in a Stanley Kubrick film, even in a non-speaking role, was prestigious, so I wasn’t too bothered about having no lines to speak. When I arrived at Elstree Studios for the shoot, I was pleased to discover I was being paired with Hugh Halliday, another Corona student. Hugh later became a drummer for the rock group, Unit Four Plus Two, whose “Concrete and Clay” reached number one in the charts in 1965

   On the vast Elstree set, resembling a high school theatre, we prepared to appear in our only scene. We were costumed in medieval Italian outfits and given trumpets to sound a fanfare as Lolita makes her entrance in her high school play. In the background of the same shot is Peter Sellers, lurking and lusting in the wings as the grotesque Quilty. As soon as the shot was lit and lined up, Kubrick wandered over to us and said, ‘On the word action, raise the trumpets to your lips and blow.’ I exchanged a look with Hugh. ‘What, you mean actually blow it,’ one of us said. Kubrick all but snapped, ‘Of course blow it!’ In his expression we read: You half-assed morons! He took his place behind the camera and everyone prepared themselves for the first take. ‘Turn over!’ ‘Speed!’ ‘Action!’

   We raised the trumpets to our lips. I pressed my tongue into the hole and puffed my cheeks out. What came out of our trumpets were two loud strangled farts. ‘Cut!’ Kubrick bounded over.  To his credit, there was amusement in his eyes. ‘When I say blow,’ he said, ‘I mean mime it. Just mime it.’ After he returned behind the camera, I muttered to Hugh, ‘Well, why didn’t he say that in the first place?’ Now Sellers, having heard the trumpet farts, was doubled up, tears in his eyes. And when we raised the trumpets to our lips during the second take and mimed the fanfare, Sellers couldn’t contain himself. Now he could imagine the fart noises. Every take was now ruined by Sellers laughing.

   It was probably my second cutting room floor job.

   I mentioned that Hugh became a pop drummer, but a few years later he quite effortlessly it seemed, segued into an opera director, first of all as Assistant Director at the English Opera Company at the Coliseum, and then he immigrated to Australia and eventually became director of Melbourne Opera Company. Barry Halliday has made his home in New York and became a theatre fight director in the name of B. H. Barry. I went over and stayed with him and his wife and daughter when I researched my Prohibition novel Willie the Actor. While I was there he drove me to upstate New York to visit Sing Sing Prison where he took a picture of me in a cell.

    Having worked with the young actors like my old friends Richard, Hugh and Barry, and a few other young actors in the ITV play, I remain eternally grateful for having been cured of ever becoming addicted to gambling, even though I lost all my money to those friends and colleagues. It happened that while we rehearsed the television play, we had an extreme amount of hanging about to do while the director rehearsed the adult actors. A card school was formed and we played Shoot Pontoon. I can truthfully admit that I was either a lousy card player and gambler or I was just unlucky. But during those card games I lost my shirt. Or to put it another way, I kept having to write cheques and I forfeited my television fee before I had even earnt it.

    So, thank you, lads for having saved me from a lifetime of gambling addiction. Losing happens to be the perfect antidote to a life of debilitating debt from lousy bets.

The Lives of Frankie Abbott

When Please Sir! began in black & white (colour TV was a year away) in 1968, and if someone had suggested back then that I might play Frankie in the next century, I would have thought they were mad.

    Back in those days there were no videos or DVDs, in fact we were still using pounds, shillings and pence and having to use public telephone boxes to make calls, if you could find one that didn’t pong like some stairwells in blocks of high-rise flats. Over the decades since the 5C sitcom aired, it was repeated on mainstream TV in the early eighties, and then again on Gold in 1996, as well as its spin-off The Fenn Street Gang. And the feature film of Please Sir! has been shown many times on TV, which is perhaps why many younger viewers who don’t remember the original series became captivated by the school comedy. And also the film and series have been marketed on videos then DVDs.

    In 2014 Stuart Morriss and his wife Jen asked me to give a talk about my career at a café bar in Soho. Later, I met with them and Stuart said that while the talk seemed to go down well, the audience would have liked me to do a bit of Frankie Abbott. I protested that this would be bizarre as I had reached my seventies. And then I was struck by an idea, something that hadn’t been done before. What if I played the character in real time and put him in a care home? I wrote it as a two-hander, a comedy with Frankie and Marion, his carer. As the script progressed I met up with Stuart, providing him with a few scenes as it developed. And then he got some south-east theatre dates booked and we began a small-scale tour, which included dates at the Phoenix Arts Club.

    In 2016 we performed for two weeks at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and the newspapers awarded us a five-star review. And now Stuart has arranged live performances at the Phoenix Arts Club on 26 March at 2 p.m. This came about when Stuart suggested I write it as an audio, and use more characters, and so now we have two episodes, with a cast including Graham Cole, Suzanne Maddock, Felicity Dean, Judy Matheson and Larry Dann, so at least three regulars from The Bill will be appearing.

    I am really looking forward to performing with this cast, all of them are great and really funny. When Frankie threatens to ‘exterminate’ old Charlie, played by Graham, with his toy Dalek, and Charlie tells him not to point that ‘toy’ at him, Frankie says, ‘Oh, wise up. It ain’t a toy, it’s a collectible.’ To which Charlie replies, ‘Yeah? An’ my farts smell of Paco Rabanne.’

    Of course, the rest of the cast have some great lines and deliver them splendidly. But this production in March will be a live recording in front of an audience. My publisher, Paul Andrews of AUK Ltd, who published Please Sir! The Official History and Frankie Abbott’s Great Big Book of Horror Stories, also publishes audio dramas, and was interested in recording this cast version of The Lives of Frankie Abbott. It meant hiring a sound studio in London which meant the cost was prohibitive in being able to pay the cast and he could only offer a percentage of sales. Stuart had a word with him and had the great idea of playing the show at the Phoenix Arts Club on Saturday afternoon on the 26 March, performing it like the BBC used to do with shows like The Goon Show and Round the Horne, and it would be recorded, and Paul Andrews has agreed to sell it on his audio platform for MP3 downloads and CDs. But the main attraction in recording it this way is because of the audience participation. When audience’s laugh and enjoy a show, they are part of the process of the performance.

    In fact, now that I think of it, John Esmonde, who co-wrote the original Please Sir! series, had a distinctive laugh, and when I listen to DVD recordings of our shows, I can hear and pinpoint John’s laughter. So there may well be members of the audience who attend the performance in March, whose laughter enhances the end result.

    Another benefit from the way this is being performed and recorded, especially for people who are interested but live many miles away from London, is the fact that they will be able to purchase an audio recording of the event.

    And anyone who has never been to the Phoenix Arts Club will be delighted by the great atmosphere of this lavish and refurbished club should they decide to attend the performance.

And following the performance there will be time to mingle and chat to the cast, which will make for a great day out.

    Here is the link for the Phoenix Arts Club and The Lives of Frankie Abbott. Copy and paste it into your browser.

https://phoenixartsclub.com/whats-on/eventdetails/?id=13001AJPBLLHQGJTKKHRRTDNKLLTSKVVJ

One 16^th Century Law For Them…

I write this in 1593, the year of our Lord, and my sincerest wish is that this document will not see the light of day during my lifetime, but I feel it incumbent upon me to lay down my feelings about this terrible epidemic and the way the monarchy and nobility are dealing with this terrible situation as a testament for posterity, and I pray that future generations may learn from our errors.

    Her Majesty has decreed that the only known protection from the plague, the terrible Black Death, is to drink a mixture of vinegar and ten-year-old treacle. This disgusting mixture may be administered free from many physicians in many boroughs throughout our green and peasant land. There are notices throughout all our cities advising people to get quaffed, and however unpleasant the taste, quaffing this mixture will give a certain amount of protection. Although there are many who have suffered the quaffing of this vile brew who have still succumbed to the Black Death and been taken to, hopefully, a better place in the sky. An uncle of mine, although he had been quaffed, was still exceedingly vulnerable as he had, prior to his booster quaff, visited the Globe Playhouse to see a play by Mr William Shakespeare, and it was thought the infection had spread throughout the audience during that visit, which would explain why the playhouses have all been shut down. God only knows what all those actors will do to earn a crust and even the Bear Baiting has been stripped of its spectacle. But my uncle, God Bless his Soul, was most vulnerable as he had reached the ripe old age of 39 and has now gone to meet his Maker in the Sky.

    Although ‘getting quaffed’ is not mandatory, there are many in the government who insist that physicians issue some sort of token to prove that the person has been quaffed, and only those who have been quaffed would be allowed to visit pie shops and taverns. But this has resulted in movements of anti-quaffers who are spreading rumours with hundreds of pamphlets that this is a government conspiracy to control the population, and the vile brew they are insisting people quaff is some sort of medicament that has been adulterated with witches spells and our Nobility has an ulterior motive for a way of controlling the population. But for the life of me, I cannot think what that is, as the poorest in our society are already controlled and have not the energy or the wit to organise an uprising.

    There are those in our society who believe the plague to be God’s punishment for making Catholicism illegal, and in Rome the Pope made it abundantly clear that it is God’s revenge on England for this barbaric act.

    We must all now suffer and live in these precarious times and pray that the plague will disappear. But for now large gatherings of people, with the exception of the mandatory church visits on Sunday, are strictly banned. It has been suggested by many influential people that masks, such as those worn by Plague Doctors should be worn by everyone, but the rising costs of the troubles in Ireland means that the treasury is unable to be burdened by such an extravagance and have issued notices instead that people must resort to self-quarantine. Apart from which, the masks are macabre and it has been known that Plague Doctors have on occasion approached a member of the public, who showing no symptoms of the dreaded Black Death, have been so terrified of the mask-wearer that they have expired from a heart attack.

  Many rebellious persons have ignored such edicts as self-isolation and have bought ale at the backdoors of taverns. Then, having been caught by constables drinking in large groups, have had their heads severed from their torsos which are then displayed on London Bridge.

     Several rebellious groups, however, have heard of news leaking from Hampton Court Palace and Lambeth of enormous crowds of carousers, government officials and royalty, holding large banquets, and protesters claim it is one law for them and one law for the rest of the population.

    When things get back to normal, if they ever do, perhaps Mr Shakespeare may write a play about these events, although it is doubtful as he may value his royal patronage.

    It is with great sorrow that my writing about these terrible times remains secret, but hopefully in many years hence someone will read this and benefit and learn from our mistakes. Perhaps government officials will behave responsibly and no protester will lose his or her head! Or even so much as a fine for dereliction of their duty, while the ruling classes enjoy a wider freedom.

From Syracuse to Birmingham

I have seen many excellent dramas at the Young Vic but now I see they are mounting a production of Oklahoma starting in April. I always thought that in this particular musical the songs and dancing took precedence over plot and historical accuracy. Although Rodgers and Hammerstein’s western had memorable songs and good dance numbers, the background setting of the range wars between cattlemen and farmers, was clumsy. Especially as the range wars, a bloody period in America’s history, with murders, arson, hangings and mass slaughter of sheep, was summed up with a jolly little ditty called ‘The Farmer and the Cowman Should Be Friends’. Almost as if ‘Springtime for Hitler’ from The Producers was sung for real, rather than as a satire on the crassness of showbusiness. But perhaps the Oklahoma song was intended as irony, and perhaps that will be the way the Young Vic plays it, although I think I may have to wait for the reviews to come out before booking, just in case it is still the jolly thigh-slapping experience that I remember from past productions.

   For me one of the all-time great musicals was based on Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, which opened in London in 1958. I played a non-speaking role for Granada Television and was staying in digs in Manchester with my chaperone, where West Side Story was being previewed prior to its London opening. Several of the pit musicians also stayed at the same digs, and I asked one of them what the show was like. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘it’s a sort of jazz/ballet. I don’t think it’ll run.’

    When it opened in London, I paid six shillings to see it, standing at the back of the stalls, and I was knocked out by the sheer energetic force of it. It has become one of the most successful musicals of all time.

    It later became an Oscar-winning film, and recently it has been remade by Steven Spielberg. It is showing at my local Trinity Theatre in Tunbridge Wells on 25 January, and so I will definitely make the effort to see how it compares with the original.

   If ever composers needed inspiration for musicals or operas, Shakespeare was the go-to playwright, having given us The Boys from Syracuse, based on A Comedy of Errors, Kiss Me Kate from The Taming of The Shrew, Return to The Forbidden Planet taken from a sci-film film based on The Tempest, and the more recently The Lion King from Hamlet.

   My own preferences when it comes to musicals has always been for ones with strong plots like Cabaret, Blood Brothers or Miss Saigon.

   I did, however, recently catch the film of Cole Porter’s Kiss Me Kate which I thoroughly enjoyed, especially when the two pinstripe-suited heavies sing ‘Brush Up Your Shakespeare’, with some great lines:

‘If your blonde won’t respond when you flatter ‘er, tell her what Tony told Cleopaterer’.      

‘Just declaim a few lines from Othello, and they think you’re a heckuva fella’.

‘If her behaviour is heinous, kick her right in the Coriolanus!’

    At least with those old musicals you do get memorable songs. Unfortunately La La Land

got many Oscars and did brilliantly at the box office, but can anyone remember a single song from it? Unlike the Rodgers and Hart musical, the aforementioned The Boys from Syracuse, which has at least three memorable songs that you can leave the theatre humming: ‘This Can’t Be Love’, ‘Falling in Love with Love’ and ‘Sing for Your Supper’. But this revival was probably one of Drury Lane’s least successful musicals and ran for only three months. I was a stagehand on this production, which starred Bob Monkhouse, Ronnie Corbett, Denis Quilley and Maggie Fitzgibbon.

    In between the Saturday matinee and the evening show, in the ballet room downstairs, Bob Monkhouse set up a film projector, and most of the cast and crew took sandwiches and we were entertained by Monkhouse’s collection of old films.

    Little did I think then as I worked backstage, that one day I would be a guest on Bob’s The Golden Shot when I travelled to the Birmingham ATV Studio with the lovely Barbara Mitchell who played Mrs Abbott my crazy mother, and Bob Monkhouse made us truly welcome.

    Of course, when I began this blog, I realised that many people like drama in the theatre but can’t stomach musicals. I on the other hand just like theatre whatever the genre, and musicals can be funny and serious. So, back to the Young Vic, where I went to see The Scottsboro Boys which was musical theatre about something that happened in, I think, the 1930s, when a group of young black boys were wrongly accused of raping some white girls. This musical was highly entertaining, funny and tragic at the same time.

    Here’s hoping their version of Oklahoma does justice to the history of the very bloody range wars in that state.

The Big Freeze

I am halfway through reading Frostquake by Juliet Nicolson, a very enjoyable read about the frozen winter of 1962/63, and a social history of the change that was happening in Britain around that time. I would have been 19-years-old then, but I have to confess I don’t remember being inconvenienced by snow and ice during that time when the Thames froze, as did the sea at Herne Bay, and hundreds of people lost their lives. It apparently began on Boxing Day, and lasted ten weeks, creating havoc. So why do I have no memory of that catastrophic winter? Was I tucked up somewhere warm? Maybe it’ll come back to me some time, but I doubt it. It has however jostled a memory of my 1981/82 pantomime season in Stafford, which had one of the fiercest of winters I have ever struggled through.

    The show was Cinderella  and I was playing Buttons. Rehearsals were due to begin on Monday in early December, and on Sunday I set off from London by road about three pm. I can’t remember what make and model of car I had then but I think it was reasonably reliable. But only a few miles up the M1 the snow came down, a blinding blizzard. Windscreen wipers struggled to clear a vision through the pelting, stark white blanket of the blizzard, and I couldn’t see a thing through the rear window. Only about 20 miles up the motorway and my car struggled to accelerate. Should I pull onto the hard shoulder? I asked myself. But it was hard to see with the snow that was piling up in great drifts where the nearside lane met with the safety of the hard shoulder. It was so cold and having only driven from Walthamstow where we lived at that time, presumably in the freezing weather the engine hadn’t had sufficient time to highly charge the battery, and I was losing power, getting slower and slower, until eventually the car’s momentum fizzled out and came to a halt. I turned the ignition. Nothing. The battery was dead.

    Then, as luck would have it, a police vehicle overtook me and reversed back. They hooked me up to the back of their four-by-four and moved me onto the hard shoulder. I asked them if they could take me to the next service station, but I was told I would have to walk to one of the roadside emergency telephones and call the AA to rescue me. I trudged about two hundred yards to the nearest phone box, the blinding snow making it difficult to see, and the punishing icy flakes forcing a way between my collar and my neck.

   When I made contact with the rescue services and told them I was likely to freeze to death, they said they only had to come from the service station I had passed about five miles back. They were with me within half an hour, gave my battery a charge and told me to follow them as far as the next services. At the services I saw a gritting lorry about to leave, heading north, and so I followed it closely, the gravel spitting at my windscreen like torrents of dried peas, but I was determined to get to Stafford no matter what.

    Eventually, at just past ten o’clock, driving no more than 20 miles per hour all the way, on a nightmare journey that should have taken me less than three hours, I pulled off the M6, confident I was almost at the end of my journey. I spotted a large welcoming pub, and knowing they shut at 10.30 on a Sunday, I thought I deserved a pint before continuing to a village called Woodseaves, where I and several others in the cast had rented a farmhouse cottage.

    When I asked at the bar if they could direct me to Woodseaves, I was told the roads were blocked, there were ten foot snowdrifts, and if I got stuck I would likely die from hypothermia. What was I to do? I asked in my little-boy-lost voice. The pub landlady told me they did bed and breakfast and I could stay the night there for eight pounds. A bargain in the circumstances, I thought. And now, because I was a resident, I could enjoy another two pints while they cleared up.

    Going to the car park after a hearty breakfast in the morning, to my dismay I discovered the freezing weather had knocked out my battery again. I returned to the pub and recruited the help of someone with jump leads to charge my battery, first of all ringing the theatre to tell them I was almost in Stafford and would be about an hour late for the first rehearsal.

   I had never worked in a pantomime in such fierce weather before. The press called that winter The Big Snow of 1982, although it began in early December when I set off for Stafford. It was the coldest December recorded in the 20^th Century, and the coldest recorded temperature was -25.2 °C in Shropshire, not a million miles from Stafford. But quite a way from the North Pole where the temperature was about the same.

    It was great to start working in the panto, which kept us all warm. Because the roads were busy being gritted we managed to make the cottage in Woodseaves. Some of the time at least. Other times I had to sleep in my theatre dressing room wrapped in some tabs (theatre curtains). And another time when we were snowed in at Stafford, a four star hotel nearby, the manager took pity on us, and gave us a bed and breakfast for a fiver. And once, when we were stuck, the theatre manager, kept the bar open, and a Stafford group, the Climax Blues Band, got going on a late night jam session, so we didn’t need much sleep that night!

    Of course, by mid-January the fiercest and coldest weather dissipated and I was able to drive home uneventfully.

    The 1962/63 winter that I read about in Julie Nicolson’s book clearly had a worse effect than mine at Stafford, because it lasted so long. So, what on earth was I doing during those ten weeks of chaos. Perhaps I wasn’t working and I stayed in bed. One thing I do remember from those years: we didn’t have central heating, and when I woke up in the morning, the frost was on the inside of my bedroom window. And that’s about all I remember of the 1962 freeze.

Behind Yer!

When I was much younger I would invariably play in pantomime each year, usually as the Buttons character or one of the Broker’s Men, Then as I got older it was either Dame or the Baron Hard-up character. I only ever played the villain once, and that was in one of my favourite pantomimes at the Palace Theatre, Watford, in Jack and the Beanstalk, and I was decked out in terrific costume, inspired by the Flash Gordon villain, Ming the Merciless. The show had been written by Roy Hudd who had named most of the characters after a vegetable, and so you had Dame Polly Parsnip and I was Cabbage Face. One of the scenes I remember was a market scene with songs about fruit and veg, one of them being the marrow song ‘Oh What a Beauty!’

   Roy Hudd was apparently not doing a panto himself that year and he came along to rehearsals and directed us in some great comedy front-cloth spots. I got on very well with Roy, and we stayed in touch after the panto closed.

    Just a week before the show opened, it was discovered that the second half wasn’t long enough. The musical director suggested the baddie ought to have a song, and as he had read in the programme biographies that I was also a writer, why not write myself a song. I went away that night thinking I might never be able to do that. Song writing was not something I had ever envisaged doing before. And then I had an idea. Masters of the Universe  was all the rage at that time, and so I wrote a reprise of ‘Oh What a Beauty’ with different lyrics along the lines of: ‘Oh what a horror, you’ve never seen one as bad as me before,’ with a verse about Skeletor being my hero, and other such nonsense. The musical director set it in a minor key, and we put in a middle eight in which I used my cloak like a matador to fight the panto cow, and it worked like a treat.

    My son, Morgan, who was ten-years-old, and in his last year at primary school, when the pupils were given a project: write a substantial book with illustrations about any Victorian of their own choosing. Morgan wanted to do Jack the Ripper, but I managed to talk him out of that one and encouraged him to do Dan Leno instead. He wasn’t keen at first, but when I mentioned that the musical hall artist went a bit mad and spent a spell in a lunatic asylum, he became enthused about the subject.

    Roy Hudd was performing his music hall comedians show in Eastbourne, and we as a family went to see it. Meeting Roy after the show, we happened to mention that Morgan was doing a project about Dan Leno. Roy said he had dozens of things ascertaining to Leno and promised to send Morgan some copies. Of course, anyone can say that. But this was Roy, one of the most genuine and nicest of performers in showbusiness, and sure enough about four days later a pile of stuff about Dan Leno came in the post, including a 10’ x 8’ previously unpublished photo of Leno.

    I must admit, as I got older, I would sooner have played the fatherly characters rather than Dame. It was the costume changes that were so exhausting. But what I loved about the Dame was the rapport with the audience and using some well tried gags that have been used over the years by other panto dames like Jack Tripp and Wyn Calvin.

    Here are some of my favourites:

    ‘I spend all my time working my fingers to the bone. And what have I got to show for it? Bony fingers!’

    ‘My first husband went out to the garden to cut a cabbage for our Sunday dinner, and he was just cutting the cabbage when he suddenly keeled over and died. It was terrible. Terrible. We had to open a tin of peas instead.’

    ‘I was just walking along the high street late one night when a man came up to me and said, “I’m going to search you all over and take all your money.” I said, “I haven’t got a penny on me. But if you search me all over I’ll give you a cheque”.’

    And so on and so forth, there are dozens upon dozens of traditional gags.

    Once I wanted an audience participation gag, so I telephoned Roy Hudd to see what he could suggest, and he told me to plant with the audience that the elastic had gone in my knickers, and when I made an arms up gesture and an exclamation, they would all shout out, ‘Pull ‘em up!’

    This was great for entrances and exits, and when I was being a bit naughty in the middle of someone else’s speech, the audience could interrupt with a rousing ‘Pull ‘em up!’

    And so all my reader…I mean readers, I would like to wish you all a very happy Christmas. My next blog will be on Friday 7 January. Please have a safe and happier 2022, and I look forward to entertaining you all next year.

Whoops!

In the late ‘80s or early ‘90s, singer Joe Brown made a series of television commercials, asking the general public to do a blind tasting of Coke and Pepsi, and four out of five people chose Pepsi. I was interviewed by producer Bob Clark at his company Visage which ran conferences. He loved my Frankie Abbott character and wanted me for a very well paid series of conferences for Pepsi Cola. The character I was to play was a newspaper reporter, and he wanted it played realistically, telling me the conferences were to motivate their sales-people, who he said would not be convinced if the performance was exaggerated in any way. In other words, although he liked ‘Frankie’, this was to be performed differently from that character. Prior to the conferences, I was taken to Earl’s Court Exhibition Centre where Joe Brown was conducting the Pepsi Taste Test, and they then filmed me taking the taste test as the reporter character, which they planned on showing at the conferences. But my test had to be done in one take, as they worried I might select the Coke in front of the public. So they told Joe Brown to tip me the wink and secretly indicate which was the Pepsi.

   The first conference was in Glasgow, and on the flight I sat next to Bob Clark. I asked him what would happen if I went to Coca Cola and said that I and Joe Brown had fiddled the taste test on camera. He said Coke would probably pay me handsomely for the info, but as Pepsi was a vast corporation, and losing one point share of the market could run into billions of pounds, he advised me – if I was thinking of doing it – to look over my shoulder if I walked down any dark alleys at night.

   (If anyone at Pepsi Cola reads this now, that fiddle happened more than thirty years ago, and there’s been a lot of Cola under the bridge since then.)

   During a rehearsal in the conference, after I made my reporter’s findings about Pepsi, a man came up to me, took me aside and told me to ham up my performance. ‘You can’t be subtle,’ he said. ‘This sales force need it to be spelled out. It’s a village hall ethos.’

   Thinking this was the client, Mr Big from Pepsi, I had a word with Bob Clark. He asked me to point the bloke out. When I did, he went over, and I saw some sort of heated argument going on. When he came back, Bob said to me, ‘Play the scene exactly as you were playing it. That bloke is less important than this table I’m sitting at. If he comes over and tries to say anything to you again, just tell him to fuck off.’

   I never saw him again.

   Our next conference venue was a French-style chateau in the West Midlands near Droitwich. Chateau Impney was a listed building, built in the 19^th century by a wealthy industrialist for his half French wife. The 18^th century-styled castle became a hotel in the 1920s I believe. It was an impressive French chateau with fantastic gardens, and my bedroom was extravagant, as I’m sure most of the bedrooms were.

    The next day, following the conference at the chateau, we were taken to Birmingham Airport, to await a flight to Heathrow, for our final conference at Heathrow Hotel the next day. It was a journey that probably took twice as long as a drive along the M1 and M25 to Heathrow, by the time we checked in and out of each airport, but I guess it was easier to organise than hiring cars.

    Once I had checked into my room at the Heathrow hotel – and this is where the ‘Whoops!’ of the title comes in – I met Bob Clark’s assistant in the hotel corridor, and we got in the lift together to go down to dinner. There were several other people in the lift, coming down from a higher floor. As we descended to the ground floor, Bob’s assistant whispered in my ear, ‘Jeremy Thorpe is staying here tonight.’

   I laughed and blurted out, ‘Not bite the pillow, Jeremy!’

   I was nudged in the side by Bob’s assistant as a warning. Jeremy Thorpe and companions were standing in the lift behind me. He must have heard me. Not only that, they were at the table next to us at dinner.

   I guess I should have been embarrassed, but then I thought to hell with that. This is the leader of the Liberal Party who attempted to cover up his gay affair with Norman Scott by hiring a hit man in an attempt to kill him but killing his lover’s dog instead. I think the man deserved a bit of embarrassment.

    And I was reminded of this, reliving the full scandalous story, when I saw Hugh Grant’s excellent portrayal of Thorpe in the TV series A Very English Scandal.

    Unbelievable! You couldn’t make it up.

Merlot at the National Theatre

On Tuesday I went to see Manor at the National Theatre. I always love going to the National, which is so well run and spacious. In 1979, only five years after the building’s completion and opening, a couple of acquaintances of mine visited London and I took them on a riverboat trip from Tower Bridge, travelling upstream. A tour guide gave us a non-stop commentary on all the sites and buildings, and as we passed the National Theatre, he said, ‘That building on the left, ladies and gentlemen, is the new National Theatre. I think it’s an eyesore meself and the geezer what designed it must either have been a raving lunatic or had shares in Ready-Mix.’

    Most of the Japanese or German tourists on that river trip hadn’t a clue what he meant. But no doubt Prince Charles, never a lover of modern buildings, would have agreed with him. In 1988 the Prince of Wales described our National Theatre as ‘…a clever way of building a nuclear power station in the middle of London without anyone objecting.’

    And even some actors have referred to the National Theatre as ‘Colditz on the South Bank!’

    But most detractors of the building have never been inside the National, let alone seen a production there. Each time I visit the theatre I marvel at its functionality, it’s space, clear views and acoustics. And even from the outside I love the angles that seem to blend with the environment.

    Sir John Betjeman, a lover of traditional architecture, who was mostly responsible for saving many wonderful buildings such as the St Pancras Station hotel and the Blackfriar pub, wrote to architect Denys Lasdun and said he gasped with delight at the National Theatre, which he praised as a lovely work and so good from so many angles.

    But if I level any criticism of the National, it is because of its elitism. I had a 175 ml glass of wine half an hour before curtain up, and another put by for the interval. When in the interval I saw the receipt for my purchases, the two glasses of Merlot were priced at £7.70 each. Of course, I appreciate that most London theatres charge over the pub odds for drinks, but I felt this was just a tad overboard, and I couldn’t help wondering what some of the workings guys in my local pub would make of those prices. No, if theatre wants to be more egalitarian, they must lower their prices. I can’t see some of the builders, bricklayers or painters and decorators tolerating those elitist costs.

    The other thing is, on top of the price of those two drinks, plus the ticket price, and the rail fare, had I read the reviews of Manor, there was no way I would have bothered to visit the National. In future I won’t take any chances and fall for their marketing. I will first of all wait until the reviews are printed. Yes, I know some of them may be mixed, but they were unanimously poor for Manor. However, I still enjoyed my evening at this wonderful theatre, and then a walk across Waterloo Bridge, and back along the Strand to Charing Cross. I intended to have another glass of wine in the Coal Hole and discovered that they shut at ten. Instead, I had a glass in All Bar One in Villiers Street, and this was £6 for the 175 ml shot, almost two quid cheaper than the bar at the National.

   Next time I visit the National a) I will read the reviews first and b) I will take a hip flask. Although, I confess, brandy in a hip flask does sound a wee bit elitist!

Happy Campers

Learning and rehearsing six plays in a fortnight even beat weekly repertory theatre when working for the Forbes Russell Theatre Company at Butlin’s Holiday Camp. Mind you, all the full length plays were drastically cut to just over an hour in length.

    This was 1965, just a few years away from starting Please Sir! We rehearsed the first three plays over six days in London, and then we travelled on Sunday to Pwllheli on the north-west coast of Wales. Six of us in the cast managed to find digs on the sea front, on the first floor of a large house. I can remember I was paid £12 & ten shillings a week, and the digs probably cost around three or four pounds.

    We opened the first play on the Monday afternoon, and the other two on the Wednesday and Friday, during which time we also rehearsed every morning, the other three plays. I was lucky, there was one play I wasn’t in, and I had the luxury of appearing in only five plays a fortnight!

    In those good old days, actors had to supply their own clothes for productions, consisting of dinner jacket with accessories, lounge suits, and sports jacket and trousers. I don’t know when Equity managed to get managements to agree to end that stipulation. Sometime in the early seventies? But I am only guessing.

    Because our performances were free to happy campers, often the door at the back of the auditorium would be barged open by a curious camper who had perhaps never seen a play before, didn’t fancy it, and exited hastily. Cue door slam!

    Another distraction we had to contend with was  a large screen to the side of the proscenium arch which lit up every so often, and every audience head would swivel to read about which baby was crying in which chalet.

     Because we were not earning much money, our treat was usually a local pub on Friday nights after we had been paid. I can’t remember whether or not we performed two shows a day. I think maybe we did, because we often ate for a concessionary staff rate some dinner, mainly fried food, and I think this may have happened between shows. But as the shows were only just over an hour long, I guess we must have done two in one day. And I can remember some of us being asked to judge things like the knobbly-knees contest after our shows.

    One of the highlights of staying almost on the beach was because several houses away a man had an enormous pet eagle, and people who had heard about this bird of prey, came from miles around to see it. But what was most magnificent was the eagle’s owner let it off for a flight now and again, and it was wonderful to see this eagle soar up over the hills, and then return to a smooth landing on the beach.

    It was during my stint at Butlin’s Pwllheli that I must have phased out beer drinking in favour of wine. This may have happened because once, during two days of performances of the play I wasn’t in, I travelled to Holyhead to visit some of my relations. Everything was fine until my return journey, catching the last bus from Caernarfon to Pwllheli, after about three pints of beer. The journey took over an hour and I wanted to go as soon as the bus left Caernarfon. I have never known such pain in my scrotum as I tried to keep from wetting myself. As soon as the bus reached Pwllheli, I staggered into the public convenience, telling myself that never again would I consume such quantity of beer before…well, before anything where there was not a handy loo.

    Another curious bus ride, not one I ever caught, thank God, was the bus that left the holiday camp at the same time each week to take staff members to the special clinic for their antibiotics to stop them pissing razor blades!

    But most of the time, once the plays were up and running in our repertoire, it was fun to just occasionally lounge about on the beach before catching the bus in for the first performance, which I think was in the early afternoon.

    It was during this summer season that I met my first wife Zélie. Before we were married we found a flat in Highgate Village, and then it was into six years of Please Sir!, the feature film of the same name, and then The Fenn Street Gang, which I wrote about in Please Sir! The Official History.

    This is the first time I have written about the Butlin’s season, and probably the last. The plays were all what you might call ‘pot-boilers’, north country comedies or thrillers, and there was one called The Judgment is Yours, in which twelve happy campers were invited to join us on stage to be members of the jury. I was the defendant and it was up to these audience members to weigh up the evidence and pronounce me either guilty or not. I often varied my performance in subtle ways to see if I could manipulate the verdict.

    Those were the days, eh?

Altercation on a Train

Last Saturday I travelled to Ashford by train for a live show on Channel Radio, a show I was co-presenting with Stuart Morriss. He and his wife Jen had to come from Robertsbridge on the London train, and we met in the last carriage when I got on at Tunbridge Wells. We got off at Tonbridge to pick up the Ashford train, had around a half-hour wait and got some coffee and chatted about what music we could pick for our show.

    Kevin Cann our producer picked us up at Ashford station and drove us to the studio. So far so good; everything seemed to be going smoothly. Our guest by telephone was the lovely Madeline Smith, who was great, and her energy came across the airwaves. It was wonderful chatting to her, and we spent a good half hour reminiscing with her. And then Stuart kindly plugged my latest book, Frankie Abbott’s Great Big Book of Horror Stories, and I read an extract from it. And then it was back to the station where we caught the train, again sitting in the last carriage.

    Sitting in table seats, across the aisle from us, was a middle-aged couple, the man wearing a polo-necked sweater. Stuart, Jen and I were wearing masks, which we tend to do on public transport. The man across the aisle stared very pointedly at me, holding a lengthy, rather aggressive look, and then shook his head in despair, as if to question why I was wearing a mask.

    Now there were probably only about a third of the passengers in that carriage wearing masks, and certainly Jen, Stuart and I were not staring at them with a heightened degree of criticism. In fact, I think now that mask wearing on transport is not mandatory, it should be up to an individual’s choice, and we three had made the choice to wear them.

     Not only did this man opposite shake his head pointedly, he then stared at me rather aggressively. So I held his gaze, staring back with hostility, seeing which one of us would look away first, and I was pleased to discover his eyes were the first to back down. I then looked at Stuart and said something like: ‘I don’t like it when a person stares at me for wearing a mask and then shakes their head.’

    Suddenly, this man opposite erupted, and raising his voice he said, ‘I can hear what you’re saying, and I don’t like you talking about me.’

    I then said, ‘If you thought I was talking about you, you must be egotistical. It’s nothing to do with you. I’m talking to my friend here, and it’s none of your business.’

    ‘I could hear you talking about me, and I don’t like it,’ he went on.

    By now I had lost my temper and I also raised my voice. ‘Well you don’t have to listen to me, you wanker! You are a wanker!’

    Now his wife waved a hand at him and said, ‘Leave it, darling,’

    He now made a point of staring out of the window, then at a magazine in front of him. We didn’t make eye contact again. They were perhaps heading for London, and we got off at Tonbridge to pick up the Tunbridge Wells train. I toyed with the idea of apologising to the man as we got off, saying something like, ‘Please accept my apology for calling you a wanker, What I meant to say was you are an arsehole.’

    But I was pleased to see he shrunk in his seat and avoided eye contact with us as we rose to get off the train, probably because Stuart is quite tall and towered above this little obnoxious runt of some dubious litter.

    But when we got to the Ragged Trousers pub in the Pantiles, we relaxed, had a few drinks and relived the altercation on the train and we were able to laugh about it. I doubt whether the humourless prat on the train was laughing, and we hoped his day had been completely upset, and he had an argument with his wife about it.

    Life can sometimes by such adventurous fun!

Dirty Jokes? Oh No There Aren’t!

Over two years ago I interviewed actor John Judd at the Phoenix Arts Club about his career. He had played many good roles in television drama, including The Sweeney and Minder. But he really created a stink in the controversial borstal drama The Scum, when he played the vicious prison officer who beat up Ray Winstone, playing a young offender. I had worked with John in pantomime, and that was something we talked about. In the audience was John’s wife, singer Helen Shapiro, and from that meeting I asked if she would come on my radio show, and I was delighted when she agreed. But for now, back to the panto in which I appeared with John.

    After we opened in Aladdin at the Pier Pavilion Porthcawl in 1978, with John Judd playing Dame and me as Wishee Washee, the Western Mail gave us a good review. But we were not long into our run when the same newspaper put the boot in with the headline on page three TV STARS IN SEX JOKE PANTO.

   The report went on to reveal that a local councillor had been told there were inappropriate jokes in the show, jokes more suitable for adults, and he had received several complaints about it. Another councillor said she had brought a party of underprivileged children to see it, and she couldn’t recall hearing anything inappropriate. But the damage was done. People only remember the headlines.

   I discussed this with John, and we both felt it was grossly unfair, as the one thing we wholeheartedly agreed on was that it should be a good wholesome family show, with no smut. And we were understandably the angriest in the cast as we were both billed above the title and had been singled out for blame in the headline. We complained to the theatre manager and he said he would make one or two phone calls to find out who was to blame for this slur.

   After the matinee, we trooped into his office, along with other members of the cast. The councillor who had brought the underprivileged children to the show had brought along the Western Mail reporter, so that he could put his side of the story to us. I wondered what he was doing there, because reporters don’t usually contact their victims to justify their stories. Perhaps, I thought, it had something to do with the councillor who organised this meeting, trying to do her bit as an independent arbiter. She flapped about with a worried expression, organised coffee for us all, and was clearly trying to please everyone.

   But whenever John and I raised our voices, she tutted and sighed disapprovingly. The theatre manager sat behind his desk saying nothing, watching the events unfolding with interest. There were not enough chairs in the office, so we stood in a semi-circle, glaring down at the reporter who sat to one side of the desk. While the councillor fussed around like a querulous hen, censuring our arguments by saying the reporter had written her side of the story as well, I could feel my anger building. The reporter added his own excuse in mitigation of the libel, protesting that he only reported what he was told. I angrily pointed out that the headline was not in quotation marks and this was something either written by himself or a sub editor. Not only that, but the councillor who made the disparaging remarks hadn’t even seen the show. ‘I’ve worked in Cardiff many times,’ I ranted, without first putting my brain into gear. ‘And at the Grand Swansea. And now I come to piddling Porthcawl to have the boot put in.’

   I watched as the reporter scribbled my comment into his notebook. Now I knew why he had come along to meet us, to get a nice juicy follow-up story. And I had just provided it.

   Oh well, I thought. I’ve got nothing to lose now. ‘If you want something to report,’ I said. ‘Report that!’

   I let him have it with the full cup of coffee. There was a stunned silence in the office. The reporter’s tweed jacket was soaking wet as he fumbled for a handkerchief to wipe his neck and face. He stood up and I was relieved to see he was shorter than me.

   ‘I don’t think I can stay here and continue this meeting,’ he announced.

   ‘No, I don’t blame you, Glyn,’ said Miss Querulous Hen, following him out of the office. John Judd was beaming, as was the rest of the cast.

   On my way to the evening show later, I bumped into the theatre manager, who asked me to step into his office. Here we go, I thought. Here comes the tirade about my bad behaviour. But once behind the closed door of his office, he grinned hugely and thrust out his hand for me to shake.

   ‘That was one of the most splendid things I’ve ever seen,’ he said. ‘It really made my day.’

   It must have got around most of Porthcawl because the very next day as I passed a youngster on a skateboard, he called out, ‘I hope that coffee was hot!’

   Following my careless criticism of Porthcawl, chucking coffee over the hack turned out to be the best thing I could have done, because there was no follow-up story in the paper.

   And after every performance, John and I asked the kids to write to the Western Mail on their Paddington Bear notepaper, saying how much they enjoyed the show. To be fair to the newspaper, they printed a few of the letters, with an addendum saying they had received a number of such letters. They also printed a retraction of the original story.

    On my more recent radio show, when I interviewed John, he told me that Bill Cotton Jnr, son of Billy Cotton, of Billy Cotton’s Band Show fame, who was head of programming at the BBC when Scum was first produced, refused to show this controversial drama in the schedules. This version of Scum John told me, became known as The Billy Cotton Banned Show!

Fiction Based on Fact

As a writer I am often asked where I get my ideas from when it comes to crime fiction. Usually my starting point is a true crime I have read about in the paper, and then my characters become my own invention and often nothing like the real life people I have read about in the newspapers or seen on television.

   Let me give you my crime novel A Deadly Diversion as a perfect example of where the process of writing it began. I already had my characters, two East End friends, Freddie Weston and Bill Turner, who first appeared in my novel Muscle. Unfortunately, I had an agent back in 2012, and this American did a deal with Thames River Press, and Muscle was published in 2013. I was never happy with these publishers, especially as my paperback which ran to only 185 pages and this publisher priced it at £10.99. Despite my countless emails and phone calls, they refused to lower the price. No wonder it didn’t sell many copies.

   However, I had already begun writing A Deadly Diversion, which Andrews UK thankfully published at the more realistic price of £7.49. At the end of Muscle, my two protagonists come into a bit of money and decide to become private detectives. And so now I needed a good murder plot for them to solve.

    The media provided the perfect springboard for my plot. SDS, the Special Demonstration Squad, was an undercover unit of the Metropolitan Police, a part of Special Branch, and its purpose was in infiltrating mainly left-wing action groups. Their undercover officers were nicknamed ‘hairies’ because of their often hippy appearances, and officers in the SDS often liaised with MI5. These undercover officers often used the names of dead children when creating false identities. And many of these officers formed sexual relationships with some of the dissidents they were investigating and even fathered children with them.

    Although the SDS was disbanded in 2008, it was reformed as the National Domestic Extremism Unit. Then in 2014 the Met agreed to pay out half a million pounds to a woman whose child was fathered  by undercover police officer Bob Lambert. And Mark Kennedy was another undercover officer who spent years masquerading as a left-wing activist and had several relationships with unsuspecting women. And many of these women spent years in relationships with undercover officers without ever realizing their partners had parallel lives and identities. And these men, like Bob Lambert, lived a fictional life for many years, then suddenly disappeared, as Lambert did when his son was two-years-old.

    So this was a starting point for A Deadly Diversion,  where my villain in the opening chapter gives the reader a clue that his identity ‘has disappeared somewhere in the dismal past, dropped like a stone into a lake, and it was highly unlikely his false identity could be compromised’.

    Of course, it is fiction and by its very nature there has to be a twist, as Freddie and Bill are hired by Alice Egerton to find out who murdered her family. Alice joins them at their detective agency, as she is a great deal younger than the two men and knows how to protect herself and other people. The mystery takes Freddie to Krakow in Poland. And the reason for this is because I like to set my locations in places I have visited and know, rather than just researching them online. My DI Harry Lambert (nothing to do Bob Lambert) novel Each Man Kills is located in Swansea and West Wales, and I know this city and these areas very well. The climax of A Deadly Diversion is located in a derelict nightclub on the Isle of Sheppey, somewhere I visited over two days so that I could be accurate with my locations, and when I discovered the derelict nightclub, this was a bonus, and I knew I just had to end my crime novel there.

    Apart from the hint about the undercover officer in the book, I have at least managed to not give any spoilers, and I think you will guess from the word go about who the antagonist might have been, or rather what he was.

   Next year I may think about writing another Freddie Weston and Alice Egerton novel, as I think they make a great team. First, though, I will see what the media has to offer by way of inspiration.

Our Best Friends

And I am talking about dogs here. While I realise you may be a cat person, can you not like both? Otherwise it becomes like that pop music antagonism between Stones and Beatles fans. After all, dogs once they get to know cats, and even other species, will often befriend them.

    I grew up with a dog and a cat, and they both got on well together, and would often curl up at nights for comfort. My daughter has a Border Collie, a lovely, friendly mutt, who wants nothing more than to play. And look at our relationship with these wonderful creatures: they can be therapeutic, and give great service as working dogs, sniffing out everything from bombs, drugs, human corpses, and helping blind and partially sighted people.

    In 1949, when I was six-years-old, my parents had a newsagent’s shop in Bangor, North Wales. One day, my brother Mervyn, who was ten years older than me brought back a scruffy puppy stinking of petrol. He was a stray of about 10 weeks old and had wandered into the garage several doors down from our shop – the mechanics wanted him moved so they could get on with their work. So we took him in and decided to foster him. No one had claimed him, so my parents decided to go the police station, and if nobody claimed him in six weeks, he would officially belong to us.

    The six weeks crawled by with the family on tenterhooks because by now, Chum, as we had decided to call him, had got his paws firmly under the table. Eventually the nail-biting six weeks was up, and Chum became legally ours. My mother dashed to the post office to purchase the licence, because in those days any dog owners had to have a dog licence.

    Dogs have a great memory. My parents gave up the shop and we moved to Amlwch Port, in northern Anglesey. Then, what every parent dreads, Mervyn’s call-up papers came; he would have to spend two years in the army, on active service in Malaya. Two years is a long time in a dog’s life, and we often wondered if Mervyn had been forgotten by his canine friend. How wrong we were. After Mervyn was demobbed, we sat in our cottage one evening, waiting for his return and listening out for his footsteps. Suddenly, Chum pricked up his ears and went berserk. We opened the cottage door and he dashed out to greet my brother, almost a quarter of a mile away, barking and yelping delightedly. I had never seen such love and passion in a dog before.

    Not long after Mervyn returned from his two years’ National Service, we moved to Richmond, Surrey, and Chum became a much more sophisticated urban dog. Sadly, my father and mother died when I was 18 and 19 respectively, and Chum outlived them. But one day my brother returned from the vet and told me that our beloved dog had a brain tumour and had to be euthanized. It was a sad day when we had to say goodbye to our faithful friend and other family member.

    These days, when I often go walking in a Tunbridge Wells park, I pass many people walking their dogs, and they all have their own distinctive personalities. If a friendly dog makes eye contact with me, and dashes over for a cuddle, I always oblige, and many’s the time the owner might say something like, ‘He can stand any amount of that.’ Other dogs pass by with their owners and ignore me, which makes me think that the character of the dog is all to do with nurture. If a human doesn’t look me in the eye when walking by, often the dog ignores me as well. And when you get aggressive dogs, it is usually because of the way they have been treated. They are like most creatures, fearful if cruelly treated, and so they react by protecting themselves in the only way they know how, by growling and baring their teeth. And guard dogs have been brainwashed by their owners to protect property aggressively, so again it comes down to nurture.

    But let me end this blog on a laugh. Actor and comedian David Mitchell said in a book of his I read, that one should always avoid drinking in a pub with a flat roof, because you may find inside it a pit bull who likes to chew on toddlers!

    But of course any breed can get a bad reputation. It is usually a reflection of the dogs’ owners, the way the creature has been raised. It all boils down to nurture in the end.

    And I can’t wait to see Denby, my daughter’s dog again, for some games and therapy!

Forgotten Appearances…

…until recently. Perhaps my long-term memory is getting better, which is a bit frightening. I just hope the one in the short term is okay. ‘Now where did I put my glasses?’ ‘What was it I came in the kitchen for?’

    My first of the forgotten non-credited appearances was in an episode of No Hiding Place, when I was Meurig Wyn-Jones. I must still have been very young, because I can vaguely remember being chaperoned to the location, filmed near a river where I found a dead body. And that’s about it really.

    But most of the forgotten appearances came later, mainly because they were commercials, but not totally forgotten. The ones I wrote about in Please Sir! The Official History were relevant to the TV sitcom, because I was either playing Frankie Abbott, as in a vodka commercial for Scottish cinemas, or putting on a leather jacket to attract Joanna Lumley in a beer commercial, and working with Malcolm McFee in a Sealink ad.

    And I have just remembered, I was in a Guinness commercial, shot in Dublin, for showing only in the Republic of Ireland. I and two other actors left Heathrow late one afternoon, and we were ferried to a large hotel in the centre of Dublin, where the production manager told us to go into the restaurant and order whatever we liked, including drinks. This was (I think) somewhere in the mid-1970s, and there on the wine list was a bottle of red wine costing as much as £24, mega money back then. But, the three of us agreed, the production manager had generously told us to order whatever we liked, and so we went ahead an ordered it. Needless to say, the wine was like nectar. So we ordered another bottle. Guinness could afford it, we decided.

    The commercial was shot the next day in a pub, where two of us were introducing the third one in the party to his very first taste of Guinness. And that was it really. But I can remember the director taking a very long lunch break and we all spent a boozy lunch at a swish hotel eating peppered steak flambéed at the table. Sometimes acting can be such hard work!

    Another one that comes back to me is for a building society. It may have been Nationwide Anglia, but I can’t be certain. Peter Cleall, Malcolm McFee and I were in the middle of rehearsals for The Lads From Fenn Street, and the production company who were going to shoot the ad, wanted me to go along to sit-in on the casting session where they were auditioning a young actor to play Frankie Abbott’s mate. When I gave my name to the icy receptionist, she handed me a form to fill in. ‘But,’ I began to protest. ‘They have asked me to…’ She didn’t let me finish and snapped at me to fill in the form and get my polaroid picture taken and clipped to the form. As I was already cast in the commercial, and it was written for Frankie Abbott, I left the form on the desk and returned to a rehearsal with Peter and Malcolm. When the ad agency heard about this they were beside themselves, and the creative director took me out for an expensive dinner to compensate for my bad treatment.

   I don’t actually remember much about filming the commercial.

   Usually casting sessions for commercials can be like cattle markets. Casting directors get as many different types of actors, sometimes for the same role, making their jobs so much easier by giving the directors a cross section from which to choose. In the late ‘90s, I attended a casting session for American Express, along with dozens of other actors of different genders and statures. The commercial was for Jerry Seinfeld, who wants to know about British comedy, catches a black cab in London, which takes him all round the British Isles where he encounters dozens of different people, from pearly kings and queens in London to a Welsh-speaking shepherd (me) on a mountain. Naturally he pays the cab with his Amex card.

    While we waited to be seen, I was reacquainted with an actress I knew, Pat Kane, who was married to Howell Evans, and I had worked with their son, Warwick Evans. Pat sat on the other side of the room to me, and was sandwiched between Jeanette Charles, the Queen lookalike, and another actress who resembled the Queen. Pat was giggling, suddenly got up and came over to me, and told me why she was laughing. Apparently, one of the Queen lookalikes introduced herself to Jeanette Charles, saying that she was also up for the part of the Queen. Jeanette Charles apparently replied: ‘Piss off!’

    Clearly there was only one royal lookalike in the country.

   Despite a recall audition for this commercial, it was never made. It was decided that as the Jerry Seinfeld Show was only shown on Channel 4, it wouldn’t mean much to viewers of ITV1.

   Sometimes I forget I have done certain acting jobs, so there may be more to come in the weeks ahead. And someone who once looked me up on IMDB mentioned that I was in The Legacy of Reginald Perrin, playing a Coach Driver. I told them that I definitely did not recall ever having done that job. ‘Were you pissed at the time?’ I was asked. I certainly was not, because I would have remembered it if I was. No, there is a simple explanation. No two members of Actors’ Equity can have the same name, and so I think that that David Barry really was a coach driver and not a member of Equity.

    If they ever repeat this series, I wonder if the royalty cheque will mistakenly come to me?

Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells!

When Henry Holland and I set off to visit Carol Hawkins in Spain this year, we couldn’t believe how smoothly everything went. Our flight was at a sensible time of 16.20, and so we had a relaxing lunch at the Gatwick Wetherspoons prior to boarding. Forty-eight hours before leaving the UK we had to go onto a Spanish website to fill in locator form with a QR code for our entry into Spain, and we also needed to show proof of a double vaccination. The form took no more than 15 minutes to fill, and on our arrival at Almeria airport, security scanned the form and we arrived at Carol’s at 9.45 pm, and stayed up until 3.00 pm talking, drinking and laughing.

   We had a wonderful time, reminiscing and catching up. But then came the British locator form for getting back into the UK with its QR code, which had to be filled in 48 hours before departure. This, unlike the Spanish form, took us two hours to complete, with Henry and me groaning every so often, and crying out, ‘Oh, no! Now it’s taken me back to the beginning again!’ Carol was doubled-up with laughter at our efforts. We thought we must have been totally incompetent. But when we met two of Carol’s friends the next day, who were soon flying back to the UK, they also said it took them 1 hour and 45 minutes to complete.

   Ironically, when I showed the QR code at security on our return journey, it wasn’t scanned and the woman just looked at my name, pointed to the departure desk and sad, ‘Go through.’

Two hours just for that!

   But we had a great time with Carol, and I wouldn’t have missed it for anything.

   However (and this is where ‘disgusted’ comes into it), prior to leaving the UK a PCR test had to be ordered – again 48 hours before departure – for a covid test two days after arriving back in the UK. I picked my testing kit up from the post office in Tunbridge Wells on Monday and did the test. The form told me I was not allowed to send it by Royal Mail, and if I used my own courier it would be at my own expense and my own responsibility should anything go wrong. Randox Health, the firm who carried out the tests are based in County Antrim, N.I. But they have dozens of drop off points in various locations in the UK. The nearest one to me was on the M25 services not far from Sevenoaks, which is great if you have a car, and many of their testing kit drop offs were on motorway services, Perhaps this is for lorry drivers coming into the country, but I am only guessing.

    The only other drop off that I could find was in Upper Ground, near the ITV studios on South Bank, so I caught a train to Waterloo East, and what should have taken me, including the walk from the station, no more than ten minutes, took almost an hour. The Randox website had given the wrong postcode, and even the local post office and a taxi driver on Upper Ground had never heard of the Randox location.

    Eventually, a Polish construction worker in a hard hat knew where it was. But by now I was in a foul mood about Randox, who had charged £48 for this test. I decided to research them, and here is what I discovered.

    Owen Paterson, Conservative MP for North Shropshire, is employed as a consultant for Randox Health, on a salary of £100,000 per year, and his hourly rate is £500. The founder of Randox is 475^th richest person in the world according to the Sunday Times rich list. His company was awarded the £133 million contract for covid testing, with no other firms being given the opportunity to tender. Matt Hancock’s department fast-tracked the deal back in May 2020.

    Then in November, a new £347 million contract was agreed with the government, and this despite their testing kits having to be recalled in the summer because of contamination. Again, this new deal was agreed as part of an extension to the original contract and no other companies were invited to bid. And Paterson was party to a call between the company and Lord Bethell, a health minister responsible for corona virus testing supplies. And Randox also supplies tens of thousands of kits to care homes and individuals, and in July this year spot checks revealed that some kits supplied by Chinese manufacturers were not sterile.

    But at least we had a great time with Carol in Spain, which more than makes up for this Randox wasted journey to London.

    I say ‘wasted’ because as I write this, it is now Friday 15^th, and my sample was dropped off at 4 pm on the 11^th. Yet I have not so much as received an email acknowledging its arrival for testing, and this despite their insistence that this had to reach their laboratories no more than 70 hours from the test. And I did hear that someone else did a Randox PCR test and heard nothing further from them about the test results.

    We all know that this handing out of contracts is called cronyism. I have another word for it. Corruption.

    Which is why I remain, disgusted of Tunbridge Wells!

Where the Change Hummed on Wires

The first time I read Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood, and got to draper Mog Edwards saying, ‘I have come to take you away to my Emporium on the hill, where the change hums on wires,’ it brought back memories of North Wales in the late 1940s.

   My mother occasionally shopped at a small department store called Polikoff. I used to love going in there and was fascinated by the contraption that dealt with my mother’s transaction. She would hand money to the shop assistant, who placed it with a docket in a small cylinder. Then, just slightly higher than head-height, the cylinder was attached to a wire, and it would go zooming off to a cashier in another part of the building, and we waited until the cylinder zoomed back to us containing my mother’s change. Hence Thomas’s line about ‘where the change hums on wires.’

     The first time I performed in Milk Wood was when I played Frankie Abbott in Please Sir! Richard Davies, who played Mr Price in the series, had been asked by the manager of Lewisham Concert Hall, close to where he and his wife Jill lived at the time, if he could get the cast of the sitcom together for a show. Richard, or ‘Dickie’ as we called him, suggested we perform Thomas’s wonderfully lyrical play, staging it as simply as possible as it was to be a one-night stand. Lewisham Concert Hall was an enormous venue, and we were sold out. Possibly because the theatre had advertised it in the Evening Standard London Theatre Guide, and we were billed as stars from Please Sir! in Under Milk Wood, with Duffy, Sharon, Abbott, Maureen, Dunstable, Craven and Mr Price, instead of our own names.

   Under Milk Wood would feature largely throughout my career. Months after the Lewisham performance, Malcolm McFee and Peter Denyer hired Theatre Royal E.15 and staged a full-scale production where we all spent a happy fortnight performing it, and in 1975, Malcolm and I formed a production company and toured nationally with the play, with Ian Talbot, Liz Gebhardt’s husband, as the Narrator. Then in 1978, I was offered the parts of Sinbad Sailors, Dai Bread and Jack Black in a BBC Radio 4 version, with Glyn Houston as First Voice.

   But my favourite production was in the 1980s, when I and my wife Pat formed a small-scale touring company, and we got together with Richard Davies, his wife Jill, and Peter Cleall, touring to small arts and community centres in the south-east. And the play, with its powerful imagery, continues to resonate with me. When I performed it on tour in 1975, Welsh actor Meredith Edwards, told me an allegedly true story about Dylan Thomas hiring a dinner jacket at the Covent Garden branch of Moss Bros and I wrote this as a short story.

    But I often wonder if anyone reading or listening to Milk Wood puzzles over ‘change hums on wires,’ Might I suggest you just point them to this blog for an explanation? Because I’m old enough to remember the meaning of that line.

    And if anyone fancies reading The Poet in Soho, a story about Dylan Thomas, it is included in my collection of short stories Tales from Soho, available at Amazon and other booksellers.

Writing Commissions

Thinking back to some old data and statistics about writing screenplays for TV, I think I remember reading that out of something like 40,000 submissions only 40 get commissioned, in other words a writer is paid to write a completed script, and out of that 40 about only four make it to the screen. So there are dozens upon dozens of writers who are often commissioned, but their creations rarely go into production.

    In 1980, I wrote three episodes of the Thames comedy Keep It In The Family. And not long after these were broadcast, I heard that Humphrey Barclay, who was then head of Light Entertainment at LWT, was looking for six sitcom pilot episodes for Channel 7 in Australia. Because of my success with the three episodes I had written for Thames, I wrote a short idea and synopsis for the Australian series. I then got a call from Humphrey Barclay to go in and discuss my idea which was set in a family run tenpin bowling alley. The very affable Humphrey liked the idea, commissioned it, and I wrote the script and sent it off to him. Weeks later I got a call from him, saying the Australians liked the script, but the trouble was there were no tenpin bowling alleys in Western Australia. Humphrey very graciously said it was their fault, but if I could think of another setting for my script and rewrite it with the same or similar characters which the Australian channel liked, he would recommission it, meaning I would earn a double fee.

   This paid for our deposit on a mortgage for a flat in Tunbridge Wells. And then I heard that Channel 7 had scrapped all six commissioned scripts by various writers without giving a reason for it.

   Later in the 1980s, I submitted a sitcom about seaside photographers to Alan J W Bell at the BBC, Alan was producer of The Last of The Summer Wine. Not a series, I have to admit, that I particularly liked, mainly because I thought a lot of the slapstick with characters in a runaway bath hurtling down a hill and going over a hedge was extremely unfunny. But Alan liked my script, and I was paid the commission for writing it. We had a meeting about my script, and Alan said why don’t we sit in my office and read it aloud. This we did, and then he made suggestions about certain characters degenerating into slapstick along Summer Wines lines, suggesting my police constable chases a car which brakes suddenly and he flies over the top of it. I didn’t like his ideas but made the changes. And then the script fell at the final hurdle.

   Months later I got a call from a BBC Wales producer who said my script had landed on his desk, he liked it and asked me if I could rewrite and reset it in Wales. He came up to London to talk about it and took me out to lunch. He agreed to commission the Welsh version of my script, and then said he had a few hours to kill before he had to catch his train to Paddington. So I took him to the Kismet Club in Soho, which opened at 3 p.m. and shut at 7 p.m. to circumvent the licensing laws at that time. The Welsh producer loved this seedy dive, and thought this was really living, rubbing shoulders with mainly actors and villains, and was thrilled that I had taken him there.

   I was commissioned to write the script, but again, nothing came of it.

   Another script I was commissioned to write early on in that decade was Mr Micawber, which I wrote as a two-page synopsis and gave it to a commercials director I knew, who passed it on to his agent. Five years later the agent, Terence Baker, who was actor George Baker’s brother, got me a commission to write the script for a production company, who were happy with my script, but were looking for an Australian co-production. Unfortunately the Australians said they weren’t interested because they had already had a Dickensian spin-off with Magwitch about the adventures of the Great Expectations convict, and this wasn’t successful. So that was that as far as my Dickens character was concerned.

   Incidentally, Terence Baker represented Jeffrey Archer, and it was he who provided an alibi for his client when the writer denied paying a prostitute money to keep quiet, saying he had taken Archer to lunch at Le Caprice, even though Baker could produce no receipts for that client lunch. Years later, when Archer unsuccessfully sued a newspaper, and received a three year sentence for perverting the course of justice, fortunately Terence Baker – or unfortunately, depending on which way you look at it – had already died, otherwise he too may have been given a custodial sentence for the false alibi.

   But that is life’s rich pageant!

   As for Mr Micawber, I eventually wrote it as a novel, and decades later it was published as Mr Micawber Down Under in hardback by Robert Hale Books in 2011. Unfortunately, a few years later this publisher wrapped up their company, having been around since 1936 maybe they decided enough was enough. There were some of my hardback books left over from the print run, and I bought them in order to secure my copyright, as Hale had reassigned my books to another publisher that I wasn’t happy with.

   I still think my Micawber book would do well if it was published in paperback and e-books. And my current publisher, AUK Ltd, has recently published my Please Sir! The Official History which seems to be doing well. They have also published another Australian Dickens spin-off, The Dreamtime of the Artful Dodger by Norman Eshley and Elizabeth Revill, so perhaps AUK might be interested in a paperback version of my Micawber book.

   Perhaps this is one for next year?

   As for the Artful Dodger book, please get a copy. It is an excellent read. I am halfway through it at the moment and thoroughly enjoying it.

Corona Academy Stage School

1959 was the year of the third Carry On film, Carry On Teacher. For me it was an uncredited role, sitting behind a desk, unaware that I would be sitting behind a desk in 5C eight years later. But for the Carry On film, nearly all the Corona students were used. Featured roles were played by Richard O’ Sullivan, Diana Beevers, Larry Dann, George Howell, Carol White, and her sister Jane, Paul Cole and Roy Hines, brother of Frazer. Jeremy and Nigel Bulloch, and Francesca Annis were also uncredited, along with dozens of other Corona Academy students.

   Later that year I came to play a part which – little did I know it – was the precursor of Frankie Abbott. I was cast as a tearaway character called Slob in a one-off BBC TV drama Roundabout, written and directed by John Elliott.  Although a few years older than me, and therefore a more senior student at Corona, Larry Dann played one of the leading roles. It was an exciting production for me, as we stole a car in one scene, and in another I had to cosh someone over the head, which perhaps made Slob a little more daring than Frankie Abbott.. Much of it was filmed on housing estates in Bermondsey and Chislehurst Caves in Kent, which was a jazz venue, where revellers would go to dance, fornicate if the opportunity arose, and drink cheap cider.  It became a huge jazz scene in the 1950s, with Humphrey Littleton, Chris Barber and Acker Bilk performing there regularly. The jazz bands who appeared with us in Roundabout were The Storyville Jazzmen and The Roy Spiller Six, whom we got to know quite well as they were an integral part of the drama and rehearsed with us in a west London church hall prior to the start of the filming.

   For me one of the highlights of this drama was working with Larry Dann, playing my first substantial television role alongside him. Larry would go on to work for Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop in Oh What a Lovely War, and many years later appeared in dozens of episodes as Sgt Alec Peters in The Bill.

   When we were taught voice production at Corona, we often used to mock some of the exercises Miss Rona Knight, the principal of the school, asked us to do, but later I came to realize just how valuable this physical training was, since I have never had a problem with being heard on stage. We were taught to take deep breaths from the diaphragm, no shallow chest breathing, then neck totally relaxed as we began a gentle humming, increasing in volume as the sound spun in the head, and chanting fully relaxed the litany of Niminy-Nim is a nice little man-n-n-n-n-n, with the last letter-n spinning louder and louder as we were urged to relax and keep it reverberating in the head. And she taught us how to conquer first-night nerves, standing in the wings prior to making your entrance, you imagine you are standing under a soothing shower, the perfect-temperature water trickling through the hair and running down the back, creating a tingling sensation in the fingers, and once more using the diaphragm to breathe gently. The value of Miss Knight’s lessons only became apparent as we matured into adulthood.

        Corona was a private, fee-paying school, which my parents couldn’t afford, but the school assured them that, as I looked younger than my twelve years, they would find me enough professional acting work to cover the fees. Which is what happened. I got so much work in my early teens that my parents never had to pay a penny towards my private education. I use the term ‘education’ loosely because of the constant disruptions when pupils were whisked away, either to attend auditions or appear in a film or television show. Imagine the frustration of teachers trying to educate students who sometimes dropped out of school at a moment’s notice, returning perhaps a day or even weeks later.

    In 1969, prior to the start of the second series of Please Sir!, I worked with Larry again in a Thirty Minute Theatre play for BBC 2. And now I get to work with him again when he appears with  Graham Cole OBE, Suzanne Maddock, Felicity Dean, Judy Matheson and me in The Lives of Frankie Abbott at the Phoenix Arts Club on Saturday 13 November at 2 p.m.

which Misty Moon is producing.

   I am looking forward to that immensely.

Never Work with Animals, Children or Drunks

The most shambolic dress rehearsal I have ever been involved in was on the opening night of Funny Money at Theatre Royal, Windsor, and having a dress rehearsal on the day we were due to open, talk about leaving things until the last minute. It was like the old days of repertory theatre when everyone was pushed for time. But the chaos in this production lay heavily on the shoulders of the leading man Rodney Bewes, who shut the door on the set when it should be left open and vice versa. Also, he seemed to be taking a prompt for every other line.

   Sweating in the wings, prior to the performance, Gareth Hunt told me he had never been so nervous. And I was just as bad. It was the insecurity of not being able to rely on Rodney, playing the character who should have been driving the play along. But however shambolic it was, the audience appeared not to notice the many cock-ups and laughed uproariously at everything. But the second act was something else, which I can only describe as abysmal. Rodney had really lost it, and Trevor Bannister was doing his nut in the wings.’

   In the dressing room after the show, Mark Piper, artistic director of the theatre, came into the dressing room I shared with Ron Aldridge, the director of the play, and I sensed an atmosphere. I decided to head quickly for the bar, but not before I heard Ron telling Mark Piper, ‘We all make mistakes. I can accept that. But he’s done a bottle of port in the interval, and that’s something I find unforgivable.’

   In the Stalls Bar, I sat beside Trevor, who ran Rodney down. And when Rodney appeared, sheepish and quiet, clutching a glass of Coke, Trevor muttered, ‘The cunt has the cheek to drink Coke. He’s not fooling anybody.’

   Ron called a line rehearsal for the next day, which was Press Night. Bill Kenwright wants Rodney to continue, probably because he is very popular and Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads was currently being repeated on BBC television. But unless Rodney improved following Press Night, Ron wanted him out.

   None of this was done behind Rodney’s back. He knew what the score was. He had to get it together or they might find someone to replace him.

    The next day, Press Night, we started a line run at 5 p.m. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief. Rodney was better and had obviously spent the day working on the script. The performance, although still rocky in places, was a vast improvement on the first night.

    (Years later, to promote my book Flashback – An Actor’s Life, I went on the Steve Allen Show on LBC Radio, and the presenter told me that he had Rodney on one of his shows who came straight from the Garrick Club and was clearly pissed. The programme controller happened to be listening in and contacted the presenter to ask what was wrong with his guest. Allen made an excuse for Rodney, telling the programme controller that his guest was ill!)

   But at the Windsor Theatre Royal during the week of Funny Money, sitting in the dressing room in the interval, I stared at my black cat mascot that my mother and father gave me at Windsor 43 years ago and tried to remember what Life with Father, an American play was like. I played the youngest of three brothers and wore a cute little sailor suit in one scene. Playing one of the maids, was Irish actress Doreen Keogh, who would later feature in many TV comedies, including Father Ted and as Mary Carroll in The Royle Family. Mother was played by Noel Dyson, who became Ida Barlow in Coronation Street. Heather Sears played Mary Skinner, and shortly after her Windsor stint, she signed a contract with Romulus Films, earning a British Academy Award for Best Actress for her starring role in The Story of Esther Costello with Joan Crawford. She was only 21 at the time. But the film of hers which I remember most strongly was as the social-climbing Joe Lampton’s hapless fiancée in Room at the Top with Laurence Harvey and Simone Signoret.

   Why are the worst memories sometimes the strongest? All I really remember of my first professional appearance at Windsor is someone’s devious attempt to murder me. During the performance one night, having to eat a bowl of porridge, I was about to shovel a spoonful into my mouth when I noticed something glinting in the bowl, catching the light. It was a pin. I tried to appear unruffled, but my cereal was full of pins, concealed just beneath the surface. It had to be deliberate. But why? Are cute-looking child actors in sailor suits so puke-making as to provoke someone to attempt infanticide? Maybe it was a test to see how I would cope. I did my best to eat heartily while I avoided swallowing the killer pins. And if it was a test, I think I may have passed, carrying on as if nothing had happened.

   I never mentioned the pins to anyone. I ate cautiously for the remainder of the run, but the killer pins didn’t appear again. It was very strange.

   But if I’m honest, the attempted infanticide was nowhere near as alarming as working with Rodney Bewes!

Flashback - An Actor's Life still available but only on Amazon Kindle.

The audio book is available from Amazon Audible and runs to five hours narrated by me, David Barry.

'Imagine yourself travelling - as a member of the company - with a train-load of stars to the great cities of Europe.' Daily Express

'He recounts those years with  great humour, and hilarious events unfold as he describes working for dodgy producers and argumentative actors.' Western Mail

Great Radio Comedies

It was because of Richard Davies and his wife Jill Britton that I eventually got to play Tony Hancock on stage, along with other characters from some great BBC radio comedies. When we appeared in the third series of Please Sir! Richard Davies involved us – the 5C cast – in a production of Under Milk Wood  at Lewisham Concert Hall. Then, in the mid-eighties, Richard Davies, his wife Jill, Peter Cleall, my wife Pat Carlile, Peter Childs and I, mounted a small-scale tour of Under Milk Wood. Peter Childs appeared for three nights at only one venue because he was committed to appearing in several episodes of Minder and we cast another actor in his place.  

    The only props we toured in Milk Wood  were six bentwood chairs, and we used rostra, usually supplied by each venue. The tour was so successful, many theatres selling out and,  benefiting from the goodwill of the theatres we had played, I wanted to create another production but I couldn’t think of anything that didn’t involve scenery, which would then mean transporting a set and all the paraphernalia that went with it. And then it struck me! Radio has no scenery. I thought I could produce a comedy radio show, standing around a BBC microphone as if it was a live recording. I had a word with most of the cast in the Welsh play and everyone thought the radio comedy show was a good idea, so I began to research it and put it together. I called it Radio Fun, kicking off with ITMA in the War Years, The Glums from Take It from Here, The Goon Show, Hancock’s Half Hour and Round the Horne.

   First, though, I needed to get theatre touring rights and my first contact was BBC Enterprises, who demanded six per cent of the box office. When I contacted Norma Farnes, Spike Milligan’s agent and friend for more than thirty-five years, she was extremely helpful. When I told her what the BBC wanted percentage wise, she told me Spike owned the copyright to his Goon Show scripts, and she told me to tell the BBC to 'fuck off'.

   For years after our conversation I had this fantasy of me dialling the BBC switchboard and telling them to fuck off.

   Norma went on to suggest I offer them one per cent just for the goodwill. She also gave me the names of the other writers’ agents and how to contact them.

   When I contacted Barry Took about Round the Horne, he said I could use the rights for

free, he didn’t want any money, and said he could also speak on behalf of Mary Feldman, even without the aid of Doris Stokes. (She was a famous psychic and medium.)

   The show began its small-scale tour in 1987. I wrote additional material linking each episode, which the rest of the cast narrated in a documentary style, all of us standing around an old-fashioned BBC coffin-shaped microphone, and used props for the sound effects, which added a visual mood to each episode. Apart from ITMA, where we made a few cuts because the humour was so dated, every episode was as fresh as when it was first written, the audiences enjoyed it and the show received good reviews. In The Glums, the comedy revolved around Ron who is unemployable, but they eventually get him a job as an art class model, and he is horrified that he might have to appear naked. ‘No, son,’ says his father (originally played by Jimmy Edwards), ‘not naked as such. Just stark symbolic naked.’ The script was by Frank Muir and Denis Norden and was extremely funny. And Round the Horne was just as up to date and would even work in this century seeing as one of the sketches was a hilarious James Bond spoof, and the licensed killer is still around and going strong.

   One of our best dates for this tour was at the Theatre Royal Margate, where we played for a fortnight, and we were joined by Arthur White (David Jason’s brother) as the sixth member of the company.

   There have been many such revived comedies in recent years, using the pretend BBC studio technique, but I like to think we were probably the first production company doing this, and it was all thanks to those wonderful radio scripts, and also the lack of funds to use much in the way of scenery. Necessity being the mother of invention, as they say.

    And now Misty Moon takes over producing a similar production as a cast stands around an old BBC microphone, performing live in front of an audience. This is two half-hour comedies I have written, titled The Lives of Frankie Abbott, which will be recorded for CDs and MP3 downloads at the Phoenix Arts Club on Saturday 13 November at 2 p.m., with Graham Cole OBE, Suzanne Maddock, Felicity Dean, Judy Matheson and Larry Dann.

    And it’s good to know that tickets are already selling well, even though the show is still more than two months away. So hurry up and get your ticket and I hope to see you there!

Something Turned Up – Years Later

In my early twenties I had read only two Charles Dickens novels – A Christmas Carol and A  Tale of Two Cities. And then, having seen W. C. Field’s performance as Mr Micawber in George Cukor’s David Copperfield, little did I think at the time that, almost half a century later, I would follow in the Micawber family footsteps and write about their adventures in Australia.

   In the 1970s, I took to Dickens’ novels, and read most of them, one of my favourites being David Copperfield. And whenever Micawber appeared on the page, I fondly recalled the eccentric Fields and his definitive performance.

   In the 1980s I wrote three episodes of Keep It In The Family for Thames TV and had never considered writing a book. And then I chanced upon a criticism of Dickens by G. K. Chesterton who questioned why the man who created the larger-than-life Micawber could pension him off as a successful colonial mayor in Australia towards the end of the book. It was a lightbulb moment, and I envisaged a TV series about Micawber, with him and his family struggling to make ends meet in this brash new world. I decided to tread cautiously, and to begin with I wrote a two-page synopsis. Then, filming a commercial abroad, I mentioned the idea to the director, who thought it was a terrific proposal and passed it on to his agent, Terence Baker, who agreed and promised he would get a deal, even if it took him five years.

   Fast-forward five years to the mid-1980s and Baker managed to get a deal for the project with Moonlight Films, who were looking for a co-production with Australian TV, and I was duly commissioned to write a pilot script. Although Moonlight Films liked the script, I had only mastered the first hurdle in this long steeplechase. Unfortunately, the Australian TV company had already broadcast Magwitch, a series about Pip’s convict benefactor, and the series was largely unsuccessful, which put the lid on the project, and that ended Moonlight’s interest in the project.

   So that was that. I would not even think about Micawber again until the next millennium, when I had my first novel published. It was then I began to feel confident enough to tackle Micawber as a book. I wrote three chapters and submitted them to the then editor of Vintage Books, who wrote back to say he was intrigued by the submission and would I send the rest of the book. Being still slightly naïve about the world of publishing, I replied saying that I had only written the first three chapters with a synopsis for its development. He then suggested I ring him to discuss its development.

   Now I began to feel excited about Micawber’s prospects. But there were still obstacles to overcome. Prior to my submission to Vintage, I sent the TV script, the one Moonlight Films commissioned, to the BBC, not getting as much as an acknowledgement from them. Then my heart sank when I saw that YTV were about to broadcast Micawber. John Sullivan had been commissioned by the BBC to write David Copperfield. It didn’t work out, so he took the Micawber idea to YTV, and as they were about to broadcast it was when I telephoned the editor at Vintage. I made the fatal error of mentioning it to him, and my horse fell at the final fence. He advised me to shelve it for five or six years and I thought no more about it.

   In March 2011 I decided I would write the rest of the novel and submitted it to Robert Hale Books, and I had a very speedy response, saying they wished to publish it, and it came out in October of the same year. It was only when a friend pointed out to me that 2012 was the Charles Dickens bicentenary that I realized how fortunate the timing was.

   Then in 2012 & 2013, actor, singer and musician, Marie Kelly, who is Branch Secretary at Kent Equity, suggested to me that I might adapt the novel into a play, this I did and then we toured it in the southeast with a cast of Kent Equity members, ending the tour at Epsom Playhouse.

   Unfortunately, Robert Hale, who had been around since 1936, wound up their company, and assigned the rights to another publisher that I was not happy with, and in order to get back the rights I had to buy the remaining stock of books back at the cost of £200

   Micawber is a wonderful music-hall character, and one with whom I can identify. Because of the vicissitudes of the acting profession, I too have been an optimist and behave like a prodigal on occasions, ever the optimist and confident that ‘something is bound to turn up’

   Since performing the play with Kent Equity members, I rewrote it, and it has been published by Lazy Bee Scripts. Anyone who is interested may read the entire play on their website free of charge, and here is the link, just copy and paste it into your browser:

https://www.lazybeescripts.co.uk/Scripts/Results.aspx?iSc=2162

A Spanish Tombstone

I have a great nostalgia for the Spaghetti Westerns from the 1960s, when Hollywood had grown tired of the genre. Then along came Sergio Leone and revived the declining Western with three Italian Westerns – A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More and The Good, The Bad And The Ugly, all starring Clint Eastwood as ‘the man with no name’.

    Nowadays young people prefer sci-fi and fantasy, and one is unlikely to see them queuing to see a cowboy film when hordes will be attracted to Star Wars or Harry Potter. But many movies are Western plots in contemporary or futuristic costumes, like the aforementioned Star Wars, and Clint Eastwood’s second biggest grossing film Gran Torino is an almost rehashed Western plot as he plays a Korean war veteran who has hung up his gun to live a peaceful life and is also a repentant because he shot a surrendering Korean soldier. But when his Asian next door neighbours are terrorised by a gang, he has to revert to his old life and become a man of action again.

    But any Western repeats on television are probably watched by older viewers. And as I fall into that category, I was thrilled to visit Spain in 2019 with Henry Holland and Mark Andrews to visit our very good friend Carol Hawkins, and a highlight of the visit was a trip to Fort Bravo.

    The Spaghetti Westerns were mostly shot in the Tabernas Desert in the Spanish region of Almeria, where the Italian company built the film sets. And our day out at Fort Bravo consisted of a walk through this cowboy town, which looked pretty authentic to me. We arrived just after 11.00 a.m. and as we walked into this quite large town, with its facades of stables, Sheriff’s Office, banks, jails, churches and all the other buildings you would encounter in a Tombstone-like area, from the saloon we heard music blasting out, and it just happened to be the Ennio Morricone instrumental from the films. It was perfect.

    Then after a few beers in the saloon (naturally), there was a show, with dancing girls up on stage doing the Can-Can, and this was followed by rough looking gunslingers performing a Western scenario in the main body of the saloon, complete with fights, and their six-shooters being fired, causing everyone to jump. There was also a great deal of humour and audience participation in the show. It was in Spanish, of course, but we got the gist of it.

    Then after lunch came the pièce de résistance when we sat outside the saloon staring down the main street of the town. Empty at first, and then The Magnificent Seven theme began playing, and the horsemen appeared from around a building at the far end of the street, marching slowly and menacingly in a line toward us. And then a show began with much stunt horse riding, and as some of the gunslingers galloped though the street, some lay horizontal on the horse as if to dodge bullets while firing themselves. And one of the baddies was shot from an upstairs balcony, somersaulting to land in the street – on a padded mat of course.

    We spent five hours at Fort Bravo at the cost of 20 Euros each, and it was money well spent. We all had a fabulous time there, and we were glad we went. I looked it up on the internet when I got home and discovered that in 1970 a storm blew down most of the original film sets and they had to be rebuilt. But that didn’t matter as it all looked pretty authentic and cared for.

    I remembered Clint Eastwood in a documentary saying that because the budget was low for A Fistful of Dollars, Sergio Leone asked him to take his poncho and Stetson back to the hotel with him every evening and look after them, because they didn’t have a duplicate set. Of course, by the time The Good, The Bad And The Ugly  was shot two years later, the budget was much bigger.

    As our visit to Fort Bravo neared the end of the season, we were lucky because we could photograph and pose for photographs with no other visitors encroaching the edge of frame. And one of the things we noticed was the absence of children. Not a single child to be seen.

    Perhaps this was because cowboys or gunslingers don’t have magic wands or books to conjure up spells.

Click on the Youtube link below for the Danish National Orchestra playing The Good, The Bad and The Ugly theme.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enuOArEfqGo

Child Actor

When I look back to 1956, it was probably one of my busiest years as a young actor, kicking off with a brief appearance in a BBC soap opera The Appleyards, directed by Kevin Sheldon, which led to a part in a BBC children’s television science-fiction series, Space School, also produced by Sheldon. It was a story about three children being educated aboard Earth Satellite One. This space station predated the first ever artificial satellite in space by a year, when the Soviet Sputnik 1 was launched, and it was certainly well ahead of the first space station which began orbiting the earth in the 1980s. But they have yet to have astronaut fathers taking their children with them, which was what Space School was about.

   One of the actors I remember was the softly-spoken Canadian actor, Neil McCallum, who played the space station’s cook, who went on to become one of the stars in the last Ealing Studios film which was shot on location in Australia, The Siege of Pinchgut, and he also became the voice of Dr Ray Pierce in Thunderbirds Are Go.

   We rehearsed in a church hall near Shepherd’s Bush, and this was conveniently close to our school. We always had a packed lunch, along with our chaperone, when the adult actors broke for an hour. After lunch, when the producer lurched back into the room, we always noticed how much more animated he had become since the morning rehearsal, his eyes lustrous, blasting us with beer and nicotine breath when he directed us.

   Of course, all this work meant pupils like myself missed many of our school lessons, which were constantly being disrupted when we were whisked away to some grotty rehearsal hall. Imagine the frustration of teachers trying to educate students who sometimes dropped out of school at a moment’s notice, because Hazel Malone’s agency, in conjunction with the school, had a policy of involving many of the pupils as part of a job lot when occasional crowd scenes of children were needed on a picture. Even teenage actors like Richard O’Sullivan who usually played featured film roles were expected to adjust to occasional work as a background artist.  Which is how three years later I found myself standing next to Richard in a crowd scene in Bottom’s Up, a filmed version of the television series Whack-O, starring Jimmy Edwards. We were told this policy of going from featured roles to uncredited extra work was so that no one became conceited or starry, but – cynic that I am – I thought it was more to do with financial gain for both the school and the agency.

   When I was 4 or 5 years older and no longer needed a chaperone, I worked again with Neil McCallum in an Armchair Theatre production. I was cast as in the very small role of a Telegraph Boy in The Night of The Apes, with Petra Davies, Jessie Evans and Neil McCallum in the lead roles, a play about a dishonourably discharged soldier who refused to shoot a terrorist and faces problems when he returns to his hometown. The play was directed by Dennis Vance.

   Following rehearsals in London at the inevitable church hall, we were due to travel to Didsbury, a suburb of Manchester, where we would spend two days at Didsbury Television Studios. We set off one evening from Euston, and spent the entire journey in the dining car, where I was treated to the spectacle of our director behaving badly as he drank copiously during dinner, and threw sugar lumps at everyone, including other passengers who were not with our party. But he did it with such roguish charm, nobody seemed to mind, and he kept everyone entertained.

   The hotel we stayed at in Didsbury was the exotic El Morocco, its decor faux north African, but the proprietors and staff were genuine Moroccans, and some of them wore sheik-like Arab costumes. On our arrival at Manchester Piccadilly, naturally the cast all shared taxis to the hotel, but Dennis Vance seemed to have disappeared. After a fruitless search for our director, his PA gave up and we all clambered into cabs and headed for Didsbury. As we entered the El Morocco, we were greeted by an Arab in full costume, his face half concealed by his headwear, which he tugged aside and said conspiratorially, ‘It’s me chaps. Biggles!’

   Dennis Vance had somehow managed to give everyone the slip, got his own cab to the El Morocco, and persuaded the management to lend him the Arab gear for the gag. Later, some of the cast speculated that he may have done this with other Armchair Theatre productions, as the staff of the hotel played along as if this was a well-rehearsed routine.

   I can’t remember whether I was 17 or just turned 18, but I was now drinking beer and enjoying it, and on the second night at the hotel, I stayed up late with the rest of the cast, way past the staff bedtime. We were left to help ourselves to alcohol and put the money in an honesty till. Imagine that! Leaving a load of actors to help themselves to drinks. But no one took advantage, as far as I can remember.

The Boys in The Band

In 1975 I played Michael in Boys in The Band at Cardiff New Theatre, and became a great friend of Peter Childs, who played Hank in the production. Peter would go on to give a great performance as DS Rycott in Minder.

   Peter and I enjoyed our five week stay in Cardiff. He was a member of the BBC Club, and one day we went out to the BBC Studios at Llandaff to have a drink in the club. We got chatting to some producers and script editors who were knocking back the booze as if the club was about to run out. One of them, a script editor, told this joke:

    A nun outside the convent was irritated by some pigeons, saying to them, ‘Fuck off!’ But the Mother Superior intervened and said, ‘No, no, sister. You shouldn’t say that. You must say, “Shoo, shoo, little pigeons, and they’ll fuck off just the same!”’

    Suddenly there was a tap on the script editor’s shoulder, and a BBC commissionaire, complete with a row of medals on his chest, said, ‘I heard you using language. Cut that out, otherwise you’ll be asked to leave the club.’

    Quick as a flash the script editor asked the commissionaire if he spoke Welsh. He didn’t. ‘Well.’ explained the script editor. ‘You see there are mutations in the Welsh language. And there is no letter V in our alphabet. The F is a V sound. So what you misheard was Buck, which mutated to Vuck.’

    The commissionaire looked very embarrassed and said, ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t realise.’

    ‘That’s all right,’ said the script editor pleasantly. ‘Now you can fuck off!’

    Peter and I often spent long nights drinking with the Welsh Opera Company. Peter went to the trouble of learning ‘Myfanwy’ in Welsh and sang it for them. On their last night they presented him with an LP of the Treorchy Male Voice Choir, and signed it ‘To Peter, an honorary Welshman.’

    Following our two week run in Cardiff, the production was scheduled to go to the MacRobert Centre at Stirling and Norwich Theatre Royal. The former theatre was on the university campus, and again we had concerns about some sort of moral backlash. According to some of the cast members, the homosexual bill had never been ratified in Scotland, and sexual relations between consenting members of the same sex was still against the law. Mind you, to say we were concerned was probably an exaggeration. I mean, who in the theatre doesn’t like a drama? And so we looked forward to anything the Scottish audiences might throw at us, either metaphorically or literally.

   But the trouble in Scotland came from an unexpected source – the Scottish Gay Liberation Front. They reckoned the play was an insult to gays, and audiences were merely being entertained by ‘laughing at poofs’, and the play didn’t deserve to be taken seriously. When we arrived in Stirling, we were shown all the newspaper cuttings condemning the play by the Gay Libs, and the chief in charge of this minority group would be attending our first night.

   The show went brilliantly on its first performance. We knew some of the Gay Lib members were in the audience, and thought they probably squirmed as Barry Howard’s Emory minced and camped it up. In the bar afterwards, the Gay Lib chief introduced himself, and immediately launched into an argument about how clichéd the play was, with stereotypical, limp-wristed gays giving out the wrong messages.

   Most of us in the cast pointed out that Emory was the only effeminate character, and the play showed an entire cross section of the gay community. But he was so intent on getting his point across, he didn’t accept or listen to our arguments. He charged in bitterly with a diatribe on all limp-wristed gays like Larry Grayson and John Inman, who were a disgrace and a pathetic travesty.

   Knowing Barry had once been the long-term partner of John Inman, I saw him bristle, and I waited with eager anticipation for the explosion. Instead, he decided it was time to buy an enormous round of drinks. ‘David, what’ll you have, love? And for you, Peter?’ He went round the entire cast, and there were nine of us, plus the stage management. Finally, he came to the Gay Lib bloke at the end of the row, looked him right in the eye, and said, ‘I’m not buying you one, because you’re a cunt!’

   It was a costly round of drinks, but I guess Barry thought it was worth it to make a point.

Fringe Benefits

By the mid-fifties commercial theatre had become monotonous, giving audiences star-studded casts in well-made plays in box sets. The excitement dwindled as theatre became a social occasion rather than an artistic experience. Time for a radical change.

   In the early days of alternative theatre, performances were usually held in an attic or musty basement. The attitude seemed to be that if you were the sort of weirdo who craved avant garde theatre then you had to suffer discomfort in the cause of art. It was a period of adjustment as well as one of experiment. People began to re-evaluate the role of theatre in society. Suddenly plays began to stimulate audiences’ imaginations again, and the theatre entered another golden period, producing plays by Pinter, Becket, Osborne, Wesker – and many others too numerous to mention – many of whom startled theatre audiences by challenging convention, but who finally became accepted as part of our theatrical heritage. Many new plays were premiered at the Royal Court Theatre, under the initiative of George Devine, and the English Stage Company.

        Their third production, Look Back In Anger was anti-Establishment and rattled the cages of many critics and was lambasted by many. Sir Laurence Olivier saw a performance and said he hadn’t liked the play but confessed that his rhythm of work had become a bit deadly and felt a change was necessary. He was looking for a challenge and he found it in The Entertainer.

     He had undergone a mental strain directing Marilyn Monroe in his film The Prince and The Showgirl, partly because she wanted to be thought of as a serious actor, not a sex symbol, and since 1954 she studied acting under the influence of the cult figure of method acting, Lee Strasberg. On 14 July 1956, Marilyn arrived in London, accompanied by Strasberg, his wife Paula, and her new husband, playwright Arthur Miller. When filming began, there were problems from the start. Marilyn relied on her acting coach Paula Strasberg for direction and Olivier had been warned well in advance to keep the acting guru’s wife well away from the set. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out that way. When Olivier started to give Marilyn direction, she walked away to consult with Paula Strasberg. And she was often three or four hours late arriving on set. Dame Sybil Thorndike, who played the Dowager Queen in the picture, said, ‘Marilyn is the only one of us who knows how to act in front of a camera.’ Despite that flattery, Marilyn still kept the elderly actress waiting for two hours on set.

    It was during this horrendous experience that fate intervened, guiding Olivier towards one of his greatest performances in modern theatre. Arthur Miller advised him to go and see Look Back in Anger again and reassess Osborne as a talented playwright. Heeding Miller’s advice, Olivier returned to the Royal Court to see another performance, then attended a  meeting with John Osborne, to which Arthur Miller went along, who was surprised to hear Olivier, asking a pallid Osborne, who looked as if he’d just got out of bed, ‘Do you suppose you could write something for me?’ As it happened, Osborne was halfway through a script about a washed-up variety artiste called The Entertainer and it wasn’t long before Sir Laurence Olivier was tap dancing, singing and making vaudevillian jokes at the Royal Court in the playwright’s second play. It became one of his most magnificent performances, as he really captured the seedy vaudevillian comedian on his last legs. I didn’t see the play at the Royal Court but I saw his great performance when it was made into a film and released in 1960, directed by Tony Richardson, who also directed the play.

   The Edinburgh Festival played an enormous part in establishing alternative theatre and provided us with the word ‘fringe’ to denote this optional extra to commercial theatre. Gradually the fringe has become accepted and respectable over the years and has changed the course of theatre. The term ‘small’ or ‘small-scale’ when applied to a production no longer meant inferior, because fringe theatre had become so popular by the late-sixties/early-seventies, new theatres and arts complexes started to incorporate small studio theatres in their designs, and many existing repertory theatres began to look for extra space in which to accommodate a studio theatre. And in recent years many so-called fringe productions have actually transferred to West End theatres or undergone national tours.

     As an actor for almost sixty years, having started in professional theatre as a child actor, I had never worked the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, not until 2016, when Stuart and Jen Morriss of Misty Moon produced A Day in The Lives of Frankie Abbott, which I wrote and appeared in, first of all touring to small venues in the south-east, playing opposite Linda Regan, and then for two weeks at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival with Anita Graham (where we received a 5-star review in the Edinburgh Evening News), before returning for two London dates with Marie Kelly playing Abbott’s carer.

    Although taking the play to Edinburgh was hard work, it was rewarding, and at least I can say that I have worked at the Edinburgh Festival and can now cross it off my bucket list!

   Now I have written, with a slight change in title, The Lives of Frankie Abbott, and this Misty Moon is presenting live at Phoenix Arts Club in front of an audience on 13 November, and this will be recorded for audio downloads and CDs.

   I have expanded the cast, and we now have five actors in Episode 1, with Graham Cole, Suzanne Maddock, Felicity Dean and Judy Matheson, and Larry Dann will join us for Episode 2. Anyone who hasn’t been to the Phoenix for a while will be bowled over by the improvements. This is one of London’s premier cabaret clubs, and it will be great to do this live and recorded show, much as the BBC used to record Round the Horne.

The Monochrome Days

In 1959, when I was 16, I was sent by Hazel Malone, Corona Academy’s agent, to Elstree Studios to appear as a telegram boy in Moment of Danger, a thriller starring Trevor Howard, Dorothy Dandridge and Edmond Purdom. When I got to the studio, I thought there had been a mistake, our agency having sent the wrong actor along, because they told me the part was in Spanish. ‘But I don’t speak Spanish,’ I told the assistant director. Not to worry, I was assured. It was only two lines, and they had a language coach who would teach me to pronounce the Spanish correctly. I guessed I had been cast purely from a photograph and CV that Malone’s office had sent in. When I was needed on set, I knocked on the door and I rattled off my two lines in Spanish as I delivered my telegram, then went home seven pounds richer, less the ten per cent agency fee of course. In today’s money that would have been around £170.

   This was the year of the third Carry On film, Carry On Teacher. For me it was an uncredited role, sitting behind a desk, unaware that I would be sitting behind a desk in 5C eight years later. But for the Carry On film, nearly all the Corona students were used. Featured roles were played by Richard O’ Sullivan, Diana Beevers, Larry Dann, George Howell, Carol White, and her sister Jane, Paul Cole and Roy Hines, brother of Frazer. Jeremy and Nigel Bulloch, and Francesca Annis were also uncredited, along with dozens of other Corona students.

   Later that year I came to play a part which – little did I know it – was the precursor of Frankie Abbott. I was cast as a tearaway character called Slob in a one-off BBC TV drama Roundabout, written and directed by John Elliott. Although a few years older than me, and therefore a more senior student at Corona, Larry Dann played one of the leading roles. It was an exciting production for me, as we stole a car in one scene, and in another I had to cosh someone over the head. Much of it was filmed on housing estates in Bermondsey and Chislehurst Caves in Kent, which was a jazz venue, where revellers would go to dance, fornicate if the opportunity arose, and drink cheap cider.  It became a huge jazz scene in the 1950s, with Humphrey Littleton, Chris Barber and Acker Bilk performing there regularly. The jazz bands who appeared with us in Roundabout were The Storyville Jazzmen and The Roy Spiller Six, whom we got to know quite well as they were an integral part of the drama and rehearsed with us in a west London church hall prior to the start of the filming.

   For me one of the highlights of this drama was working with Larry Dann, playing my first substantial television role alongside him. Larry would go on to work for Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop in Oh What a Lovely War, and many years later appeared in dozens of episodes as Sgt Alec Peters in The Bill.

   The most iconic image in British cinemas was ‘Bombardier’ Billy Wells banging that gong to herald the start of a J Arthur Rank picture. Rank, was a millionaire flour miller who became arguably the most powerful movie mogul in Britain, owning cinemas, studios and stars. He was a Methodist Sunday-school teacher and, ironically, his name is common rhyming slang for masturbation. His involvement with the Methodist church led to his policy of showing short religious films at his cinemas on a Sunday, which is how I came to play the title role in one of his films, The Fred James Story, the only time I have ever played the title role on screen, in a film I have never seen.

   Fred James was a railway porter who became a Methodist minister. And that was about it! A story that could have you sitting on the edge of your seat.  Another Corona pupil, Paul Cole, was playing a school chum of Fred’s in the film, and our first day’s shoot on location was a riot of bad behaviour. Captain Walker, a grizzled man who obviously insisted on retaining his military title, was the director. Unfortunately, he had a wall-eye. This proved a handicap when he directed us as we weren’t sure which one of us he was talking to, made doubly difficult by his inability to remember names, either our own or the characters’. Paul stepped forward at Walker’s command, then the director became impatient and said something like, ‘Not, not you, Ron, I meant Johnny.’ Who were these people he gave directions to? It soon degenerated into farce, with Paul and me spluttering with laughter, attempting to conceal it with handkerchiefs covering our faces, but the tears in our eyes betrayed our irreverent hilarity. There was no excusing our bad behaviour, but we really couldn’t control ourselves. Every time the captain opened his mouth to direct these non-existent actors, we fell about.

   I believe the showing of these short religious films was not a success, as most of the yobs or teddy boys who attended the cinemas on wet Sunday afternoons took the piss out of them, and so they disappeared, never to be seen again. I would like to think The Fred James Story did have a showing in some flea pit at least once, and the yobs blew me almighty raspberries and shouted obscenities. That thought cheers me up no end.

Film and TV Clichés

We all know them, don’t we? They seem like old familiar friends whom we tolerate, although they can become tiresome when they repeat themselves ad nauseum.

   It is the war film that has created some of the biggest clichés. Deep in the jungle, it is always the young soldier who reveals the beloved picture of his wife or girlfriend who is the next to die. And the friendly sergeant who takes the young conscript under his wing, so that when the rookie soldier confides, ‘I’m scared,’ Sarge. To which the sergeant replies, ‘We’re all scared, son.’

    And in the crime TV series you just know that the honest copper who is a week away from retirement and called out to a robbery is the one who will get shot. These are always the inevitable deaths, and we just know what will happen. The trouble is with these scenarios, there are no surprises.

    And always when a senior police officer gives an underling a command, the minion’s reply is always, ‘I’m onto it.’

    And the gangsters in these series are usually Cockney or Glaswegian, never Welsh or Cornish. But just sometimes the top baddie is upper class and listens to grand opera, and this too has become over-used. And they always meet in that derelict factory or underground car park, shout at each other, and have a stand-off.

   But it is the car chase that has been done to death with the way they always hit the fruit and veg stall. In fact, Bob Bayne, a friend of mine, who was a prop man for Yorkshire Television told me that when he was with a director ready to film a fight scene in a basement, Bob asked him, ‘Where do you want the fruit and veg stall?’

   The cars should always burst through a wedding party, too. And other cars on the road conveniently miss the main cars, although they crash into other cars causing mayhem.

   Another well-worn device is the person who talks to a dear departed one via the gravestone, giving the writer an opportunity for exposition, so that the viewer might piece together a bit of the plot. Their dead ones are never cremated for this reason, because talking to an urn of ashes is nowhere near as effective.

   We have all seen the grumpy old bugger who doesn’t get on with anyone until he is befriended by a young child with problems, and the old tosser is suddenly blessed with the milk of human kindness (apologies for that cliché).

    In horror films, groups of teenagers rather than stick together always split up to investigate something scary and go off in different direction so that they can be picked off one by one.

    But these are all writers’ clichés. Directors and DOPs are also prone to these hackneyed movie moments, especially when it comes to the focus pull If you are not technically minded, let me explain about what has become a cinematographic cliché. If there are perhaps two people in a scene, and one of them is out of focus, the person in focus is the subject of attention, then the focus is pulled and changes to the other person, and they become the subject.

    You probably know the scene, having endured it hundreds of times on television. Two people talking in a car, with the focus switching between whoever happens to be speaking. The trouble with scenes like this is it makes me very aware that what I am watching is a piece of film and I cease to become so involved in the action or the dialogue, watching as the camera switches from one subject to another. Of course, some viewers are never fazed by this, never notice it even, which is fair enough.

   But there is often a reason for using this technique. It is a cheap and quick way of filming. A scene can be shot with a one camera set-up, and if the actors know their lines, the scene can be achieved rapidly, and then it’s on to the next location. I have never seen a single focus pull in a classic black and white film. And this device, as far as I know, has never been used for comedy. Even TV spin-off films like On the Buses or Please Sir! never resorted to this device, despite being shot in a shorter time than many drama features. Of course, a person speaking out of focus in a comedy would destroy the feed and tag. Which is also why most comedies do not have the dirty big close-up of a person. Huge close-ups work better for drama.

    The other hackneyed bit of camera work is the joie de vivre moment, taking the camera in a whirlwind 360 degree spin around a joyful couple, but only succeeds in making me dizzy and irritated with the director, and I always feel like writing to him or her with a Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells letter.

    So that’s that as far as I have given you a few film and TV clichés, and I now want to get back to the Wimbledon tennis.

    But I’m sure you can come up with a few of these hackneyed moments I may have missed. Good luck!

That’s Entertainment

‘I can’t stand the way they suddenly burst into song in musicals,’ I once heard someone remark. Which is about as sensible as objecting to books because they contain written material. I rather suspect the person who made this sweeping statement had only ever seen a handful of filmed musicals, where the bursting-into-song syndrome tends to look staged and false, because the conventions of a stage musical become emasculated by a medium that is constantly striving for realism.

   Of course, I appreciate that many people hate musicals. When Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd was made into a film, starring Johnny Depp, a woman who was one of his devoted fans complained because she hated musicals and demanded her money back. Clearly she hadn’t noticed Music and Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim on the posters. I hope they didn’t pander to her ignorance and refund her ticket money.

   There is no getting away from the fact that stage musicals are the most popular form of theatre (up until the lockdown that was). More than half the listings in the Official London Theatre Guide were either musicals or opera.

    For me, the coming of age of the musical was in 1959. I appeared in a non-speaking role in an episode of the Granada TV series Knight Errant, and I was staying in a small Manchester hotel. The little-known musical West Side Story had just opened for its pre-West End try out at the Opera House. One of the pit musicians happened to be staying at our hotel, and I asked him what the show was like. ‘Well,’ he began, less than enthusiastically, ‘it’s a sort of jazz-ballet. I don’t think it’ll run.’

    Later that year, I queued in London to buy tickets to see it at the Haymarket Theatre. I, and a school friend, managed to get six-shilling seats standing at the back of the stalls. If I suffered any discomfort from my two and a half hour stand, I didn’t notice, so engrossed was I in this energetic, dynamic musical. To me this was a turning point. Musicals could have a strong narrative and deal with serious subjects.

    Growing up in North Wales I didn’t get to see much in the way of theatre, it was mainly films at the Royal Cinema in Amlwch. But I do remember being taken by my parents to Liverpool, where we saw at the Empire Theatre a post-West End tour of Carousel.

    Many decades later I can’t help wondering if Gerry Marsden’s parents took him to see this production and ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ filtered into his brain?

    There are no hard and fast rules as to what makes a musical. Almost any subject can be handled, from the light-hearted Me and My Girl to the threat of Naziism and decadence in pre-war Germany in Cabaret.

   Shakespeare has provided many plots for musicals, and Cole Porter’s Kiss Me Kate, based on The Taming of The Shrew is about a theatre company producing Shakespeare’s play, when the husband and wife stars have fallen out. But the showstopping number is sung by two Bronx-accented enforcers come to collect the leading man’s gambling debt. They suddenly burst into ‘Brush up your Shakespeare, start quoting him now. Brush up your Shakespeare, and the women you will wow!’  And later comes the line, ‘If she says your behaviour is heinous, Kick her right in the ‘Coriolanus’.

    Return to The Forbidden Planet is a rock musical based on a sci-fi film which was based on The Tempest, so in a roundabout way leading back to Shakespeare, and The Lion King is based on Hamlet. And there have been many other musicals based on classic writers, including Chaucer, Bernard Shaw, Dickens. There have been musicals about composers, God, cartoon characters, prostitutes, transvestites, hippy draft dodgers, rock singers, dozens of jukebox musicals – the list is endless. There was even a musical about the Vietnam My Lai massacre. It was called Lieutenant and ran for only 9 performances but was nominated for a Tony Award.

    Pantomime, that very British Christmas entertainment could just about be described as a musical, as most pantos contain many songs and dances, although unlike ‘proper’ musicals their rehearsals are scant, and I have appeared in pantos before now which have been thrown on with only eight days’ rehearsal.

    In Doncaster I worked with Malcolm McFee with only just over a week to rehearse in Robin Hood & The Babes in The Wood. I can remember us having to rehearse a song and dance for hours on end when we had a break from the rest of the cast. We were the silly robbers and the number we sang was ‘We’re Busy Doing Nothing’ which came from the Bing Crosby musical A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court from a story by Mark Twain.

    During my career I worked in several musicals, including the one for which I wrote the script, The Trail of The Lonesome Pine, and Big Sin City and Fings Ain’t Wot They Used T’Be. But my favourite was The Wizard of Oz and is in one of my top ten films of all time.

    And what of the future for musicals? What bizarre subjects will be employed in this hybrid art form, I wonder? The spoken word of the non-musical theatre is the better at communicating ideas, but music can have a powerful effect on our emotions, which may partly explain the popularity of the musical.

Judging a Book by its Cover

They say you should never judge a book by its cover, but I suspect this is not meant to be taken literally and is probably a metaphor for some greater truth, instructing us to admire another human being’s inner beauty rather than going on just looks.

    With books it’s a different kettle of fish. Of course people judge them on their covers, because people in bookstores have to be attracted enough by the design to pick them up in the first place. Half the battle is getting a potential customer to pick up a book, turn it over and read the blurb on the back. To achieve this obvious marketing strategy, the book needs a good design. 

My first novel was published in 2002. Each Man Kills is a thriller located in South

Wales, published by Gomer Press a south Wales publisher. I had had good experiences with this publisher and when the book was almost ready for the printers, I was asked for suggestions for the cover design. So far so good.

    The plot of my thriller hinges on Celtic mysticism, and an escape following ley lines and ancient druidic stones and monuments. I suggested a  black and white photograph of an ancient stone, surrounded by atmospheric mist on a gloomy day, and a red trickle of blood running down the stone, the only colour on the cover. A bit like Schindler’s List, which was shot in monochrome, but with occasional and unnerving glimpses of a would-be victim seen in red. My publishers seemed to like the idea and said they would soon be in touch with a proof. But a proof never came. As the launch date of the book drew close I was presented with a fait accompli; the book arrived in the post one morning and on the cover was a rather unsubtle photograph of a hooded man grabbing a woman from behind with a knife to her throat. My initial reaction was negative. But, as it was my first published book, I became impatient to see it released and pushed any doubts I had about the cover to the back of my mind, convincing myself that I liked it. This was consolidated by the enthusiasm of the editor informing me how pleased they all were with the design. I well and truly buried my doubts.

    Months later a friend of mine lent her copy of my book to a friend, who read it and said she was surprised at how good it was. I was told that had she not known about me, and seen the book in a store, she wouldn’t have bothered to pick it up because of the cover. I knew then I had made a grave error and should have trusted my first gut reaction. I had been too eager to become a published writer to form an objective opinion about the design. And I had no one else to blame but myself. I got on well with the editor and hadn’t even mentioned to her my concerns about the cover.  I could at least have tried to gently persuade her that the cover was lurid. Of course, she might have told me it was too late to change the design, and maybe it was. But what really annoys me is that I didn’t even try.

    I suppose, if a writer is already famous and has a huge following, the book cover is not so important. On the other hand, in 1975, when I performed with Malcolm McFee in Pauline Macauley’s play The Creeper at Hull New Theatre, on my travels around the city I saw East of Eden by John Steinbeck in a second-hand bookshop. It had a ghastly cover: a badly drawn picture of a half-naked woman in the arms of what looked like a western saloon gambler. But I had already read Cannery Row, Sweet Thursday and The Grapes of Wrath, so the cover didn’t matter to me. I bought it and loved every page of it.

   When I showed it to Malcolm, he laughed and said jokingly, ‘So you’re reading dirty books now.’ Of course, Malcolm was familiar with Steinbeck, and we both spoke about those two great films: The Grapes of Wrath, starring Henry Fonda, and East of Eden with James Dean. And he agreed that it was a disgusting cover, and whoever had published that version of the novel should have been executed for the design of that cover.

    But, I thought, supposing someone who had never heard of Steinbeck bought a copy of that version of the book, thinking every page had steamy sex scenes as promised by the book cover?  Perhaps the opening chapters and the descriptions of the Salinas Valley in California might prove to be a huge disappointment, however evocative and well written.

     The trouble is, the original cover of Each Man Kills looks as if there is a great deal of violence against women in the novel, and this is far from the truth of my story, unlike many other thrillers on the market. But when it was republished by Andrews UK in 2014, the cover design of the atmospheric forest scene at twilight is so much better.

Recording in Soho

A film I watched on Talking Pictures a while back was The Small World of Sammy Lee, released in 1963 and starring Anthony Newley as a Soho reprobate and compere of a seedy strip-tease club, who owes money to some very nasty people from gambling, and his small world is centred around this famous district as he dashes around trying to raise the readies before the heavies catch up with him. As I watched the film I was pleased to see the exteriors were shot in Soho, and I recognised many of the clubs, bars, restaurants and shops.

   Originally called Sammy it was a TV play first, and a one-person drama, with Newley in his seedy Soho apartment trying to raise money by telephone before his small world falls apart. I can remember seeing the TV drama and how effective it was.

   The film, directed by Ken Hughes, was not successful at the box office, even though it was adapted and expanded with a great cast, including Julia Foster. Perhaps this was because it was about a loser who was going nowhere, except to get beaten up on a garbage heap.

   But the successful Soho loser was Budgie, and I watched every episode of the two series when they repeated it last year on Talking Pictures. Adam Faith was excellent as the ducking-and-diving small-time thief and conman, always trying to get in with Glaswegian Charlie Endell, the gangster and porn shop owner who uses Budgie to do some of his dirty work, for which Budgie always loses out.

   I was also pleased to see that the exteriors of the series were mostly shot in Soho, and I occasionally caught glimpses of Cecil Gee’s Men’s Outfitters or Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club.

   I have written quite a bit about Soho, especially in my book of fictional short stories Tales from Soho. But Soho does have some interesting history, such as Theodore the King of Corsica being buried there, and Karl Marx lived in the district and wrote much of the Communist Manifesto from above the Red Lion pub in Great Windmill Street, and what was once known as the York Minster pub became ‘The French House’ and it was where during the war members of the French Resistance and General de Gaulle met to plan their campaigns against the German occupation.

    And then there was Dr John Snow who identified the source of a cholera outbreak to a water pump in Broad Street (now Broadwick Street). Soho is just teeming with history, as well as being a centre of entertainment. And Wardour Street was crammed with many offices of film companies, with dozens of recording studios in the area.

    One of the main hallmarks of Soho is its history of recording studios. Possibly the most renowned was the Trident Studios  at St Anne’s Court in the heart of Soho, where many bands recorded some great hits, including Elton John and David Bowie, but to mention all the musicians that recorded there would take up another 10,000 words of this blog…and the rest.

   My memories of recording studios are of the many voice-overs I did in the 1970s. I was always the cheeky Cockney, as you might have guessed. I can never remember the products or the scripts I read, but I do clearly remember my brief sojourn (recordings usually lasted an hour) with many actors, like the voice over I did with Warren Clarke and James Bolam, and what was said about Rodney Bewes, which I wrote about in Please Sir! The Official History.

And my brief stint with Julie Walters, who was just starting to make a name for herself when she appeared in the West End in Educating Rita. Having not seen the play, I didn’t know who she was, but the recording producer had clearly seen it and booked her for this session on the strength of it. Then and there, I made up my mind to see the play as soon as possible.

   What struck me about Julie Walters during that session was how natural and unpretentious she was, especially when she leaned over to me and whispered so that the sound engineer couldn’t hear and said, ‘This is money for old rope, isn’t it?’

   From her remark, I guessed this may have been her first ever voice-over. Not long after the session, I went to see Educating Rita, and was captivated by her brilliant performance. Weeks later I happened to be at Theatre Royal E.15, and there she was in the bar during the interval. I told her how much I had enjoyed her performance and she was openly delighted with the compliment.

    Back in those days, voice-overs were well paid, especially if you had a TV track record. I was appearing in Aladdin at Porthcawl during Christmas of 1975, and we only just over a week’s rehearsal. The producers, who were also in it as the Chinese Policemen, were disorganised and fairly useless, so that by the second day we had achieved very little. Then my agent got in touch and asked if there was any possibility of my doing a voice-over the next day. Of course, I agreed, I would do it. I told the producers I had to visit a doctor on Wednesday morning ( and let them make of that what they will, I thought), and I caught the early 125 train from Bridgend to Paddington, and was in the Soho studio by 10.00 a.m.

    If I was always doing the silly, character voices, it was often Keith Baron who did the straight voice selling the product. Keith was then one of the kings of voice overs, and this was about the third voice over where we had bumped into each other. I knew Keith having worked with him in a BBC 2 Somerset Maugham play. But after this particular session ended, his pager bleeped, summoning him to yet another voice-over in yet another Soho studio.

   Whereas I had to catch a fast train back to Bridgend. I arrived back at rehearsal just after lunch, and very little had been achieved in my absence, and so I had absolutely no regrets about my deception. Ho-hum!

A Year in Aberdeen

Between 2007 and 2008, I spent a year in Aberdeen as a Writer in Residence on a project called The Reading Bus, a vehicle similar to a travelling library, but filled with mainly children’s books and puppets, with a screen for showing various video projects. The job came about because of information I received from a bulletin sent out by The Writers’ Guild, of which I am a member. I applied for the job, sending off my CV, and weeks later I received a reply saying they would like to interview me in Aberdeen. They arranged a flight for me from Gatwick, and a small hotel in Aberdeen, as the interview was in the morning and so I had to fly up the night before.

    I was interviewed on The Reading Bus by Jenny Watson, who was manager of the project, a primary head teacher, and some of their staff and two sixth form students. I outlined my writing project for primary pupils where I would invite them to think creatively about an imaginary personal space belonging to one or more characters, and the writing would end on a cliff-hanger, and the reader would be challenged to guess what had happened within the space after they were uploaded onto the Reading Bus website. I was also taken by one of the staff to a local library where I did an interactive reading with nine-year-old children. When the interview ended, and before catching a cab back to central Aberdeen, I asked how many applicants they were interviewing, and I was told six, and five had already been interviewed.

    Before leaving to catch my flight home, I had a spot of lunch at a Chinese restaurant in the city centre. I had just been served when my phone rang. It was Jenny Watson to tell me I had got the job. And there was me thinking I would have to wait weeks to hear.

    The school summer holidays are different in Scotland; they break up earlier and resume the last week in August, which meant I had to set off on Saturday 18 August. Tunbridge Wells to Aberdeen is about 600 miles, and so I spent the Saturday night with friends in Leeds before continuing my journey on Sunday, ready for my induction at a school on Tuesday.

    I checked into my Aberdeen digs late Sunday afternoon, temporary accommodation until the flat I would be renting became available a week later. Having driven from Leeds fuelled on a banana, two oranges and a packet of bacon fries, I felt in need of a proper meal, so I took a  long walk from my digs to the far end of Union Street and ordered a roast dinner in a nearby branch of Wetherspoon’s. Unfortunately, I chose a table next to two couples who were loudly inebriated, and the fatter of the two blokes found it hilarious to keep shouting on about “Lanzafuckin’grotty!”

    Welcome to Wetherspoon’s, I thought.

    On my first Monday in the granite city, I explored some of the pubs, and soon discovered that football had replaced religion in Scotland, certainly in the urban areas. Every pub you went into was filled with banks of television screens showing soccer matches from near and far. Blokes stared like zombies at football matches in silence, not registering much collective enjoyment. Thankfully, after I had been in Aberdeen a while, I discovered two pubs with no TV, which was a bonus. Where football is concerned, I remain an atheist.

    My job description meant that I only worked four days a week, and one day was set aside for my writing, so that I could continue working on my children’s novel The Ice Cream Time Machine, and as it developed I would often read some of it to the children I taught to judge their reactions.

    I thoroughly enjoyed the creative writing sessions I did with the children, mainly in their last primary year before secondary school. Two of the projects I did with them over the course of that year were published in small books, and I also took four children once a week to a local radio station where they broadcast their own hour-long radio show, each child being given a 15 minute segment as presenter.

    Occasionally, older secondary pupils participated and came aboard the bus for a talk. Although they knew I was an actor, none of them had heard of Please Sir! but many of them recognised me from an episode of Chucklevision I appeared in.

    Often at weekends I drove out to a lovely seaside town, Cruden Bay, and years later this became the setting for a murder scene in my thriller Walking Shadows. I also used to go to a nature reserve, an area of sand dunes, on which businessman Donald Trump wanted to build a golf course, dividing the community. And who could possibly guess back then that this man would one day become the most ridiculous US president?

    During Christmas and Easter, when the schools broke up, rather than stay on my own in Aberdeen I flew back home. During my stay in the granite city they did a televised test, challenging two people to leave the city centre and meet at London’s Piccadilly Circus, one travelling by rail and the other by air. I can’t now remember who won the race because there was only five minutes difference in it. So if the train is just as quick, why did I choose to fly home? Because the train was more than double the price of the air fare.

    I was sad when my year in Aberdeen ended. I had enjoyed all the challenging creative projects I did with many children from various schools. Our Reading Bus visited many schools on different days. Sometimes Norman, our bus driver, had difficulty manoeuvring the enormous bus through small gaps in school gates, when I always used to wind him up by saying:

    ‘Come on, Norman. You could get a bus through there!’  

Nostalgia

‘I’ve never seen a view that didn’t look better looking back,’ sang Lee Marvin in the ‘Wanderin’ Star’ song from Paint Your Wagon. And I guess we all do it when all is not right in the world and we have to look tragedy in the face. We think those summers back then were truly gorgeous. I took myself back to the late sixties and seventies during the first lockdown by writing Please Sir! The Official History and many people have responded favourably as they treasure memories of a series which I worked in and counted myself lucky to be involved in with such a fabulous cast. And after writing this autobiographical book, other memories of those decades have come flooding back.

   Prior to starting the series you might have caught me swanning around in a kaftan, all the rage at the time in those Beatlemania days. These were the days of flower power and love and peace, so it’s no wonder the view is always better looking back. You would often glimpse shared lovemaking when hippies disrobed at music festivals. You had to be young, though, in the sixties, otherwise it must have been…well, Philip Larkin summed it up better than I could in his poem Annus Mirabilis.

           So life was never better than

           In nineteen sixty-three

           (Though just too late for me)—

           Between the end of the Chatterley ban

           And the Beatles’ first LP.

    Around the early seventies there was a curious custom about running naked across football or rugby pitches. This was called streaking and this fad soon caught on and in 1974 a Daily Mirror photographer got an iconic shot at Twickenham when a policeman’s helmet came in handy for covering another helmet.

   The other fashions at the time, apart from dashing about in your birthday suit, were platform soles. I remember owning a pair in bright red, but I don’t think I wore them that much, and was glad when they soon disappeared. Flares soon went out of fashion, I think before the decade was out. And the pacifists' kaftan changed to a more aggressive bomber jacket. Then there were flowery shirts with enormous collars, worn with identical matching flowery ties. This was just the men, of course. Women’s skirts changed on a daily basis from ankle length to mini, depending on their mood. But the men’s fashion I really liked were velvet suits, and they were practical, as they could also be used as a dinner suit worn with a black bow tie.

    And if you were extremely rich in those days, and likely to die from an incurable disease, then you could turn to cryogenics. After your death you could be frozen until some future date when they might find a cure for whatever killed you and – hey presto! – resurrection.

Now we are in the noughties, I don’t know if there are any wealthy recipients of cryogenics whose frozen bodies have been preserved somewhere, or was this just another passing fad?

    If you asked anyone who was around during the ‘60s or ‘70s, what they might remember, it would probably be music, but along with music came all those advertising jingles, like Beanz Meanz Heinz. I can distinctly remember Homepride flour, those bowler-hatted little flour graders sifting busily, and the James Bond figure who always climbed through a woman’s window late at night just because she loved Cadbury’s Milk Tray. Sometimes the adverts back then resulted in some outrageous graffiti. Typhoo put the T in Britain resulted in: ‘If Typhoo put the T in Britain, who put the c**t in Scunthorpe.

    But not all adverts were successful, even though they might have had a fortune spent on them. In 1960, a trilby-hatted Frank Sinatra lookalike stood on one of London’s bridges alone one gloomy night, took out a Strand cigarette and lit it, and the tag was: ‘You’re Never Alone with a Strand.’ Which of course was contrary to what they showed, and it killed the cigarette off forever. And I heard of an actor turning up to shoot a Findus or Bird’s Eye commercial, and the tag or pack shot was: ‘Try our tasty cod pieces.’ When they asked the actor why he was giggling, and he explained the reason, the ad was pulled, and I bet he wished he’d kept his mouth shut now that he wouldn’t be getting repeat money for the showings. Another ad which was transmitted for a time until the Netherlands-based clients realised there was a very different meaning to the tag and logo for the Dutch cheese which said, ‘Look for the girl with the little Dutch cap.’

   Not long after The Fenn Street Gang ended my agent sent me to meet with an ad agency executive at J. Walter Thompson in Berkeley Square, who explained that they wanted me for a commercial, and it would be me sitting behind a desk, while a teacher’s arm held a packet of Golden Wonder crisps. Each time I took one I would say the word ‘Wonderful,’ and this said the ad man would supersede the key word of the seventies, which was ‘super!’

Soon, he said, everyone would be saying ‘Wonderful!’ because of me.

   It gave me nightmares. I imagined walking into pubs where everyone would cry ‘Wonderful!’ ‘How’s your mum’s legs, Frankie?’ I could just about cope with, but not that association with crisps. And even worse, walking onto the stage in a straight role and the audience whispering audibly that dreaded word.

   I phoned my agent and turned it down. Curiously, I never ever remember seeing that ad with anyone else, and thankfully wonderful never became the ‘in’ word. Not like amazing nowadays. I get sick of hearing ‘amazing’ following every minor achievement. I wonder if we can get as many people to use a different word. It might catch on, you never know. Instead of the word ‘amazing,’ what about ‘spiffing’, instead? And then everyone will sound like Bertie Wooster.

    It might just work!

Now You See It…

I have always been a sucker for magic tricks. About four years ago I saw Derren Brown at the Assembly Hall Theatre in Tunbridge Wells. At the start of the second half, he did a mind reading act, and when he revealed details about a woman sitting in the row in front of me, she began yelling excitedly that he was so accurate he had to be psychic. ‘How could he have possibly known that?’ she asked her partner.

    But Derren Brown is honest about his tricks and illusions not being anything to do with superstition. He lets his audiences know these are tricks, despite concealing the truth of how they are done. Although, if I could hazard a guess on how he deceived the woman in front of me, might he have sent an assistant into the bar in the interval to eavesdrop on conversations?

And, although Derren Brown insists he is not a psychic, still there were people leaving the theatre that night who were convinced he had psychic powers. I guess it’s because people want to believe, even though science can demolish most beliefs that are taken on trust.

   I think my love of magic tricks and illusionists goes back to my teenage years when I lived in Brentford and we would often travel to the Chiswick Empire, one of the last of the great Moss Empires to be demolished to make way for an office block or supermarket. But it was at this wonderful suburban theatre I first saw the illusionist The Great Levant, and many other magicians. The Chiswick Empire incidentally has been preserved as a great piece of pop art by Sir Peter Blake who created the ‘Sergeant Pepper Lonely Hearts Club Band’ cover, and he has used the same creative process as he did with the Beatles famous album cover to preserve the memory of that once great theatre, using the same technique as he did with Sergeant Pepper, with all the famous entertainers who worked there lined up in front of the theatre, everyone from Laurel and Hardy to Tommy Steele. Oh! Where was I? Yes, back to the magic tricks.

    The way most magicians operate is through misdirection, drawing the observer’s attention to something else. As an actor I can appreciate that, getting audiences to focus on what we want them to see even when another actor is speaking. This type of misdirection can either be a positive focus or a negative one.

    First, let me give you a negative example of misdirection. I was in a play called Forget-Me-Not Lane by Peter Nichols, and I had a line that was a sure-fire laugh but was greeted with silence. Behind me stood Dave King, who made a sudden move during my delivery of the line, so that the audience’s attention was distracted. Upstaging someone is a form of negative misdirection.

    Now for the positive. I was performing, alongside Bob Grant, in Ray Cooney and Tony Hilton’s brilliantly constructed farce, One For The Pot. I played Hickory Wood, a trio of triplets using various dialects. I needed two assistant stage managers who would double for me as I ran backstage to make another entrance. There was one exit I had to make which involved stepping back to exit through French windows, being replaced by my double who entered and threw his arms around the actress playing one of the triplets’ girlfriend. I always felt insecure. Surely someone in the audience would notice this switch? But the misdirection worked like a dream. As the switch was about to happen, Ivor Salter, playing Jugg the drunken butler, crashed through the door on the opposite side of the stage, collapsing in a heap, and in that split second the switch was made. Some members of the audience saw the play a second time and still they couldn’t work out how it was done. Cooney and Hilton successfully used conjurors’ tricks in that farce.

Cheers!

Pub licensing laws have gone almost full circle. These days most pubs stay open all day, and some open early for breakfast. Many’s the time I have had a Wetherspoon’s breakfast, taking the moral high ground as I look down on those boozers knocking back beer at ten a.m.   Whereas pubs in years gone by could also open early and close late, it was during the First World War that licensing laws became more stringent and remained that way until the late 1980s. Pubs opened at 12 noon and shut at 2.30 p.m.. opening again at either 5.30 or six in the evening then closing at 10.30 or 11 p.m., depending on which county you imbibed in. But there were always ways around this, and you could almost drink round the clock in London in the sixties and seventies if you knew where to go.

   I can remember in my late teens attending West End drinking clubs after the pubs had shut at eleven. There was some strange law that allowed backstreet clubs to function provided they sold food. So what you did to gain an entrance to these establishments was pay two shillings and sixpence (roughly equivalent to £2.40 in today’s money), and this would get you a club table on which lay a sad open sandwich, the stale bread curling at the edges, and a lame bit of ham and lettuce on the top. But the point was not that you ate it, unless you were desperate, but that enabled you to legally purchase alcohol.

   In my early twenties I worked backstage at Theatre Royal Drury Lane. Whenever we worked a get-out, when a show closed and the scenery and props had to be taken away, it usually involved working all night, sometimes several all-nighters. At about five in the morning, which became almost like our night-time, we took a break and went to one of the Covent Garden market pubs for a pint. In the sixties Covent Garden was the fruit and veg market, and if you were a market porter you were entitled to drink alcohol in the early hours at one of the market pubs. I and my stagehand colleagues were not market porters but we still got served.

   Once the curtain came down on the Drury Lane show, we hurried to drink in perhaps the last 20 minutes or half hour before the pubs shut. Then we took ourselves off to the Russell Hotel just up the road at Russell Square, where we would sit drinking in the residents’ lounge. The waiter was quite happy to serve us as we gave him two bob every time we bought a round, and I guess that’s like a two quid tip these days.

   In my Please Sir days I belonged to two West End clubs, Gerry’s, which was an actors’ drinking club, and the Kismet club in Great Newport Street, opposite the Arts Theatre. This subterranean club opened at three in the afternoon, when the pubs shut, and closed at seven, just after the pubs had reopened. The Kismet was quite scruffy, with scuffed and torn linoleum on the floor, and a jukebox with way out-of-date discs on the turntable. Numbers like Kay Starr singing ‘Wheel of Fortune’ and Frankie Vaughan’s ‘Green Door’.

   In my late teens I and my friends’ Sunday routine was to meet in the pub around twelve-thirty. The Sunday pubs shut at two, so then we went to the Temperance Snooker Hall for a couple of hours until the cinema opened at four and, after the film, the pubs would open again at seven. In the early seventies, I used to be in the pub on a Sunday bang on 12 noon, because half an hour before they shut I rushed home to listen to Round the Horne which was broadcast at 1.30.

   Although pubs in England opened for limited times on Sundays, in Scotland they remained shut on Sundays up until 1976, and in Wales each county held a referendum when certain counties voted to remain dry on Sundays. Gwynedd, formerly known as Caernarvonshire, where I come from, remained a dry county. So when I visited Holyhead one Easter, my cousin suggested we go to the pub on Good Friday, and was told they opened Sunday hours, despite pubs not opening on Sundays. Work that one out!

   Finally, I can remember a pub somewhere near Wembley and Malcolm McFee came to the rescue when my car radiator sprung a leak. I can’t remember where we were going, perhaps to do some exterior filming of Fenn Street Gang. I was driving a Hillman Hunter at the time when the radiator started spurting water. As we were passing a pub, Malcolm told me to pull into their car park. Inside the pub I ordered two halves of bitter, and then Malcolm asked the barmaid if she would sell me an egg. What she gave me was a hard boiled one. Malcolm laughed and said we needed a fresh, uncooked one, as it was really for my car. After giving him a funny look, she fetched me an egg from the kitchen.

   And that did the trick. It repaired the leak And I remember thinking it was the sort of streetwise tip that Peter Craven would have known. We broke the egg into the radiator, and what happens is the white of the egg is sucked into the leak and hardens as it is cooked in the hot water. It kept me going for maybe a week or more afterwards, until I could get a proper radiator repair or replacement.

   I think, if we were on our way to do some filming that day, it adds a new meaning to the advertising slogan of that time: ‘Go To Work On An Egg’.

From Welsh to English R.P.

After my professional debut aged 12 at Theatre Royal, Windsor, playing an American boy, it was soon time for me to dress in the Corona Academy school uniform, the distinctive bright green blazer with yellow piping and monogram on the breast pocket, along with grey flannel trousers and black shoes, which we were instructed to keep clean and polished always, not forgetting the crowning school cap, an addition which most of the boys folded and tucked into a pocket when no Corona staff were around.

   We had moved from Richmond to live in Hounslow, close to Hounslow Central station. My parents rented a maisonette above an optician’s shop in Lampton Road, and Vernon Morris, who played one of my older brothers in the Windsor play, also lived in the district. As he was a year or two older than me, and already a pupil at Corona for several years, he came to call on me for my first day at school, and we travelled on the Underground train together to Ravenscourt Park station near to where Corona Academy was situated, at the end of a

cul-de-sac near the park and the elevated tracks of the District and Piccadilly Line trains.

Walking into the school playground through the gates is a flimsy memory. I accompanied Vernon through a sea of green and yellow blazers towards a large three-storey house with Gothic windows, with stone steps leading up to an enormous wide-open front door. And what looked like a building site in the playground, soon to become Corona’s purpose-built theatre.

   I can’t remember being nervous. I was probably relieved to escape from the clutches of the sneering bullies at Mortlake school who picked on me because of my Welsh dialect. And even worse, the teachers, embittered and wishing they were somewhere else, without appreciating how mutual that feeling was between them and their pupils. But I could put all that behind me now. This school was different, unlike any I had so far experienced. The usual academic subjects were taught every morning, but the afternoons were filled with drama, ballet, tap dancing, play reading, modern dance, mime and voice production. This was more like it. And these pupils were very different from the Mortlake thugs, many of whom were already regular film actors. Richard O’Sullivan, with whom I became close friends much later, was in the same class as me; as were Carol White, Frazer Hines, Jeremy Bulloch and Francesca Annis.

   The principal of the school was Rona Knight, short and dumpy, with carrot-red hair, she could sometimes be quite forbidding, but mainly she was bright and enthusiastic, and fanatical about mime, voice production and Shakespeare. So, it wasn’t long before I was speaking like a proper English person, as if I’d been brought up with that silver spoon in my mouth – because this was 1955, and kitchen sink drama had yet to hit our screens, when regional dialects became acceptable in films such as Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner, Cathy Come Home and television dramas like Up the Junction. But my first television appearance was in a light entertainment programme, arranged by the school agency, which was run by Rona Knight’s sister, Hazel Malone.

   Accompanied by a chaperone, about a dozen of us was sent to the Shepherd’s Bush Empire to appear in The Bob Monkhouse Show¸ which would be televised live by the BBC. In the rehearsal, we all stood around and Monkhouse and the director wanted one of us to listen to a string of gags told by the comedian but keep a perfectly straight face. When Monkhouse went through his routine, some of the kids snorted and giggled, but I didn’t crack so much as a smile. Maybe the quick-fire gags went straight over my head. And so, because of my blank expression, I was given the non-speaking role of listening to Monkhouse’s jokes deadpan, and when he desperately got to the end, going down on his knees pleadingly with one almighty joke, I took from behind my back an egg which I cracked on his head. It got a great laugh from the studio audience, and then Monkhouse was whisked away to change and clean up while a performer called Yana sang a number.

   So, my first television appearance was in comedy. The second, which came around Christmas time, was in a drama, and I played another American lad. Three Empty Rooms was set in a New York City tenement, and the play was produced by a young Canadian director, Alvin Rakoff, and I was one of three youngsters in the play.

   I will never forget one of the actors in the small part of a removal man, because he was so tall and striking, rather terrifying until you spotted the warmth in his eyes, and when he wasn’t needed in rehearsal, he and other actors who hadn’t a great deal to do in the play, retired to a corner of the rehearsal room and played cards, with what seemed to me a great deal of money changing hands. This removal man was played by Bernard Bresslaw, and I recognised him a few years later when he played Private Popplewell in The Army Game.

   Three Empty Rooms was broadcast live, as most television was in the ‘50s, and well into the mid ‘60s. The play had the offstage cries, the birth pangs of a woman in labour, and when it went out live on the 27 December, the BBC switchboard was jammed with complaints from viewers who found the screams of a woman in labour distasteful and upsetting. Imagine that! A woman giving birth around Christmas time!

The Real Mascot

After I moved with my parents and older brother from North Wales, I was ten-years-old, and when it came time to sit for the 11-plus exam, I failed in Maths, a subject I’m still pretty bad at, but at least now we have calculators and computers to do most of the work.

   I was sent to the most loathsome school of all – Mortlake Secondary Modern, a place I detested, which was full of sneering bullies at my Welsh dialect, and if anything the hard-bitten schoolteachers were worse. I hated my contemptible class teacher. I had wanted to be an actor for as long as I can remember, so instead of putting me in the school play, he put me in the boxing ring instead. He must have hated me as much as I hated him.

   Rescue came when my parents were doing amateur dramatics for a Welsh society in Twickenham. The play was Emlyn Williams’ The Corn is Green, and I was given the Welsh-speaking part of Idwal. Richard Palmer, an English boy, also played one of the young pupils. He attended Corona Academy Stage School and had already made several films. I pestered my parents to send me there, but it was a fee paying school, and my parents couldn’t afford it.

But they thought there was no harm in investigating and we were interviewed by the school. When they saw my 12-year-old self, who only looked about nine, they told my parents that they could find enough work for me to cover the school fees, which is what happened. My parents never had to pay a penny towards the fees or school uniforms and extras. Not only that, but during the summer of 1955, prior to my starting in September at Corona, the school got me a part in an American play at Theatre Royal, Windsor.

   Life with Father, from a book by Clarence Day, opened in New York in 1939 and ran for 3,224 performances, holding the record for the longest-running non-musical play on Broadway. At Windsor, I played Harlan, the youngest of three brothers, and wore a cute little sailor suit in one scene. A lot of time was spent sitting around a dining table with Vernon Morris and Richard Palmer, who played my brothers John and Whitney.  Playing Annie, one of the maids who served our breakfast in one scene, was Irish actress Doreen Keogh, who would later feature in many TV comedies, including Father Ted and as Mary Carroll in The Royle Family. The mother was played by Noel Dyson, who became Ida Barlow in Coronation Street. Heather Sears, a pretty girl, played Mary Skinner, and shortly after her Windsor stint, she signed a contract with Romulus Films, earning a British Academy Award for Best Actress for her starring role in The Story of Esther Costello with Joan Crawford. She was only 21 at the time. But the film of hers which I remember most strongly was as the social-climbing Joe Lampton’s hapless fiancée in Room at the Top with Laurence Harvey and Simone Signoret.

   Why are the worst memories sometimes the strongest? All I really remember of my first professional appearance at Windsor is someone’s devious attempt to murder me. During the performance one night, having to eat a bowl of porridge, I was about to shovel a spoonful into my mouth when I noticed something glinting in the bowl, catching the light. It was a pin. I tried to appear unruffled, but my cereal was full of pins, concealed just beneath the surface. It had to be deliberate. But why? Are cute-looking child actors in sailor suits so puke-making as to provoke someone to attempt infanticide? Maybe it was a test to see how I would cope. I did my best to eat heartily while I avoided swallowing the killer pins. And if it was a test, I think I may have passed, carrying on as if nothing had happened.

   I never mentioned the pins to anyone. I ate cautiously for the remainder of the run, but the pins didn’t appear again. It was very strange.

  My parents bought me a lucky mascot black cat for the show, a mascot which I still have, and that little puss is now 67-years-old, which also means I have been an actor for 67 years.

And just when I thought retirement had come along uninvited about six years ago, along came Misty Moon, and here I am reviving a character I played between 1968 and 1973. 

COMING UP ROSES

I think it is common knowledge how precarious the business of acting can be, and there are often great periods of unemployment, which we never call ‘resting.’

   In the early 1990s I went through a long period when that phone call from my agent remained mute. But I still needed to support my family and pay the mortgage. So I worked nights driving a taxi. And I can truthfully say it was one of the worst, badly-paid jobs I have ever done, which is why I tend to tip taxi drivers well, and also because I have experienced the late-night pick up of drunks when the pubs turned out. So, why didn’t I work during the day? Daytime I attempted to be creative by writing the next script that might alter our situation.

   I worked in the garden shed, and I was almost in tears one morning, after a particularly depressing night, and then my agent rang. At last! The phone call that took me from between three and five pounds per hour, to a £3,000 job for just three weeks’ work.

   Bob Clark, the producer of Visage Productions had used me about five years earlier for some Pepsi Cola conferences, playing a newspaper reporter called Wilkins, And now he wanted to resurrect my character for some Nationwide conferences. He wanted me to rehearse in London for the best part of a week and also do a little filming at some Nationwide branches. And in order to save them the trouble of sending motorbike messengers to Tunbridge Wells where I live with script changes, they put me up at the Holiday Inn, Swiss Cottage for the week.

   I segued from driving my miserable taxi to being picked up by a chauffeur-driven car on the first day to drive me to London. And when I later checked in at the Holiday Inn I discovered that everything was paid for, including the booze. One night I invited my agent to join me for dinner at the hotel, and we had a lavish meal with all the trimmings, all ultimately paid for by Nationwide.

   The first conference was in an aircraft museum just outside Swindon. The set, an enormous traditional newspaper office, dominated the aircraft hangar. There were about ten desks with ten telephones and the same amount of typewriters. The set wouldn’t have looked out of place on the West End stage.

    I spent a day just hanging around while they worked on getting the technical side of things right. When it reached 5.30, and Bob Clark saw me looking excruciatingly bored, he asked me if he could help in any way. I said it was a shame we were a long way from the town, and there was no pub I could pop into for a pint. Now Bob did a lot of work for the automotive industry and owned a top-of-the-range BMW, and he offered to get his chauffeur to drive me into Swindon for a pint. When I returned from the pub, he asked me if I’d had my pint, so I told him the car  had broken down and we had trouble bump starting it. He looked really angry and began striding across the hangar, presumably to call BMW. But his wife Sally, noticing the cheeky smile on my face called him to stop, and said I was winding him up.

   The crew also wound people up, especially Bob’s chauffeur, who wore the proper uniform and hat. But Bob had added to the car’s front a large Comedy Relief Red Nose. They kept on at the poor chauffeur, saying how could it be a proper chauffeuring job driving an expensive car with a red nose on the front, and the poor man, who had no sense of humour, took it really seriously.

    My part consisted of running to answer this plethora of phones on the set, and each time the audience heard the distinctive voice of John Baron, who was speaking from a booth somewhere, saying things like ‘I didn’t get where I am today, Wilkins, by…’ And I would reel off a load of facts I had discovered about Nationwide; which could have been difficult to learn, but I doctored all the typewriters with pages from my script, so that when I was talking to CJ on the phone, I was actually reading from the script.

   Bob Clark always wore cowboy boots or Cuban heels. And he always dressed casually, but the Nationwide clients had insisted that he and the crew wore dinner jackets for the event. So he donned a dinner jacket, but still wore his cowboy boots. Then he happened to glance down and saw that every member of the crew were wearing cowboy boots, having each gone out and bought a pair as a wind-up.

   Following the Swindon conference, a second conference was held at a large hotel in Coventry. It would take them a day to erect the set, plus all the lighting and sound equipment needed, Bob Clark, his wife and most of the Visage personnel, headed back to London, returning to Coventry the next day for the rehearsal. I was alone for the entire day and did nothing but swim in the hotel pool between eating and drinking.

   After the conference I shared a car back to London with John Barron, and it was the first time we had had a long conversation. And we both got the conference job because Bob Clark happened to like both Please Sir! and The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin.

   The car dropped John Barron off in London and then took me home to Tunbridge Wells.

   I was so grateful for that job and could now relax financially for a while. I often wondered what happened to Bob Clark and his Visage company. Our paths would never cross again, but that is not so unusual in the acting profession.

FOOD, DRINK, MUSIC AND SEX

On last Monday’s news I saw that many pubs in Soho had tables out in the streets, and many of those thoroughfares had been blocked off to traffic. It was as if many street parties were taking place throughout the district, the only difference being that pubs and restaurants would only serve customers outside and seated at tables.

   So why is the district of Soho so popular? Food, drink and music, maybe, which attracted people to that district ever since the 16^th century. The name Soho is believed to be the call of the huntsmen crying, ‘So-Hoe’ as they chased game in those under-populated fields back then; afterwards, the dignitaries adjourned to a nearby banqueting house to feast on their catches. In the early 17^th century a parish grew bit by bit north of Leicester Fields (later Leicester Square). From France, the Huguenots escaped to an exile in London to avoid Catholic persecution, gravitating towards Soho and opening French shops, cafes and restaurants. Many other migrants were also attracted to the area, often exiled from far-flung eastern European countries because of their religion or simply to search for a better life. Greek Street, at the heart of Soho, takes its name from the arrival of many Greek Christians fleeing from persecution in the Ottoman Empire.

   One of my favourite Greek restaurants in this street was Jimmy’s, which opened just after the second World War. It was subterranean, you would climb down steep narrow stairs into a room which wasn’t exactly pleasing aesthetically, as it was plain white tiles, a bit like eating in an underground toilet. But the food was excellent and not expensive. Sadly, Jimmy’s closed about six years ago.

   But it is not just food and drink that is Soho’s main attractions. Music has always been a magnet to the area. In 1866 it was recorded that there were more than 30 music halls in the square mile. In the 1930s American jazz was imported to the area, and in 1932 Louis Armstrong performed at Soho’s most renowned theatre, the London Palladium. The famous Marquee which debuted many aspiring rock musicians and bands has long since gone, but  Ronnie Scott’s famous jazz club is still going strong, although Ronnie passed away many years ago.

    I can remember in the late 1950s the tacky tourist coffee shops that sprang up. On many occasions I and my mates sat in a coffin in a coffee bar named Heaven and Hell which was decorated like the set of a Hammer horror film. I was only 16 or 17 at the time, so I guess I could be forgiven for this lapse of street credibility.

   Many tourists do not get beyond the confines of Leicester Square and miss out on, not only Soho’s rich history, but some of the less expensive London eateries. No so long ago I stopped outside the Angus Steak House at a corner of Leicester Square and looked at the menu unchanged since the 1960s, when we always ate prawn cocktail, followed by Steak, and finishing off with Black Forest gateau, washed down with Mateus Rosé.

   Of course, Soho did also have a sleazy reputation and was known as London’s red light district, and sex shop and strip clubs were abundant. Recently I watched on Talking Pictures The Small World of Sammy Lee, about a Soho reprobate, played by Anthony Newley, dashing around Soho while he tried to raise money to pay off a loan shark. Shot on location in the district, while Newley dashed around I recognised most of the clubs and shops from the 1960s, and even glimpsed the men’s outfitters Cecil Gee where I used to shop for my clothes.

   No wonder, then, that I used the area as inspiration for my anthology Tales from Soho, eleven fictional stories, but also a brief history of Soho and some of its famous pubs. Many famous people have lived in the district at one time, including Casanova, Karl Marx, Shelley, Canaletto and Isaac Newton – the list is endless. If you want a more extensive list, visit the Soho Society website, www.thesohosociety.org.uk and you will find a list of blue plaques on buildings.

   Having mentioned the 4 main ingredients of Soho, these days I limit myself to two - food and drink, not necessarilly in that order.

Fun With The Addicted

Many years ago I remembered reading in a Sunday broadsheet research into the occupations of people with the highest addictions to alcohol. I think actors came about fourth on the list. Having worked with many who suffered from this addiction I wondered if it had something to do with nerves or insecurity, or perhaps both.

   In my book Please Sir! The Official History I mentioned quite a few incidents and performers who suffered from this malaise and sometimes made spectacular fools of themselves on stage. In the book I have written about meeting or working with these problem drinkers: Bob Todd, Charles Hawtrey, James Beck, Bill Simpson, Edward Chapman, Ralph Reader, Eddie Braden and Rodney Bewes. There were a few borderline alcoholics, but two of them were so very professional that I won’t mention them.

   When I toured with Rodney Bewes in Funny Money he had varying degrees of his drink problem. Years after the tour finished, to promote a book I had written, I was invited to be interviewed by Steve Allen at LBC, who told me that a few weeks earlier Rodney Bewes turned up for an interview pissed, having come from a session at the Garrick Club. So slurred was Bewes that Steve Allen told me the programme controller happened to be listening in and phoned him to ask what was wrong with the interviewee. Allen made an excuse for Bewes and told the controller he was ill, something about palsy.

   Although there is a certain sadness about addiction, whether it be from drugs, alcohol, tobacco or overeating, the alcoholics can sometimes give us a laugh, because many of them were highly intelligent and witty. One of the most notorious of these drunks was the legendary W. C. Fields  who was famous for his drinking, and while he was never a falling down drunk, except when he once fell downstairs while carrying a glass of martini. Legend has it that he never spilt a drop due to his juggling abilities for which he was renowned. But alcohol didn't help his disposition. He was notorious for carrying a flask on movie sets, claiming to interested parties that it contained nothing stronger than pineapple juice While he was performing, a fellow actor stole it, emptied the contents and poured real pineapple juice in it. Fields unwittingly took a swig and almost choked. ‘Who's been putting pineapple juice in my pineapple juice?’ he spluttered. But many of the Fields’ stories could fill a book, but I think my favourite was the one where he was being interviewed by a journalist and she asked about his hard upbringing. He told her that because he had been a deprived child he made himself a promise, that should he one day become successful, he would make sure that underprivileged children were catered for. And then the journalist asked him if he had made good that promise. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I thought fuck ‘em!’

   And many of the so-called bloodshot brigade came out with some interesting last words prior to the curtain coming down. Richard Harris lived at the Savoy Hotel in London. When he collapsed and had to be stretchered out of the main entrance, he called out: ‘It was the food.’  Another fond of a drop actor was Humphrey Bogart who shuffled off this mortal coil with the words, ‘I should never have switched from Scotch to Martini.’

   Wilfrid Lawson and Robert Newton were appearing in Richard the Third, one of them as Lord Hastings and the other as Duke of Buckingham. Both had been out drinking during the day and were inebriated for the night's performance. Several members of the audience spotted Hastings was clearly drunk and complained loudly. The actor playing Lord Hastings stopped his inebriated Shakespearean speech, turned to the audience and said: 'You think I'm drunk. Wait till you see the Duke of Buckingham!'

   Because of his alcoholism, Robert Newton, found it increasingly difficult to get work. His friend David Niven was to star in Around the World in Eighty Days, produced by Mike Todd. Niven had a word with the producer, and suggested Newton for a part. When Todd met Newton, he said, ‘You're friend Niven says you are a big drunk.’ Newton replied, ‘My friend Niven is a master of understatement.’

   Wilfrid Lawson again. He was appearing at the Arts Theatre, London, in Maxim Gorki's Lower Depths, the classic play about the Russian underprivileged. He was about to exit a scene, and he had of course been drinking, and was supposed to leave the stage singing a Russian hymn, a real dirge. Instead, he turned full-on to the audience and sang: ‘Some enchanted evening...’ Another time, he went drinking all day with a friend, and they ended up in the circle bar of the theatre where he was performing that night. The curtain had gone up on the show, and they both stood at the back of the circle and watched some of it. Suddenly, Lawson turned to his friend and whispered: ‘It's very good this bit. It's where I come on.

   Peter O'Toole, having given up alcohol after his years as a hellraiser, reminisced about the days when he was a heavy drinker, and confessed he missed situations like the time he was in Paris and woke up to discover he was in Corsica. And Richard Burton once said, ‘I was so drunk I thought I was Peter O’Toole.’

   Finally, my friend Peter Cleall, who played Duffy in Please, Sir! was working in a sitcom Spooner’s Patch with Ronald Fraser. I met Peter one day, wondering why he wasn't rehearsing and he told me the cast had taken a week off so that Fraser could dry out and get himself sober in order to continue the series. ‘But,’ I told Peter, ‘I was in the Pickwick Club last night, and there was Ronnie Fraser, pissed as a rat, as you might expect.’ Peter couldn't quite believe it. So much for plan A.

(To read about the aforementioned performers I met or worked with, read Please Sir! The Official History, and signed copies are available from this website)

Craven, Abbott and the Conman

On page 41 of my book, Please Sir! The Official History, there is the story of the rather smooth record producer, who having made a record with us, vanished into thin air having left the musicians unpaid. I don’t know whether any of them did get any money, because this so-called record producer named Barry Gout was like most smooth-talkers, untrustworthy.

    Long after The Fenn Street Gang ended on television, perhaps three or four years, I really can’t remember and have no record of the events that were about to unfold, I got a call from Malcolm McFee who told me that Barry Gout was in the Netherlands, and had a contact at NCRV, the Dutch TV company that used to broadcast Please Sir! and wanted Malcolm and me to write a sitcom about a Dutch amateur football team, with me and Malcolm in two of the starring roles. At first, I told Malcolm if it had anything to do with Barry Gout, I was not interested. But Malcolm told me persuasively, that Barry Gout was a changed man, and had promised that airline tickets would be waiting for us at Heathrow for our trip to Amsterdam. We, I suggested to Malcolm, would use this as the test. If Barry had genuinely supplied the return flight tickets, then it was probably kosher.

   The tickets were waiting for us at Heathrow, so that put paid to any doubts we might have. It gave us a week to work on the first draft of a script, with Malcolm providing the information about football, of which I know nothing. Once we were satisfied with the script’s first draft, we picked up our tickets and headed to Amsterdam, and a small restaurant where we were met by Gout, who informed us he had a share in this restaurant, and he ordered us a steak dinner and beers, which as part owner he put on the tab. He also introduced us to a young Dutch actor, whose surname escapes me, but I can remember his first name was Gus. And Gus would put us up at his flat for the duration of our stay as he would also be starring in the sitcom.

   But things soon began to go wrong. We discovered Gout had promised the restaurateurs that he would be bringing John Alderton over for them to meet, and not only that but he had lied about having a share in the establishment, and all the food and beer we consumed there during our stay was on his promise to the proprietors that he would eventually settle his bill. Then, one day, Gus was showing us round Amsterdam, and he happened to tell us about a sentimental trip that Gout had taken to Arnhem, where he claimed his father was buried as he was a paratrooper killed in the war. That was when Malcolm gave a bitter laugh and told us that as far as he knew, Gout’s father was alive and well and living in Tottenham.

   And then we discovered a tough Dutch stevedore – someone you don’t mess with – had loaned Gout a substantial amount of money and was on the warpath (this loan probably financed our plane tickets).

   Suddenly, Gout was taken ill and hospitalised. Hoping we might salvage something from this disastrous trip, we went to visit Gout, hoping to get the name of the head of programming at NCRV. We had Gout’s room number at the hospital, but the receptionist said he had been moved from the second floor to a room on the ground floor for safety reasons. We wondered if he had attempted suicide but were told that the day before our visit the angry stevedore visited Gout and had to be restrained from throwing him out of the window. When the stevedore calmed down and was about to be escorted from the room, his parting shot was, ‘The boys will be along to see you tomorrow, and they’ll want answers.’ Meaning Malcolm and me. Which was why they moved him to another room, thinking these ‘boys’ were mafia hitmen, maybe. But when Malcolm and I turned up, we were recognised and shown to Gout’s new room. We managed to extract the name of the decision maker at NCRV, and we phoned his secretary and made an appointment to visit him, taking the script with us.

   NCRV was a train ride from Amsterdam, and when we were shown into the programme controller’s office he seemed pleased to meet us. We mentioned that Barry Gout told us he had already been in touch with him and sent him the first draft of the script. He shook his head and said he had never heard of Barry Gout, and had never received a script. It was just another of Gout’s lies.

   But still hoping to retrieve a possible deal, we explained what the script was about. Unfortunately, we were told, NCRV could buy Please Sir!, (taking them high in the ratings) for less than 2,000 guilders an episode, so to make their own sitcoms would cost maybe fifty times that per episode, and it didn’t make financial sense.

   So that was that. We came away from the meeting wondering why he had so readily agreed to the meeting and came to the conclusion that perhaps he wanted to meet two of the Please Sir! actors who had given NCRV such high ratings.

   That same day we said goodbye to Gus and flew back to the UK.

   I never heard anything more about Barry Gout ever again, and I sometimes tried to imagine what became of him. It was mind-boggling what he put us through in Amsterdam, and I and Malcolm should have known better.

  Ho-hum! Maybe that will find its way into a story or script one day, so the trip and the con will not have been wasted.

Adrift in The South Atlantic

Aged thirteen, I was offered a part in my first feature film, Seven Waves Away. Every weekday morning, extremely early, a car picked me up at our home in Hounslow to take me to Shepperton studios, where I had a tutor to give me lessons in between takes. Thankfully, these lessons were more for the sake of appearances as the entire film took place in a lifeboat, so most of my days were spent filming.

   Seven Waves Away was based on a true incident of a transatlantic liner which hit a mine in the South Atlantic and sank. The story was of the 26 survivors drifting helplessly in an overloaded lifeboat in shark-infested waters. When the film was released in the US, it was called Abandon Ship, and the poster logline stated “14 of these survivors must be cast adrift. Which will the captain choose?”

   The captain faced with this difficult decision was played by Tyrone Power, and Mai Zetterling played the ship’s nurse, whose love for the captain is put to a severe test when he must choose which passengers to abandon or risk flooding the overloaded boat. The other survivors were played by mainly British actors, including Stephen Boyd, as the ship’s purser, Gordon Jackson, as a seaman, Marie Lohr as a frail, retired opera singer, and James Hayter as the ship’s cook, in charge of the meagre rations in the lifeboat. Little did I know then that I would work in the theatre opposite James Hayter in my early thirties. Seven Waves Away was written and directed by Richard Sale, an American writer who wrote The Oscars, a novel exposing the build-up to the Academy Award ceremonies, later made into a film.

   For my first visit to a major film studio I didn’t know what to expect but was surprised by the scruffy and temporary look of everything. Prefabricated huts, abandoned scenery and vehicles, strewn haphazardly between large unglamorous-looking sound stages and smaller offices that looked like military buildings. The main sound stage, resembling a massive aircraft hangar, housed the near Olympic-sized tank, filled with thousands and thousands of gallons of water, with a depth of five feet, and two enormous wave machines, plus wind machines. And the full-sized lifeboat itself, which was not floating freely but attached to machinery at the bottom of the tank so that it could be rocked, but controlled to avoid random fluctuations, keeping the camera reasonably steady, or to stop the actors from bobbing in and out of shot when camera was positioned.

   A nine week shoot, having warm water chucked over us before we climbed aboard the lifeboat, and make-up that looked like salt crystals in hair and eyebrows, with dark oil smears on faces. Having been shipwrecked in the night time, most of the actors playing passenger survivors were dressed in nightclothes or evening wear. I wore pyjamas and a dressing gown, clutching a toy London bus as a comfort blanket, and crying out dramatically in a scene where the captain decides my mother must be cast adrift, despite the pleas of my father, played by Ralph Michael, who has oil on his lungs, and must also be cut loose. Having screamed the loss of my parents, I am comforted and cuddled by Mai Zetterling.

   Most of the actors, especially the older ones like Marie Lohr, found the discomforts of sitting in a rocking lifeboat, with wind machines blowing, while stage-hands hurled buckets of water over us, arduous and couldn’t wait for the nine weeks to end. Me, I loved every moment of it. Although I had spent most of my childhood by the sea in North Wales, I had never learnt to swim. I learnt aged ten at the public baths in Richmond when I attended St. John’s Primary School, and any opportunity to swim in the faux South Atlantic was a treat and a chance for me to show off. Some of the actors, though, couldn’t swim, and were traumatised by a scene where the lifeboat capsizes, hurling us all into the water, and it took many of them a long time to recover.

   Richard Sale was a very patient and methodical director, and hugely friendly, as were Tyrone Power, Mai Zetterling and Lloyd Nolan. And I was very impressed that Danny Green was in the film, as I had recently seen him in The Ladykillers, which became one of my all-time favourite comedies. He played a character called One-Round, and I pondered for many years the meaning of his nickname, and it came to me years later: of course, he was probably a boxer who was always knocked out in the first round.

   Something I found puzzling was my first glimpse of racist behaviour. Orlando Martins, a Nigerian who came to Britain at the end of the war, played Sam Holly, one of the survivors in the water hanging on to the side of the boat, and Stephen Boyd, along with some of the other actors in the boat, would look down on him and say things like: ‘Who dat down dere!’ Although I was only 13-years-old, I could sense the Nigerian actor didn’t like it and pretended not to hear most of the time. And then, when the boat jerked suddenly during a scene, Stephen Boyd’s knee knocked into my back. It was extremely painful, and he must have known it, yet he never bothered to apologise. This, coupled with his mockery of Orlando Martins, made him my least favourite actor in the picture. But the Americans, Tyrone Power and Lloyd Nolan were utterly charming, and when the last scene had been shot, they really made a fuss of me before I left.

   Getting the part in Seven Waves Away had been effortless, all I’d had to do was meet Richard Sale and look cute.

   A year after the film was made, my parents took me to see Tyrone Power in the West End when he starred in Bernard Shaw’s The Devil’s Disciple. It was only recently when I looked it up online that I discovered Erik Chitty was in it, and when I worked with Erik in Please Sir! I had no idea he was in the Tyrone Power production I had seen.

Blame Frankie Abbott

I first worked and met Peter Childs when I appeared with him in The Boys in the Band in Cardiff, in which we both played gay characters. I was interested to read recently that Russell T Davies who wrote the TV drama It’s A Sin thinks that only gay actors should play gay characters. I think I know what Peter Childs would have had to say about that. No doubt he would have pointed out a long history of gay men who have played heterosexuals.

   When I worked with Peter in Cardiff we hit it off and became longstanding friends. He loved working in Wales and had an affinity with us Welsh. We used to drink with the Welsh National Opera cast and musicians, and Peter went to the trouble of learning ‘Myfanwy’ in Welsh, and one evening gave us a rendition of the entire song. At the end of the opera’s run, they presented him with an LP of the Treorchy Male Voice Choir, and signed it, ‘To Peter, an honorary Welshman’. And by God did we sink a few that night.

   After the production ended, I used to travel from London to stay in Tunbridge Wells with Peter, and we tried to get some writing off the ground, although we never managed to get anything going. If ever we did, Peter decided that the best writers he thought were Jewish, English and Irish, and so he was going to use the pseudonym Leo O’Goldharris.

   Peter had a rather ne’er-do-well Tunbridge Wells friend, Richard Billington-Cook, and one hot summer’s day, Richard drove the three of us out to a country pub not too far from Tunbridge Wells, the Rock at Chiddingstone.

   The pub’s landlord was Peter Cook (not the comedian), and we stood at the bar drinking our beer and having an amiable chat to him. When he disappeared into the other bar, and noticing a fire was made up in the enormous fireplace, Richard or Peter egged each other on for one of them to light it on this sweltering summer’s day. One of them did – I can’t remember who, and it immediately began blazing. Because the landlord couldn’t see the fireplace from his position behind the bar, he wasn’t aware that it had been set alight. But the three of us began giggling, and he did as well, not realising that the joke was on him. When he twigged, and saw the smoke billowing into the bar, he said something like, ‘You bastards! The chimney hasn’t been swept yet.’

   Richard decided we ought to continue drinking back at the ‘Wells’ and drove us back. Along the way, we passed a fire engine speeding towards Chiddingstone. Peter laughed and said, ‘That’ll teach him for not having his chimney swept.’

   Later, as I didn’t live in Tunbridge Wells then, Peter asked if it was all right if they blamed me for setting the Rock’s chimney alight, just in case they bumped into Peter Cook, telling him it was that nutter who played Frankie Abbott who did it. And little thinking that I would eventually move into the district.

   Peter was a very mischievous person. I can imagine Terry Jones had him in mind when he said, ‘He’s a very naughty boy.’

   In our local pub in Tunbridge Wells, The Mitre, Peter was barred on darts night when the local team was at home. This was for his own safety, as he used to give the opposing team such a devastating commentary, they almost threw him out of the door one night. But all the locals loved him, and he was very entertaining and witty.

   Sadly, Peter was only fifty when he died from leukaemia, and I did miss him and his cheeky wit. I continued to drink at our local for many years. Then one day a new landlord took over, and it was none other than Peter Cook, the Rock’s landlord whose chimney had been set on fire by either Peter or Richard.

   Peter Cook told everyone in the pub how I had set his chimney on fire. I swore to him that it wasn’t me, it was Peter Childs or Richard Billington-Cook, but I don’t think he believed me. Besides, it made a much better story to say, ‘That Frankie Abbott once set fire to my pub!’

Good Old Frisby Dyke

I had wanted to be an actor for as long as I could remember. Growing up in North Wales, first in Bangor, and then in Amlwch in the northern part of Anglesey, there were no theatres. The nearest theatres were summer season playhouses in Colwyn Bay and Llandudno, and I don’t ever recall a visit to one of those theatres. The nearest I got to seeing a theatre production was when my parents took me to the Liverpool Empire to see a touring production of Carousel, and I can recall being confused after the death of Billy, when he goes ‘up there’, then seeing him returning to earth as an angel wearing a lounge suit. But I did come away humming one of the memorable songs, little knowing that in about three and a half decades it would become the Liverpool Football Club anthem.

   I think my parents had friends or relations in Liverpool, and so we often went there, staying over one or two nights, and my mother loved to do the shops. There was John Lewis, of course, and the well-known Frisby Dyke, which I think had ceased to exist since it was bombed during the war. But its name returned to my consciousness years later when I discovered that in the ITMA radio comedy, they named one of the characters after the store. And Frisby Dyke was played by Deryck Guyler, who talked about this during our stint in Please Sir! But I’m jumping ahead of myself here.

   Most of my early acting influences came from the silver screen. The Royal cinema in Amlwch showed the latest films, and an outing to the cinema was a great event in those days. Prior to the feature film we were not subjected to fifteen minutes of advertisements. Instead, as only the privileged few had a television set in those days, we were shown at least five items of news both nationally and internationally, either from Pathé News or Movietone, always with that stentorian voice-over which sounded the same alarming note whether it was reporting the Korean war or the latest catwalk fashion. The news was invariably followed by a cartoon or a short comedy film and then the B-feature. All of this was a build-up to the main event, following an interval when the ice cream lady would walk backwards down the aisle, picked out by a spotlight, and there would be a rush for ice creams and orange drinks. But it was always the main feature that influenced me the most. To this day I can remember seeing films like Moulin Rouge, The African Queen, The Quiet Man, High Noon and The Day the Earth Stood Still. I think I must have attended the cinema at least once a week. I can remember my father taking me to see Viva Zapata, with Marlon Brando and Anthony Quinn, a film with a screenplay by John Steinbeck. I was nine-years-old then and seeing Brando as Zapata riding into a deadly trap on a white horse had me hooked. I definitely wanted to be an actor when I grew up. I was never interested in playing with toy cars and trains. It was always ‘dressing up’.

   Once, walking from our home in Amlwch Port to the cinema to see José Ferrer in Moulin Rouge for the second time, we met a friend of my father, who presented us with complimentary tickets for a Noson Lawen (Joyful Evening), a sort of variety show. To say I was cross about missing the colourful story of Toulouse Lautrec was putting it mildly. Until we arrived at the church hall where this far from joyful evening was to take place, I threw a few tantrums before falling into a petrified sulk. And imagine my horror when this performance turned out to be everything I had suspected. Dreary soprano followed dreary tenor, and the highlight of the evening was a one-act play which ended with an appallingly bad stage fight. Even at the age of nine, I had enough critical acumen to know that this was a sham and no match for what the Royal had to offer.

   Less than a year later, we moved to Richmond, Surrey. I failed the 11-plus and was sent to Mortlake Secondary School, an institution I loathed with every fibre of my being. But, as I had witnessed on many a night at the Amlwch Royal, the 7^th Cavalry came to the rescue.

   My parents were involved in an amateur production of The Corn is Green by Emlyn Williams. I was given the part of a Welsh speaking schoolboy, and an English boy played one of the other boys. He attended Corona Academy Stage School and had already appeared in several films.

   I pestered my parents to send me to this school. But it was a private, fee-paying school and my parents couldn’t afford it. But they decided there was no harm in at least making enquiries, and so we went along to the Corona offices in Chiswick, and when they spotted this twelve-year-old who looked like a nine-year-old, they realised it was a distinct casting advantage and assured my parents that enough work would wing its way in my direction to cover the school fees. Which was exactly what happened throughout my time at Corona.

A Wizard Lock-In

One of my happiest Christmas shows was in 2000/2001, and instead of a pantomime I appeared in The Wizard of Oz, playing the Wizard and Uncle Henry in the Kansas scenes. But the biggest bonus was working in a professional show practically on my doorstep. I lived in Rusthall then, just a mile and a half from Tunbridge Wells, and the show was at the Trinity Theatre within walking distance.

   Although rehearsals were due to take place in Tunbridge Wells, to get the part I had to audition for it in London. Also attending the audition was another Tunbridge Wells actor, Michael Elliot, who was up for the same part, but it was offered to me. Years later I worked with Michael when we both appeared in The Duck Variations by David Mamet. Michael being six feet tall and stout, I was able to explain to him that the reason I was offered the wizard was because I fitted the costume.

   What was so good about the show was that it was the MGM version, and Dorothy was played by a 17-year-old from Aberystwyth, who was excellent and had a great voice. The Lion, Scarecrow and Tin Man were played respectively by Christopher Howell, Tim Laurenti and Mark C Pollard, who were friends from the same drama school, and had appeared in many West End Shows. And a great character, both on stage and offstage, was Katerina Jugati, playing Miss Gulch and the wicked witch, who played Ariadne in many episodes of London’s Burning.

   It was a very happy cast, and I was able to walk into rehearsals most days, which were held at the Toc-H Hall in the older part of Tunbridge Wells, and what was so great about working with these actors, was the fact that we all had our lunch in the Compasses pub, and nobody seemed to mind us having a few beers before continuing with the rehearsals.

   Of course, most of the cast lived in London and commuted to Tunbridge Wells. But towards the end of the second week, prior to the opening of the show, Chris, who played the Cowardly Lion, suggested that as a cast bonding exercise, the entire cast would stay in Tunbridge Wells on Friday night, and we would all go out for dinner.

   Following dinner we adjourned to a busy and noisy pub, so I suggested a visit to my friendly village pub, the White Hart in Rusthall, and we all piled into taxis. Unfortunately, I was in the last taxi. I say ‘unfortunately’ because of what happened when the first taxi arrived at the White Hart.

   Another Rusthall pub, the Oak, which was the rough bar in the village, had been raided for drugs the previous night, and was temporarily closed down. So when the first taxi dropped off some cast members, one of the young performers, thinking about the storm cellar in Kansas just before the twister arrives, jumped on the pub cellar doors. Ken the landlord happened to be in the cellar getting ice when he heard this almighty bang overhead, thought it might be ‘that lot from the Oak’, came tearing upstairs just as Chris the Cowardly Lion entered the friendly village pub, to be confronted by an angry landlord, pointing a finger at him, and yelling, ‘And you can fuck off for a start.’

   When Chris explained that it was David (me) who had suggested that the Trinity cast drink here, Ken immediately morphed into a cross between Uriah Heap and Basil Fawlty, apologised profusely, and hurried to pour a pint for Chris. And then we all arrived and had a great  evening session, resulting in a lock-in until two a.m. Resulting in a bleary-eyed rehearsal on Saturday morning.

   The show opened the following week and was hugely successful. And Toto was played by two real dogs, Sparky and Jenny-Bell, And of course the children in the audience loved seeing real dogs playing Toto. The dogs alternated shows, unlike us humans who have to do two shows a day.

   At the White Hart, Marion, the landlady, had put up details of our show in the pub, and customers could put their name down for a block booking. So one Wednesday, we had 60 regulars from the pub in attendance, followed by about 30 of us at the local Indian restaurant afterwards, and then another late session in the pub.

   But the guys, Lion, Scarecrow and Tin Man had so enjoyed their Friday night lock-in at the Hart, they asked me to ask Ken and Marion if for our last night party after our penultimate show on the Friday, if they would host our party and run a karaoke. This they did, and the pub was heaving that night.

   It had been in the local paper that Nina Keevan who played Dorothy was just 17, and Ken whispered to me during that boozy session, and pointed to a dozen empty Vodka Ice bottles, that they had all been consumed by Dorothy. Although she was clearly underage for drinking, I have to admit she could probably have drunk me under the table. And Ken was also amused by Katerina Jugati, who used to drink Carlsberg Special Brew.

   Following this heavy session came our final two shows, and in the Trinity bar afterwards, before most of the cast dashed off to catch a train for London, programmes needed to be signed. One of the technical crew, John Dartnell, who was our sound man, had shoulder length hair, and long straggly beard, and wore black leather with chains and studs, and looked as if he had stepped straight off a Hell’s Angels movie set. John got everyone to sign his programme, and I put something bland like, ‘To John, thanks for the great sound.’ Others put something similarly bland too. And then John spluttered with laughter when he showed me what Katerina had written. Above her signature, her message read, ‘Fuck off you bearded wanker.’

   He loved it! And that’s what working in this show was about. We all got on great guns and shared many a laugh. And one of my favourite spots in the show was the curtain call when the entire cast reprised ‘Over the Rainbow’, and usually most of the audience joined in.

Doubling for Richard O’Sullivan

When we attended Corona Academy, the stage school in Chiswick, Richard O’Sullivan and I became great friends. We were both the same age, and when we were 17-years-old, he was contracted to play Hugo, the villain’s henchman in a Walt Disney film, The Prince and the Pauper, being shot at Shepperton Studios. Richard knew I was desperate for work, so he put in a word for me to work as his double and stand-in. I was keen to earn some extra money and reckoned it would be fun to knock around with my friend and was delighted when they agreed to employ me. Soon we were both zooming out to Shepperton Studios on our motor scooters (I occasionally borrowed my brother’s when he wasn’t using it).

   The Prince and the Pauper was a hugely prestigious Disney picture. The story was from a late 19^th century novel by Mark Twain, about Tom Canty, the pauper, who meets Henry VIII’s son, Prince Edward, when loitering near the palace gates and they exchange identities for a bit of fun. The dual leading role of both pauper and prince was played by 13-year-old Sean Scully. Richard’s scenes were mainly with Donald Houston, Tom’s villainous father. When I wasn’t standing-in for Richard during studio scenes, I would be taken to the second unit, and some of the time during my first week’s work I doubled for Richard in exterior scenes, long shots of me and Donald Houston’s double hurrying towards a solitary large oak door in the middle of a field. It was explained that this was what they called a matte shot, and the complete set of a medieval building would be superimposed onto celluloid, painted on to complete the building. It was, after all, a Disney Picture, and they knew one or two things about adding background pictures onto film frames.

   The film was way over budget and three weeks behind schedule. When we reached the end of the first week, Richard had only been involved in one scene and as we parted on Friday evening, he tapped the side of his nose and muttered something about me having an especially good time next week. I wondered what he meant, but he didn’t let on. When I got to Shepperton on Monday morning, I was taken aside by the producer and told that Richard’s contract had expired and today he was starting work on Cliff Richard’s film The Young Ones, and would I like to take over the role. I didn’t hesitate to say yes.

   Now my salary and status changed. Not only did my salary go up to £150 per week for the remaining two weeks – a not inconsiderable sum in 1961 – I was offered a share of Sean Scully’s car to give me a lift home from the studio every day. The trouble with this rise in my good fortune, thanks to Richard, was the fact that I would have to wait until after the film finished shooting before I saw any money. So, I used to pretend I lived near Shepherd’s Bush Green, and I got the car to drop me not far from the British Motor Company HQ, where I cleaned their offices every weekday evening. After a glamorous day on Walt Disney’s set, I came crashing down to earth, and reflected on how I could never become starry, and promised myself to always take life as it comes.

   Shooting this costume drama was hugely exciting as it would be my first choreographed fight in a film, challenged to combat by quarter staff against Tom Canty. A fight arranger rehearsed Sean Scully and me, and as his character was really Prince Edward, he wins the contest. But I was determined I was going to make it difficult for him to beat me. We had done some second unit exterior scenes and, while hanging around, he had found some frogs near the river, and mistreated and tortured them. I can’t stand cruelty to animals. And although I, and others hanging around, told him to stop, he ignored us, shrugging it off as the star of the picture’s privilege. Right, you little brat, I thought, when it comes to our fight, I’ll get my own back on behalf of the frogs. But, I had to admit, not only was he a good actor, but he was also a great quarter staff fighter, and never once did he falter in the routine. It didn’t matter how aggressively I charged at him, he never once lost the ability to parry my lunges and swipes. The fight was done in one take, using two cameras to give different angles when it came to editing, and because of the way Sean Scully and I battled it out, the fight scene worked brilliantly.

   One scene, however, might be described as abysmal. Richard’s first scene as Hugo, established him as Houston’s henchman. Now that I was stepping into Richard’s shoes, we had to do some sort of a changeover. We were called for a Sunday shoot, as Richard had begun shooting The Young Ones, and a scene was inserted where he and Donald Houston drag Sean Scully into a barn, where I happen to be sitting – back to camera. Houston’s black-toothed villain asks me what’s been going on, and I mutter something about robbing and pillaging. Then, as Houston hurls Scully onto a pile of straw, he mentions something about me being Len. Fade out. Most audiences would have missed it, and when I cropped up in my first big scene, they must have wondered who this character was.

   My final scene involved attacking Scully along the branch of a tree. Naturally, he wins, and I end up falling backwards into the river. This was done by a stuntman, and I waded into the river afterwards, to splash about and cry for help, having first been given an anti-tetanus shot.

   I must admit, the film was not one of Disney’s most notable pictures, although I enjoyed every minute of the three-week shoot. But the man himself flew over for the wrap party, and I am thrilled to be able to say that I once met Mickey Mouse’s creator.

   If only I had kept the script and got Disney to sign it. Imagine what that would be worth now. But you don’t think of stuff like that when you are a teenager.

Frankie Goes to Edinburgh

Prior to Anita Graham and I meeting on King’s Cross Station at noon on Wednesday 3 August, flyers, badges, and T-shirts promoting the show needed to be designed. I was always amazed by Stuart’s designer, an American who lives in Minneapolis I believe, how he latched onto the character straight away and came up with the teddy bear and machine gun design, which I thought was spot on.

   There are so many events at the Edinburgh Fringe that their shows brochure is as immense as a Yellow Pages directory, and I am not exaggerating. And because we were a last-minute booking, we were not in it. And from what I had read about shows going to the festival, they encouraged gimmicky publicity stunts, and so when I set off with Anita from King’s Cross, on the Inverness train, with all my props and costume in my suitcase, I came up with the idea of having an extra teddy bear with me.

   Just before we alighted less than four and a half hours later at Waverley Street Station, I made certain the alternative teddy bear was left tucked away on the luggage rack. After I had seen Anita into a taxi taking her to her digs in Leith, I telephoned the Edinburgh Evening News, told them who I was, and about the show, and said our vital teddy bear prop had been left on the Inverness train and could they possibly put out an appeal so that the show could go ahead. But the tone of the world weary reporter made me doubt that it would make the next edition of the paper. He said, ‘This is a stunt, isn’t it?’ I admitted it was, and he said he would see what he could do but, as I thought, it didn’t make the papers.

   My digs were with Caroline Walker, a fifteen minute walk from the venue. She included in the reasonable price she charged, an enormous, cooked breakfast every day, and a massive evening meal, which is probably why I put on weight during my two weeks in Edinburgh.

   That same evening there was a meeting at the New Town Theatre, which was to be our venue for our 5 p.m. show for the next two weeks. Having put our props and costumes in a dressing room which we would be sharing with several other performers, Anita and I hung around in the main hall and watched as the venue manager, an American who was a singer and guitarist, entertaining the other performers who seemed to know him, and applauded heartily, and when he spoke they all laughed dutifully in the right places. Then he organised them to perform extracts from their respective shows. It had been a long day, and Anita and I seemed to be his last choice to perform an extract. By now it was quite late, and we were both shattered, so we told him politely that we would not be giving him an extract. On the plus side, every performer at this venue was given a token for a free pint of beer, and as Anita didn’t drink beer she gave me hers, so I had two free pints.

   The next day was our first preview, and as Stuart, our producer, and his wife Jen were not arriving until Monday the 8^th, we had difficulty getting someone to agree to operate the lights for us. And then when I checked my props I was mortified to discover I had left a vital prop behind – a nail through finger trick.

   Having asked around, I was told there was a joke shop in the Grassmarket in the Old Town, which is where I had to dash off to prior to our preview. And then I had difficulty locating a small black coffee table we needed for the show, and which I had ordered within plenty of time from Amazon, to be sent directly to the New Town Theatre. I eventually located and assembled it, and we were off for our first preview which we performed to no one. But at least Anita managed to get some much-needed rehearsal. Our first, proper show to paying customers was on Saturday, only there were no paying customers, and we treated it as yet another dress rehearsal. Sunday we had an audience of paying customers – three of them.

Things were looking up.

   And then on Monday Stuart and Jen arrived, and Stuart was able to operate the lights every evening. No show in the festival must run for more than an hour, and you are allowed 15 minutes to remove your props and/or scenery. And then the next performer has 15 minutes to set up.

   One night Micky Flanagan and his family came to see the show. Stuart had a word with him and he said he really enjoyed the show. Also, Arthur Smith had publicised his top four plays to see, and ours was one of them. And slowly the audience began to build. Our venue only seated about sixty, so even playing to nine or ten people felt reasonable.

   During the fortnight, I didn’t get to wash any clothes, I bought new gear at Primark, and as the weather was reasonably warm, it meant mainly T-shirts and underwear.

   In the middle of our second week we had a 5-star review in the Edinburgh Evening News and of course it boosted our audience attendances. The review was written by Liam Rudden, himself a writer, who invited us to see his play about the Bay City Rollers, and we met their lead singer Alan Longmuir, who wasn’t in the play but he made an appearance at the end of it.

   We all had a great time in Edinburgh, wouldn’t have missed it for the world, and instead of losing our shirts on this venture, we all made eighty pounds!

   Just one minor disappointment though. I am a great Inspector Rebus reader, and his creator, Ian Rankin, mentions the Oxford pub in most of the books, and it is a pub used by Rankin himself. I went there several times, hoping I might bump into him, but our paths didn’t cross.

   I would have liked to tell him the story about my children’s book The Ice Cream Time Machine which is about time travel of two children, their uncle and his Irish wolfhound. Prior to the publication the editor e-mailed me, saying she was a doggie person, and her dogs on every walk spent their time sniffing and cocking up their legs. So I e-mailed back and said that I had read every Inspector Rebus novel, and do you know, he hasn’t had a shit in thirty years.

A Day in The Lives of Frankie Abbott

In my book Please Sir! The Official History I wrote about taking A Day in The Lives of Frankie Abbott to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2016. What I didn’t write about was all the obstacles we encountered along the way, but also all the small triumphs. Long before we even considered taking the play to Edinburgh, we needed to rehearse, and Stuart Morriss, who was producing it for his company Misty Moon, needed to find us a London venue in which to rehearse. I came up with the idea of hiring the Club for Acts and Actors in Covent Garden, opposite the Actors’ Church. In return for using their small theatre to rehearse for free, we offered to perform a preview there and wouldn’t charge entrance. They still demanded £20 per hour to rehearse, and told Stuart that to give a preview performance, we would have to pay for the theatre, but we would be allowed to sell tickets.

   Thanks but no thanks, Stuart told them. Now we were panicking, because we were due to open at the Phoenix Artist Club in Charing Cross Road in just over a week’s time and we had nowhere to rehearse. Then Stuart phoned the Cinema Museum in Kennington, and the curators lets us have it for free.

   We opened at the Phoenix in April, giving two performances on the first night. Unfortunately, their bar next to the room in which we performed was so busy and noisy, that a few audience members complained. And it took Linda Regan (who was playing Frankie’s carer) and me, all our mental energy to concentrate in the battle against the bibulous noise. Fortunately, for our second performance, the bar was a little less crowded, and the noise level diminished.

   Two days later we played one night at the Epsom Playhouse in their studio theatre, and this was one of our better venues, and the show was reasonably well attended. The following night we performed at the Cinema Museum, and we also played to a large audience here too.

   But our smiles were soon wiped off our faces as we had to battle it out at Battle, near Hastings. Stuart had paid to hire Battle Memorial Hall, which was a mistake. Once you pay a venue, they are getting their money so they don’t need to do anything to promote your show. Which is exactly what happened. A fortnight earlier Stuart and I had taken a trip to Battle to leaflet the town in the hopes of finding an audience, but we were left completely to our own devices at this venue and were given a code to let ourselves into the building; there wasn’t even a single person belonging to this venue who would help us in any way. In fact, it was a miracle we performed to even 12 in the audience.

   The next three venues were reasonable: Cranleigh Arts Centre in Surrey, Sarah Thorne Theatre in Broadstairs, and the Lost Theatre in Stockwell. It was at the Stockwell date that the theatre technician told us that a date at the Edinburgh Fringe had become available, at the New Town Theatre, and would we like to take it. We discussed this with much trepidation over the next week or so because it was already May and opening in Edinburgh would be in less than three months away.

   Linda Regan backed out of Edinburgh as she had heard of people losing their shirts at the Edinburgh Fringe. After all, how might we get an audience when there are nearly 3,000 other shows performing there each year? But we went for it, and I’m glad we did, because it is something that every performer should experience.

   But first came the organising of Public Liability Insurance, marketing, publicity and a million and one other things. So that we wouldn’t suffer a great loss, Stuart set about crowd funding, and Jason Read shot a comedy video for it. We managed to raise a substantial amount, but the biggest expense would be accommodation, as every hotel or B & B in Edinburgh at that time of the year charge excessive rates.

   Having cast Anita Graham as Marion the carer, we now needed to rehearse her into the  show. One rehearsal was in Stuart’s local library at Crofton Park, and we had to ignore the funny looks we got from library customers as we rehearsed in a corner. Anita and I also rehearsed during coffee mornings at the Phoenix Artist Club, having to drop our voices to an acceptable conversational level. And then, after less than a week’s rehearsal, I set off with Anita from King’s Cross for Edinburgh on the 3^rd of August. Stuart and Jen planned to arrive the beginning of the following week. And Anita and I were due to open for a preview show the day after our arrival and opening the day after on the 5th.

  During this second 2021 lockdown, news came through that the Glastonbury Festival has been cancelled this year, and I wondered about the fate of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

What a shame this will be if that happens. Although the Fringe is difficult, traumatic  sometimes, there is no getting away from the excitement and atmosphere of the event. And I will share those two weeks with you in next Friday’s blog.

Clerical Errors

Last Wednesday’s media brought us news of the Republic of Ireland’s shameful past, when unmarried mothers were taken in by nuns and their babies taken away from them. This can happen when a country is governed by a religious order, whose beliefs are not only misguided but intolerant to the point of depravity.

   In 1962, when I was still a student at Corona Academy Stage School, I became involved in playing a small part in the Jean Genet one-act play Deathwatch. The play concerns a homosexual ménage a trois between three convicts and I played the prison guard. We performed this play along with The Lesson by Eugene Ionesco and Hello from Bertha by Tennessee Williams at Corona’s own theatre for one night. Rhona Knight, the principal of the school and a passionate Shakespeare buff, came to see them, but I don’t think she was impressed by the subject matter of any of these plays. However, the director, Fiona McCleod, arranged for us to present them as part the Dublin Theatre Festival, at a tiny fringe venue, The Pocket Theatre, situated down some steps in a basement at Ely Place in central Dublin. As there were seven of us performers, we would be lucky to receive anything other than copper coins as our share of the box-office, but we were offered accommodation at the home of one of the actors, Declan Harvey, whose parents lived in a large house on the outskirts of Dublin.

   And I can remember Declan talking to us about his father, who was a high-ranking civil servant in the Irish government, and one of the archaic customs in offices of authority was that if a minion wanted to get married, they had to approach their boss to ask permission.

   But my strongest recollection of this trip was of handing out flyers for our show on St Stephen’s Green one sunny afternoon. And then I saw a man in black gliding ominously towards me, his hand held out for a leaflet. It was a Catholic priest. Now, bearing in mind that back in the sixties the priests wielded so much power, and we had heard that priests on masse attended a showing of the Tennessee Williams film adaptation of Suddenly Last Summer, starring Elizabeth Taylor, and on the cinema’s opening night they stood up, declaiming how disgusting the film was, and the audience – or should I say congregation? – had no option other than to walk out after their spiritual leaders. The film closed after the first showing as it was always the Catholic priests who called the shots back then.

   So, it was with great trepidation I handed the priest a flyer. He took his time reading it, clearly trying to intimidate me with his theatrically unhurried examination of the leaflet. ‘Hmm,’ he rumbled like the distant threat of thunder. ‘Tennessee Williams, eh? I think we shall be along to see this.’

   When I mentioned this incident to the cast, Declan Harvey threatened to kick any priests in the balls if they tried to disrupt a performance. And he meant it. He hated them with a vengeance bordering on psychotic. His mother, who was an alcoholic, had a reputation in her parish for inviting young curates into her study, and then she would lock the doors to prevent them escaping, and lecture them at length on atheism. Which only partly explained why Declan, who came from this rather unconventional Catholic family, had a long history of priest hatred, and we all hoped the clergy might attend a performance, and speculated on what great publicity our plays would have if Declan attacked any of them. Of course, they never attended a performance, knowing that actors in the theatre can answer back. Films were an easier target for the cowardly priests.

My New Year’s Resolution

No I am not giving up alcohol or even having a dry January. I am stuck indoors, as in “’im indoors, Terry”, so I will take comfort in the odd bottle or two of wine. I am not even going to give up colourful language…no, fuck that for a game of tin soldiers. And I am not dieting or committing myself to anything physical. No, what I am going to try to do is – and I am the first to admit I may not succeed – I am going to try to not make assumptions about people.

   We all do it, don’t we? We might spot that dickhead who wears socks and sandals and write him – it’s usually a ‘him’ – off as a total wally. Whereas that sock and sandal clad person may well be a professor of physics or a brain surgeon. It’s doubtful, but you never know. In the brain of a badly dressed person there may well be tomorrow’s Stephen Hawking or the next Man Booker Prize winner.

   We tend to judge on appearances, when we may well turn out to be wrong about a person. And the police do it all the time, don’t they?  Oh, that black person driving a Mercedes must be a drug dealer, else why would a black person be driving such a high-status car? Let’s have him, shall we? And while we are at it, let’s search the baby in the back seat for drugs. They don’t fool us. Nah! Good place to conceal drugs that.

   You see how thick those coppers are. Whoops! Did I just make an ‘assumption’ then?

   I must stop doing it. Remember this year’s resolution? Thou must not assume by a person’s appearance, or where the police are concerned I must not judge them by the behaviour of the odd bad apple. Or where the Mercedes stop and search was concerned, three bad apples I believe.

   Pamela Anderson has been in the news recently, and in the past whenever I thought of her in Baywatch, I wrongly assumed she was a stereotypical bimbo. How wrong I was. She has become a close friend of Julian Assange and has been campaigning on his behalf.

Recently she said, ‘The case is simply a criminalisation of a free press. Julian is being charged with journalism. Documents that have exposed war crimes and human rights abuses. Now the US wants to punish him for exposing those crimes.’

    And Assange himself has created a multitude of people who have made assumptions about him. He is a spy, and what he wrote about in Wikileaks endangered the lives of US troops and allied soldiers. But whenever I challenged this, no one could give me an example, no facts to back it up. Even the Americans couldn’t come up with anything, which is why they want him on the trumped up charge of spying by hacking their war computers, a charge which he categorically denies.

    But he has seriously upset the Americans, exposing them as war criminals. For instance, he posted military video footage of a 2007 Apache helicopter air strike near Baghdad that killed civilians, including Reuter’s correspondents, who had children with them in their van, and a little girl was seriously wounded in this carnage.

    This disgraceful slaughter of civilians from the Apache helicopter is posted on YouTube should you wish to see it, but I must warn you it is seriously upsetting. And you can hear the helicopter personnel laughing and joking about the slaughter, almost as if this is nothing more serious than a video game. And when the ground troops discover the little girl in the van is wounded, one of the helicopter crew says, ‘It’s their fault for bringing children to a battle.’

    If this was from a fictional film you would think it was overdone.

   Anyway, that is my resolution. Not to assume anything about anyone based on appearances. It will all be existential from now on. I will attempt to only judge a person by their  actions or behaviour. Of course, I may fail. In fact watching the news today I think I may have failed already.

   I may have mistakenly assumed that there must be at least 70 million Americans who are as dumb as shit!

Aladdin’s Magic Computer

Wishee’s Log…Star Date 23.12.20

Chief Engineer Wishee Washee reporting from the Starship Twankey. Our mission: To find the Dreaded Waffling Monster from the Bullingdon Planet and recover the magic computer. I turn to my trusted robot Aladdin. He seems a little down in the dumps. In fact, a hypo-glycerine tear has fused his circuits, and I know he’s sad because he’s in love with the humanoid Princess. I thump him with a laser head. ‘How can a humanoid love a robot like me?’ he moans.

   ‘Especially a robot in fishnet tights,’ I tell him.

   He looks like blowing another fuse.

   ‘Holy electron!’ I exclaim. ‘I’ve had an idea. Find the magic computer and the Universe shall be yours.’

  ‘I don’t want the Universe,’ he squeaks. ‘I just want the Princess.’

   I am about to tell him that the Princess is included in the Universe in a package deal when we are interrupted by Widow Twankey entering the control room. She has pointed ears and ‘Made in China’ tattooed on her arm.

   ‘And how’s my little invention today?’ she addresses Aladdin in her big bass voice. Her robot bleeps sulkily.

   ‘Suit yourself,’ she snaps and turns to me. ‘Now then, Chief Engineer, have you reactivated the retro-booster rockets yet? Fixed the spark plug in the transmogrification unit and changed the porthole abstersive  oscillators?’

   ‘What’s that?’

   ‘The windscreen wipers. And have you reassembled the megaton tackling regenerator, repaired the electric toaster and the space shuttle?’

   ‘No.’

   ‘Why not?’

   ‘I lost my screwdriver.’

   Suddenly, we are hurled sideways. ‘Our ship is heading straight for a chrono-synclastic infundibulum,’ I scream.

   ‘Don’t panic,’ Twankey yells. ‘I know exactly what to do?’

   ‘What?’

   ‘Look it up in the dictionary.’

   But it’s too late! We are swallowed up by a big Black Hole and are bombarded by what appears to be Big Macs, at least 500 feet in diameter.

   ‘Oh no!’ cries Twankey. ‘We are heading into a fast food belt. And it’s takeaway only these days.’

   Bleep. Bleep.

   ‘Mistress,’ announces Aladdin. ‘The control console tells us we are nearing a small asteroid called Tier 4. And there appears to be some life down there. Look at all those strange lights.’

   ‘I’m going down to take a look,’ I say, and beam down.

   They’re lights all right. Hundreds of them, changing from red to amber to green and back again. But there is very little life as far as I can see. I beam up again and report my verdict to Twankey.

   ‘Aladdin,’ she instructs the robot. ‘Increase our speed to 186,000 miles per second.’

   And before you can say Steven Spielberg, here we are on the other side of the Universe, and below us is the Green Planet, what used to be known as Earth. ‘Ah!’ I nod knowingly. I expect they changed the name from Earth to Green Planet because of all the trees they planted.’

   ‘Wrong!’ bleeps Aladdin. ‘It’s because of their obsession with the green folding stuff that you keep in a wallet.’

   Suddenly, I have the answer. It’s the Waffling Unkempt Monster from the Bullingdon Planet who has the magic computer, and he has left it in charge of his other evil minion Pratty Pathell. I know what I have to do. Reconnoitre the Green Planet and find the Magic Computer, which will save us all.

   ‘Take the space shuttle,’ Twankey suggests. ‘But beware of the Alien.’

   ‘Is that the slimy thing that bursts out of your stomach?’

   ‘Yes, so don’t eat at Motorway Services.’

   Aladdin and I bid Mrs Twankey farewell and climb aboard the space shuttle, and we soon touch down on the Green Planet, which doesn’t seem as green as I imagined. Then, as soon as we leave our craft, a hideous, horrible thing collapses across our path.

   ‘Sensors indicate that this is a common disease of earthlings, ‘ Aladdin explains. ‘Known as Bacchanals Compotation.’

    ‘Oh,’ I say. ‘He’s been defying earth curfew and drinking with his mates.’

   The thing croaks and whines unintelligibly, sounding not unlike one of those Karaoke Androids. But there is worse to come.

   With a waffling roar the Unkempt Waffler from Planet Bullingdon confronts us with a waved fist, who thinks he’s the ruler of the Universe, but even his evil minions have begun deserting him.

   Aladdin confirms this, saying, ‘Yes, his most sacred advisor has flown the planet.’

   ‘What was his name?’ I demand.

   ‘First name initial D,’ confirms the robot.

   ‘Of course. Darth. The D stands for Darth, Evil ruler of the Empire.’

   ‘Wrong,’ Aladdin says. ‘D is for Dominic. The Power behind the throne, until he decided to take a trip to the moon to test his eyesight.’

   ‘Enough!’ screams the Waffler. ‘Now it is time for my evil minion Ms Pathell to torture you with her rhetoric.'

   But I am saved by an idea. ‘The pound is mightier than the dollar,’ I yell.

   They are both so elated by the news that they take their eye off the ball for a moment and Aladdin reaches the Magic Computer. ‘It won’t do you any good, ‘ screams Pathell while fondly fondling her Waffler. ‘The computer is programmed for evil.’

   ‘Want a bet?’ bleeps Aladdin, his mechanical buttons pressing digits. He types out four letters:

   L-O-V-E.

   ‘Aaagh!’ screams the Waffling Monster and shrivels to an oily pulp. While Pratty Pathell screeches before vanishing to a distant galaxy to write her memoirs.

   ‘Ah!’ says the Princess dreamily, appearing magically in soft focus and running to Aladdin. She gazes into his electronic optics.

   ‘I’m rich,’ Aladdin shouts. ‘Rich! Beyond my wildest dreams.’

   ‘Ooh,’ the Princess coos dreamily. ‘A perfect match.’

   Of course, I think: many girls marry automatons just as longs as they have wealth.’

   It was time for me to leave. ‘May the force be with you,’ was my parting shot as I beamed up to Starship Twankey.

   Chief Engineer Wishee Washee Over and Out.

   Last message received was:

   Be back in another earth year when we will find out if the rulers of the universe have stopped waffling, which is a bit like asking a tiger if it likes salad.

THE POET IN SOHO

As the beer-fuddled poet blinked the sleep from his eyes, he knew there was something he had to do, or something he had already done, but his mind was a raging blank. Raging blank! He made a mental note of the phrase before staggering into the bathroom, promising himself he would write it down before it was lost forever in his booze splattered brain cells, and wondered how many millions of the little grey devils he had slaughtered in last night’s binge.

      As soon as he had urinated copiously, he went into the hit-by-a-bomb kitchen, and found her note on the table. The note from his lovely love, his dearest treasure, and easier to love now that she had caught yesterday’s late afternoon train for Swansea, leaving him alone which was how he wanted it to be. No fussing, arguing, or expectation of performing now, left in peace to be creative and write that poem that was buzzing in his head, tormenting him with words that he relished like liquorice sweets, chewy and sickly.

      Scowling as he lit a cigarette, inhaling smoke deep into his lungs, he stared at the note as if it was a mysterious wartime code, though it was merely a briefly scrawled reminder, unsigned. ‘Don’t forget tonight’s reading. And the suit from Moss Brothers.’

     It started to come back to him, dripping into his brain like a leaky tap, cryptic clues of his impending poetry reading. Not just any old poetry reading. It was something significant, that much he remembered. A reading in front of – was it a royal personage or an important member of the cabinet, someone connected with the arts? What did it matter? He would give his best undying performance whether it was prince or pauper. But where was the venue? Was it Wigmore Hall or perhaps the self-important Guildhall in the City? His memory filtered slowly like coffee in the Swansea Kardomah, and he remembered they were sending a car for him at five-thirty, so the driver would have been given instructions. And he felt it was better not to know where they were going; that way he could surprise himself, indulge in a mystery trip and catch the venue unawares. He chuckled, coughed, and ash fell from his cigarette. Peering again at the note, he saw a writhing snake, a higgledy-piggledy underlining of the second sentence. Of course! She had emphasised the need for sartorial elegance. A dinner jacket needed to be rented for this truly important reading, for a performance which could lead to greater affluence and sustain his family and holy treasure for many months. Much as his mind was torpedoed with bombastic broadsides about bourgeois preening and prancing, he was nonetheless comforted by the delight of dressing up, which would remind him of his stage performances when a mere stripling at the Little Theatre in the ghastly, glorious town of his birth.

     Later in the day – but not much later, as his surfacing had been way past noon – he sustained himself with two pints of bitter before staggering into the Moss Brothers gentleman’s outfitters in Garrick Street, Covent Garden. The first member of staff to greet him was tall and stately, and he could imagine this dignified butler dishing out brandy sodas in some vast drawing room in a country house somewhere in the shires. And if this almost credible Jeeves registered alarm at his dishevelled appearance, it was but a brief flicker of the eyes, and the shop assistant soon resumed impassive dignity in dishing out the same restrained service on offer to every client. Soon the poet was kitted out in evening wear, admiring himself in a full-length mirror. No longer looking like an unmade bed, as some wag had once described him, but now cutting a dash in ballot box black and butterfly bow.

      Careful to avoid temptation and the lure of the alehouse, he returned to his borrowed residence and soaked indulgently in a steaming hot bath, sucking boiled sweets and cigarettes. Proud of his almost two hours of abstinence, he dressed hurriedly at five-fifteen and glanced at his image in the mirror. Bow tie slightly skew-whiff but at least an improvement on his usual tangled appearance. Hair deliberately let loose in uncombed raffishness so as not to pander completely to the bureaucratic whim of the bourgeoisie.

     His car, an impressive Austin Princess, arrived bang on the dot of half-five. The chauffeur saluted him smartly and opened the rear door for him. But, as poet and man of the people, in spite of the upper crust outfit, he refused the open door invitation and let himself into the front passenger seat. The chauffeur slid huffily into his driver’s seat, and he could tell the man was a grovelling forelock puller, streets more snobbish than many of his passengers. So when he was gruffly informed they were heading for Wigmore Hall, he felt a strong desire to puncture the chauffeur’s pompousness and instructed the man to head for a Soho pub instead. The man started to object but the poet waved it aside demonstratively, showing the fellow who was in charge.

     They parked outside the York Minster in Dean Street, the pub everyone knew as ‘The French’, and without a backward glance the poet dashed inside. His intention was perhaps one pint and a whisky chaser, just to show the wretched driver how free he was from the constraints of convention; and then, having made his point, he would be a good poet and allow himself to be chauffeured on best behaviour to the venue. But there is many a slip, as they say. And the slip was the bibulous atmosphere of the pub, beckoning him away from duty, along with the other ragbag of artists, actors and writers, some of whom he knew, propping up the bar and imbibing as though their lives depended on how much booze they could slosh down their throats. Three pints and two whisky chasers later, his mellifluous voice soared in the blue fog of the bar as he belittled Wordsworth. His voice, cut with glass vowels from Oxford, still rose and fell in sing-song Welsh, and stories sprang from his lips with abandon, often punctuated by nicotine coughs. He was great company, and so was everyone in the bar. This was phase one of the evening. Next came the offer to his dearest friends, even ones he had only just met, of a lift to the next boozer, the Coach and Horses. Two of them took him up on the offer, while others walked the short distance round the corner. By now the driver was resigned to his fate, stiffly obedient, but comforted by the thought that he might get home early and still be paid the same rate..

      An hour later the poet, in the company of an actor and a musician, tumbled out of the ‘Coach’, and the chauffeur-driven car was dismissed with a grandiloquent gesture. Every pub was now within weaving distance, and next on the agenda was the Dog and Duck in Bateman Street where, after their noisy entrance, the poet abandoned the bow tie in an ashtray and spent much time discussing Marx Brothers films. By now he was well into his cups, and after another hour of rambling conversations about Stravinsky and surrealism, he and his tipsy companions staggered to the Nellie Dean, where they consumed alcohol in vast quantities, drinking faster as their pub crawl degenerated into a race towards oblivion. Clinging to hazy parodies of sobriety, they then reeled into the Intrepid Fox, where they reached the penultimate phase of the night, becoming argumentative and contradictory. The final phase came a little bit further up Wardour Street at The George, where the poet fell over, tried to pick a fight with the musician over slurred disagreements about jazz and opera, before blundering into the Gents, where he bounced into the door, impaled his coat pocket on the handle, and ripped an ugly gash in it as he pulled himself free. A sudden agitation in his stomach was his last surviving memory of the evening.

     Stirring the following day, a mouth like the ashes of the dead, and eyes that seemed to be glued together, he felt his bladder bursting, and groaned loudly as he dashed to the bathroom and made it just in time. The relief was unbelievably enjoyable, like sitting down and getting one’s breath back after hill walking. When he returned, swaying, to the bedroom, and stood framed in the doorway clutching the doorknob for support, he spotted the sad bundle of his evening wear, discarded in a heap on the floor by the end of the bed. Head bent, he shuffled closer to the bundle, moved the jacket with his foot, and was horrified to see the vomit clinging to it like cereal in an unwashed bowl. He tried to recall the butt end of the night, vaguely remembering arguments and a fuzzy recollection of being thrown out of The George. Everything was hazy, like dream sequences in films. He gave up trying to stitch the pieces together and went back to bed where he slept for another two hours. When he awoke at well past two o’clock, his eyes focused on the degraded bundle of his rented dinner suit. He shivered from blood-lowering excess and finger-pointing accusations of his third-rate antics of the night before, then suddenly remembered the chauffeur and his appointment at the Wigmore Hall. He swung his legs out of bed and sat up, cupping his throbbing head in his hands. How could he have forgotten the poetry reading? And how could he now repair the blunder? There was no telephone in the basement flat so he resolved to go out and make his almost-needing-hospital-treatment excuses from a call box. But first there was the problem of the dinner jacket to sort out.

     Still swaying and muddle-headed, he carried the Moss Brothers bundle into the small back garden. Rummaging in the garden shed, he found a spade, then buried the stinking bundle in a small patch of soft earth in the flower bed. Once he had patted the soil down with the back of the spade, and returned it to its shed, he went indoors to make himself a cup of tea and erased the tawdry crime from his brain.

     Almost a week passed before the evening wear was noticed missing by Moss Brothers. A letter arrived, polite at first, wondering if the return of the suit had been overlooked. But the poet, busy broadcasting for the BBC, conveniently forgot about the reminder. A second letter arrived, now more assertive and demanding. This too was shoved into the part of the poet’s brain reserved for trivialities, while he concentrated on creating a masterpiece of metaphors and imagery. But when the third letter arrived, this one more threatening in tone, and even hinting of legal action, he decided it was time to act. He dashed out and purchased brown paper and a ball of string. Then, returning to the scene of the crime, he went back to the garden and dug up the offending suit from its burial ground. Back in the kitchen he laid the sodden article carefully on two layers of brown paper. Lumps of clay now clung to the disgorged contents of his stomach and, holding his breath, he quickly folded the brown paper over the carcase of his evening wear.  Never clever with his hands, except for wielding a pen, he struggled to tie the parcel and swore profusely. Eventually the misshapen object was tied with so much string it looked like an escapologist trying to fight his way out of a strait jacket, but at least it was secure. He stared at the slipshod parcel for a while, wondering what might mitigate the offence, and then it came to him. Of course! Why hadn’t he thought of it? He was, after all, a regular broadcaster for the BBC and a poet about to have a five-thousand print run of his latest anthology. He would write a poem for the gentleman’s outfitters which should appease the hardest heart.

      He scribbled the poem, which took him no longer than five minutes, on a sheet of paper from a writing pad, slipped it into a matching envelope, attached it to the parcel and, feeling pleased with a job well done, rushed out to the post office. Once the parcel had been despatched, he jumped in a taxi and headed for the Star and Garter in Soho where he sat on a bar stool and regaled some of the regulars with amusing stories and filthy rhymes.

     He never ever thought about the dinner jacket again. As far as he was concerned, the generosity of his poetic gift had wiped the slate clean.

     When the parcel arrived two days later at the gentleman’s outfitters in Garrick Street, staff stared at it suspiciously, and one of them suggested humorously that they ought to call out the army bomb disposal unit. The manager of the store was summonsed to review the situation as not one member of staff wanted to touch the errant package. The manager sniffed suspiciously, certain he could detect an unpleasant, earthy smell, then removed the envelope and slid out the note. His eyes bulged as he tried to comprehend its message. It read:

“Dear Brothers Moss,

Sorry for the loss.

Dylan Thomas”

No Deal in The Fifties

I can’t help wondering what a ‘No Deal’ Brexit would mean for us British tourists entering France. After all, almost twenty years before we even joined the Common Market, two of our then biggest stars in the United Kingdom found entering France difficult. Sir Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh, the most famous theatrical couple in the fifties were held up at the  French border for well over an hour. I can honestly testify to that happening. I was there, aged fourteen.

    We were about to tour in Shakespeare’s  Titus Andronicus, the most prestigious theatre tour of all time, visiting Paris, Venice, Belgrade, Zagreb, Vienna and Warsaw, and I was playing Young Lucius, Titus’s grandson.

    We set off one bright and sunny day in May from Victoria, on the boat train. After the channel crossing, after we had disembarked, and wanting to get to our chartered train, eager to be in Paris, I couldn’t believe how severe the French customs officers were as they regarded the Titus company with deep suspicion. They fiddled, fussed and procrastinated until everything ground to a halt, so that we were holed up for what seemed like an eternity in the heat of the customs shed, with actors becoming severely tetchy. I watched Vivien Leigh’s dam about to burst, restraining herself from grabbing an official by the throat. From her body language I could see how much she hated authority and petty mindedness. I think I must have been gaping open-mouthed, watching Scarlett O’Hara, and seeing why she was perfect casting for the role. As the customs officers dithered and shrugged in their offhand Gallic manner, a volcano inside Vivien Leigh seemed about to erupt. But she must have realised that she was one of Britain’s cultural ambassadors and managed to calm herself as she turned away from the heated arguments taking place as Patrick Donnell, our company manager, attempted to reason with the officials.

   Fascinated, I stared at the scene, frowning in concentration. Suddenly, Vivien Leigh marched over to me and told me not to frown, telling me it would age me as an adult. ‘Never frown,’ she advised. Which I thought was choice coming from someone who had been scowling at the customs officers. But perhaps I had saved the day and she had used me as a distraction to revert to diplomacy, tearing herself away from the petty officials she wanted to slap. However dazzling her husband’s reputation was, it didn’t seem to cut any ice with the customs officers. Perhaps they held him personally responsible for Agincourt. Whatever the reason, we spent a long time entering France, and it was well over an hour. But I didn’t mind, I was too busy taking it all in, staring at gendarme with a gun in a holster, because in those days we never saw armed British policemen on the streets.

    Eventually, after a good 90 minutes, this enormous cast of 40 actors, plus the stage management, electricians, props and wardrobe, making a total of 60 in the company, was permitted to board the Paris train.

    Now, if Sir Kenneth Branagh, thinks entering France will be easy, he must think again. He did, after all, follow in Sir Laurence’s footsteps and play Henry V on film, and if the French get word of this that yet another thespian walloped them at Agincourt…although it is far more likely that any hold up at the French border is more likely to be caused by our prime minister’s lack of a deal.

And in The Beginning was The Potter’s Wheel

My family had resisted buying a television set up until 1955. There were all sorts rumours about the ‘goggle box’ or the ‘one-eyed monster’ and how it was blamed for many social evils and was responsible for all kinds of physical deformity; anyone who had a squint, naturally it was television to blame. But the worst thing about television back then was the way the BBC operated, shutting down at 10.45 p.m., first of all playing ‘God Save the Queen’. (Did the BBC expect us to stand to attention at home, as was expected of us when they played the National Anthem at the end of the main feature at the cinema?) And there were the mind-numbing interludes between programmes when they played drippy music while showing hands making a vase on a potter’s wheel or a windmill turning, a form of hypnosis as if Big Brother was lulling us into a soporific state. And the programmes themselves were not much better. Often I and my family preferred to sit by the wireless and listen to the anarchic comedy of The Goon Show or some of the brilliant lugubrious humour of Anthony Aloysius St John Hancock of Railway Cuttings, East Cheam, in Hancock’s Half Hour. At first, it was hard to accept live television shows, often ruined by many technical cock-ups, with sound booms or a camera lens coming into shot. In the early days of television, a teenage girl remarked, ‘I prefer radio to television, the images are so much better.’

    My parents, and my older brother, preferred the theatre and cinema, which also rubbed off on me in a big way.

    But there was one American comedy my father loved, which was The Phil Silvers Show, in which he played army Sgt Bilko, performing with immaculate timing. Of course in those days most of the American imports were Westerns. But BBC’s output then was ever so twee, with programmes like What’s My Line, hosted by Gilbert Harding, a headstrong schoolmasterly man who often upset people with a caustic remark and his panel consisted of well-spoken and well-mannered ladies like Lady Barnet, Lady Boyle and Barbara Kelly. And this was the quiz show where a guest had to mime their occupation, and the panellists had to guess what he or she did for a living. Riveting! But maybe we were easily pleased back then. (Perhaps we still are judging by some of the reality TV programmes showing these days.) But surely our gratification was easily satisfied in the fifties when we were amused by some of the variety shows like The Billy Cotton Band Show, where we marvelled at Cotton,* the entertainer and host, an overweight man who was able to do cartwheels as he yelled, ‘Wakey! Wakey!’

    Little wonder that television remained socially low and inferior on the cultural scale. And when ITV began broadcasting in 1955, it created social divisions with the viewing public, many snobbish viewers preferring the cosiness of the BBC, with Dixon of Dock Green  and his catchphrase (it was the era of catchphrases) ‘Evening all,’ which was perhaps more comforting than ITV’s Dragnet and ‘My name’s Friday. I’m a cop.’

    Then on ITV there were the commercials, which loyal BBC viewers tried to avoid, like the first ever TV advert for Gibbs SR toothpaste informing viewers that it was tingling fresh.  And a washing powder commercial stated that ‘Omo improves even on perfect whiteness.’ (Did anyone stop to wonder how you can improve on perfection?) ITV stations soon became known for a ‘licence to print money.’ A commercial during peak time between 7.00 p.m. and 10.30 p.m. could cost as much as £2,000 per minute (roughly £36,000 in today’s money). But it was ITV who became more innovative when a Canadian, Sydney Newman, who left the Canadian Broadcasting Company to work for ABC Television, founded Armchair Theatre, a series of hour-long plays broadcast every Sunday night after Sunday Night at The London Palladium. Many of the plays were written by renowned writers like Alan Plater, Alun Owen and Harold Pinter. These plays, which gave many young writers their first opportunity in writing for television, ran for 452 episodes. At last television was getting somewhere.

*His son, Bill Cotton junior became Controller of BBC 1 in the 1970s. When the violent borstal play Scum was made for television, it was banned. In certain circles Scum became known as ‘The Billy Cotton banned show.’

Trailer extracts for Please Sir! The Official History

On the day of the first episode in Wembley Studios, all of us 5C actors had to go early to wardrobe and get into the costumes we would be wearing, so that we were in our costumes for the technical camera rehearsal, when everything runs very slowly as the crew deal with all the problems we might encounter prior to the dress rehearsal, which would be in the afternoon of the following day.

   After I got kitted out in my combat jacket, I went into the studio to find John Alderton already sitting at his desk in the classroom, looking just like a young teacher fresh out of teacher training college, wearing a drab, brown tweedy jacket. I went up to him and said something like, ‘That is a brilliant costume, John, just the sort of naff thing a young teacher would wear.’

   By reply I got a funny look, as if I was winding him up.

   Later on I discovered he hadn’t yet been to wardrobe to get kitted out, and those were his own clothes!’

Mark Stuart’s direction, we soon discovered, could be very basic. Once I asked him what my motivation was for a certain line, to which he replied, ‘It’s because you get fucking paid to say it.’ And if any characters ended a scene with a visual shot, Mark’s direction would be along the lines of, ‘Come on, give me a mixed bag of reactions.’

Although the second series of Please Sir! was not due to start rehearsing and recording until early September, John Alderton invited most of us to an Apollo 11 moon landing party on 20 July at his London flat, where we stayed up all night to see the memorable event. A friend of John’s, Geoffrey Hughes, who was due to play a painter and decorator in the first episode of the second series of Please Sir!, attended the party and cooked us pancakes throughout the night. However shadowy the moonwalking astronaut figures of Armstrong and Aldrin were, we were all enthralled as we talked about the enormity of this technological achievement, and the distance that separated them from the earth. We all agreed it was a staggering achievement, although we did enjoy a few laughs that night as well, especially when President Richard Nixon came online to speak to the astronauts, saying it had to be the most historical phone call ever made, and Geoffrey Hughes wondered how much the call was costing, and if he had enough coins to feed in before the pips went. It was a great night though, and wonderful being part of this historic and memorable event, sharing it with our work colleagues, although I don’t think Peter Cleall attended because he lived in Brighton, but I can certainly remember Peter Denyer and Malcolm McFee being there.

Erik Chitty occasionally behaved just like his Smithy character. When we were about halfway through the series, he approached Peter and me, and asked why Eric Duffy was called El. We explained that East Londoners often do that – calling someone by the name of Derek ‘Del’ or Terry ‘Tel’, which was why the script often referred to Eric as ‘El’. There was a pause before Erik Chitty said, ‘Oh, I see. But no one has ever called me El.’

   It gave us the giggles, and we later referred to him as El Chitty.

The Fenn Street Gang

Another time one of the prop men showed me a butterfly bookmark which if you folded it and inserted it in the pages of a book, then opened it at that page, it would fly out. Feeling I needed to indulge in a childish prank, I borrowed the butterfly and a book, and in the middle of a camera rehearsal of a scene I wasn’t in, a scene in which Carol sat at a dinner table, I crawled on my hands and knees unseen by the cameras, looked up at Carol and told her to open the book at a certain page. I hadn’t expected quite such a startled reaction when the butterfly flew out. She jumped and screamed, while I crawled hastily away. And then I heard John Quilty, our floor manager, explaining to the director that it was just an Abbott creature playing a silly joke. I think the director of this particular episode was Phil Casson who was always laid back. Had it been Mark Stuart in the control room I dread to think what an earful I would have got.

The book also contains many colour photographs and is currently available in hardcover priced at £16.99, with free postage on Amazon.

Never On A Sunday

As we are in a lockdown at the height of a pandemic, I often wonder what day it is, as they are all the same now. And what is even worse, every day is like a Sunday, my least favourite day. For me, the Boomtown Rats got it wrong with their song about why they hated Monday. I always looked forward to Monday, because it meant I had survived another Sunday.

    So why do I loathe Sundays so much? It was to do with my childhood, growing up in North Wales where everything was shut on a Sunday: no pubs, restaurants or cinemas, everything except chapel was forbidden on a Sunday. During my teens, after we had moved to the south east, with my family I returned to Holyhead to visit my grandmother. Even though the pubs were closed on Sundays, some headway had been made and the cinemas could now open on a Sunday. My brother and I went to see a film early one Sunday evening, and when my grandmother found out she admonished us as she sat in front of her television set watching Sunday Night at The London Palladium. We tried to explain that a visit to the cinema was no different to watching TV, but she didn’t see it that way.

    In the early sixties, each county in Wales held polls to decide which ones would remain dry, and several counties voted to remain dry on Sunday. Which didn’t do a lot for drinking and driving if you enjoyed a drink and lived not far from the border of a ‘wet’ county. Many residents of Holyhead – those who liked alcohol – belonged to a yacht club and could have a guilt free drink on Sundays, even though they might never have been on a yacht in their life. And there were some crazy anomalies. In the late sixties the county of Gwynedd had voted to remain dry on Sundays, and my wife and I, while paying a visit to my cousin in Holyhead one Easter, were surprised to learn that we could have a drink on the Christian religious day, Good Friday. But we said, the pubs are still shut on Sundays. Then my cousin explained, we could go to a pub on Good Friday, but they only opened normal Sunday hours!

    And it wasn’t just Wales that suffered such angst from boozing on a Sunday. Scotland was the same. In 1974, they were still dry then on a Sunday, and Peter Cleall, Malcolm McFee and I were on tour in The Lads From Fenn Street, and performing at Kirkcaldy in Fife. When we arrived on the Sunday, prior to opening on the Monday, we checked into a hotel and, because we were residents, we could at least enjoy a drink after our long journey from England. At the finish of this date, our next venue was in Hull and we set off on Sunday morning. As we drove to our next venue and crossed the border, we stopped for some liquid refreshment during lunchtime at the first pub in England. We had just got our drinks when someone said, ‘How’s your tour going?’

   The chap introduced himself. He recognised us because he was an actor touring in another show, on their way from Bournemouth to Aberdeen, and decided to stop off for a final drink before the last leg of their marathon journey.

    Although certain areas in Wales remained dry on Sundays right up until the early ‘90s, thankfully during our tour most of Wales had seen the sense in conforming with the rest of Britain, and the three of us enjoyed a boozy week when we performed at the Swansea Grand Theatre. During that week, I had to rise extremely early one morning to catch the 125 train to Paddington, where I was picked up and driven to a film studio for a half day’s shoot with Caroline Munro, which I have written about in my recently published Please Sir! The Official History.

    When I returned to Swansea, just in time for the evening show, Malcolm and Peter were in one of the hotel rooms, tucking into chips and scallops bought from a local chippy. When they complained that the scallops tasted of potato, I explained that in Wales what are known as scallops in chippies are thin slivers of potato dipped and fried in batter. They had just been eating a double portion of potato. I laughed as I told them the price should have given them a clue. Seafood scallops for the price of a bag of chips!

Death of a Musical

In 1978 I was offered three roles in a Radio 4 version of Under Milk Wood. I was thrilled at being asked to play Dai Bread, Sinbad Sailors and Jack Black. The First Voice was played by Glyn Houston, and the rehearsal and recording lasted a week, an almost unknown luxury for radio.

   After this bright start to the year, a phone call came out of the blue from Bill Kenwright. ‘Can you sing?’ he asked me. When I told him I could, he laughed and said, ‘Of course, you’re bound to say that just to get the job, you wanker.’

   He invited me to visit his office that afternoon, and he and his general manager, Rod Coton, took me to a coffee bar in The Strand for tea. Bill switched on the charm and told me he wanted me to take over from Jack Wild in a pre-West End tour of a new musical, Big Sin City. He gave me an LP, a cast recording of the show, signed the front cover wishing me luck, and promised to re-record the track with me singing Jack Wild’s solo song. When I asked him why Jack Wild was leaving the show, all he said was something like, ‘Because he’s a useless little fucker.’

   Big Sin City was a rock musical, a modern reworking of the legend of Orpheus and Eurydice. It was written by three brothers: John, Neil and Lea Heather, and tried hard to be a parody of other musical shows. I went to see it almost every night at Wimbledon Theatre, which was to be Jack Wild’s last date on tour. After that it was a week’s rehearsal, not only for my benefit but so they could make much needed rewrites to the show.

   The part was a character called Slic, a teddy boy, and the show opened with him sitting and snogging with Su Pollard in the auditorium (I didn’t get paid any extra for this!). A spotlight picked us out, then I stood up and spoke some brief dialogue prior to a rock ‘n’ roll number bursting into life on stage. We opened at Brighton Theatre Royal for this part of the tour. During the midweek matinee, as soon as the spotlight picked me out, and as I was about to start my prologue, an irate pensioner sitting on my other side to Su, grabbed my arm and tried to pull me back into my seat. ‘Sit down, son,’ he said. ‘This is a show. Behave yourself.’

   Even though Jack Wild had left the show, he had become great mates with some of the cast and musicians, and attended almost every performance at Brighton, then came to the pub with us afterwards. I felt there was something fishy going on, I still couldn’t work out what it was. Some of the cast must have known, but nobody had the decency to tell me. And throughout the tour the Heather brothers encouraged my ad-libs while one of them stood in the wings making notes. They also told me we would definitely be going into the West End.

   As soon as the tour ended, I sat at home waiting for the phone call about the West End transfer. When I didn’t hear anything, I telephoned one of the cast. His wife answered. ‘Michael’s not here,’ she said. ‘He’s rehearsing.’

   When I asked her what he was appearing in, there was a pause before she answered. ‘Oh, haven’t they told you? The bastards! Mike’s rehearsing Big Sin City. It opens next week at the Roundhouse, prior to the West End. And Jack Wild’s back in it.’

   So, as I deep-down suspected, that was why he kept visiting us on tour. He’d been keeping abreast of all the script changes we made. Kenwright and the Heather brothers knew all along that Jack Wild would come back into the show for the London run. He’d left the tour due to a

prior television commitment. What I couldn’t get over was why everyone found it necessary to lie to me. If they’d offered me the job saying it was only for the five week tour, I would still have done it.

   I made an angry phone call to Kenwright’s organisation. They still owed me ninety pounds for my rail travel, so I went storming down The Strand towards his office. While I waited for a lull in the traffic to cross the road, I spotted the Heather brothers arriving at his office. Pleased I could watch them wriggle with embarrassment, I followed them into the building.

They must have been warned of my imminent arrival because they had disappeared into the inner sanctum of Kenwright’s office and clearly had no intention of showing their faces in the reception area where I sat.

   Rod Coton pleaded poverty and promised there would be a cheque in the post. Along with the other broken promises, I thought. As it was gone five in the evening, I said I refused to budge, and would remain in the office until I was paid. Eventually, Rod managed to borrow eighty pounds from an assistant and I settled for that. I never did get the outstanding balance. 

   Big Sin City opened at the Roundhouse and was unanimously slated by the critics. It lasted a week.

Stranger than Fiction

A Deadly Diversion, my crime novel, which was published in 2014 by Acorn Books, an imprint of Andrews UK Ltd, has suddenly become topical as an enquiry has just begun into the SDS (Special Demonstration Squad) and their undercover and fraudulent activities.

   The SDS was an undercover unit of the Metropolitan Police, and part of the Special Branch, set up in 1968 to investigate mainly left-wing anti-Vietnam war protesters at the American Embassy in Grosvenor Square, but over many decades the undercover officers have investigated animal rights and environmental protesters, and even Labour politicians. Undercover police officers were given the nicknames of ‘the hairies’ because of their hippie appearances.

   In my thriller, private detective Freddie Weston investigates the murder of a young woman’s family, a crime the police failed to solve more than eleven years ago, and this takes him and his partner on to discovering the false identity of a suspected killer, thought to be an undercover police officer, who has taken the identity of a child who died years ago. And the investigation reveals that the suspected undercover police officer has been leading a double life, living with a woman who has fathered his child and knows nothing of his true identity.

   If you think that is fiction, think again.

   The inquiry into the SDS activities, which has already cost almost £30 million, will take at least three years. For instance, in 2014 the Met agreed to pay out almost half a million pounds to a woman whose child was fathered by undercover SDS officer Bob Lambert. And Mark Kennedy who spent years masquerading as a left-wing activist had several long-term relationships with unsuspecting women. And most of these undercover officers took the identities of children who had died, and became fictional characters, living a lie for many years, disappearing occasionally to liaise with their handlers and MI5 officers.

   Although the SDS was disbanded in 2008, because of so much adverse publicity and criticism, another undercover squad has been set up called the National Domestic Extremism Unit but doing pretty much what the SDS did. A rose by any other name!

   But that was what gave me the basis for writing my crime novel, which took my protagonist to Krakow in Poland, then on a perilous visit to a derelict night club on the Isle of Sheppey, where the fun really starts – or nearly ends for Freddie and his daughter.

   When writing fiction I often use real locations, and spend time getting to know the districts, as I did for this novel in Krakow and on the Isle of Sheppey, and at the latter I came across a real derelict nightclub, perfect for what I had in mind for the climax of the book.

   And so I will be following the ongoing investigation into the victims and undercover SDS officers over the next three years with great interest, to see just how bizarre and stranger than fiction the investigation discloses.

A Deadly Diversion link to Amazon on Crime Books page

What’s In A Name?

Quite a lot, actually. Think about the naming of some of your favourite characters when it comes to fiction. How many fictional dynamic detectives do you know who go by the name of John Smith? They need good names like Phillip Marlowe, Nero Wolfe, Nick Carter or Hercule Poirot. And not just in detective fiction. Look at all the wonderful Dickens characters that are aptly named. Everyone from Fagin to Micawber.

    And nicknames are great, although it sometimes takes me a while to imagine how a character came by that particular moniker. One of my favourite films is the Ealing comedy The Ladykillers. Danny Green, the gentle giant, is named One-Round. It took me years to realise why this was his particular nickname before it struck me that the screenwriter has imagined him as a boxer who is almost always knocked out in the first round. And then there is the duality of Budgie. He is called Ronald Bird, so yes that makes sense. But why Budgie? Why that particular bird? Well, observe a budgerigar walking and you will see the way it ducks and dives. And our eponymous character played by Adam Faith is one of Soho’s duckers and divers. Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall the creators and writers of the series knew what they were about, it wasn’t random.

   Nicknames are great for creating characters and they are better when they defy explanation, leaving the viewer or the reader to use their imagination, as I eventually did with One-Round. Also, they can be used from real people into characters with no fear of libel. In one of my locals there was a large chap and his nickname was Whisky. I never saw him drinking whisky, he was strictly a lager man. I never did find out why he was called Whisky, but I imagined either he once got blotto on the drink and behaved outrageously or it was because he was bult like a whisky barrel. Whatever the reason I used that nickname for a character in one of my books.

    Pubs are great for nicknames. A bloke who came in my local in Rusthall was called Clippo. I did eventually discover the origins of his name. It came about because he was a postman, and after work he hurried to get in that first pint during early doors without first removing his bicycle clips.

   Wales, of course, is rife with nicknames, but there is a very good and obvious reason for this; with so many of the population called Jones, Owen or Evans, nicknames come to the rescue. I remember once hearing about a young man who after he got married was nicknamed Griffiths Quiet Wedding. When I enquired about this, I was told his wedding was anything but quiet, in fact it was quite wild. He had drunk so much the night before, and was excessively hungover, and he walked silently down the aisle wearing trainers, hence his nickname.

   But it is also the ordinary naming of characters that is important, even those who are never seen. We can all of us imagine what Norman Potter’s wife Ruby was like, even though she never once appeared in Please Sir! And I cannot now imagine any other name for Norman Potter.

   And all the characters were well named. I cannot possibly think how my character would have developed had Esmonde and Larbey named him anything but Frankie Abbott. And Eric Duffy was aptly named, who we all called ‘El’ in the script.

   Once, during rehearsals, Peter Cleall and I were approached by Erik Chitty who played Smithy, and he was confused, wanting to know why we referred to Eric as ‘El’. We explained that it was an East End trait, when Derek becomes Del, Terry becomes Tel and so on.

   There was brief pause before Erik said, ‘No one has ever called me El.'

   From that moment on, we often referred to Erik, when he couldn’t hear us, as El Chitty!

   That one little anecdote is from my new book Please Sir! The Official History, with a foreword by Peter Cleall, and will be released next month in time for Christmas.

Performing with Peter Childs

In 1975 I played Michael in the ‘gay’ play, The Boys in The Band at Cardiff New Theatre, and became a great friend of Peter Childs, who played Hank in the production. Following our two week run in Cardiff, the production was scheduled to go to the MacRobert Centre at Stirling, and we had concerns about some sort of moral backlash. According to some of the cast members, the homosexual bill had never been ratified in Scotland, and sexual relations between consenting members of the same sex was still against the law. Mind you, to say we were concerned was probably an exaggeration. I mean, who in the theatre doesn’t like a drama? And so we looked forward to anything the Scottish audiences might throw at us, either metaphorically or literally.

   But the trouble in Scotland came from an unexpected source – the Scottish Gay Liberation Front. They reckoned the play was an insult to gays and the play didn’t deserve to be taken seriously. But the show went brilliantly on its first performance. We knew some of the Gay Lib members were in the audience and in the bar afterwards the head of the Gay Lib Front introduced himself, then launched into an argument about how clichéd the play was, with stereotypical, limp-wristed gays giving out the wrong messages.

   Most of us in the cast pointed out that Emory was the only effeminate character, and the play showed an entire cross section of the gay community. But he was so intent on getting his point across, he didn’t accept or listen to our arguments. He charged in bitterly with a diatribe on all limp-wristed gays like Larry Grayson and John Inman, who were a disgrace and a pathetic travesty.

   Knowing Barry Howard, who played Emory, had once been the long-term partner of John Inman, I saw him bristle, and I waited with eager anticipation for the explosion. Instead, he decided it was time to buy an enormous round of drinks. ‘David, what’ll you have, love? And for you, Peter?’ He went round the entire cast, and there were nine of us, plus the stage management. Finally, he came to the Gay Lib bloke at the end of the row, looked him right in the eye, and said, ‘I’m not buying you one, because you’re a cunt!’

   It was a costly round of drinks, but I guess Barry thought it was worth it to make a point.

   After Stirling we played at Norwich Theatre Royal for a week, and then suddenly the last night was upon us, phone numbers were exchanged and promises to keep in touch. Like holiday friendships or romances, it rarely happens. The actors you were bosom friends with on tour become just a passing experience, like a book you enjoy reading, but you know you will never read again. But there are exceptions, and Peter Childs and I had formed a firm friendship, and when we said we would keep in touch when the play was over, we both knew we meant it.

   Although Peter occasionally appeared in Minder in the 1980s, playing DS Rycott, I hadn’t expected him to show interest in my small-scale production of Under Milk Wood in the ‘80s which needed at least two weeks’ solid rehearsal, followed by just three performances at Stafford. But he loved the play and the language, and launched himself into the roles of Mog Edwards, Cherry Owen and Mr Waldo with enthusiasm. If Peter was keen to do something, he gave himself to it one-hundred per cent.

   Later in the decade I was devastated by Peter’s death from leukaemia at the age of 50. I went to see him at his cottage in Hawkhurst just four weeks before the end, and despite his shrunken, hollow appearance as he lay in his bed, he still had a cheeky smile as he laughed and joked, his eyes sparkling with each witticism. I often catch repeats of his Minder episodes, and I am always staggered by how good he was. One of the things Peter enjoyed was making up rhyming slang, and as he suffered from piles, he referred to the disorder as his Chalfonts – as in Chalfonts St Giles. One night I watched an episode of Minder which Peter wasn’t in, and Arthur Daley said to Terry McCann, ‘My Chalfonts ain’t half playing up, Terry.’ I wondered if Peter had been drinking with one of the Minder writers.

   Peter’s Chalfonts got so bad at one stage, he had to go into hospital for an operation to have them cut out. Afterwards he told me it was horrendous because halfway through the op the anaesthetic wore off, and he said he was screaming with pain. And then he added, with a twinkle in his eye, ‘Mind you, I know how I could play Edward the Second now.’

   When I attended Peter’s memorial service at the Actors’ Church in Covent Garden, Michael Elwyn, an actor friend of his, paid a tribute to him with a funny story about a time when they toured together.

   They shared the journey to each venue in one car. Michael was a keen golfer and had an expensive set of golf clubs on the back seat. Peter had a plastic supermarket bag containing his theatre make-up and shaving tackle. The car was broken into, and the thief stole Peter’s flimsy bag of make-up but left the golf clubs behind. They informed the police about the break-in and later that day a young constable was sent to interview them at the theatre.

   ‘Have you any idea who might have stolen this item?’ the constable asked Peter.

   ‘Well, constable,’ Peter replied, ‘I suggest you scour the town and search for a clean-shaven, non-golfing tramp, wearing Number Five Eye-liner.’

Characters from Crossroads

When I began my professional acting career at the age of 12, it was as the real Meurig Jones. My middle name is Wyn, and a year later a pretentious hyphen joined it to my surname. Whether it was my parents’ idea or a suggestion of the stage school I attended, I have no idea. Then, in the mid ‘60s, an older actor pointed out that when I attended auditions, producers and directors would be expecting to meet a young actor speaking with a strong Welsh accent instead of the homogenized received pronunciation I had been forced to adopt at the Corona Academy Stage School. Rhona Knight, the principal of Corona worked me hard to get rid of my strong Welsh dialect, and it wasn’t long before I was speaking like a proper English person, as if I’d been brought up with that silver spoon in my mouth – because in 1955, the year I started at Corona, kitchen sink drama had yet to hit our screens, when regional dialects became de rigeur in films such as Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner, Cathy Come Home and television dramas like Up the Junction. 

   My first job as David Barry was in eight episodes of Crossroads, a five-nights a week soap opera where actors struggled to remember their lines, camera shots were often focused on the wrong characters, and occasionally the set shook if an actor slammed a door too forcefully.

   But however bad Crossroads was five decades ago, it became comedy gold for Victoria Wood when she created Acorn Antiques, with Julie Walters as the inept Mrs Overall, a parody of Ann George, who played Amy Turtle in the soap. And although I wept when I saw my terrible performance as a character called Ross Baxter in Crossroads, I wept with laughter every time I watched Acorn Antiques.

   Having worked with actors like Paul Scofield and Sir Laurence Olivier in my early teens, giving a shit performance in Crossroads as the rechristened David Barry didn’t seem to bode well for working under my new name. In those days, an actor appearing in a soap was just one notch up from a serial killer. I remember Peter Cleall, who played Duffy alongside me in Please, Sir! drawing my attention to a BBC soap called The Newcomers (1965-69), about a new town. Peter told me to watch the actors carefully, who seemed to sigh before delivering their lines. And he was right. The meaningless pauses spoke louder than the dialogue.

   But who am I to talk after giving that dreadful performance in Crossroads? Not only was my performance inadequate, I had been totally miscast. Ross Baxter should have been played by a mature actor, instead they got a boy to do a man’s job. And how did this happen? I hear you ask.

   Peter Lawrence, a roguish actor, had played a policeman in quite a few episodes of Crossroads, and I had had a general audition for the soap, which meant I was not interviewed for a specific part, but should a suitable part come up then the casting director, Margaret French, would bear me in mind. A week after my interview, I became involved in a pub crawl with Peter and his boyfriend in Wimbledon Village. When we were well and truly plastered, he suggested I send Margaret French a bunch of flowers, with a note saying, ‘Thank you for one of the nicest interviews I’ve ever had in this business.’ And I was drunk enough to do it. Which explains how the new David Barry played a tough, go-getting theatrical agent who talks Carlos the chef into becoming a singing chef. Carlos was played by Anthony Morton, a robust man, struggling to inject life into a usually moribund script as beads of sweat broke out on his pasty forehead. In one scene we cut thirty seconds from the script, which was almost a hanging offence as half-hour slot ITV shows had to be as tightly near to 24 minutes and thirty seconds as possible. They needed to make up the time, and once the director had glowered at Carlos and Ross Baxter, rather than do a retake, at the start of the second half, after what was to be the commercial break, he asked Sue Nicholls to talk on the telephone at the motel reception. ‘What about?’ she asked. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she was told. ‘Anything, just as long as it’s thirty seconds.’

   And that was Crossroads. I never did include it on my CV.

   But four years later, when I began life as Frankie Abbott in the Please Sir! series, Peter Cleall told me he had also been in Crossroads, playing a character called Chuck Feeney. We both agreed with how bad the series was and had a few laughs when we imagined a drama with the leading characters of Ross Baxter and Chuck Feeney, and how naff that would be!

   And in 1974 when Malcolm McFee, Peter and I toured in The Lads From Fenn Street, Malcolm played Meg Richardson and I played Amy Turtle in a Crossroads spoof, which was a hundred times more enjoyable than the real thing.

Did Laurence Olivier Watch Please Sir!?

At the age of 14 I toured Europe in 1957 with Sir Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh in Titus Andronicus, and after a six week season in London ended, our paths would never cross again. But I occasionally bought either film magazines like Films and Filming or its sister journal Plays and Players. So I was aware of what was going on at the National Theatre at the Old Vic, with Sir Laurence in charge.

    Obviously going to the cinema was much less costly than the theatre, and I hated having to sit in the gods with a bird’s-eye view of the actors’ heads. But if there was ever a Vivien Leigh or Laurence Olivier film showing I always made a point of seeing it. About this time I saw Bunny Lake Is Missing, directed by Otto Preminger, with Laurence Olivier as the calm, methodical Scotland Yard detective, a fairly average psychological mystery which I watched recently on Talking Pictures TV, which was a little dated, but Olivier gave a very credible performance. I don’t recall seeing Vivien Leigh’s The Roman Spring Of Mrs Stone, but I did make a point of seeing Ship Of Fools, her final screen appearance in which she was terrific, and how terrifying it must have been for the cowering Lee Marvin, physically punished by her manic temper when she beat him up, which looked horribly real. How he must have suffered, unless he was numbed through doctor alcohol.

   Vivien Leigh died in July 1967 aged only 53. Two years later she was commemorated with a plaque at St Paul’s, the actors’ church in Covent Garden, unveiled on the occasion of what would have been her 56^th birthday on 5 November. I liked to imagine that the rockets that lit up the sky that night were to celebrate her life.

   Whenever I mentioned to anyone that I had worked with Laurence Olivier, often the first thing I was confronted with was, ‘Oh, didn’t he once have a fling with Danny Kaye?’

    Which, according to Tarquin Olivier in his biography My Father Laurence Olivier, the Danny Kaye homosexual affair was merely the invention of biographers titillating their readers. He makes the point that it is garbage and gossip, and had there been any truth in the rumour, Vivien Leigh, who was terribly indiscreet about those sorts of peccadilloes when Larry left her, she would have made it public.

    I think Tarquin Olivier makes a powerful point. It was just gossip which people love. And we have to bear in mind that Olivier so admired Danny Kaye’s talent and they were such close friends, who possibly kissed and cuddled in public as far back as the thirties and forties, when masculine men didn’t do those things – it was a handshake or a slap on the back, even on the football field back then.

    In 1971, while we made a feature film of Please Sir!, Olivier was playing Count Witte in the film of Nicholas and Alexandra. He was out in Spain shooting some scenes and producer Sam Spiegel said they were having trouble finding someone to play Rasputin. Olivier said there was someone in his company at the National who would be ideal, and Tom Baker was flown out there for a screen test. A year later he stepped onto the red carpet at Leicester Square for the Royal Premiere of the film.

    In 1972, while I worked on the second series of the spin-off sitcom The Fenn Street Gang, and my friend Peter Cleall, who played Duffy in the series, thought a career change might be a good idea, he auditioned for Oliver at the National Theatre. After Peter had performed his two audition monologues, Olivier said to him, ‘Haven’t I seen you somewhere before?’

    Peter, thinking that Lord Olivier surely wouldn’t have seen him in Please Sir!, and knowing he lived in London-by-the-Sea, replied uncertainly, ‘I live in Brighton. Perhaps you’ve seen me on the train to Brighton.’

    He didn’t get accepted at the National.

    When Peter told me of this exchange between him and Olivier, I said to Peter that he (Olivier) and Joan Plowright had young children, and for all Peter knew he might have sat down and seen an episode or two of Please Sir! with his young son. And had Peter mentioned this, rather than the feeble train to Brighton explanation, it might have swung the audition for him.

    Much later I was struck by a bizarre thought. If Olivier had seen an episode or two of us cavorting in Fenn Street School, in which I played a 15-year-old, perhaps I hadn’t changed that much since Titus Andronicus. Would he have recognized me, I wondered? But, like Peter, I felt that Baron Olivier of Brighton watching our sitcom was a fanciful thought.

The Return of Malcolm McFee

For the second series of The Fenn Street Gang in 1972, all six of us were contracted to do 14 out of 18 episodes, but this time the series was recorded at LWT’s new studio, the South Bank Television Centre, near the site of the new National Theatre.

   It was great to be in central London after Wembley, where we had been limited to either Chinese or Indian restaurants after the recordings. Now we had an unlimited choice of where we could eat after the show, and we could even go on and do a little bit of extra late night drinking afterwards.

   The new LWT studio was very close to the site of the new National Theatre, the building of which had commenced in 1970 and it would be another four years until the opening. It was great to be working in this district overlooking the River Thames, and the lovely Somerset House on the other side of the river, which looked magnificent when it was lit up at night. But it was even greater to have Malcom returning as Peter Craven which made such a difference to the dynamic of each scene. I felt sorry for Léon Vitali, who had replaced Malcolm for the first series, and often wondered how he must have felt, unless he concluded that his engagement had been, like a theatre understudy, a temporary measure. But I needn’t have been concerned as in 1975, having played Lord Bullingdon in Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon, he became the director’s assistant, working on many of his films, including The Shining, in which he is credited as Assistant to the Director.

   In 1979 I toured in Pauline Macauley’s play The Creeper, playing opposite Bill Simpson of Doctor Finlay fame. Just before the tour finished, a couple of acquaintances of mine visited London and I took them on a riverboat trip from Tower Bridge, travelling upstream. A tour guide gave us a non-stop commentary on all the sites and buildings, and as we cruised past Somerset House on our right, he pointed out that it was where they kept the national records of births, deaths and marriages. Then said, ‘Or as they say, hatch ‘em, match ‘em and dispatch ‘em!’ But when he pointed out the theatre on our left, he said disparagingly, ‘That building on the left, ladies and gentlemen, is the new National Theatre. I think it’s an eyesore meself and the geezer what designed it must either have been a raving lunatic or had shares in Ready-Mix.’

   Not many of the mostly German and Japanese tourists on the boat knew what he was talking about!

    No doubt Prince Charles, never a lover of modern buildings, would have agreed with the tour guide. In 1988 the Prince of Wales described our National Theatre as ‘…a clever way of building a nuclear power station in the middle of London without anyone objecting.’

    But probably most detractors of the building have never been inside the National, let alone seen a production there. Each time I visit the theatre I marvel at its functionality, its space, clear views and acoustics. And even from the outside I love the angles that seem to blend with the environment.

    Sir John Betjeman, a lover of traditional architecture, who was mostly responsible for saving many wonderful buildings such as the St Pancras Station hotel and the Black Friar pub opposite Blackfriars Station, wrote to architect Denys Lasdun and said he gasped with delight at the National Theatre, which he praised as a lovely work and so good from so many angles.

   So there you go: if it was good enough for Sir John Betjeman…and you know what he said about Slough!

Experiment With Alcohol

Have you ever watched a television drama where there is a short scene in a pub and someone has just bought a fresh pint of beer, and the character exits leaving most of the pint? I don’t know about you but I find this unrealistically annoying, especially as a pint costs almost a fiver these days. So, is this the fault of the writer or the director, I wonder? I also wonder why they don’t give the characters shorts to drink if the scene is too short to sustain drinking a pint. And the amount of alcohol that is consumed, which we know is coloured water, couldn’t possibly be consumed without the characters becoming incomprehensible. That is what is termed the suspension of disbelief.  But in 1976, when I played Michael in The Boys in the Band at Cardiff New Theatre, the director Martin Williams tried excessive alcohol consumption in a play as an experiment.

   The play has an all-male cast and is about a group of gays during one night at a party in a New York apartment, all drinking too much and getting belligerent.

   Someone I got along with in the cast was Peter Childs, and we stayed in touch following the production and became close friends. (Peter went on to play Detective Sergeant Rycott in Minder.)

   During the third rehearsal week, when we had got as far as running it from start to finish, Martin Williams instigated a somewhat crazy experiment. Throughout the play, heavy drinking is done by most of the characters, and my character ends up pretty plastered. Without any prior warning, Martin substituted the prop bottles of booze that were filled with tap water with the real thing. If a character drank whisky, then that’s what he found on the makeshift rehearsal room set. And if it was mentioned that he drank Chivas Regal, then that’s what Martin purchased, being lavish with the council-run theatre budget. My character Michael doesn’t drink until the end of Act One, when he suddenly weakens, goes off the wagon, then drinks neat gin by the tumbler full.

   The rehearsal began. Well into Act One the actors began knocking back the booze. Then, not far into the second act, some of us started to giggle. Martin became annoyed. ‘OK!’ he said. ‘Go back to the top of Act Two and start again.’ Which meant we would consume more booze than the script required. After half an hour we began to slur our words. By the end of the play some of us were legless. Peter drew my attention to the fact that I was the only character drinking gin and pointed to the almost empty bottle. ‘And that’s in less than an hour,’ he chuckled.

   And what did we prove with this experiment? Only that alcohol consumed by characters in a play demands a huge suspension of disbelief from the audience. Nobody was capable of drinking that much alcohol.

   And on the subject of alcohol, Peter was a member of the BBC Club and one day, while the play was up and running, I accompanied him to the BBC Llandaff club where we were soon imbibing with a crowd of directors and writers. One of them told a joke about a nun outside a convent telling some pigeons to Fuck off! The mother superior came out and said, ‘No, no, you mustn’t say that to the little pigeons. You must say, Shoo, shoo, little pigeons, and they’ll fuck off just the same.’

   As we laughed at this joke, a figure loomed over the BBC director and tapped him on the shoulder. It was a uniformed commissionaire, complete with mandatory row of medals. ‘I heard you,’ he warned the director. ‘Using language. Now cut that out.’

   Quick as a flash the director asked him if he spoke Welsh. The commissionaire admitted he didn’t.

   ‘Ah, well, there you are you see,’ began the director. ‘You obviously misheard what I was saying. I was speaking Welsh. And in the Welsh language there are mutations. And you may or may not be aware of the fact that there is no letter V in our alphabet. This is replaced by the letter F. So what you heard was the word Buck, and because it was mutated, it became Vuck, spelt with an F but pronounced as a V.’

   We all stared at the commissionaire and saw the rising tide of redness which engulfed his cheeks. ‘I’m sorry, he mumbled. ‘I didn’t realize.’

   The director smiled pleasantly. ‘That’s all right,’ he said. ‘Now you can fuck off!’

   I had to admire the way he was so quick thinking in dealing with the jobsworth. Me, I’d have thought of it after the event.

Abbott in the Blind Beggar

If a young actor appeared in a beer commercial, it was a hard-and-fast rule that the actor had to be over the age of 24, otherwise it was tantamount to encouraging young men to drink. Of course, advertisers could get round this Independent Television inflicted rule by casting actors who were over the required age but looked very much younger. And so I benefited from my television image from the Please Sir! and Fenn Street Gang TV series in which my playing age was probably late teens or early twenties top whack, and by the time the latter series ended I was 31 and appeared in many booze commercials. No commercials could be conflicted within a three year time span. For instance, it was not acceptable to appear in two beer commercials within three years, but it was permissable to appear for other booze products, or you could appear in beer commercials for other countries which was how I came to appear in three beer commercials in less than three years, one for Heineken in Italy, one for Guinness in the Republic of Ireland, and one for the UK. In the latter I was cast as a leather-jacketed yob – surprise, surprise! – for a bottled beer – McEwen’s Export, I think – for showing in Northern Ireland. The ad was shot in an Irish pub in Whitechapel Road, on the corner of Cambridge Heath, opposite the Blind Beggar on the other corner, which was the pub notorious for the Ronnie Kray murder of George Cornell in 1966.

   I and another actor drank beer from early in the morning, and the drinking lasted as long as the shoot, which was all day. The message of this ad was a simple one. You might be a loser it implied, but drink our beer and you’ll be a winner, because as we leant on the bar sipping the brew, the door opened and in came Joanna Lumley, looking radiant in a diaphanous dress, and naturally the Greek goddess was attracted to these two yobs.

   It was a simple minded ad for simple minded people.

   There was a small location catering wagon outside the pub, where I spotted the chef with a fag in his mouth, ash dropping into the food. I got on well with the cinematographer and when we broke for lunch we decided ash-free pub grub in the Blind Beggar was preferable to the chuck wagon. We crossed the street and entered the pub. As we walked up to the bar, the young barmaid recognised me and got quite excited. ‘Frankie! What are you doing here?’ she said, smiling. Without hesitating I dropped into character. ‘I heard there was a spot of bother in here,’ I replied, ‘So I thought I’d come down and sort it out.’

   The pub went quiet, the smile left the barmaid’s face and she excused herself to serve another customer further along the bar.

   Perhaps a gin and tonic in the Blind Beggar was a bad idea on top of all the strong beer I’d drunk, because by late afternoon I was feeling very pissed, and the final shot of the day was a dirty great close-up of me seeing Joanna Lumley’s entrance into the pub. My reaction now would have been over the top viewed from the upper circle at Drury Lane. John Crome, the director, asked me if I could give a smaller reaction. My next reaction was numbed inscrutability. ‘You didn’t do anything that time,’ he said. Eventually, he kept the camera rolling and I gave many different reactions, some big, some small. After this mixed-bag of reactions he got what he wanted, because it was a wrap and they poured me into a car and gave the driver my address.

   But I had other ideas. Instead of heading for Kingston-upon-Thames where I lived, I redirected the driver to Gerry’s, an actor’s club in Soho. I can’t recall what happened after that.

The Heart of London

I would love to hear repeats of BBC Radio 4’s Love Letters to London, which was presented and written by Madness’s talented vocalist Suggs, four half-hour programmes covering Spitalfields and Shoreditch, Soho, Hampstead, and Camden Town, each episode containing a little quirky history, some gags, a few songs, and comic observations of the city where he was born and bred, and which he clearly adores. These programmes were so enjoyable, they flew by as if they were only ten minutes long. London has always fascinated me, as it has many others. No wonder Peter Ackroyd called his history of the city London The Biography, thinking of it as a living organism, and his lengthy book is an entertaining and animated read about the great city and its personality.

   One of my favourite areas in London is Soho.  I was first attracted to visiting Soho along with some of my school friends in 1959 when I was only 16-years-old. The attraction was obvious to us young rites of passage teenagers. This was London’s red-light district and trips out from the suburbs by underground train to this iniquitous district, just yards from the exit at Piccadilly Circus Tube station, was an audacious adventure. Prostitutes, in high heels, garish make-up and tight alluring dresses, still walked the streets plying their trade. Not that we could do anything but think wishfully at that age, but it was watching this daring and dangerous slice of immoral life, that was intoxicating to us libidinous, hormonal teenagers. When we got tired of merely watching the streetwalkers, we headed for the frothy coffee bars, the places that attracted tourists and out-of-towners that knew no better. Coffee bars like Heaven and Hell, a tacky joint done out like a Hammer Horror film set. We thought we were sophisticated sitting in a coffin in the darkened ambience of the establishment, sipping our foamy brew. In that same year, the Street Offences Act, made it illegal for prostitutes to solicit for trade on the streets and they became call girls, euphemistically calling themselves “models”, in what might have been a pathetic attempt to fool the law but actually fooled no one. They advertised with notices stuck to seedy shop doorways or postcards distributed to telephone boxes where punters could find whatever was on offer, ring up, make an appointment and climb those rickety stairs to see if the “model” looked anything like the photograph on the postcard. And sex shops were on the increase during the sixties. Then there were the bookies runners, the guys who would stand on the street corners, take punters bets on the horses or dogs, always keeping an eye out for the ‘fuzz’ or the ‘rozzers’. This was before betting shops became legal.

   And Talking Pictures has been repeating Budgie, starring Adam Faith in the title role, with Iain Cuthbertson as the Glaswegian crime boss Charlie Endell. This is a witty and enjoyable series, made in the early seventies by London Weekend Television, about of one of Soho’s duckers and divers, written by Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall. Budgie, although warm-hearted and unlikely to resort to violence, nevertheless has criminal tendencies as he strives to pull a lucrative stunt or two while keeping on the right side of Charlie Endell.

   But not everything in Soho was about criminality. It was as much about food and drink, and music has always been a magnet to the area. In 1866 there were more than 30 music halls in the square mile and, in the 20^th century, famous music venues sprang up, like Ronnie Scott’s and the Marquee. Soho has been a cosmopolitan area, vital with many attractions, both legal and illegal, for hundreds of years, fostering a village atmosphere for regular customers in its many favourite watering holes and restaurants, and pubs which once tolerated outrageous behaviour from some of its famous habitués.

   No wonder, then, that I used the area as inspiration for my anthology Tales from Soho, eleven fictional stories, but also a brief history of Soho and some of its famous pubs. If you have never been to Soho, and you’re planning a visit, don’t be alarmed; as a distant relative of mine from North Wales once was, thinking a toe dipped into that den of vice might lead to violence or murder. It’s probably one of the safest areas in London. And many famous people have lived in the district at one time, including Casanova, Karl Marx, Shelley, Canaletto and Isaac Newton – the list is endless. If you want a more extensive list, visit the Soho Society website, and you will find a list of blue plaques on buildings.

   Enjoy the trip! I always do, and on a regular basis until more recent times. As soon as we return to normal, I will be back and enjoying a glass of wine in The French House or the Dog and Duck. I can’t wait.

There is a link from Page 1 on the website to Tales From Soho at Amazon.

The Urge to Act

I had wanted to be an actor for as long as I could remember, which was unusual for a youngster growing up in rural North Wales, first in Bangor, and then in Amlwch in the northern part of Anglesey, where there were no theatres. The nearest theatres were summer season playhouses in Colwyn Bay and Llandudno, and I don’t ever recall a visit to one of those theatres. The nearest I got to seeing a theatre production was when my parents took me to the Liverpool Empire to see a touring production of Carousel, and I can recall being confused after the death of Billy, when he goes ‘up there’, then seeing him returning to earth as an angel wearing a lounge suit.

   Most of my early acting influences came from the silver screen. The Royal Cinema in Amlwch showed the latest films, and an outing to the cinema was a great event in those days. Prior to the feature film we were not subjected to fifteen minutes of advertisements. Instead, as only the privileged few had a television set in those days, we were shown at least five items of news both nationally and internationally, either from Pathé News or Movietone, always with that stentorian voice-over which sounded the same alarming note whether it was reporting the Korean war or the latest catwalk fashion. The news was invariably followed by a cartoon or a short comedy film and then the B-feature. All of this was a build-up to the main event, following an interval when the ice cream lady would walk backwards down the aisle, picked out by a spotlight, and there would be a rush for ice creams and orange drinks. But it was always the main feature that influenced me the most. To this day I can remember seeing films like Moulin Rouge, The African Queen, The Quiet Man, High Noon and The Day the Earth Stood Still. I think I must have attended the cinema at least once a week. I can remember my father taking me to see Viva Zapata, with Marlon Brando and Anthony Quinn, a film with a screenplay by John Steinbeck. I was nine-years-old then and seeing Brando as Zapata about to ride into a deadly trap on a white horse had me hooked. I definitely wanted to be an actor when I grew up. I was never interested in playing with toy cars and trains. It was always ‘dressing up’. And I became one of those obnoxious kids who lost his temper with other children if we were playing Cowboys and Indians and they didn’t die properly.

   Once, walking from our home in Amlwch Port to the Ritz to see José Ferrer in Moulin Rouge for the second time, we met a friend of my father, who presented us with complimentary tickets for a Noson Lawen (Joyful Evening), a sort of variety show. To say I was cross about missing the colourful story of Toulouse Lautrec was putting it mildly. Until we arrived at the church hall where this far from joyful evening was to take place, I threw a few tantrums before falling into a petrified sulk. And imagine my horror when this performance turned out to be everything I had suspected. Dreary soprano followed dreary tenor, and the highlight of the evening was a one-act play which ended with an appallingly bad stage fight. Even at the age of nine, I had enough critical acumen to know this was a sham and no match for what the Ritz had to offer.

   Less than a year later, we moved to Richmond, Surrey. I failed the 11-plus and was sent to Mortlake Secondary School, an institution I loathed with every fibre of my being. But, as I had witnessed on many a night at the Amlwch Ritz, the 7^th Cavalry came to the rescue.

   My parents, keen amateur actors, joined the Whitton Welsh Society, not far from Twickenham, and they became involved in a production of The Corn is Green by Emlyn Williams. I was given the part of Idwal, a youngster who was required to speak Welsh, and, because there were not enough Welsh-speaking children to fill the other roles, an English boy, Richard Palmer, stepped in and learnt the lines. He attended Corona Academy Stage School and had already appeared in several films.

   I pestered my parents to send me to this school. But it was a private, fee-paying school and my parents couldn’t afford it. However, knowing how unhappy I was at the Mortlake school, they decided there was no harm in at least making enquiries at Corona. We went along to their office in Wellesley Road, Chiswick, and when they spotted this twelve-year-old who looked like a nine-year-old, they realised it was a distinct casting advantage and assured my parents that enough work would wing its way in my direction to cover the school fees. Which was exactly what happened throughout my time at Corona.

   When I first attended Corona aged twelve, I can’t recall being nervous. I was probably relieved to escape from the clutches of those sneering bullies at Mortlake school, who picked on me because of my Welsh dialect. And even worse, the teachers, who were both embittered and wished they were somewhere else, without appreciating how mutual that feeling was between them and their pupils. But at Corona I could put all that behind me.  This school was radically different and unlike any I had so far experienced. The usual academic subjects were taught every morning, but the afternoons were filled with drama, ballet, tap dancing, play-reading, modern dance, mime and voice production. This was more like it - except for the ballet dancing, when I loathed seeing reflections of my skinny legs in the mirrors behind the barres. I lived for the afternoon subjects. And what was so great was the fact that so many of my new Corona Academy contemporaries were already regular film actors. Richard O’Sullivan, with whom I became close friends a few years later, was in the same class as me, as were Carol White, Frazer Hines, Jeremy Bulloch and Francesca Annis.

    This was more like it. These pupils were different from the Mortlake thugs who had done everything to make my life a misery.

The Ocean at Shepperton

In 1956 I was offered a part in my first feature film, Seven Waves Away. Every weekday morning, extremely early, a car picked me up from our maisonette home above an optician’s shop in Hounslow to take me to Shepperton studios, where I had a chaperone, and the education authorities insisted on my having a private tutor to give me lessons in between takes. Thankfully, these lessons were more for the sake of appearances as the entire film took place in a lifeboat, so most of my days were spent filming.

   Seven Waves Away was based on a true incident of a transatlantic liner which hit a mine in the South Atlantic and sank. The story was of the 26 survivors drifting helplessly in an overloaded lifeboat. When the film was released in the US, it was called Abandon Ship, and the poster logline stated “14 of these survivors must be cast adrift. Which will the captain choose?”

   The captain faced with this difficult decision was played by Tyrone Power, and Mai Zetterling played the ship’s nurse, whose love for the captain is put to a severe test when he must choose which passengers to abandon or risk flooding the overloaded boat. The other survivors were played by mainly British actors, including Stephen Boyd, as the ship’s purser, Gordon Jackson, as a seaman, Marie Lohr as a frail, retired opera singer, and James Hayter as the ship’s cook, in charge of the meagre rations in the lifeboat. Little did I know then that I would work in the theatre opposite James Hayter in my early thirties. Seven Waves Away was written and directed by Richard Sale, an American writer who wrote The Oscars, a novel exposing the build-up to the Academy Award ceremonies and which was later made into a film.

   It was my first visit to a major film studio. I don’t know what I was expecting but I was surprised by the rather scruffy and temporary look of everything. Prefabricated huts, abandoned scenery and vehicles, all strewn haphazardly between large unglamorous-looking sound stages and smaller offices that looked like military buildings. The main sound stage, resembling a massive aircraft hangar, housed the near Olympic-sized tank, filled with thousands and thousands of gallons of water, with a depth of five feet, and two enormous wave machines, plus wind machines. And the full-sized lifeboat itself, which was not floating freely but attached to machinery at the bottom of the tank so that it could be rocked, but controlled to avoid random fluctuations, keeping the camera reasonably steady, or to stop the actors from bobbing in and out of shot when camera was positioned elsewhere.

   It was to be a nine-week shoot. Nine weeks of having warm water chucked over us before we climbed aboard the lifeboat, and make-up that looked like salt crystals in hair and eyebrows, with dark oil smears on faces. Having been shipwrecked in the night-time, most of the actors playing passenger survivors were dressed in nightclothes or evening wear. I wore pyjamas and a dressing gown and cried dramatically in a scene where the captain decides my mother must be cast adrift, despite the pleas of my father, played by Ralph Michael, who has oil on his lungs, and he also must be cut loose. Then, having screamed the loss of my parents, I am comforted and cuddled by Mai Zetterling. Worth it, just for that.

   Most of the actors, especially the older ones like Marie Lohr, found the discomforts of sitting in a rocking lifeboat, with wind machines blowing, while stagehands hurled buckets of water over us, arduous and couldn’t wait for the nine weeks to end. Me, I loved every moment of it, and any opportunity to swim in the faux South Atlantic was a treat and a chance for me to show off. Some of the actors, though, couldn’t swim, and were traumatised by a scene where the lifeboat capsizes, hurling us all into the water, and it took many of them a long time to recover.

   Richard Sale was a very patient and methodical director, and hugely friendly, as were Tyrone Power, Mai Zetterling and Lloyd Nolan. And I was very impressed that Danny Green was in the film, as I had recently seen him in The Ladykillers, which became one of my all-time favourite comedies. He played a character called One-Round, and I pondered for many years the meaning of his nickname, and it came to me years later: of course, he was probably a boxer who was always knocked out in the first round.

   Something I found puzzling was my first glimpse of racist behaviour. Orlando Martins, a Nigerian who came to Britain at the end of the war, played Sam Holly, one of the survivors in the water hanging on to the side of the boat, and Stephen Boyd, along with some of the other actors in the boat, would look down on him and say things like: ‘Who dat down dere!’ Although I was only 13-years-old, I could sense the Nigerian actor didn’t like it and pretended not to hear most of the time. But the Americans, Tyrone Power, Lloyd Nolan and Richard Sale were utterly charming, and when the last scene had been shot, they really made a fuss of me before I left.

   Abandon Ship was remade in colour as a TV movie, starring Martin Sheen as the captain, and on American television it was called The Last Survivors. But it is the 1957 version I will look out for on Talking Pictures.

A Surcharge for Actors

About six or seven years ago, when I was a committee member for the Kent Equity branch, I attended an Equity area conference in Birmingham. One of the items on the agenda was a BBC technician’s strike and should Equity members support them and not cross a picket line – in other words, not enter the studios, and risk breaking a contract. I voted against this motion because I felt it was unfair. I felt that most of the technicians were in permanent employment, whereas a young actor’s first television role might be compromised, thus robbing him or her of a step up that precarious ladder. And there was also a more personal reason for voting against it because of something that happened in 1970, during camera rehearsals for the third series of Please Sir!

   Halfway through the series, during rehearsals, we ate at Wembley Studio self-service canteen. One lunchtime we arrived at the cashier with our food to be told there would be a two-shilling surcharge on all meals for freelance employees as opposed to LWT’s permanent staff (Roughly equivalent to £1.40 in today’s money). We objected to this because we felt actors might earn good wages but only for a limited time, whereas technicians and permanent staff were employed 52 weeks a year with paid holidays and sick leave. As our Equity Deputy, Peter Denyer, who played Dennis Dunstable in the series, approached the NATKE (National Association of Theatre and Kine Employees) shop steward to request support. But he was met with a cold shoulder. The NATKE shop steward shrugged it off, saying something like, ‘Well, actors earn enough money.’ Peter was incensed by his attitude, as we all were. We acted by refusing to eat in the canteen, told Mark Stuart, our producer and director, the predicament, and said we intended leaving the studio each lunchtime to get some food somewhere in the Wembley district. Mark offered to send out for takeaways which he paid for. He occasionally surprised us by his supportive actions. Also, he may have feared us getting back late from lunch. As soon as the catering manager saw what was happening, with all our takeaways spread out over the canteen tables, it wasn’t long before the surcharge was removed.

    For some reason the way they intended treating the actors reminded me of a couple of lines from Mel Brooks’ The Producers, when Max Bialystock suggests killing one of the actors, and Leopold Bloom protests that actors are human. To which Bialystock replies, ‘Have you ever eaten with one?’

   I was also reminded of when I worked backstage, mainly at Theatre Royal Drury Lane, and if ever there was a function to which all the stage crew and performers were invited, I can always remember the advice of many of the crew suggesting all the backstage staff better get there before the actors, otherwise all the food would be gone!

   And there is also an old joke about an actor on tour and looking for digs, and when he knocked on a bed and breakfast door and asked, ‘Do you have any special terms for actors?’ He was met with, ‘Yes, fuck off actors!’

The Biter Bit

Are we living in more violent times? Or is the view looking back rosier? I can remember as a young adult walking back from Chiswick to Brentford late at night, and finding milk, confectionery and cigarette machines outside corner shops. Despite there being no CCTV on almost every street then, those dispensing machines often remained free from vandalism. But over the years they have vanished from outside the small newsagent shop. Whether this was because they were no longer safe from being broken into, or for economic reasons, such as costly insurance rates.

    In 1979, Meibion Glyndŵr (Sons of Glendower), a Welsh nationalist movement, angered at the many well-off English people buying second homes in villages in Wales, resorted to arson and set fire to many holiday home cottages. But back in the 1960s, the objections to holiday cottages was different, as I witnessed one night during a run of the second series of Please Sir! in 1969.

    Liz Gebhardt, who played Maureen in the series, was married to Ian Talbot, who became the artistic director at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre. My wife Zélie and I became close friends with them and on several occasions we were invited to stay with them at their holiday cottage in Llanberis, where Liz’s maternal grandmother lived. One evening, during the run of our series, we were round at Liz and Ian’s flat in Kentish Town and Liz’s mother, who lived upstairs, told us to switch on News at Ten. One of the news items showed their holiday cottage, being occupied by Plaid Cymru or the Free Wales Army. I can’t remember which group it was, but I suspect it was the former, as Plaid Cymru early on adopted a pacifist political doctrine. However, they still opposed the purchase of second properties for holiday use only. They probably picked Liz and Ian’s cottage because she was an actress, her surname was Gebhardt (her father Joe was American) and thought it might be positive publicity for their cause. But what they hadn’t realised, when they broke a back window to gain access to the cottage, was that Liz’s mother was Welsh, and there was a solid local connection to the village. Her grandmother, who had lived in Llanberis all her life, tore round to the occupied cottage and gave the rebels a piece of her mind in the Welsh language. The dissidents then abandoned the cottage, having first left a cheque to pay for the broken window. 

Zélie and I stayed in Liz and Ian’s cottage with them for a week one summer. Drinking in one of the pubs some of the locals invited Ian and me to join them for a game of five card brag for money. As they knew me as Frankie Abbott, none of them guessed that I was born and bred in North Wales, brought up by Welsh-speaking parents. And one of their pals stood behind me, saw what cards I had in my hand, and told his friends sitting opposite at the table what they were in Welsh. Not realising I could understand what he was saying, I soon managed to turn the tables on them, only letting the cheating friend see my cards when I had a very low hand, hoping Ian had a good hand; and whenever I had a good hand I made certain he only saw the low cards. Consequently, Ian and I cleaned up that evening, winning about £15 between us, reasonable money in 1970.

   When they called Last Orders and we were about to leave, I thanked and said goodnight to our opponent card players in perfectly pronounced Welsh. Their collective jaws dropped and they blamed the pal who had looked over my shoulder. Liz’s Uncle Peter, who was with us, and a regular at the pub, fell about. Liz told me that over the succeeding years that her uncle had never forgotten the incident, and always enjoyed winding up the regulars at the pub, reminding them of the incident every time the cards came out.

    And I always allowed myself a chuckle when I thought of those Llanberis locals who never suspected Frankie Abbott could speak Welsh.

From Fact to Fiction

I began writing Before They Die – which was published in March this year - quite a few years back then put it to one side. Although it was in a way a conventional murder mystery with all the usual elements of a thriller, it was also controversial inasmuch as I had based it on my investigations of child abuse by politically powerful people.

   My early discoveries began with Geoffrey Dickens, a Conservative MP for Huddersfield West, whose investigations into a Westminster ring of paedophiles resulted in a dossier of 114 files, naming at least six prominent MPs as paedophiles. This dossier was given to the then Home Secretary Leon Brittan, and not surprisingly the dossier went missing and has never been seen since.

   This was a springboard for my thriller when missing files such as these resurface in 2006 on a USB stick belonging to John Kenneally MP (fictional), who is subsequently murdered and the files are destroyed to conceal evidence of a ring of Westminster child abusers. But, unlike the Lord Brittan files, these resurface, and ex-Metropolitan Police detective, Mike Halliday, now working as a private investigator is hired to trace the origin of the missing files.

   During the course if his investigation, Halliday sees a photograph of Jimmy Savile’s funeral, attended by quite a few freemasons dressed in their regalia, and one of them he singles out from the way he seems reluctant to be recognised, half-concealed by a pillar. This actual photo I used as a device for my investigator to recognise the man as a secret service spook from when Halliday was in Counter Terrorism Command.

   Of course, cover-ups like this do not happen in real life, do they? Especially as more than two years ago Carl Beech told lies about being abused by prominent politicians such as Edward Heath, resulting an in 18 year prison sentence for perverting the course of justice and fraud. (Compare his sentence to that of Jeffrey Archer, who for being found guilty of perverting the course of justice got a three year sentence in an open prison.)

   Now since it was discovered that Carl Beech lied, the entire Westminster paedophile ring story has blown away. No truth to it at all. It was all just damaging lies.

   Or was it? Here are some facts. Sir Peter Morrison, Margaret Thatcher’s Private Parliamentary Secretary was exposed as a pederast by Edwina Currie, and in her diary she noted that he had a liking for young boys, and even admitted it to Norman Tebbit, but added, ‘However, I am very discreet.’ And in a 1986 memo by Eliza Manningham-Buller, later Director General of MI5, she said that allegations against Morrison were tolerated and that the prime minister was aware of it and was supporting Peter.

   So, why was Thatcher so tolerant of her private secretary’s perversions? Could it have anything to do with her upbringing by her hypocritical father who espoused Victorian values but was a serial groper of the young girls who worked in his grocer’s shop in Grantham?

   And it gets a lot worse, believe me, and this is all on record and won’t go away. Like the Elm Guest House in Putney that was used for orgies with prominent people abusing under-privileged children. The guest house was eventually raided in the late-eighties and Carole Kasir who ran it committed suicide in 1990.

   Then there is the strange case of a man named Henderson, who inadvertently left extreme images of child porn on a bus. He was a member of PIE (Paedophile Information Exchange) and when his house was searched it transpired that he was actually Sir Peter Hayman, HM High Commissioner to Canada 1970-74. Sir Michael Havers, Attorney General at the time, defended his position not to prosecute Hayman on the grounds that as he was not on PIE’s executive committee, and he was not therefore part of a conspiracy.

    I could go on and on, listing prominent politicians who have been child abusers. But conveniently they are often named and shamed after their death, as in the case of Cyril Smith, whose depravities were on record as far back as the late sixties. An enormous file of his heinous activities was in the hands of Lancashire police until MI5 collected it, allowing him to continue his depravities for many decades, and even being given a knighthood in 1988.

   Yes, depressingly, this list is endless. But now, since Carl Beech’s lies, this has all been buried, as if it never happened. And is unlikely to happen in the future.

   But, to use a Shakespearian cliché: Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

Please Sir! and Dylan Thomas

The first time I read Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood, and got to draper Mog Edwards saying, ‘I have come to take you away to my Emporium on the hill, where the change hums on wires,’ it brought back memories of North Wales in the late 1940s.

   My mother occasionally shopped at a small department store called Polikoff. I used to love going in there and was fascinated by the contraption that dealt with my mother’s transaction. She would hand money to the shop assistant, who placed it with a docket in a small cylinder. Then, just slightly higher than head-height, the cylinder was attached to a wire, and it would go zooming off to a cashier in another part of the building, and we waited until the cylinder zoomed back to us containing my mother’s change. Hence Thomas’s line about ‘where the change hums on wires.’

     The first time I performed in Milk Wood was when I played Frankie Abbott in Please Sir! Richard Davies, who played Mr Price in the series, had been asked by the manager of Lewisham Concert Hall, close to where he and his wife Jill lived at the time, if he could get the cast of the sitcom together for a show. Richard, or ‘Dickie’ as we called him, suggested we perform Thomas’s wonderfully lyrical play, staging it as simply as possible as it was to be a one-night stand. Lewisham Concert Hall was an enormous venue, and we were sold out. Possibly because the theatre had advertised it in the Evening Standard London Theatre Guide, and we were billed as stars from Please Sir! in Under Milk Wood, with Duffy, Sharon, Abbott, Maureen, Dunstable, Craven and Mr Price, instead of our own names.

   Under Milk Wood would feature largely throughout my career. Months after the Lewisham performance, Malcolm McFee and Peter Denyer hired Theatre Royal E.15 and staged a full-scale production where we all spent a happy fortnight performing it, and in 1975, Malcolm and I formed a production company and toured nationally with the play, with Ian Talbot, Liz Gebhardt’s husband, as the Narrator. Then in 1978, I was offered the parts of Sinbad Sailors, Dai Bread and Jack Black in a BBC Radio 4 version, with Glyn Houston as First Voice.

   But my favourite production was in the 1980s, when I and my wife Pat formed a small-scale touring company, and we got together with Richard Davies, his wife Jill, and Peter Cleall, touring to small arts and community centres in the south east. And the play, with its powerful imagery, continues to resonate with me. When I performed it on tour in 1975, Welsh actor Meredith Edwards, told me an allegedly true story about Dylan Thomas hiring a dinner jacket at the Covent Garden branch of Moss Bros. I wrote this as a short story which I included in my anthology Tales from Soho, published just a few years ago.

The book contains 11 entertaining stories from London's famous square mile. Plus a history of the area and some of its famous pubs.

To purchase a copy go to Page one and you will find a link to Amazon, Barnes & Nobel and Kobo

Live TV Drama

In 1956 I played Ginger in the first ITV production of Just William. This was called Over to William, a series of 13 episodes directed by Cecil Petty. The other outlaws were played by Keith Crane (William), Michael Saunders (Douglas) and John Symonds (Henry). They were all fellow pupils at Corona Academy, the stage school I attended, including Margaret Sawyer, who appeared in several episodes as Violet Elizabeth Bott.

   We rehearsed in a church hall in west London each week, sometimes a day was set aside for telecine (filmed inserts), then every Friday we travelled on an early train to  Birmingham, and then by cab to the studio, where we began the technical camera rehearsal, so that the technicians, sound and camera operators, could get to grips with the action. The cameras used were like outside broadcast cameras, large cumbersome brutes with different lenses which swivelled, a red light which lit up on top, indicating which camera was live, and these clumsy-looking beasts trailed yards of cable. Each studio used about four cameras, and it was the vision mixer in the control room who called the shots and pressed the buttons, with the director giving him or her directions. In the ‘William’ studio, unlike the set up for comedies where about four sets face an audience, our sets were placed in a circle, so that the cameras and sound booms held a central position and manoeuvred into each set when they were required. And as this was live television, allowances had to be made for errors. If any of us dried, the assistant floor manager had a button to press, called a cut key, which would take the sound off the air, give us a prompt, and whoever had dried could continue, with the assistant floor manager restoring the sound, so that viewers thought it was a technical rather than human error. The biggest culprit for drying was Michael Saunders who often had to take a prompt. In fact, it happened so often that once, when I dried, they thought it should have been Michael’s line, thinking he had dried yet again, and they prompted him instead of me.

   But far worse things happened than forgetting lines. In one episode, we the outlaws were peering over a brick wall. Someone had forgotten to brace the wall, and it started to rock, prior to being knocked over. The cameraman, knowing there was nothing behind the wall, panicked and swivelled the lens of his camera in a 360-degree pan around the studio, giving audiences at home a view of every set, including actors idly waiting their turn to perform, make-up artists and technicians. 

     When in the same year I appeared as a Mexican boy in The Power and the Glory, starring Paul Scofield, one member of the cast, Gareth Jones, was a fluent Welsh-speaker, and when my parents came to see the play at the Phoenix Theatre they conversed with him in Welsh. So, it was with great interest my mother, father, my brother Mervyn and I sat in the front room one Sunday night in 1958 to watch Gareth Jones, who was playing a leading part in an Armchair Theatre play. These television plays were hugely popular, did well in the ratings, especially as each play followed Sunday Night at the London Palladium. Produced originally by ABC Television, most plays were televised from their northern studios at Didsbury in Manchester, were broadcast live, and were written by some notable writers, including Harold Pinter, Alun Owen, Alan Plater, Brian Clemens and Ludovic Kennedy, to name just a few of the hundreds of writers who wrote for this long-running series of almost five hundred episodes.

   But the episode we were most interested in watching was called Underground, mainly because Gareth Jones had a leading role. The play was about the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust and took place in the London Underground where surviving Tube travellers have become stranded. The character Gareth Jones played had to crawl from one Underground station to another, then discovers the tunnel is blocked. There was a dramatic cliff-hanger before the commercial break, but when the drama resumed, Gareth Jones had disappeared. It didn’t make much sense. The tunnel was blocked, so where did the character go? A drama which began with a straightforward narrative suddenly became confusing and we soon lost interest in the play, although we stuck with it until the end, just in case Gareth Jones reappeared.

   My father, who was always an early riser, banged on my door the following morning and entered, excited and distressed. He showed me the headlines in his newspaper. Gareth Jones had dropped dead during the commercial break, suffering a massive heart attack. I imagined the chaos in the studio. Less than three minutes until they were back on the air, minus one of their leading actors, distributing his lines to the other actors as best they could, and Ted Kotcheff the director having to improvise camera shots. It’s a wonder there weren’t any more heart attacks in Didsbury Studios. What a way to go. No time to grieve, that would come later. The show must go on!

The Boys in The Band

Out of the blue in 1977 I was offered the leading role of Michael in The Boys in the Band at Cardiff New Theatre. It came about because Martin Williams, the manager, had booked our production of Under Milk Wood for a week at the New just over a year ago, and I got on well with him.

   I had seen the play when it opened in the West End with the original American cast in 1969, and I never imagined I would play the part of Michael, who goes on an emotional roller-coaster throughout the play, culminating in a breakdown. But the play was also very funny, and one of its funniest lines was delivered by the effeminate character, Emory. ‘Who do you have to fuck around here to get a drink?’

   (An actress who saw the original West End show found this line so funny, she committed it to memory, and determined to use it some time. The next time she was at a party, she said loudly – and wrongly – ‘What do you have to drink around here to get a fuck?’)

   The play has an all-male cast and is about a group of gays during one night at a party in a New York apartment. ‘ The part of Emory was played by Barry Howard and it was great to work with him again. He often used the line, ‘I’m not really gay. I just help them out when they’re busy.’

   Someone else in the cast I got along with was Peter Childs, who had a wicked sense of humour. Anyone with pretentious leanings would often be reduced to jelly by his caustic barbs. But he never picked on anyone who didn’t deserve it, and he usually brought people down to size with a twinkle in his eye and a mischievous giggle.

   During our rehearsal period the Welsh National Opera Company performed at the New and we used to drink with them in the bar of a bistro opposite the theatre. Peter learnt to sing “Myfanwy” in Welsh and on the last night of the opera company’s appearance, they presented him with an LP of the Treorchy Male Voice Choir, and signed it ‘To Peter, an honorary Welshman.’

   When the play opened, we were concerned about some of the language, worried that there might be some sort of chapel backlash. But it was received with laughter and a great deal of applause at the end, and our fears were unfounded.

   Following the two week run at Cardiff, the production was due to go to the MacRobert Centre at Stirling and Norwich Theatre Royal. The former theatre was on the university campus, and again we had concerns about some sort of moral backlash. According to some of the cast members, the homosexual bill had never been ratified in Scotland, and sexual relations between consenting members of the same sex was still against the law. Mind you, to say we were concerned was probably an exaggeration. I mean, who in the theatre doesn’t like a drama? And so we looked forward to anything the Scottish audiences might throw at us, either metaphorically or literally.

   But the trouble in Scotland came from an unexpected source – the Scottish Gay Liberation Front. They reckoned the play was an insult to gays, and audiences were merely being entertained by ‘laughing at poofs’, and the play didn’t deserve to be taken seriously. When we arrived in Stirling, we were shown all the newspaper cuttings condemning the play by the Gay Libs, and the chief in charge of this minority group would be attending our first night.

   The show went brilliantly on its first performance. We knew some of the Gay Lib members were in the audience, and thought they probably squirmed as Barry Howard’s Emory minced and camped it up. In the bar afterwards, the Gay Lib chief introduced himself, and immediately launched into an argument about how clichéd the play was, with stereotypical, limp-wristed gays giving out the wrong messages.

   Most of us in the cast pointed out that Emory was the only effeminate character, and the play showed an entire cross section of the gay community. But he was so intent on getting his point across, he didn’t accept or listen to our arguments. He charged in bitterly with a diatribe on all limp-wristed gays like Larry Grayson and John Inman, who were a disgrace and a pathetic travesty.

   Knowing Barry had once been the long-term partner of John Inman, I saw him bristle, and I waited with eager anticipation for the explosion. Instead, he decided it was time to buy an enormous round of drinks. ‘David, what’ll you have, love? And for you, Peter?’ He went round the entire cast, and there were nine of us, plus the stage management. Finally, he came to the Gay Lib bloke at the end of the row, looked him right in the eye, and said, ‘I’m not buying you one, because you’re a cunt!’

   It was a costly round of drinks, but I guess Barry thought it was worth it to make a point.

   After Stirling there was just one more week at Norwich Theatre Royal. The part of Michael was a demanding role and I was almost relieved when it ended, although I would have liked a few more touring dates. The four weeks of performances had flown by, and suddenly everyone was shaking hands in the bar on the last night. Johnny Worthy, who played Bernard in the production, was also a singer, choreographer and tap dancer, and had been in the controversial sex musical Let My People Come. Knowing how much I like Dylan Thomas, on the last night he presented me with a parting gift of a book of the poet’s short stories and poems. It would be well over twenty years until I met with Johnny again.

   During the last night farewells, phone numbers were exchanged and promises to keep in touch. Like holiday friendships or romances, it rarely happens. The actors you were bosom friends with on tour become just a passing experience, like a book you enjoy reading, but you know you will never read again. But there are exceptions, and Peter Childs and I had formed a firm friendship, and when we said we would keep in touch when the play was over, we both knew we meant it, and I often visited him at his home in Tunbridge Wells throughout the late seventies.

    Sadly, Peter died from leukaemia aged 50 in 1989. He is still fondly remembered by many pub regulars in Tunbridge Wells.

Death of Babes in the Wood

In 1975 I was offered, along with Malcolm McFee, a pantomime, Babes In The Wood, at the Gaumont Cinema, Doncaster, starring Cy Grant as Alan A Dale. Grant was well known for providing topical calypso numbers for the BBC news show Tonight.  Originally from Guyana, in 1941 he joined the RAF, became a Flight Lieutenant navigator, and on his third mission was shot down over the Netherlands. He was captured and spent the next two years in the prisoner of war camp Stalag Luft III until the allied liberation.

   Another company member with wartime experience was Edwin Braden, our musical director, who provided mid-show music for Round the Horne and Beyond Our Ken, as Eddie Braden and the Hornblowers. Malcolm, Eddie and I stayed in the same hotel, and Eddie, after he usually topped his breakfast tea up with a generous measure of whisky, regaled us with his stories. He served in the army during World War II and was in the North Africa campaign. He told us that one Christmas, their unit came across an abandoned village, in which there was a large vat containing red wine. It was apparently a rule that soldiers serving in the desert must never waste water from their canteens, but as it was Christmas Day, and there was a well in the village with enough water to refill everyone’s canteens, a special dispensation was granted from the CO that every soldier would be allowed to empty their canteen and fill up with wine to celebrate. Pretty soon all the wine was drunk. At the bottom of the vat it was discovered there were belt buckles, gold teeth, and metal buttons. It looked as if bodies had been disposed of in the vat, and everything that wasn’t metal had been eaten away over time by the wine. Eddie chuckled and said, ‘Mind you, that wine had a fine body to it!’

   The pantomime was produced by Alexander Bridge of West End Artists and directed by Michael J. Smith, who knew as much about directing a show as I know about the laws of thermodynamics. And we only had about eight days’ rehearsal. We began rehearsals in Doncaster on Monday 15 December. Friday came and went, and we weren’t paid, but we were told that because the production company had so many other productions running concurrently, they didn’t have anyone able to make the trip to Doncaster to pay us. Instead, we were offered two weeks’ money the following Friday after the show had opened. We should have been suspicious, but as we were playing to large audiences, we assumed everything was above board.

    In the wings every night, as we waited to make our entrance, Malcolm and I spluttered as we watched the actor playing Will Scarlet saying his lines as he accidentally discovers the red tunic that gives him his name. There was an error in the script, and rather than tell him so that he could correct it, we thought it much more fun to hear his camp delivery every night as he said, ‘Well, here is a fine jerking.’

   Despite financial problems, and the deceit of the management, there were positive encounters when we became great friends with Bernie Higginson, the pit drummer, and the three of us hardly stopped laughing during this disaster-filled show.

   The following Friday was our next pay day when we had been promised our money. It was Boxing Day, and we were told as the banks were shut no one could be paid until they opened. By now we all knew something was very wrong with this company. But they promised us full payment by Friday the 1^st of January, another bank holiday when the banks would be shut.

   On Friday, an Equity representative arrived on the scene, who turned out to be less than useless and we all performed the show that evening. The show was scheduled to run for another two weeks until January 17^th, but the Gaumont Cinema management said West End Artists had gone bankrupt, and they had no option but to end the show on Saturday, and the bookings for Saturday were excellent. During a heated company meeting, most of the cast suggested it would be awful to cancel and disappoint all the kiddies and parents who had booked tickets. It was a show must go on attitude, even though none of us had seen a single penny in three weeks. I have to admit I was one of the few in the company who said we were within our rights not to perform, but when it came to a vote I was outnumbered.

   Following our two final (unpaid) performances, the Gaumont Cinema advertised a film opening on Monday 4 January. The Towering Inferno.

   I had no cash, and no cheques left in my chequebook, so how was I able to get home? I had heard somewhere that provided you have all the account details etc., and a bank guarantee card, you can write a cheque out on ordinary paper and this will be legally binding. I wasn’t certain it would work, so what I did was drive into a petrol station, fill up the tank, then explain my predicament to the cashier. I wrote out my cheque on half a sheet of A4 paper, and it worked. The payment was honoured.

Private Abbott

The eighth episode in the first series of The Fenn Street Gang was written by John Esmonde and Bob Larbey. It was called The Thin Yellow Line and was about Abbott joining the army, with Tony Selby as the corporal. Graham Evans directed this episode, and for some reason became annoyed by one of the actors and bullied him. Royce Mills who played the Commanding Officer was his bone of contention and on the first day of rehearsal, as Mills spoke in his terribly, terribly upper-class voice, Evans told him to play it straight and not as a silly toff. Unfortunately, this was Mills’ natural voice. There are some actors who can do various accents and voice changes, but clearly Mills wasn’t one of them, and Evans became aggressive as he kept stopping Mills every time he opened his mouth, demanding that he play it straight. We were all hugely embarrassed and wondered why Evans took against him so. When I spoke to Peter Cleall about it, we both agreed, that a toff’s voice was perfect casting for the C.O., especially as this was a comedy.  The second day of rehearsal, Royce Mills was gone and had been replaced by Colin Farrell. I had already worked with Colin, as had Peter Denyer, in Zigger Zagger, the play about football hooliganism, which lasted only 10 days in London’s West End. In case you are thinking this is the Colin Farrell who was in Ballykissangel, who then went on to Hollywood stardom, think again. Every actor who is an Equity member has their name registered, so that no one else can use their name. Perhaps Colin Farrell the Hollywood star never joined Equity, so it is the Colin Farrell I knew who had to alter his name slightly to avoid confusion.

   Much was made of the fact that my hair was shorn for this episode and, in the opening scenes before I enlisted, I had to wear a wig. One of the filmed sequences took place on army ground, and many squaddies hung around watching. One of the scenes was target practice, in which Abbott gets over-excited by his fantasy of firing a real gun coming true and runs along the firing range shooting from the hip at the target. After Graham Evans shouted ‘Cut!’, I held the barrel of the rifle. Having never fired a rifle before, and nobody having told me the barrel of a gun gets red hot after firing so many rounds, I yelled and dropped the rifle, blowing on my hands.

   The squaddies fell about with laughter and most of them commented, ‘What a wanker!’

   One of the joys of working in this episode was because Barbara Mitchell was in it, and her character was now going from strength to strength, especially when she became a wheelchair user in one scene, playing the grieving war widow to the hilt.

    As the corporal Tony Selby was excellent, and I can recall his entrance when he soon snapped, ‘I am bomb proof, waterproof, fireproof and always bleeding right.’ And after more of his swagger, Abbott opines, ‘I like your style, sonny.’ His damn about to burst, Selby says, ‘There is always one, and you are him, aren’t you?’

    Fenn Street was a spin-off from Please Sir!, which in turn produced another one called Bowler. But I often wondered if the episode with Tony Selby inspired Esmonde & Larbey to write Get Some In, with Tony Selby starring as the RAF corporal. If that was the case, I guess that would have made the RAF series indirectly the third Please Sir! spin-off.

BACK TO SCHOOL

For me, the sixties was a wonderfully childish decade. Not just because soup tins had become works of art, and Yoko Ono had made a film about naked buttocks and not much else, but mainly because I was about to start school again at the age of 25.

   I nearly didn’t get to sit behind that desk, though, because early in 1968 I auditioned for the hippie, draft-dodging musical Hair, and the anonymous producers in the darkened auditorium loved my audition. There had been so much publicity about the show and its Broadway success, I knew exactly how to dress the part: shirt hanging out of torn flared denims, and a waistcoat made of what looked like an old carpet, and flip-flops on my feet. At least my attempts to look like an actor who knew what the show was about seemed to go down well. Unlike the young actress who auditioned before me. She wore a cute party frock, and in her total ignorance of knowing what the show was about, she sang “I Enjoy Being a Girl” from Flower Drum Song.  I don’t know how many bars into her song she got before they hooked her. ‘Next!’ Which was me, and I managed to get through to the end of my song, singing (angrily) an Irish rebel song, which ended with ‘Fuck the British Army’, followed by my gesture of a V-sign – not the Churchillian one for victory. They loved it, and I made the recall audition. The first audition I had treated light heartedly, not really expecting a great response and not caring whether it was sink or swim, but now I was recalled I began to take it seriously. Big mistake. I should really have given them the same song again at the next audition. Instead, I sang a Manfred Mann number: “My Name is Jack”. I don’t think they liked it as much as the Irish rebel song, and so that was that. Which was just as well, because a part in Hair would have meant the loss of the Please Sir! and The Fenn Street Gang series that ran between 1968 and 1973. Maybe my failed Hair audition was meant to be.

   In the autumn I auditioned, along with about 30 other young actors for the series called Rough House. The auditions were held at Station House, the head offices and rehearsal rooms of LWT, the television company not yet a year old, which had won the franchise from Associated Rediffusion, and would be transmitting from early evening on Fridays until late on Sundays. Station House was a 20-storey building near Stonebridge Park station, not far from Wembley and the studios which were used by London Weekend Television.

   Mark Stuart, the producer and director, and the writers, John Esmonde and Bob Larbey, sat in front of a long table. We the actors waited in another room and then three of us were ushered in to stand before them and read from a script. As soon as I read for the part of Frankie Abbott, I shrugged my shoulders audaciously and imagined reaching for the semi-automatic pistol concealed under my arm. I saw John Esmonde laugh and tug his goatee beard, which I took to be a good sign.

   Once we had read, we were sent back into the other room, and Mark Stuart’s PA would enter at odd intervals, tap someone on the shoulder and say, ‘Thank you. You can go.’ Then three of us would go in again to read for Dunstable, Craven and Abbott, which were the parts they were casting that day. Whenever I had given my reading, I dreaded the PA’s dismissive tap on the shoulder. Eventually, after nail-biting minutes, three of us were left in the other room: Malcolm McFee, Peter Denyer and yours truly. Then Mark Stuart came in and announced with a twinkle in his eye, ‘Well, I guess you three will have to do. We’ll be in touch with your agents.’

   The read-through took place just over a week later, and it was exciting sitting around a table listening to the actors playing the staff members, many of whom I had seen in other comedies. Following the read-through, as we helped ourselves to coffee and got to know one another, we became aware of a conflab going on between Mark Stuart, Esmond and Larbey and Frank Muir, who was Head of Light Entertainment. Then we were told that the title was changed to Please Sir!’ And I can’t remember the original ending to the first episode The Welcome Mat, but now in the story Hedges unwittingly gains a reputation as a karate expert. It was established that the classroom desk was rotten, and towards the end of the episode he enters the rowdy classroom and attempts to keep order by striking the worm-eaten desk, which is split in half by what the pupils think is his karate chop. The show went from a weak ending to a big finish and we wondered if this suggestion came from Frank Muir.

    The series became popular and reached a high of number nine in the ratings, which meant serious lunchtime boozing in the LWT bar, because in those days it wasn’t considered bad form to lubricate one’s tonsils during a break in the rehearsals.

Y Viva Espana

In 2010 I spent a memorable five days with Carol Hawkins, her husband Martyn, and their friends Henry Holland and Mark Andrews at Carol and Martyn’s villa in Spain, and we didn’t stop laughing during our time there. I already knew Henry and Mark from when they had looked after Carol, Peter Cleall and me when we attended  a Memorabilia convention at Birmingham earlier in the decade. Sadly, Martyn died of cancer about four years later, but up until the Corona virus hit us, Henry, Mark and I continued to fly out to visit Carol each year.

    I belong to the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain, and for many years at meetings and events I met another writer, who had written a couple of sitcom series. She now lived in Spain, and we kept in touch by phone or email. She kept inviting me to visit her, and in 2011 I relented,  booked a flight to Malaga, caught the airport bus to Marbella, where she picked me up and drove me to her flat in another town along the coast.

   No sooner had we walked through the door than the television was switched on as she never missed an episode of EastEnders. All this way, I thought, and here I am forced to watch a soap I’ve never seen before and have no intention of watching in the future. Not that I have anything against it as such, but I am an avid reader and can’t imagine reading a book in the same setting with the same characters in volume after volume ad infinitum. Surely there has to be an end somewhere?

   Over dinner later on I happened to pour myself a second glass of wine, and my host said, ‘You drink a lot, don’t you?’

   God! I can remember thinking. I have four nights of this to get through. This is worse than being married.

   In fairness to her, being a guest in someone’s home is not the easiest way to get to know a person, especially when you early on discover you have little in common, and mistakenly think being fellow writers is enough of a bond.

   I spent two dreary days pretending I was enjoying this brief holiday and putting a brave face on it. But the crunch came on day three. She had adopted a stray cat, which feared strangers. Her bedroom had an en suite bathroom, and so did the guest bedroom, where she had placed the cat’s litter tray, telling me not to shut the door, in case the cat needed to go in the night. She called it in for the night after I had gone to bed, because the cat was too scared to come anywhere near me. The next morning, I heard a yell, and then as I took a deep breath I was overwhelmed by the most disgusting reek of diarrhoea. The cat had shit in her wardrobe, and she accused me of shutting my bathroom door, depriving it of access to its litter tray. But I didn’t believe her. The cat, being too scared to venture near me, took the easy way out, and did its business in some comfy clothing and shoes at the bottom of her wardrobe.

   This event triggered the end for me, and I still had the third and final day to get through before my flight home. I was relieved when she suggested I spend the day in Marbella because she had some work to catch up on. I caught the bus to Marbella and had the best time of the entire trip, sitting in a café in the old town, drinking beer with a light tapas lunch, exploring the harbour, and seeing all the Salvador Dali statues.

   That night, back from my great solo day at Marbella, I took my host for a Chinese meal to thank her for – er – introducing me to the one episode of EastEnders I had ever seen up until then. As I ordered a second glass of wine for myself, again she said, ‘You drink a lot, don’t you?’

   I pointed out that as she used to be an actress, she must have worked with actors who drank a lot more. She told me all the actors she had worked with didn’t drink much.

   I wanted to say, ‘You can’t have worked much then.’ But I hushed my mouth.

   My flight from Malaga was at 3.15, and at 10.30 I suggested we might leave, just in case the airport bus from Marbella was delayed. I arrived at the airport with three hours to spare before the flight, and it was my best airport experience ever. As I sat in the airport bar, enjoying a few beers, I almost expected the barmaid to say, ‘You drink a lot, don’t you?’

    Another visit to Spain in October, but this was relaxing and fun, staying with people I knew and loved. It was my second visit to see Carol Hawkins and her husband Martyn. I flew from Gatwick with Mark Andrews and Henry, and during the visit we never stopped laughing. When I related my tale of the earlier trip to Spain, everyone fell about. Especially the story about the cat shitting in the wardrobe. And as we sat by the pool, every time I poured myself another glass of wine, Carol quipped, ‘You drink a lot, don’t you?’

In Praise of Barbara Mitchell

I couldn’t have wished for a better fictional mother than Barbara Mitchell as Mrs Abbott in Please Sir!. Her first appearance was in the third episode of the second series, Panalal Passes By in which Bernard Hedges meets her, accompanied by Frankie, in a café and she puts him off his food when she talks about her operation and haemorrhaging. She also reveals herself to be a racist, and Barbara played the character with such conviction and still made this monstrous mother funny.

   Mrs Abbott didn’t appear again until series three, Hitches and Stitches, when Abbott is taken to hospital for an appendectomy. But it was in the film that Barbara really made her mark, with her show-stopping scene in the kitchen when Frankie is seen squirting their budgerigar with washing-up liquid, and she perfectly delivers the line, ‘Don’t do that, my duck, you know Dickie don’t like it.’

   She was great to work with, and it was often difficult to keep a straight face performing with her. When she was in The Fenn Street Gang, when her character really took off, there was one time when some of us ‘gang’ members couldn’t stop corpsing. It was in an episode I wrote called ‘When Did You Last See Your Father?’, and I must confess I couldn’t resist indulging her character in this episode. It was directed by Alan Wallis, and after the dress rehearsal, just hours before the episode was recorded before a studio audience, Alan had to plead with us not to corpse, because in a café scene with Barbara we were reduced to tears of laughter when she performed, up to and including the dress rehearsal. That is how funny she was, and in each rehearsal, she always managed to add a little something extra and funny to each scene.

    Offstage she was wonderful, and a lovely person. My wife Zélie and I had moved to Park Road in Kingston-upon-Thames, and Barbara, her husband Rex and their two children lived just around the corner in Crescent Road. Not long after we had just moved in Barbara came round to welcome us and gave us a cup of sugar! She was incredibly involved in raising money for charity, and on several occasions she and Rex asked me to attend some events with her, which I was delighted to do.

    She became a regular character in the comedy For the Love of Ada, which I have been watching on Talking Pictures, and it reminded me of just what a fine comedy actress she was. She also played Vi Tonks in Beryl’s Lot in dozens of episodes.

   And I don’t know whether it was a producer, a researcher, or Bob Monkhouse himself who asked for us both to appear as guests of The Golden Shot. Monkhouse treated us royally, and it was clear he loved our two characters from the show. And going on the train up to the Birmingham studio where the programme was recorded gave me an opportunity to chat to her at length.

   Sadly, she was only 48 when she died of breast cancer in 1977. It was such a great loss, not only for her close family, but for her fellow actors and the general public. She was such a positive person, and there was never a dull moment when you were with her.

   And one of my fondest memories was of bumping into her, which I often did, in our local shops in Park Road, and she would always shout loudly and outrageously across the road to me, ‘Just shopping for chips, Frankie?’

Tragic Start to The Fenn Street Gang

It wasn’t long after the release of the Please Sir! film that we began rehearsals for The Fenn Street Gang spin-off.  Six of us were contracted to appear in 16 out of 21 episodes which ran consecutively with the fourth series of Please Sir!  Class 5C was recast with other young actors playing different characters,

   Now John Esmonde and Bob Larbey’s writing was put to the test. Of the first series of 21 episodes of Fenn Street Gang, they wrote 11 episodes, and of the 21 episodes of series four of Please Sir! they wrote eight episodes, plus working as script editors on the other scripts for both series. Two of The Fenn Street Gang and five episodes of the new Please Sir! were written by Tony Bilbow, who presented BBC Television’s Film Night between 1970 and 1973, and Geoff Rowley and Andy Baker wrote seven episodes of Please Sir! and seven of Fenn Street Gang. I wrote one episode of the latter.

   Mark Stuart, as executive producer was still in charge of both series, but we now had other alternating producers and directors.

   John Alderton was contracted to appear in two episodes of the new school series and three episodes of The Fenn Street Gang. Malcolm McFee was unavailable to continue as Peter Craven because the production company, Memorial Enterprises, wouldn’t release him from a West End play. He had an understudy, and only one week after our series started they gave notice that the play would finish in two weeks. You would have thought that a production company run by two actors, Albert Finney and Michael Medwin, would have been understanding and let Malcolm go before the end, since the end was imminent, and Malcolm would lose out on 16 episodes of a TV series. But no, they insisted on him staying until the final curtain, even though his understudy could have played the part for the last two weeks. Léon Vitali was cast as Peter Craven

   The first episode, Should Auld Acquaintance, was not a happy memory. Nothing to do with any aggravation with the cast or production. It was directed by David Askey and on the second day, when producer Mark Stuart came into the rehearsal room to watch a rehearsal, he seemed to be staring at me which I misinterpreted as his dissatisfaction with my performance. At the end of a scene, he came forward, took me by the shoulders, saying he wanted a word with me, and I was taken into an adjoining empty rehearsal room. He then told me he had bad news. My brother had died in Australia.

   My first inappropriate thought was relief that I wasn’t being sacked. This terrible immediate thought has filled me with such guilt that I have been unable to wash it away. It has haunted me ever since.

   When I look back at that first episode, I think how kind and understanding Mark was. He took me into his office, then left me to telephone my wife Zélie, who told me Jenny, my brother Mervyn’s wife, would be ringing me later that evening from Australia. We broke for lunch and I went home early.

   The cause of Mervyn’s death was pleurisy, which is not usually life-threatening, but Mervyn had been in a bad motor accident a year before they emigrated, and he spent over six weeks in hospital. I guess his body had weakened considerably and was unable to cope with a defence against illness.

   The next few days were a blur, and I suppose a sort of ‘Doctor Theatre’ got me through the recording. Everyone was supportive and understanding. The first episode was written by John and Bob and opened with us playing tenpin bowls. Christopher Biggins was in this episode, as a Royal Mail employee. He had a scene with Peter Craven, now played by Léon Vitali. I felt sorry for Léon, because he was thrown in at the deep end, and they had obviously cast him on his looks, whereas he never really nailed the character, because there wasn’t really a big enough contrast between him and Peter Cleall. It wasn’t Léon’s fault, he just played it differently to Malcolm, who had been laid-back and understood the art of less is more. But as Sharon, Carol Hawkins, although different from Penny Spencer, managed to take the character to another level, and succeeded in making it her own.

   I guess I managed to get through these early episodes because I was kept busy and didn’t have time to dwell on Mervyn’s death. Besides, he had left the UK more than five years ago, and a vast distance lay between us. The wrench at that time was like a bereavement, never knowing when we might meet again, and never suspecting that we never would.

The Mystery of The Missing Photographs

During the first series of Please Sir! London Weekend Television realised they had a huge hit on their hands. But you would never have guessed it from their glossy photographs of all their shows in reception at Wembley Studios. There wasn’t one of Please Sir! And it wasn’t the cast members being paranoid. Whenever any of our wives, friends or agents came to a recording, they invariably noticed how our series was overlooked as far as the studio promotion went. It was as if the company resented the success of its own series, which was very strange, and several times our series hit Number One in the television ratings, even topping Coronation Street, Dad’s Army and Steptoe and Son.

   Often, following the recording of our shows, we would go for an Indian or Chinese meal. John Alderton for the first two series of our show, used to do the studio warm-up, thus saving Mark Stuart money in his episode budget for a professional warm-up man. So John asked Mark that it might be only fair that the warm-up money should go towards our meal after the recordings. Mark point blank refused, and so John refused to do the warm-ups for the third series, which was when Mark hired comedy actor John Junkin. John was fun and entertaining, and the audience seemed to like him because he was a well-known face, and he always joined us for a meal after the recording. But his warm-up days were numbered because of the sensitivity of our bosses. It happened during one warm-up, when John Junkin told the audience that LWT stood for ‘Low Wages and Tat!’ The curtain came down, and for the next episode we had another warm-up man. We couldn’t work out why the LWT bosses were so hyper-sensitive, unless it was a follow on from their resentment of our success.

   Someone who clearly disapproved of the way we behaved as characters, and our sometimes risqué dialogue (although mild by today’s standards) was Mary Whitehouse of the National Viewers’ and Listeners’ Association. LWT often got complaints from her organisation, which we all thought was strange. Because our programme was broadcast at 7.25 p.m., way before the nine o’clock watershed, it was a rule that each weekly script had to be sent to ITA (Independent Television Authority) to monitor their suitability for transmission during the early evening. It transpired that Mark’s P.A. had been posting the scripts to the wrong address, and they lay abandoned on the floor of a vacant office building in Knightsbridge along with piles of junk mail.

   This couldn’t have happened with the first series, as two out of the seven episodes were moved from their earlier transmission of 8.30 to a 9.15 slot, so I guess ITA must have insisted on this having read the scripts.

   The last three episodes of the third series were broadcast in black and white because of a colour technicians’ strike. The first of these episodes was Situations Vacant, and we were introduced to Mr Dunstable, Dennis’s ghastly, drunken father. The part was played by eccentric actor Peter Bayliss, who arrived at rehearsals looking dapper, wearing a collar and tie and blue serge suit. He threw himself into the role, and you often wondered what strange exclamations would spring from his larynx, groans and grunts from deep down in his chest, and uncoordinated arm movements. His character took over, and the dapper actor went home at the end of rehearsals looking like a tramp. But we all loved Peter, who was a lovely man.

    Our final episode was a Christmas special, And Everyone Came Too, about Bernard and Penny’s wedding to which we were all invited (they gave us prop wedding invitations, and I’ve still got mine!). It could have been a colourful ending, but the strike was still on and it was recorded and transmitted in black and white, which was disappointing. It would have been good to finish with the eye-catching colourful fashions at the end of the swinging sixties and the beginning of the early seventies.

   The series became so popular it was sold to more than 40 countries, and still reception at Wembley Studio didn’t display any photographs from the show, even though they had pictures of On the Buses, Within These Walls, The Gentle Touch, and many others.

   But if anyone had told me back then that the series would find an audience in the next century, I would have thought they were off their trolley. Soon the series is to be repeated on Forces TV, well into the 21^st Century, and there was me thinking back then that in 2001 a computer like HAL would take us whizzing into infinity. Just goes to show, some things are still more down to earth.

Living Language

Never end a sentence with a preposition. Never start a sentence with a conjunction. Do you ever remember English teachers telling you this? Maybe they don’t anymore, but once upon a time those pompous, pedantic Malovolios mistakenly thought it was a hard and fast rule, and if in our English lessons we wrote something like ‘There is a theme park I would like to go to.’ This would be biroed (no such verb but who gives a monkeys) in red, and we ignorant little schoolkids would be corrected, and the preposition would be put in its place, reading, ‘There is a theme park to which I would like to go.’ Which to us kids sounded very formal and not the way we would talk in the playground.

    A friend of mine who was a schoolteacher, although his subject was maths, used to argue with me incessantly in our local pub (and this was only 20 years ago) about not beginning a sentence with a conjunction, until I eventually took in a Charles Dickens novel to show him that even writers of great literature ignored this suspect grammatical rule. I would have taken in the Complete Works of Shakespeare to show my friend that even the Bard of Avon could use conjunctions at the start of a sentence, but the tome was too cumbersome to lug to the pub.

    I had just begun writing my first novel Each man Kills when my friend argued about this factitious grammatical rule and I looked on starting a sentence with a conjunction as a challenge. Not much of one, I must admit, so I went a little further and began a chapter with ‘And that was that as far as the police were concerned.’

    In 1973 I performed in Peter Nichols’ splendid play, Forget-Me-Not Lane, in which Nichols gets many laughs out of the way the father is obsessed with correcting his son about never ending a sentence with a preposition. At one point Young Frank says, ‘Perhaps it was something he was driven to.’

    ‘Driven to? What’s “driven to”? admonishes Charles his father. ‘He was driven to it as pointlessly as you seem to be driven to end sentences with prepositions.’

   ‘Obsolete!’ Frank protests. ‘That’s one of the set of obsolete taboos you expected me to face my twentieth-century adolescence with.’

   ‘With which you expected me to face my—’ begins the father.

   Which always got a big laugh.

   Language is fluid, like Shakespearian and American/English, using new words, with old words taking on new meanings. Many new words survive and many fall into disuse throughout changing generations. How many people in 50 years’ time will be using the word Brexit, or even much earlier than that? And phrases, especially American ones, tend to become media clichés, such as ballpark figure meaning an approximate sum. And we have adopted so many American slang words and phrases, many of which are very imaginative. I often use the term ‘taking the back doubles’ to describe an alternative route somewhere, and it doesn’t mean the same as a short cut. If you try to analyse it’s true meaning, you may find it difficult. But we all know what it means without resorting to analysis. Much of our language, when used aurally, is emotional rather than intellectual.

    Frank Norman, who wrote the script and book of the Lionel Bart musical Fings Ain’t Wot They Used T’Be, in which I toured in a revival in 1979, was illegitimate and a Barnardo’s boy, who received five prison sentences, mainly for burglary, was recognised as a talented writer, even though he had had no formal education and couldn’t spell or write perfect grammatical English. When he wrote his first book, based on his prison experiences, Bang to Rights, it was great writing from the heart, giving the reader his honest emotional experiences rather than a formal intellectual opus. And his publisher had the courage to publish it exactly as he wrote it, warts and all. Here is a brief extract:

    ‘The fact is the nicks stink the screws are ignorant inhueman sadistic and a percentage of them are bent, so why don’t you face it and do something about it instead of hideing all the time.’

    So impressed was crime writer Raymond Chandler by Norman’s writing that he wrote a foreword to the book, saying things like: ‘He has a clever eye and swift observation and the power to put those qualities on paper and make you see with him. There is no damned literary nonsense about his writing.’

    One of my favourite writers, Bill Bryson, in his book Mother Tongue, which is hugely informative and funny, as most of his books are, gives as an example the way we Brits find it curious how Americans say ‘gotten’, whereas we say ‘got’. The point Bryson makes is that Shakespeare would have used ‘gotten’, and it has fallen into disuse in the UK, whereas the Americans have kept it alive over the centuries. Yet we still use phrases like ‘ill-gotten gains’.

    But for me, I still like to keep abreast of the words we use in our everyday speech, and also what is grammatically acceptable and correct. Only then can I dare to break rules.

    And finally: A preposition is not a good word to end a sentence with.

    And here is what it should be: A preposition is not a good word with which to end a sentence.

    You choose!

 Scenes of Murder

Let me begin this blog with a rhetorical question. How important are real locations in crime novels? My personal preference is for real locations, in fact all of them described in my crime novels I have visited at one time or another. But that’s a personal thing. Not all crime novels need real locations, many can be fictional, and a good many of those crime novels which have fictional locations I have enjoyed.

    The first crime novels I devoured were the Enid Blyton Famous Five books, all of which took place in fictional areas, and involved the four children and the dog solving a crime of smugglers or foreign secret agents. And although there is no such place as Kirrin Island, it became very real to me. Later my reading tastes gravitated towards Agatha Christie, whose murders often took place in country houses or vicarages, locations I found it difficult with which to identify, and were more like puzzles in a game of Cluedo. Of course, Christie did occasionally use real locations such as Murder On The Orient Express, but even that one was a murder mystery set in a drawing room which just happened to be on a train.

   And then I discovered Raymond Chandler, in the very real Los Angeles, and his private eye Philip Marlowe had an office on Hollywood’s Sunset Boulevard. And when I saw his novels translated into film, I realised just how important using a real location was. And much, much later another private eye, or gumshoe as they are sometimes known, was Lew Archer, also set in Los Angeles, excellent mysteries written by Ross Macdonald, whose hero was portrayed by Paul Newman in the films.

    In the Dr Tony Hill and detective Carol Jordan novels by Val McDermid, these are located in the fictional town of Seafield in East Yorkshire, which is a hybrid city and could be a mixture of Leeds, Scarborough and Middlesborough. But it doesn’t really matter where it is set, because unlike detective fiction set in real locations, she is asking readers to use their imagination.

    But my own preferences are for real locations. One of my favourites being Rebus’s Edinburgh, which is also his creator’s city. Ian Rankin even writes about the very tiny pub, the Oxford Arms, as one of Rebus’s regular haunts, a pub which Rankin uses himself.

    Each Man Kills, which was my first Harry Lambert crime novel, is set in Swansea, and also West Wales and Aberystwyth, all locations with which I am familiar. And when I used DI Harry Lambert in two more novels, The Wrecking Bar and Missing Persons, written in my birth name of Meurig Jones, I returned to Swansea and spent some time there getting to know the city and surrounding areas more intimately, which resulted in my writing scenes in which I had a massive explosion blowing up the marina at Burry Port. No one ever complained about my destruction of their lovely location. Unlike a slightly peeved email I received from a resident of the Isle Of Sheppey.

    When I began writing A Deadly Diversion, I visited the island over two days and took loads of photographs as I usually do. In the novel, I had one of my characters say, ‘What a karzy that place is. Don’t bother to send me a postcard.’ The email complained about the way I had written the island off, saying there was a great deal to recommend it. I wanted to write back and say it wasn’t me saying it, but a fictional character. Unfortunately the email got inadvertently deleted. I also wanted to send two photographs as proof of what I had seen on the island: one of a caravan park with a rust-bucket abandoned van; the other a derelict night club.

    The night club I discovered was a gift as it became the location for the climax of the novel after my protagonist flees from Krakow in Poland, which I have also visited.

 (Below you will see the rust bucket from the Isle of Sheppey Caravan Park and the night club

 which once knew better days, but became perfect for what I had in mind)

This same protagonist, Freddie Weston, in a previous novel Muscle, is set mainly in London’s West End and East End which I know very well, although I was able to take a nostalgic walk one sunny day along the River Thames to the weir and lock at Teddington, where the climax of Muscle is set.

    And in Walking Shadows, which was published in 2019, I returned to the Richmond area, where I spent my teens, and had a murder take place in a house on Richmond Green, one on a  marina by the Menai Straits, where I grew up, and another at Cruden Bay near Aberdeen, where I worked for a year as a Writer in Residence. So all of these locations are very real, and I even had characters meeting in a pub I drank in several times in East London, the Eagle at Snaresbrook.

   In my latest book, Before They Die, details of which you will find on the link below, much of the action takes place in London, but I did visit Docklands over two days, took loads of photographs, preparing to write an exciting car chase that features in the novel, with an escape onto the DLR. I also had two villains of the novel meeting in a pub I knew, The Anglesey Arms in South Kensington.

   The book I have recently completed is a horror anthology, The Great Lucifer & Other Horror Stories, so it is very much a novel of the imagination, and most of the locations are fictional. Although there is one story that…but you will just have to wait and see.

   Meanwhile, I have just bought another Michael Connelly novel, featuring Harry Bosch, and set in Los Angeles, and look forward to reading it, knowing that the author will take me to some very real places that I have never visited. But I think, because it is the city that Raymond Chandler introduced me to, he should have the final word. Of Los Angeles he said, ‘A big hard-boiled city with no more personality than a paper cup.’

BeforeTheyDie

DeadlyDiversion

Muscle

EachManKills

WalkingShadows

A Desert Rat on VE Day

If the morning rehearsals for Please Sir! went well, which they invariably did, the lunchtimes became boozy affairs, playing silly games in the bar. One lunchtime, our producer and director Mark Stuart, who was in his early fifties, accused writer John Esmonde, who was much younger than him, of being far less fit. A challenge reared its ridiculous head. A fiver was wagered on the writer attempting to beat the director, running from the ground floor to the bar on the twentieth floor, a punishing forty flights of stairs. They went down in the lift while we all waited. A little while later Mark strutted into the bar, breathing heavily but otherwise quite relaxed. John Esmonde stumbled in later, panting and pale-faced, barely able to speak. But he was too competitive to acknowledge defeat. He claimed age was on his side and challenged Mark to run the race again. Double or quits. But Mark was an ex-dancer and choreographer, a champion diver, regular squash player and trampolinist. He was genuinely fit. The only thing John had going for him was his competitive personality. When they ran the second race, we thought Bob Larbey would have to find another writing partner. Not only did John lose the race, he looked as if he was about to expire. He shook and couldn’t speak for quite some time and had to be given another cognac transfusion.

   Mark used to direct some of the Tommy Cooper shows. The comedian was at the bar one day and Mark brought him over and introduced us. The great accident-prone magician sat at our table and made a great big fuss of wanting to buy us all a drink. Unfortunately for us, and fortunately for him, he kept his money in a handkerchief, with at least half a dozen knots surrounding it. As he struggled to undo a single knot, not only did he make us laugh but he managed to get out of buying a round.

   Mark had already told us the story of one of Cooper’s favourite tricks. If a car was sent to pick him up, at the end of the journey, the comedian would say to the driver, ‘Thank you. Have a drink on me.’ And he would shove what felt like a wad of notes into the driver’s breast pocket. It turned out to be a tea bag.

   As Tommy Cooper used his avaricious hankie trick on us, Mark was equally keen to get some good-humoured revenge. Cooper began telling us a long and elaborate joke. Mark whispered to someone in our group, ‘Make an excuse and walk away. But first pass it on.’ It took a while for the comedian to cotton on to what was happening, but by the time he neared the tagline of his gag he had lost his audience, and there was a look of desperation on his face as he belted out the punchline to the one person he physically restrained.

    As I write this on Friday 7 May, I am reminded that it is 75 years since Germany surrendered, ending the war in Europe. And during a break in the Please Sir! rehearsals, I can remember Deryck Guyler telling us that one of the most memorable moments of his career was when he worked in a West End show in 1945, and on 7 May, the day before the official VE Day celebrations, word came that Germany had surrendered, and it was Deryck who, with tears in his eyes, announced to the audience that Germany had surrendered and peace had been declared in Europe. The audience went berserk, he said. It was a very moving moment and a treasured highlight of his career.

    Of course, he wasn’t really a Desert Rat!

Early Days of Television

My parents resisted buying a television set up until 1955. There were all sorts rumours about the ‘goggle box’ or the ‘one-eyed monster’ and how it was blamed for many social evils and was responsible for all kinds of physical deformity; anyone who had a squint, naturally it was television to blame. But the worst thing about television back then was the way the BBC operated, shutting down at 10.45 p.m., first of all playing ‘God Save the Queen’. (Did the BBC expect us to stand to attention at home, as was expected of us when they played the National Anthem at the end of the main feature at the cinema?) And there were the mind-numbing interludes between programmes when they played drippy music while showing hands making a vase on a potter’s wheel or a windmill turning, a form of hypnosis as if Big Brother was lulling us into a soporific state. And the programmes themselves were not much better. Often I and my family preferred to sit by the wireless and listen to the anarchic comedy of The Goon Show or some of the brilliant lugubrious humour of Anthony Aloysius St John Hancock of Railway Cuttings, East Cheam, in Hancock’s Half Hour. At first, it was hard to accept live television shows, often ruined by many technical cock-ups, with sound booms or a camera lens coming into shot. In the early days of television, a teenage girl remarked, ‘I prefer radio to television, the images are so much better.’

    My parents, and my older brother, preferred the theatre and cinema, which also rubbed off on me in a big way.

    But there was one American comedy my father loved, which was The Phil Silvers Show, in which he played army Sgt Bilko, performing with immaculate timing. Of course in those days most of the American imports were Westerns. But BBC’s output then was ever so twee, with programmes like What’s My Line, hosted by Gilbert Harding, a headstrong schoolmasterly man who often upset people with a caustic remark and his panel consisted of well-spoken and well-mannered ladies like Lady Barnet, Lady Boyle and Barbara Kelly. And this was the quiz show where a guest had to mime their occupation, and the panellists had to guess what he or she did for a living. Riveting! But maybe we were easily pleased back then. (Perhaps we still are judging by some of the reality TV programmes showing these days.) But surely our gratification was easily satisfied in the fifties when we were amused by some of the variety shows like The Billy Cotton Band Show, where we marvelled at Cotton, the entertainer and host, an overweight man who was able to do cartwheels as he yelled, ‘Wakey! Wakey!’

    Little wonder that television remained socially low and inferior on the cultural scale. And when ITV began broadcasting in 1955, it created social divisions with the viewing public, many snobbish viewers preferring the cosiness of the BBC, with Dixon of Dock Green  and his catchphrase (it was the era of catchphrases) ‘Evening all,’ which was perhaps more comforting than ITV’s Dragnet and ‘My name’s Friday. I’m a cop.’

    Then on ITV there were the commercials, which loyal BBC viewers tried to avoid, like the first ever TV advert for Gibbs SR toothpaste informing viewers that it was tingling fresh.  And a washing powder commercial stated that ‘Omo improves even on perfect whiteness.’ (Did anyone stop to wonder how you can improve on perfection?) ITV stations soon became known for a ‘licence to print money.’ A commercial during peak time between 7.00 p.m. and 10.30 p.m. could cost as much as £2,000 per minute (roughly £36,000 in today’s money). But it was ITV who became more innovative when a Canadian, Sydney Newman, who left the Canadian Broadcasting Company to work for ABC Television, founded Armchair Theatre, a series of hour-long plays broadcast every Sunday night after Sunday Night at The London Palladium. Many of the plays were written by renowned writers like Alan Plater, Alun Owen and Harold Pinter. These plays, which gave many young writers their first opportunity in writing for television, ran for 452 episodes.

    I often think it’s a  great shame we can’t have one off single plays on television anymore.

    I mentioned the Billy Cotton Band Show. John Judd, with whom I worked with in pantomime in the 1970s, I interviewed at the Phoenix Artist Club just over a year ago, and he talked about his role of Sands in the violent borstal drama Scum, and how Billy Cotton’s son, Bill Cotton Junior became Controller of BBC1 in the 1970s and banned it from being televised. John Judd told us how in certain circles Scum became known as ‘The Billy Cotton banned show.’

Bad Timing

In 1988 I was asked to direct the Sevenoaks Stag Theatre’s first professional pantomime. This came about because I had been instrumental in helping to raise money to get this new theatre off the ground, by organising evenings of Poems and Pints, in which I managed to persuade Valentine Dyall, Peter Cleall, Richard Davies and his wife Jill Britton, Christopher Timothy, and my wife Pat Carlile to appear. Then, Margaret Durdant-Hollamby who ran the theatre, asked me if I would direct their first professional pantomime and I was offered a Cinderella script by Christopher Timothy. I agreed to play one of the Broker’s Men and I asked Malcolm McFee if he would join me as the other Broker’s Man. I managed to hire some excellent scenery and a Cinderella coach from Norwich Theatre Royal, and also two Shetland ponies to do the pulling and thrill the children at the closing of the first half.

Meanwhile, Maggie Durdant-Hollamby wanted a name to top the bill as Buttons. I had been watching The Lenny Henry Show, and I thought the young actor, Vas Blackwood, who played Winston in that show was rather good and very funny. We cast him, and on the first day of rehearsal at Sevenoaks, which I called for 11.00 a.m. to allow the actors to get the cheaper fares, Blackwood did not turn up until nearly 11.45, saying he’d left his wallet at home. Fair enough, I thought, that was just bad luck. But he was late most days, and often he didn’t even bother to make excuses. Because I called rehearsals for eleven, I expected everyone to work until six – at least. Not Blackwood, who left dead on half-five, saying, ‘I’ve got a train to catch, man.’

   To say I regretted casting him is an understatement, but the buck stopped with me.

   I have been in some technical rehearsals in productions which go on until very late at night. This particular one, with Malcolm’s help, was reasonably smooth and we were well into the second half by six o’clock with only another hour to go. But Vas Blackwood said he was going. Walking out. The stage manager went ape, screaming at him and swearing, and in the end a cowed Buttons stayed until we finished the tech. But Malcom and I had wanted Blackwood to walk out, because then we could have sacked him without pay, and got David Sargent, who played the Major Domo to take over the role, as he was so much better.

   But we were stuck with Vas Blackwood for the entire run. And I can remember Malcolm whispering to me in the wings, as he watched Blackwood’s performance as Buttons, ‘You would think some of Lenny Henry’s professionalism would have rubbed off on the bloke, wouldn’t you?’

    I can also remember warning Blackwood during the rehearsal period about his time-keeping and having to phone up his agent to complain. Now most actors’ agents stick up for their clients. Not this one. He blithely told me he had had many complaints from other theatre companies about his client and reluctantly agreed to have a word with Blackwood.

    Fat lot of good it did. And I do so wish it had been David Sargent playing Buttons instead. But many years later I would eventually get to work with David again, who appeared in my play Mr Micawber, based on my novel Mr Micawber Down Under, which toured the South East in 2013, and he was excellent playing multi roles.

Lads From Fenn Street…Further Adventures Of

The Lads From Fenn Street was booked for a week at Hull Arts Centre, a small theatre which later became the base for Hull Truck Company. Advance bookings were poor, and Ken Shaw, an Australian actor who worked as our Publicity Manager arranged for us to make a brief appearance at a cabaret club, where the resident DJ would plug our show prior to Gerry and the Pacemakers performing. We stayed to watch the show, and Gerry Marsden not only sang all his popular hits, but invited some members of the audience to participate in “Old MacDonald Had a Farm”, which worked well, as many of the participants were uninhibited through alcohol, and prepared to be the butt of Gerry’s jokes.

   The singer heard that some of the Please Sir! cast were visiting and invited us to join him in his dressing room after the show for a few drinks. As Gerry’s cabaret performance wasn’t until quite late, we invited him to see our show on Tuesday night. He came and liked the show so much, he returned to see the midweek matinee, bringing his wife and family. Then he invited us to have a drink with him after his performance on Friday night.

   We arrived a bit early and he was still on stage. But he had left word to expect us and we were shown into his dressing room and told to help ourselves to the Scotch he had left out.

Suddenly his manager or roadie barged in, behaving as if he owned the place. He began criticising Gerry’s act and we thought this must be Mister Ten Per Cent. Definitely his agent, the way he spoke about his client. When Gerry arrived, he gave the man a cursory nod. Then the bloke launched into a criticism of his act, going on and on in running down Gerry’s performance. Suddenly, the singer could take it no more, pointed his finger at the man and demanded, ‘What do you do, pal?’

   ‘I’m a gas fitter.’

   Gerry exploded. ‘You’re a gas fitter and you’re telling me how to do my act. Go on, clear out!’

   The man exited hurriedly, and Gerry turned to us and apologised. ‘I’m sorry, lads, if he was a colleague of yours. But I couldn’t take all that shit after a show.’

   We said we’d never seen him before. ‘The way he spoke we thought he must have been your agent,’ Malcolm McFee said.

   Gerry laughed. ‘Good job I thought he was with you lads, else I might have chinned him.’

   Our show did well in the south, and in Scotland and Wales, but not so well in the north of England. I often used to wonder if this was because of some myth about northerners not liking southerners. One small venue in the north, and I really can’t remember where it was, we played for two nights. Prior to our tour they demanded a great deal of publicity material. When we arrived at the venue I could see in the box office a huge pile of our posters lying around. It put me in a terrible mood, angry not so much about the cost of the posters but the fact that they hadn’t been used to publicise the show. I demanded to see the manager who was not available until the interval. After the first half the manager came into the dressing room and I launched into a tirade about how badly run the theatre was. I expected Malcolm at least to back me up, but he snuck out of the dressing room, stifling a smile. I was astounded. When he returned I asked him why he hadn’t stayed to back me up. And he told me he found it difficult to keep a straight face.

   ‘How can anyone take you seriously, ranting and raving, when you’re dressed as Little Bo-Peep?’

   Another northern date we played was in Preston, Lancashire. The first night at the hotel I hardly got any sleep as my room backed onto the railway lines, and diesels hummed and throbbed all night long. Unable to sleep, I telephoned reception and asked, ‘What time does this hotel arrive at Euston?’

   The three of us moved to a quieter hotel in Lytham St. Anne’s for the rest of the week.

   But we did have a lot of laughs on this 18 week tour. It was in Peterborough I seem to remember coming down to breakfast in the hotel we stayed at, and one of the chambermaids recognised us and said, ‘Fenn Street Gang! I recognised you. You look just like yourselves.’

   And at another venue the theatre manager accompanied us to the bank to cash a cheque for the week’s takings, and the female bank teller recognised us and asked for our autographs. After we gave her our signatures, then pushed the cheque across the counter, she said, ‘Could I see some ID please?’

   But one of the biggest laughs we had on the tour was at the expense of Peter Cleall. We were at Torquay and Peter went into a public convenience. When he came out, nonplussed and shaken, he told us he’d been standing at the urinal enjoying a pee when a man standing at the next stall recognised him and demanded an autograph, thrusting pen and paper at him while they were both still urinating.

The Three Amigos On Tour

When Malcolm McFee and I first began booking dates for our tour of The Lads From Fenn Street, we hoped to get a few reasonably close to London so that we could invite a few television producers along to see it; but the nearest venue we managed to book was at East Grinstead. We invited Michael Grade, who was Head of Light Entertainment at LWT, never thinking he would accept our invitation, so we were surprised and pleased when he made the journey one rainy midweek night, and we picked him up at the railway station. We had a drink with him after the show, which he said he enjoyed, but no offers of sketch shows were ever forthcoming from LWT after that.

   We discovered the greatest difficulty in booking tours is in trying to get them within reasonable travelling distance of each other. I think the longest journey we had to make was from a few one-night stands in the Cheshire area to Kirkcaldy in Fife. At least we could relax at the Adam Smith Centre because we were booked for the entire week on a guarantee, and the bookings were reasonably good. We stayed at the Station Hotel, conveniently close to the theatre, and on Friday night after the show we were in the bar when the hotel manager said there was an event going on in their function room and people would love to meet us. We joined the event, which looked as if it might have been some sort of dinner and dance which started much earlier in the evening. Thinking we might plug our show for the last two Saturday performances, we got up on the stage and performed a couple of short sketches, and I sang a short song from the show.

            Sweet Fanny Adams,

            Always bright and gay

            In the old apple tree in the orchard

            We carved our names one day.

            But the woodpecker came in September

            And woodpecker wood peck away,

            Now all we can see on the old apple tree

            Is sweet F.A!

Then Malcom said something like, ‘I hope you are all having a good evening, and are a bit pissed like we are, and please come and see our last two performances at the Adam Smith Centre.’

   The organiser of this event, a dour looking giant in a kilt, came over and said, ‘I’d like you to leave now.’

   We laughed. This guy had a real dry sense of humour, and because we’d entertained them at his function free of charge, we waited for him to say something like, ‘What’ll you have to drink, lads?’ Then we realised by his sour expression that he was deadly serious. What had upset him we wondered? Was it my sweet F.A. line? Or was it Malcolm using the word pissed. Whatever it was, his attitude was extreme. When several woman asked us for autographs, we apologised, saying we had to leave as their organiser was throwing us out.

   We never found out what his problem was, unless he was some nutty Bible-thumping bigot who hated The Fenn Street Gang. But at least our theatre performances went down well at Kirkcaldy.

   In 1974, like Wales, the pubs shut on Sundays in Scotland, so on the Sunday morning as we drove to our next venue and crossed the border, we stopped for a lunchtime drink at the first pub in England. We had just got our drinks when someone said, ‘How’s your tour going?’

   The chap introduced himself. He recognised us because he was an actor touring in another show, on their way from Bournemouth to Aberdeen, and decided to stop off for a final drink before the last leg of their marathon journey.

   Ken Shaw, who played the detective sergeant in Just Plain Murder, in which we toured in 1973, we employed to market the show, which is how I ended up fighting two rounds wrestling Albert ‘Rocky’ Wall. We’d been playing a few one-night stands up north, and we had a Saturday free. Our next venue was the Pier Pavilion Cleethorpes, so we decided to drive over there, book into a hotel, then have a look at the venue. When we arrived at the theatre, a band was getting their equipment into a large vehicle. We asked them what the venue was like, and they gave us their eye-rolling verdict of terrible, having played to only a dozen people. We asked the name of their group and were told it was Showaddywaddy, soon to reach number two in the charts with “Hey Rock and Roll”.

   Our publicity stunt took place on the Sunday night when I climbed into the boxing ring to challenge ‘Rocky’ Wall. I wore a great cape, Bermuda shorts and boxing gloves. Peter and Malcolm, as my seconds wore snazzy sequined jackets and bowler hats. I pranced around the ring, waving gloved fists in the air, saying ‘I am the greatest.’ It was then I got a bit worried because ‘Rocky’ looked towards his manager as if to say, ‘Why didn’t you tell me about this stunt?’ Then he grabbed me, raised me above his head, and slammed me on to the canvas. But he knew exactly what he was doing, and I didn’t feel a thing. He grunted and shouted, squeezing me in a neck lock as I struggled to think what happens next. ‘Submit, you idiot!’ Malcolm and Peter shouted. After I’d capitulated, we fought another round, I submitted again, and the champion wrestler retained his title. Not that he was ever in any danger from Frankie in his Bermuda shorts. Afterwards, he fought his proper round and beat his opponent. Following the match, we met both the wrestlers and their wives for a pint in the nearest bar. Later, I admitted ‘Rocky’ was an excellent actor who had me worried for a moment.

    I guess that’s what wrestling’s about. Good performance. Otherwise a wrestler’s forearm smash might break an opponent’s jaw.

The Lads From Fenn Street

Liz Gebhardt, who played Maureen in Please Sir! was married to actor and director Ian Talbot, who for many years was Artistic Director of Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre, and he and I wrote a sketch show, The Lads from Fenn Street. We had talked about this during the last series of Fenn Street, and as we needed permission to use the television characters, we approached John Esmonde and Bob Larbey, who happily gave their consent. Malcolm contacted Peter Denyer, who was doing his summer season in Bournemouth, but he wasn’t interested in either performing or directing it. We asked Christopher Timothy to direct and he agreed, also adding some great ideas and sketches to the script. At that time, Chris was contracted to do hard sell television commercials for the Sun newspaper, and he wrote one of the sketches, a spoof of himself, with Malcolm playing him.

   As Malcolm, Peter and I met for the first time at Stonebridge Park, which was then where LWT's offices and rehearsal rooms were located, we decided to call our production company Stonebridge Productions. First, we played some small halls in the suburbs of London to try our show out initially before taking it on an 18 week tour, a tour which varied from one- and two-night-stands to a week in some of the larger theatres, such as Swansea Grand Theatre.

   This became one of my favourite venues, run by John Chilvers, who watched our show several times, and told us his favourite sketch was the Crossroads spoof with Malcolm as Meg Richardson and me as Amy Turtle. When I mentioned working in Roy Plomley’s Just Plain Murder in which I toured the previous year, he told me the radio presenter kept submitting terrible plays to him which he always turned down.

   One of the notable features backstage at the Grand, which has disappeared since the theatre was revamped, was a ladder halfway up the stairs leading to the dressing rooms. At the top of the ladder was a hatch, and if you knocked on this door it would slide open to reveal a barmaid’s ankles. The hatch was on the floor behind the counter in the dress circle bar and it enabled performers or stage crew to purchase a drink, but only during the running of the show when the audience was seated in the auditorium, never during the interval. It would be disconcerting for a member of the audience to see an actor’s face peering from a hole at shoe level like a wee timorous beastie.

   We three were never able to make use of the hatch as we rarely left the stage, except for quick costume changes.

   Another feature of this theatre was Sir Henry Irving’s signature on his baggage label, encased in glass on the door of the number one dressing room. John Chilvers told us about a touring rock ‘n’ roll show visiting the theatre. He showed the lead singer around backstage and explained about the legendary actor’s signature. ‘This is Sir Henry Irving’s signature,’ he said. ‘The Grand Theatre Swansea was his penultimate performance. After that he went up north, where he died.’

   ‘Well,’ replied the rock singer, ‘don’t they all in those northern clubs?’

   During the week in Swansea I had to catch an early train back to London for a half day’s filming – a religious film made by Churches Television and Radio Centre. The film was called Support Your Local Poet and I performed a voice-over poem while sitting opposite Caroline Munro at a candlelit dinner. Caroline was hugely familiar from the Lamb’s Navy Rum campaign and also became a Bond girl as Naomi in The Spy Who Loved Me. As I sat opposite her, playing a rather smooth young man who wondered where this dinner would lead, my voice-over suddenly revealed to me a spiritual truth that I was being rather shallow, and I suddenly saw the light and was saved. And if you believe that…

Next week's blog will continue the tour story, telling how we were thrown out of a venue in Kirkcaldy, Fife.

Please Sir! Stories

One lunchtime, during a Please Sir! camera rehearsal we were on the studio floor, surrounded by all the mess and tangle of camera cables. Apart from us ‘kids’, and John Alderton, the studio was empty, everyone having gone to lunch. John suddenly folded his arms and began hopping on one leg. It was a game we all knew, where you hop about, barge against someone and try to knock them off balance. The loser is the one who must use both legs or risk being pushed over. We had only just started the game when John tripped on one of the camera cables and sprained his ankle. While we helped him out of the studio we agreed to keep quiet about the ridiculous game. As he limped badly, we helped him to where Mark sat in the canteen. At first, Mark looked worried, wondering how his leading actor was going to get through the night’s recording. After John had visited the studio nurse, got his ankle bound up, and limped back into the canteen, he told Mark he couldn’t possibly drive to Weybridge and the studio must provide a car to take him home after the recording. Mark then went into cynical overdrive and point blank refused to increase his budget for a car, telling John he would have to pay for his own taxi. John protested that it was a studio accident, tripping over the camera cables. But Mark then said something along the lines of: ‘I know you were mucking about, John. You know you were mucking about. And you know I know you were mucking about.’

   After the recording, which John managed to get through without much obvious limping, we all headed for the bar. By now, Mark and John were in deep sulks and not talking to one another.

   When we began rehearsals for the next episode, Peter Cleall and I watched as John stood awkwardly next to Mark at the coffee point. Then one of them made a move, offering to pour coffee for the other, which was accepted gracefully. The quarrel was over. As we observed this touching, cinematic scene, Peter and I giggled as we imagined how it would look in slow motion and soft focus.

   Mark was a very active man, and once he’d completed his camera script by the morning of day three, everyone relaxed, and most of us younger cast members would disappear into an adjacent and empty rehearsal room to play handball on a court Mark had mapped out with gaffer tape. He provided gloves and tennis balls, explained the rules to us, then enjoyed beating us. God knows what guest actors coming in to do one episode thought as the producer/director disappeared to play games with some of his actors.

   We also played cricket with balls made from compressed newspaper covered in gaffer tape. These elliptical missiles were quite hard, and John bowled as if it was county cricket he was playing. Strip fluorescent lights got smashed, crashing spectacularly to the floor, then the shards had to be swept up and concealed behind cupboards. Strangely, nobody from LWT ever mentioned this damage.

   Eric Chitty occasionally behaved just like his Smithy character. When we were about halfway through the series, he approached Peter and me, and asked why Eric Duffy was called El. We explained that East Londoners often do that – calling someone by the name of Derek ‘Del’ or Terry ‘Tel’, which was why the script often referred to Eric as ‘El’. There was a pause before Eric Chitty said, ‘Oh, I see. But no one has ever called me El.’

   It gave us the giggles, and we later referred to him as El Chitty.

    Whenever we did exterior filming, the series was so popular with young people, we were invariably mobbed as they clamoured for autographs. When we finished rehearsals, which always coincided with the time secondary schoolchildren went home, we tried to keep a low profile. Hiding behind sunglasses and broadsheet newspapers. On our own we were less of a target. Collectively there was more of a chance of being recognised.

   Once, on our journey to Euston from Stonebridge Park where we rehearsed, in one of those single compartment carriages, Peter Denyer got off at Queens Park to cross to the other side of the platform to catch a Tube train. The platform swarmed with teenagers, and Peter kept a low profile, head buried in his newspaper. He went unnoticed as he stood in the heart of the throng. Until our train began to pull out. Peter Cleall, Liz Gebhardt and I lowered the carriage window, pointed excitedly at the poor sod and yelled, ‘Look! That bloke in sunglasses. That’s Dennis Dunstable.’ The teenagers descended on the unfortunate actor like a plague of locusts.

   Although working in Please Sir! sounds as if it was all just fun and games, it had its downside. Occasionally we became nervous, gibbering wrecks, and it was all down to Mark Stuart who used to rule his actors like a demented cattle-trail boss. Rehearsals were not so bad, it was when we got into the studio that the fireworks would start. Whenever he shouted at the slightest noise, the veins stood out on his neck and people feared for their lives. I was doing a scene with John Alderton in an episode, and Mark asked me to pause for a quick reaction shot from John. During the camera run-through I forgot. The floor manager told me to hold it. And then I heard the control room door being flung open and feet pounding along the catwalk above the studio. And then a let-there-be-light voice blazed across the studio, ‘Barry! What about that pause?’

   During the camera rehearsal of a boxing scene in The Sporting Life, Mark came pounding down onto the studio floor, stormed up to an extra and screamed at him, ‘Your lifeless, boring face is in the back of my shot. For Christ’s sake react. Do something.’ The extra turned to jelly. Unconcerned, Mark turned away and delivered his next line to the studio. ‘Wood. Fucking wood.’

   Mark knew how to play to the gallery. Always. But he didn’t fool many with his temper tantrums. Like the camp vision mixer who, having listened to one of his tirades, threw out an aside. ‘I missed his last Western.’ Or the world-weary prop man behind the scenes, who muttered following one of Mark’s slavering outbursts, ‘I’ve seen them come, and I’ve seen them go, but that cunt’s the biggest actor of them all.’

   As far as the studio staff and technicians were concerned, these outbursts were interesting incidents to break up the rehearsal. But for us, the younger actors, it was nerve-wracking. We knew Mark hated to do much editing, which was time and money, so he instilled so much fear into us so that when we performed the shows in front of the studio audience, we didn’t dare stumble, fluff or dry. Our shows were complete theatre performances with no retakes. Retakes were verboten. If there were any mistakes, these were broadcast, so that millions of viewers witnessed our gaffs. Consequently, we rarely made mistakes.

   In fairness to Mark, his tyrannical behaviour vanished after the recordings, and he often pushed the boat out in the bar to make amends. He was never a person to hold a grudge.

FICTION FROM FACT

When I came to write my thriller with a political slant, Before They Die, I had read in the mainstream media reports about Cyril Smith’s child abuse at his constituency in Rochdale. What disgusted me as much as anything was the fact that he managed to get away with it for so many decades, even though the Lancashire Constabulary had a thick file on his abhorrent practices as far back as the late ‘60s, yet he was never prosecuted. And then I read reports that MI5 had removed the dossier with the connivance of the Special Branch in Lancashire.

   I was so appalled that I began to look into allegations of child sex abuse by high profile Establishment figures and celebrities.

   Then in recent years Carl Beech made accusations about many Establishment figures who had been named in the press, claiming he had been abused by them, and some friends of his had been murdered. These turned out to be lies, and it transpired that he was himself a paedophile, now serving an 18 year prison sentence. But what happened after his lies were found out was the fact that high profile suspected child abusers were now let off the hook. Suddenly everything was a lie and a conspiracy. However, the wall of truth of what went on should not be whitewashed over.

    In 1983 Geoffrey Dickens, Conservative MP for Huddersfield West claimed he gave the names of eight prominent people who were child sexual abusers to the DPP but nothing was done about it.

    Jimmy Savile spent 13 Christmases with the Thatcher’s at Chequers, and at this serial abuser’s funeral many Freemasons attended in their arcane regalia.

    Margaret Thatcher’s PPS Sir Peter Morrison was a paedophile, and Edwina Currie exposed him as a ‘pederast’. Many people speculated that surely the Prime Minister must have known. Could it be that she didn’t consider these sorts of sexual propensities as important? After all, Alderman and Methodist preacher Alfred Roberts, her revered father, from whom she espoused her Victorian values was a hypocritical lecher and groper who harassed the young female assistants who worked in his Grantham grocer’s shop.

    And PIE (Paedophile Information Exchange) member Henderson was arrested after extreme child porn addressed to him was found on a bus. A search of his flat revealed he used a false name and he was in fact Sir Peter Hayman KCMG, CVO, MBE and High Commissioner to Canada 1970-74. Sir Michael Havers, Attorney General at the time, defended his decision not to prosecute Hayman on grounds that he was not on PIE’s executive committee and therefore not part of a conspiracy.

    Then there are the children’s homes like Bryn Estyn in North Wales where prominent people abused underprivileged children. Or the Elm Guest House in Putney, where parties took place involving Establishment figures abusing youngsters, and which was raided in 1982. Father McSweeney, the priest who presided over Frank Bruno’s wedding, was arrested in connection with the VIP paedophile ring at the Elm Guest House.

    Jimmy Savile visited Broadmoor with Frank Bruno and introduced him to Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe, and there is a photograph of the boxer shaking hands with the serial killer. There is also one of Bruno giving Prince Charles a Masonic handshake with Savile present in the background.

    If all of this wasn’t bad enough, the worst was the missing dossier, 114 files which were handed to Home Secretary Leon Brittan by Geoffrey Dickens, details of a Westminster paedophile ring that should have led to a major enquiry. Now, after Brittan lost the files, many people accused him of being a paedophile himself. But I think we ought to give the late Home Secretary the benefit of the doubt…until proven guilty. But I would have accused him of total incompetence, which meant that no enquiry took place, leading to three more decades of child abuse.

    So, how does this fit into Before They Die? Alfred Hitchcock had a name for the reason a mystery kicks off. A McGuffin. The McGuffin is the springboard to a plot, it is the missing microfilm, or the stolen money or incriminating evidence. In my book it is a dossier that Lord Albion, not Home Secretary but Minister of Information and Home Affairs, has conveniently lost. But there remains a copy of the inflammatory document (the McGuffin) which now leads to all sorts of complications and many murders, and a mystery of who is behind it all.

    And I have introduced a fairly flawless character. Ex-Met detective Mike Halliday who has now gone private, and he is on a mission to expose these abusers. His only shortcoming is a deep desire to pummel child abusers, and he often has to check his vigilante behaviour.

    If I were to write a logline, it would be:

    One man seeks justice for the victims before the perpetrators die.

 To go to Before They Die on Amazon, go to my Homepage David Barry Actor & Writer and click on Amazon next to the book's image. If you purchase a copy, and you enjoy the read, please consider reviewing it on Amazon. Thank you.

CHUKLEVISION NIGHTMARE

An 85 mile drive along the traffic-heavy M25 for a second day’s filming for Chucklevision almost became a guilty nightmare until the make-up woman assuaged my feelings of remorse. It happened like this:

     The locations were well north of London, roughly in the Hemel Hempstead area – so quite a distance from Tunbridge Wells where I live. For the first day’s filming I wasn’t called until around 11.30 a.m. and finished around 5.00 p.m. So, that was fairly easy to cope with, although the drive home took me nearly two and a half hours.

    I was called the next day for 10.30, and I set the alarm for seven, knowing I would have to cope with the M25 during rush hour, and I thought leaving at 7.45 would allow me plenty of time to reach the location. What I hadn’t realised, or I had forgotten, was that my alarm clock was battery driven and – yes, you’ve guessed it – it chose that morning to run out. Exhausted from my long drive the previous day, I slept until almost nine o’clock. When I looked at my alarm clock, my eyes sprung from my head like a Tom & Jerry animation. I was in my car and set off just after 9.15. And I knew there was no way I was going to make it clockwise around the motorway, then up a stretch of the M1 by 10.30. And this location I knew would be more difficult to find as it was in a disused quarry, a more rural location than the previous day.

    As I left the 15 mile stretch of the A21, and eased down the slip road onto the M25, I saw that it was now nearly quarter to ten. This was when I began to think about my survival and decided as I was never going to make it in time, I would have to tell whopping great lies. Aware that any crew members for the shoot may have negotiated the M25, I decided I couldn’t blame that particular road, so in my head I made up a story about being stuck in a very nasty accident on the A21, on the dual carriageway not far from Tunbridge Wells.

    Once I had this lie worked out, I remember thinking that there was nothing I could do to quicken the journey and might as well just accept my fate. It was well past 10.30 when I reached the Heathrow turn-offs, and a rough guess told me I wasn’t going to make the location until at least 11.30, maybe later. I wondered why my mobile hadn’t rung with someone from the film unit asking me where I was. I had my lie all prepared. But no one rang.

    When I left the M1, desperately searching for the right direction to this quarry, I guessed I must have been only fifteen minutes away from it. Then my phone rang. It was one of the runners, who said, ‘We’re just about to get to you? Where are you?’

    I breathed a sigh of relief when I realised they must have been an hour behind on their schedule. But I still had a little way to go yet, and so I let me voice tremble with shock while I described the terrible accident, which by now had become very real to me.

    When I arrived at the location at 11.40, everyone had heard the story of this mythical accident, and the director placed a sympathetic hand on my shoulder, told me to take my time and have some breakfast before I began filming.

    He was so nice about my predicament, that I was struck by remorse and guilt. But after a bacon butty I began to feel a lot better. And then after going to make-up, I was asked where it was I lived. I told them it was in Tunbridge Wells in Kent.

    ‘What?’ the make-up woman shouted indignantly, almost as if it was she who had made the journey. ‘That’s disgusting making you drive all that way. In the good old days they’d have forked up for an overnight at a nearby hotel.’

    And that was when all my guilt vanished completely. Even though it was all the fault of my alarm battery running down, now I could shoulder the blame to the BBC for their parsimonious attitude to a featured actor.

Comedy Nostalgia

I often hear people saying you don’t get great comedies on television anymore, like the good old days of Please Sir! Which pleases me, of course, because I was a regular character in it, and remember it with fondness. But are these people who hark back to the good old days missing something? Like the “Wandering Star” song, and the line ‘I’ve never seen anything that didn’t look better looking back’. Do some – even youngish people – live in a sort of false memory, residing in a cosy Nostalgia Land?

    By all means travel back to the sixties and seventies and enjoy those TV sitcoms, but don’t let any of us lose sight of more recent comedies which have been great, starting in the nineties with Father Ted. I must confess that I saw one episode back then, and I missed something (stupid me) and didn’t continue watching the series. But when I began watching repeats in the early noughties, I couldn’t stop laughing and it became one of my favourites shows of all time. And this was the decade of The Office, a classic comedy if ever there was one, and on a par with Fawlty Towers. Of course, when I say something like that, people are bound to disagree because it’s subjective and we all have our particular favourites.

    But when I hear people in a pub, and on discovering I played Frankie Abbott, becoming nostalgically excited and then usually they end up moaning and wishing they still made comedies like that. Again, is that just the better view looking back? Because I might say to them, what about Still Game. Blank look. Or Two Doors Down. Another blank look. What about Toast of London or This Country? Even blanker looks.

    Now I appreciate there are more channels now but it can’t be that difficult to find programmes, can it? But I expect many of you reading this have eclectic tastes and have seen those comedies I just mentioned.

   But when I go back to those good old comedy days, I have to confess to sometimes being glad I missed many of them. I was never that fond of On The Buses (which is where some dyed-in-the-wool fans are going to fall out with me). And one of my reasons is this: it was because I always found Stephen Lewis’s performance as Inspector Blakey embarrassing. Reg Varney, Bob Grant, Michael Robbins and Anna Karen were funny, but gave reasonably realistic performances. Whereas I always thought Lewis was ‘trying to be funny’ and it was a sketch show parody of a jobsworth man. And for me it was a near miss.

    But for a big miss watch Ron Burgundy, Anchorman. Now it was I confess a hugely popular film, and by criticising it I might be stepping into a crocodile infested swamp, but here goes. I watched half an hour of this most cringe-making comedy before I switched off. The cast were all mugging like mad, pulling funny faces and trying to be funny. Now, compare that to a film like Airplane where all the actors play it for real as if they are in a real disaster movie. It is left to the writers to make it funny, and the actors get the laughs from the delivery of their lines and their reactions.

    Being funny playing a character is a thin dividing line. Steve Martin does it brilliantly. Behind the character, there seems to be a twinkle in Martin’s eye, sharing with the audience his personal criticism of the character and what a jerk he is. It’s a very subtle comedy trait that many great comedy performers have mastered.

    However crazy and bizarre the behaviour of Father Ted (Yes, all right, so it’s my favourite.) was, Dermot Morgan gave it some reality. Which I always think it’s what it’s about really.

    When I first began working on the first series of Please Sir! I used to internally question everything about the character before making an entrance. What does he want as soon as he enters the classroom? Does he want to show off, show he’s a hard man? And what sort of mood is he in? Of course, by the time the second series began, I stopped doing this and switched the character’s behaviour on and off like a light switch.

    I remember once asking Mark Stuart, our director, ‘What’s my motivation for this line, Mark?’

    His reply: ‘It’s because you fucking get paid to say it!’

Turn The Volume Up!

During rehearsals for the third series of Please Sir! Richard Davies engineered a production of Under Milk Wood with himself and us six Fenn Street Gang actors, and several others in the cast.

    Penny Spencer played Mae Rose Cottage, Mrs Pugh and Mrs Dai Bread Two. There were no radio microphones that we could use, and Penny often had difficulty being heard when she played Sharon in the studio, and the boom operator came in as close as he dared without throwing shadows across faces. We knew that being able to hear Penny in the vast Lewisham Concert Hall venue was going to be a problem, but Peter Denyer came up with a solution. He had an actress friend who concealed herself behind the masking curtain behind Penny. As Penny delivered her lines, Peter’s friend said them in unison so that the audience could hear them. This double-tracking effect, for all I know, was probably the first time anyone has been dubbed in live theatre.

    Now, of course, radio microphones are often used in the theatre. I recently saw Jesus Hopped the A Train at the Young Vic. It’s a fairly intimate space. I can understand  actors having to use mics in vast theatres like Drury Lane, but the trouble with using them in a small theatre, and the close proximity to the audience, means an actor will resort to dropping the voice to a sometimes unbelievably tiny level. In this production I sometimes found myself straining to hear actors who were using a mic, for God’s sake. The trouble is, everyone involved in the production has read the script, and the director knows the part thoroughly, so of course they can hear, because they know what the actor is saying. But we the audience are hearing it for the first time.

    And this is a problem in television. Some actors drop their voices to a level of whispering, thinking that it probably gives the scene a greater intensity, and again the directors know what their performers are saying and don’t stop to consider that it might be lost on the person watching at home, and increasing the volume on the remote, then decreasing it hurriedly when it switches to a visual scene and that sudden blast of music.

    This is, some directors might argue, the push for greater reality. But just think, the next time you are talking to someone in the pub, do you drop your voice to a whisper. The reality is that you probably raise the level of your voice.

    Of course, not all actors were difficult to hear and, having been properly trained in voice production, even their smallest whispers could be heard. Remember Richard Burton in A Spy Who Came in From The Cold in which he gave a very realistic and believable performance? Despite the film’s realism, I heard the actor’s every spoken word.

    But I have found the perfect solution as far as watching television is concerned. I watch mainly foreign drama and read the subtitles.

    Finally, have you noticed the contrast between reality shows and drama? In reality and chat shows they shout everything at mega decibels, probably in the deluded belief that it gives greater energy to a programme that has very little to say.

    I think I’ll pick up a book instead and have a nice quiet read!

Please Sir! Pranks

Playing practical jokes and winding people up happened regularly during rehearsals of Please Sir!. LWT had small pads of notepaper with their logo at the top, and occasionally someone would get a message scribbled on one of these pads to call their agent during a break in rehearsals. We the naughty grown-up kids played a joke on Richard ‘Dickie’ Davies once. He got a message from his agent to ring such and such a number and speak to Mr Lyon or, if he wasn’t there, to ask for Mr Fox. When Dickie made his call, he came back and told us how the conversation went.

   ‘Hello. Could I speak to Mr Lyon?’

   Pause. Then, ‘Are you trying to be funny?’

   ‘No, no. If he’s not there I was told I could speak to Mr Fox.’

   ‘This is Regent’s Park Zoo.’

   Another time, during a break in camera rehearsals at Wembley Studios, we were sitting in the canteen, when I brought out a page I had torn out of a copy of the Irish Spotlight when I was in Ireland. (Spotlight is a publication containing photographs of actors which casting directors can view when casting.) I handed my page round the canteen table. The photographs were three amateurish poses of an actor called Ben Bristow. The first photograph was captioned ‘Drama’ and was a picture of the Irish actor wearing a dreadful make-up, including an obviously false moustache, posing in fear as if a Hammer House of Horror ghoul was about to drag him to hell. Beneath the next picture it said ‘Comedy’ and showed Ben in an enormous plaid jacket, like an itinerant bookmaker, a finger pointing upwards, highlighting a brilliant punchline. The final picture was ‘Variety’, and the actor now had a ventriloquist’s dummy sitting on his lap.

   As the picture was passed around the table, everyone had a laugh at Ben’s expense. Until it came to John Alderton. Stony-faced. Not the trace of a smile. ‘What’s funny about this?’ he demanded.

   I was taken aback. At first, I tried to explain what was funny but soon realised it was self- explanatory. Then John went on to say that Ben was an old friend of his and a very fine actor. ‘You’re winding me up, John,’ I protested. He threw the page onto the table and looked disgusted. I began to squirm. And others at the table began to shift uncomfortably and stared into their coffee cups. Then John went too far, telling me that Ben’s wife had just died of cancer, how much he missed her and was finding it hard to cope. Now I knew I was being sent up.

   We also found a great way to entertain everyone in the studio canteen. If any of the studio floor managers needed someone paged to the studio, they used an internal phone, usually situated between two heavy doors leading to the studio. We began to put in some false calls. Sitting in the canteen, people often heard announcements along the lines of: ‘Could Mr Albert Bridge go to Studio Three in five minutes, please?’

   None of the telephonists seemed to twig. We got away with all kinds of names, everyone from Joe Stalin to Bill Shakespeare or Jane Austen. Then one day I picked up the internal phone and put in a call for Miss Connie Lingus to go to Studio Three. ‘Who’s that?’ the telephonist demanded. ‘This isn’t a proper call, is it?’

   Clearly there was nothing wrong with the telephonist’s sex education.

BACK INTO THE FRYING PAN

Following my stint in Forget-Me-Not Lane in Hornchurch, another phone call to my agent from Bill Kenwright’s office. Davy Jones was returning to America for the final two weeks of their tour. Would I take over? No way, I said. I emphatically did not want to be involved in this production. Bill must have guessed my reason for turning it down and reassured my agent that Edward Chapman had been replaced by James Hayter, and everything now ran smoothly.

      But trouble this time came from Dave King. ‘We’ve changed some of the lines,’ he told me. Meaning he had changed the lines. Because he came from somewhere east of London, and was unable to portray a Bristolian, Peter Nichols’ wonderfully evocative script no longer conjured up images of Frank’s commercial traveller father as he travels from Yeovil to Minehead but wanders instead to Southend and Basildon. Essex man had brought it closer to home.

   ‘By all means change your lines,’ I said. ‘But I would sooner stick to Peter Nichols’ script. I don’t mind what you say, but I’m sticking to the script.’

   After this little speech, an Arctic wind blew into the theatre. If I stuck to the script then clearly others in the cast would have to, otherwise none of it would make sense. We broke for coffee and there were huddled discussions. When the rehearsal resumed, King agreed that we could still set it in the west country – which was big of him, since he hadn’t written the play – but he would have to insist, he said, on one of my lines being changed, the one where I talk about a ‘woman’s minge’. He said many people walked out of the audience when they heard that line. ‘So, it’s got to be changed, son.’

   I asked him what I should change it to, and he told me to say ‘woman’s thingee’ instead. I agreed, and we carried on rehearsing. But I could tell he really hated me now. And he had never once, I noticed, called me by name. It was always ‘son’ in a condescending, sneering manner.

   During the week at Bath Theatre Royal, the tour from hell began. Admittedly it was only for two weeks, but I could imagine if I was really bad in this life, my everlasting punishment would be working for eternity with Dave King.

   At Hornchurch I always got a laugh on a certain line, but in Bath the silence that followed was because of Dave King’s sudden move as he deliberately killed my line. I didn’t know what I could do about this. Then on Wednesday night’s performance, hatred struck in a big way. About to deliver the ‘woman’s thingee’ line, a slight hesitation on my part, and then ‘minge’ inadvertently slipped back into the dialogue.

   Cut to my dressing room in the interval. John Ingram, company manager, asked me to put ‘thingee’ back in. I explained about it being a mistake because I knew the lines from the Hornchurch version, which was, after all, Peter Nichols’ scripted lines.

   Suddenly, the dressing room door flew open and in barged King. ‘You,’ he yelled, doing a lot of finger waving, ‘are fucking deliberately ruining everything I’m trying to do on stage.’

   I explained that it was a mistake, but it was a waste of time. He was in an abusive mood and looking for trouble.

   ‘You are fucking useless,’ he screamed and began to exit.’

   Perhaps it was a mistake to have the last word, but I was damned if I was going to let him get away with that. ‘That’s the trouble with allowing red-nosed comics into the legitimate theatre,’ I said.

   Which was unfair and untrue about comedians and variety artistes. But this was a fight. And in fights you have to go for where it hurts the most. Unfortunately, although I am not a moral coward, I’m not the bravest person when confronted by fisticuffs.

   Fists clenched, he spun round and came towards me. ‘I’ll smash your fucking head in, you little cunt.’

   I remember thinking at the time that if this was a man who had a go at Lew Grade, managing director of ATV, then he wouldn’t hold back on pummelling me. And I made a split-second decision that if I did nothing, received a blow, the play would be cancelled, resulting in a major lawsuit. Perhaps he realised this. Without saying another word, he stormed out.

   We were called for Act Two. I had to stand by in the wings, and when I got there, Dave King also stood by, a smug, self-satisfied look on his face, the trace of an evil smile. I was suddenly so enraged, I went over to him, grabbed his wrist and raised his hand over his head.

   ‘What are you doing,’ he snarled, snatching back his hand.

   ‘Congratulations!’ I said. ‘You wanted to upset me, and you succeeded.’

   He made a move towards me. ‘I’ve a good mind to smash your fucking head in.’

   The curtain began to rise on Act Two. ‘OK,’ I whispered. ‘Cool it. Cool it.’

   His upper lip curled angrily. ‘Don’t start that jazz talk with me, son.’

   After the performance, I phoned my agent at his home, told him about the incident, and said I was leaving the show. First thing in the morning I intended driving home. He sympathised with me but asked me to wait until he’d had a word with Kenwright.

   The following morning Bill phoned me at the Garrick’s Head, where we were staying. He was supportive and told me he wanted to ‘get rid of that cunt’ but couldn’t find anyone to replace him. He pleaded with me to stay with the show, especially as it was only another week and a half to go. Reluctantly, I agreed.

   When I got to the theatre that night, James Hayter was also very supportive. ‘If I was a younger man,’ he said, ‘I’d have kicked that cunt down the stairs for you.’

   For the rest of the run there was a terrible atmosphere. Dave King and I never had to look at one another on stage, as I was playing his younger self. That was a blessing I suppose. But whenever we passed each other backstage, we both avoided eye contact. We hated each other. In fact, I’ve never known anything like that much hatred between two performers before or since.

   The final week at the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford, couldn’t come quickly enough. And throughout that final week we still avoided eye contact and each other. And then I was slightly cheered up by a form of petty revenge, provided by courtesy of Tom Owen.

   Bill arranged to visit the penultimate performance and take the cast out for a meal afterwards to an Italian restaurant. King asked Tom if everyone was dressing for it, and Tom told him, yes, it was the works, black tie do.

   I was delighted to see Bill arrive on Friday evening wearing a denim jacket. I almost punched the air jubilantly. And everyone else was casually dressed. The only one feeling more than a little over-dressed at the dinner was Dave King, wearing a dinner jacket, black bow tie and horrendously over-the-top frilly shirt.

   Yes, I thought. A vengeance of sorts.

   After that fiasco, I couldn’t wait to see my Fenn Street friends again for the third and final series.

A Better Production

In 1972 the Queens Theatre Hornchurch offered me the part of Young Frank in Forget-Me-Not Lane. This was the play I had seen, which featured Malcolm McFee playing Ivor, Young Frank’s friend, at Greenwich Theatre. I loved the play and didn’t hesitate to accept the role. The post West End tour of the play was produced by Bill Kenwright, with Davy Jones of the Monkees playing Young Frank. Prior to my Hornchurch engagement, Bill contacted my agent and asked if I would take over from Davy Jones for one week at Weston-Super-Mare, because for some reason the singer had to dash back to the US for that week. On a Tuesday I picked up a copy of the script at Kenwright’s office, then the next day I travelled to Bournemouth where the play was currently performing. Playing the leads in the cast were Dave King as Frank, and the father was played by Edward Chapman, known as Mr Grimsdale from the Norman Wisdom films. Tom Owen played Ivor and Young Ursula was played by Wendy Padbury from Crossroads.

   When I got to Bournemouth, I spent every waking moment learning the lines. I would walk along the street muttering them, getting weird looks from people. The rehearsal time I was allocated wasn’t enough. The cast was reluctant to devote more than a few hours a day as they had to perform the show every night and twice on Saturday. I had to make do with remote and intensive line learning, catching an hour here or there with some of the more obliging members of the cast, and of course I watched the show every night.

   One of the major obstacles was working with Edward Chapman who was an alcoholic. We had a dress rehearsal for my benefit on Saturday morning, and in one scene he entered not knowing where he was, having cut something like ten pages. David Buck, the director, stopped him, saying with as much patience as he could muster, ‘Ted, you’re two scenes too early.’

   Confused, Chapman paused. You could see his fuddled brain trying to grasp at clues for which scene or what play he was in. Then, clearly deciding attack was the best form of defence, he cursed the stage management. ‘Well, why can’t that girl set the props in the correct place?’ he yelled.

   It was a shabby way to transfer the blame and everyone felt embarrassed.

   When I got home that weekend, I spent the entire time going over the lines, drumming them into my head. When I arrived at Weston-Super-Mare on Monday, I saw my name was emblazoned across the front of the theatre. Dave King went berserk because his contract with Kenwright gave him top billing. It led to a heated argument with the manager, and I later discovered the change of billing may have been because King had upset Weston-Super-Mare audiences in the past. Having died a death at the venue, as the curtain came down one night he told them to ‘Piss off!’

   Eventually, because it looked as if Dave King was not going to back down and refused to go on stage unless the billing was changed, John Ingram, the company manager, came into my dressing room and asked if I would mind if the billing was changed.

   ‘I couldn’t care less if you take my name off completely,’ I said carelessly. ‘Because I’m only here for a week.’

   Having seen the excellent pre-West End production at Greenwich, I didn’t tell him how disillusioned I was with this production. The billing was changed, and the play opened. There were a few mistakes but nothing major. I got through it, despite Edward Chapman’s erratic entrances and exits, and the scenes I most enjoyed were with Tom Owen and Wendy Padbury. But by Saturday I was relieved it was over. Apart from my scenes with Tom and Wendy, the production had been a huge disappointment.

   After the curtain fell on Saturday night, I said goodbye to the cast. I didn’t want to bear a grudge and part bad company with Edward Chapman, so I entered his dressing room to say goodbye.

   ‘Would you like a drink for the road, son?’ he offered, clearly trying to make amends for any shortcomings in his performance during the week. I was puzzled. Where was the booze? He was barred from bringing it in to the theatre. My eyes quickly scanned the dressing table and I saw no alcohol. He then picked up a shampoo bottle with amber liquid inside. ‘It’s whisky,’ he whispered, glancing furtively over his shoulder. I declined the drink, explaining that I had a long drive ahead.

   Soon after, I began rehearsals at Hornchurch, one of the most relaxed rehearsal periods I can ever remember. I already knew the lines and could enjoy the in-depth exploration of the play, and not go home every evening to learn lines. This production was far superior to the Kenwright tour. The cast worked as a team, with everyone pulling their weight, and when it opened the audiences laughed uproariously at every funny line.

Classic Film Photography

I watched on television recently back-to-back two Billy Wilder films, The Apartment and Some Like It Hot. Both great comedies, with Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine and Fred MacMurray in the former, and Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis and Marilyn Monroe in the latter. But what is so very great about these black and white classic films is the stunning photography. Every shot is clearly focused, there is none of that pulling the focus which I find so irritating in modern films and has become a cinematograph cliché.

    If you are not technically minded, let me explain. If there are perhaps two people in a scene, and one of them is out of focus, the person in focus is the subject of attention, then the focus is pulled and changes to the other person, and they become the subject. So, someone in a two-handed scene is always out of focus.

    You probably know the scene, having endured it hundreds of times on television. Two people talking in a car, with the focus switching between whoever happens to be speaking. The trouble with scenes like this is it makes me very aware that what I am watching is a piece of film and I cease to become so involved in the action or the dialogue, watching as the camera switches from one subject to another. Of course, some viewers are never fazed by this, never notice it even, which is fair enough.

   But there is often a reason for using this technique. It is a cheap and quick way of filming. A scene can be shot with a one camera set-up, and if the actors know their lines, the scene can be achieved rapidly, and then it’s on to the next location.

   Often the size of a film or television’s budget is why you will rarely see the clichéd Focus Pull used in an American series like Breaking Bad. Sometimes, when used sparingly, it can be used for good dramatic effect, but when a director is not under pressure from a small budget, he or she can spend the time with varying camera set-ups.

   Many moons ago, when it was first used, it probably had an artistic justification for its use, but now the cinematographic cliché has become as well-worn as the car chase driving through a wedding reception party or the fruit and veg stall being trashed.

   But how I miss those early films where you could take any image from the entire film and it would work as a great still photograph that could be hung on the wall of an exhibition. The photography in Howard Hawks’ The Big Sleep, which starred Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, is wonderfully atmospheric with its chiaroscuro lighting. Of course, I do appreciate that a shooting schedule of seven or eight weeks to produce a 100 minute feature allows the director far more time than two weeks to shoot a 60 minute television drama, although I sometimes think that it’s occasionally a question of imagination that is lacking. And it’s not just the classic black and white movies that avoided any focus pulling. I recently watched  Jacques Tati’s colour film Mon Oncle which was shot perfectly. And even some of the TV spin-offs, including Please Sir! in which I was involved, avoided the focus pull, despite having a limited shoot time.

   At one stage in his career, Billy Wilder said to his lighting cameraman, ‘Keep that shot out of focus. I want to win the Best Foreign Film Award’. If he was still alive today, he might say, ‘Lose focus, I want to win a Bafta for the Best British Film.’

   On another light note, one of the funniest out-of-focus performances is Robin Williams, playing Mel an actor in Woody Allen’s Deconstructing Harry, and when the cameraman/focus puller can’t seem to get Williams in focus, and they wrap up for the day, the actor goes home to his wife who sees him – or rather doesn’t see him – because he’s permanently out of focus. Robin Williams performed his part in the film entirely out of focus. 

Benefit of Hindsight

In 1970 I attended a casting interview for the Granada Television comedy The Lovers, starring Richard Beckinsale and Paula Wilcox. I was interviewed by writer Jack Rosenthal and director Michael Apted. When I was asked about what recent work I had done, I naturally mentioned Please Sir! Rosenthal and Apted turned to each other and had a long discussion, almost as if I wasn’t in the room, about how much they disliked the series, saying they thought the characters were clichéd and stereotypes. Their behaviour was rude and unsettling, and I should have said something. But I didn’t. I only thought of what I should have done when I came away from the interview.

    Often in my head I have fantasized about how the interview went, with me admonishing Jack Rosenthal for his rude behaviour, after which he becomes quite contrite, apologetic, and of course he and the director offer me the job because they were so deeply sorry for their bad behaviour. It was another of my life’s if only moments, and I wish I’d been possessed of that rewind button.

    Perhaps Peter Cleall, who played Eric Duffy in Please Sir! and Fenn Street Gang, felt the same way after he auditioned for Laurence Olivier. This was, I think, around the time we made the second series of Fenn Street Gang.  Lord Olivier, as he was then, was Artistic Director at the National Theatre, situated then at the Old Vic. After Peter had performed his two audition monologues on the Old Vic stage, Olivier said to him, ‘Haven’t I seen you somewhere before?’

    Peter, thinking that Lord Olivier surely wouldn’t have seen him in Please Sir!, and knowing he lived in London-by-the-Sea, replied uncertainly, ‘I live in Brighton. Perhaps you’ve seen me on the train to Brighton.’

    He didn’t get accepted at the National.

    When Peter told me of this exchange between him and Olivier, I said to Peter that he (Olivier) and Plowright had young children, and for all Peter knew he might have sat down and seen an episode or two of Please Sir! with his young son. And had Peter mentioned this, rather than the feeble train to Brighton explanation, it might have swung the audition for him.

    Much later I was struck by a bizarre thought. If Olivier had seen an episode or two of us cavorting in Fenn Street School, in which I played a 15-year-old, perhaps I hadn’t changed that much since I appeared aged 14 as his grandson in Titus Andronicus and he might have recognized me, But, like Peter, I felt that Baron Olivier of Brighton watching our sitcom was a fanciful thought.

    And another hindsight moment, during which unlike Edith Piaf I am riddled with regrets, perhaps I should have auditioned for Olivier when he was at the National. After all, I had toured Europe with him and Vivien Leigh for six weeks and performed for another five at the Stoll Theatre in London. I might have stood a chance.

   Ah well, I’m not going to fantasize about that one. Too late for that!

THE IMPORTANCE OF COVER DESIGN

They say you should never judge a book by its cover, but I suspect this is not meant to be taken literally and is probably a metaphor for some greater truth, instructing us to admire another human being’s inner beauty rather than going on just looks.

    With books it’s a different kettle of fish. Of course people judge them on their covers, because people in bookstores have to be attracted enough by the design to pick them up in the first place. Half the battle is getting a potential customer to pick up a book, turn it over and read the blurb on the back. To achieve this obvious marketing strategy, the book needs a good design. 

My first novel was published in 2002. Each Man Kills is a thriller located in South

Wales,  and after many rejections with large publishing houses in London, I decided

to approach a small Welsh publisher. They liked it, and a year later it was almost ready for the printers. I had had good experiences with this publisher, the editor was friendly and approachable, and everyone seemed enthusiastic about my book. I was

asked for suggestions for the cover design. So far so good.

    The plot of my thriller hinges on Celtic mysticism, and an escape following ley lines and ancient druidic stones and monuments. I suggested a  black and white photograph of an ancient stone, surrounded by atmospheric mist on a gloomy day, and a red trickle of blood running down the stone, the only colour on the cover. A bit like Schindler’s List, which was shot in monochrome, but with occasional and unnerving glimpses of a would-be victim seen in red. My publishers seemed to like the idea and said they would soon be in touch with a proof. But a proof never came. As the launch date of the book drew close I was presented with a fait accompli; the book arrived in the post one morning and on the cover was a rather unsubtle photograph of a hooded man grabbing a woman from behind with a knife to her throat. My initial reaction was negative. But, as it was my first published book, I became impatient to see it released and pushed any doubts I had about the cover to the back of my mind, convincing myself that I liked it. This was consolidated by the enthusiasm of the editor informing me how pleased they all were with the design. I well and truly buried my doubts.

    Months later a friend of mine lent her copy of my book to a friend, who read it and said she was surprised at how good it was. I was told that had she not known about me, and seen the book in a store, she wouldn’t have bothered to pick it up because of the cover. I knew then I had made a grave error and should have trusted my first gut reaction. I had been too eager to become a published writer to form an objective opinion about the design. And I had no one else to blame but myself. I got on well with the editor and hadn’t even mentioned to her my concerns about the cover. 

    So what could I have done? I got on well with the editor, so I could at least have tried to gently persuade her that the cover was lurid. Of course, she might have told me it was too late to change the design, and maybe it was. But what really annoys me is that I didn’t even try.

    I suppose, if a writer is already famous and has a huge following, the book cover is not so important. On the other hand, years ago, when I was a young man, I saw East of Eden by John Steinbeck in a bookshop. It had a ghastly cover: a badly drawn picture of a half-naked woman in the arms of what looked like a western saloon gambler. But I had already read Cannery Row, Sweet Thursday and The Grapes of Wrath, so the cover didn’t matter to me. I bought it and loved every page of it.

    But supposing someone who had never heard of Steinbeck bought a copy of the book, thinking every page had steamy sex scenes as promised by the book cover?  Perhaps the opening chapters and the descriptions of the Salinas Valley in California might prove to be a huge disappointment, however evocative and well written.

     Now here is the cover for Each Man Kills when it was republished by Andrews UK. So much better, wouldn’t you agree?