Turn Right at the Spotted Dog

by Jilly Cooper

  ‘The actors like him.’

  ‘Actors don’t know anything. If an actor asks me: what is my motivation in this scene? I tell him: pay day on Thursday.’

  9.55 p.m.: Angie was chucking eggs into a frying pan for Sharon’s breakfast, but they didn’t fry quickly enough. Time was up. Even if they’d been acting like Trevor Howard and Celia Johnson, the scene would be scrapped and started again in the morning.

  Thank you all very much,’ said the director. ‘It’s been a long day, and I do appreciate it.’

  In reception, the taxi drivers waited for the stars. Julia Smith, the producer, came past preceded by Roly the poodle, bouncy in anticipation of a late-night walk. Leslie Grantham was on the telephone talking in a lowered voice. My mini cab hadn’t arrived and as all the cast left, they bid me a jolly good night, and asked if I was OK for a lift.

  The director, who was staying at a hotel nearby, even offered to drive me into London. Finally at 10.35, when the mini cab still hadn’t arrived, Leslie Grantham came off the telephone.

  ‘Would you like a lift into London?’ he said softly.

  To my eternal shame, some middle-class inhibition, some crippling shyness, some wish not to bother him, all overwhelmed me. I stammered I was fine. All over England, I could hear ten million besotted female fans muttering: you blithering idiot.

  It was no comfort when I finally got back to the Garrick Club to hear a judge confidently assuring two barristers over a midnight brandy that Dirty Den was definitely turning gay.

  Part Two

  Wandering, on my second visit to EastEnders, through the beautifully kept BBC garden with its manicured shrubs and frozen fish ponds, it was a shock to find myself suddenly in the slums. For the Albert Square set built for EastEnders is so stunningly realistic you can’t believe you’re not in the most derelict part of the East End, or, even more incredibly, that houses are just shells made of plywood and fibreglass.

  Dominating the square is Dirty Den’s pub, the Queen Vic, with its tatty peeling paint and rusty hanging baskets swinging in the icy wind. The pavement outside must be the coldest spot in the world, the sort of place Eskimos send their children as punishment.

  When I finally managed to interview Leslie Grantham, back in the press office, the welcome was equally chilly. He seems to put up defensive barriers, because he is terrified that people will discover that – like his pub in Albert Square – his handsome, slightly battered exterior is nothing but a shell and an illusion.

  To understand both Leslie’s paranoia and the magnitude of his achievement, we have to go back to 1966, when at the age of just eighteen he was jailed for life, accused of murdering and robbing a taxi driver while he was in the army in Germany.

  He did eleven years, but towards the end of his sentence was allowed out to go to interviews at drama schools.

  ‘Can’t have been easy,’ said one of the EastEnders cast, ‘declaiming “To Be Or Not To Be” with handcuffs on.’

  But Leslie was accepted by the Webber Douglas Drama School and set about rebuilding his life. After several minor parts including appearances in Dr Who and The Jewel In The Crown, he landed the star role in EastEnders. Immediately he had the guts and sense to level with Julia Smith, the programme’s despotic but understanding producer.

  ‘He told me all about his past,’ said Julia, ‘which was an incredibly brave things to do. I said, “Let’s be positive, let’s face it if and when it comes out.” Leslie simply couldn’t believe I was going to keep him on.’

  Immediately the programme went out on the air, the press put two and two together and the storm broke. The BBC, however, stood firm and the ratings soared, with Leslie, the prodigal son, emerging as a star attraction. Everyone was for Dirty Dennis.

  Like the rescued dog, who, after being badly treated in early life, is taken into a loving home, Leslie’s loyalty to his new master EastEnders is unassailable and deeply protective. Again as I talked to him, he reminded me of the rescued alsatian. He has the same long face, the watchful acorn-brown eyes, the wolf-like grace, the unpredictability and the aggression hiding the intense vulnerability. Appropriately dressed in a thundercloud-grey sweater and trousers, he was very pale, the black hair falling in tendrils over his forehead, his mouth set in a thin line. Determined not to betray any emotion he is, however, highly intelligent and, when he relaxes, marvellously irreverent.

  At drama school, according to a fellow student, Leslie had to overcome chips both about being working-class cockney and about his past. Having been inside at an age when he should have been wowing the girls, it took him a long time to appreciate how attractive he was. He over-compensated at first by pulling nearly everything in sight. But if a pretty girl talked to him he still worried that she was winding him up.

  On a first date, he stood up drama student Jane Laurie because he couldn’t believe that a beautiful middle-class girl with a rich father could really fancy him. In the end she did the proposing – and they’ve been happily married for five years.

  ‘Any children?’ I asked.

  He half grinned: ‘No, we’re still practising, but we’d like a baby soon.’

  In fact both he and Jane have been too busy with their careers. Last year she played Pandora, the ravishingly pretty reporter in Lytton’s Diary.

  ‘What makes her really fed up,’ said Leslie, ‘is when journalists take her out to lunch to talk about her career and spend the time pumping her about me.’

  They have a house in Fulham. ‘People leave us alone there. The only problem is you come home shattered after a twelvehour stint on EastEnders and you’ve just got to sleep when all the Hooray Henrys wake you up yelling and banging their GTI doors at 3 a.m. And I tend to get fed up when journalists ring my doorbell in the middle of the night to ask whether I’m turning gay. I just say, “No – but my husband is,” and slam the door in their faces.’

  Although he’s been known to get his clothes ripped off by women when he makes personal appearances, usually the alsatian quality keeps people at a distance.

  ‘I can even travel on the Tube without people bothering me. They stare, and nudge each other and say: “D’you fink that’s ’im? No it can’t be, stars don’t travel on the Tube.” They don’t realise no one’s going to be a millionaire on a BBC salary.’

  He’s not doing too badly, however. He recently gave Jane a BMW and at Christmas took her away for a five-day break in a Cheshire hotel. The only drawback was leaving Russell, their black-and-white cat whom Leslie plainly adores.

  ‘I was worried he’d get lonely. A mate told me if you left five bowls of cat food covered with Clingfilm the cat would break it with his paw each day when he got hungry. I spent bloody hours trying to teach Russell to break the Clingfilm. But he just purred and rolled over on his back’ – a natural reaction of most women when confronted by Mr Grantham.

  What did he feel about Roly, the Queen Vic poodle?

  ‘As Dirty Den, I’m supposed to adore him. But we have a sort of love-hate relationship. He’s such a stupid dog – he’s like a Sun reporter, ’angs around all day but never does anything constructive.’

  While not a versatile character actor like Olivier, or a classical juvenile lead, Leslie is brilliant, like Redford, at projecting his own personality on the screen.

  A tinge of colour came into the pale face when I said how good he was.

  ‘Well, I work very hard at the brush strokes. That’s why I go on the Tube and make myself go out. An actor’s got to study people. If you isolate yourself you’ve nothing to feed on.’

  Like all the EastEnders’ cast, he is addicted to old movies. His favourite actor is Robert Mitchum, another personality actor, whose deadpan style Leslie tries to emulate.

  One suspects a touch of inverted snobbery and professional jealousy in his intense dislike of up-market heart-throbs like Jeremy Irons, Anthony Andrews, Rupert Everett and even Jason Connery.

  ‘They all come from the MFI furniture shop school of acting.’

&n
bsp; ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Wooden.’

  Wasn’t that a case of the deadpan calling the pot black?

  Like many insecure people, he can be bitchy and insensitive, particularly towards his own sex. The cast, who like and admire him, say he has moments of frantic name-dropping, even megalomania when he refers to EastEnders as ‘My Show’.

  And, on the flipside, moments of panic. When he read the script and found that, as well as having a mistress and an embattled wife, he was to emerge as the father of teenage Michelle’s baby, he wanted the part changed. He was terrified the public would stop sympathising with the character.

  ‘He can’t realise’, said Julia Smith, ‘that the public really love him and that by his success he has given hope to thousands of people.’

  The secret of sex appeal is more hard to define. Julia Smith believes it is the haunting, vulnerable quality that stems from what he has suffered. As the troubled, misunderstood loner, he is a direct descendant of James Dean and Frank Sinatra as Pal Joey. Watching him, women feel he’s only behaving badly because he’s unhappy and needs the love of a good woman. As Dirty Den he has the love of at least three.

  Another reason the programme succeeds is that it not only makes the viewers laugh and cry, it also makes them wait. For nearly a year now, Dirty Den has had snatched conversations on the Queen Vic telephone with his mistress, Jan, without her making an appearance.

  Just when we believed it would be always Jan tomorrow, never Jan today, she suddenly made a dramatic appearance in the pub three weeks ago. Hardly a soap dish, she turned out a most bizarre mixture – as though Shirley Williams had not only become a Sloane Ranger, but had also acquired Mrs Thatcher’s slow-measured voice when she’s being ‘deeply caring’ about some national disaster.

  How did Leslie fancy his mistress now she’d finally arrived?

  Again he grinned wickedly. ‘Mates keep ringing up complaining she looks more like my mother.’

  Jane How, who plays Jan, was more chivalrous when I rang her, describing Leslie in her intensely theatrical baritone voice as a ‘wonderful, truly caring man’.

  ‘Of course,’ she went on, ‘he’s a leading man in all senses of the word. He pulls the whole cast.’

  ‘Really,’ I squeaked in excitement.

  ‘Together,’ she added firmly. ‘If anyone’s a bit down, Leslie jollies them along. Without him I think the whole programme might disintegrate into factions and sniping.’

  Back to Leslie. Wasn’t he gratified that he pulls in three times as much fan mail as anyone else?

  He shrugged: ‘There’s more stars in this programme than the Planetarium. If the microphone gets in shot it gets fan mail.’

  Before EastEnders, in between acting parts, Leslie took a job as a bingo caller, painted a VD clinic and worked in Piero di Monzi, a smart clothes shop in the Fulham Road where he served all the stars.

  What were they like? He thought for a minute.

  ‘Most people in this profession are so far up themselves, they wear themselves as a wig. Acting’s about paying your mortgage. I get fed up with actors who keep asking: “Would this part be good for my career?” They never think if they’d be good for the poor audience. The only thing that matters in acting is whether Aunt Marjorie in Manchester wants to know if he’s knocking her off or not. If you lose credibility, you lose your audience.’

  A minion arrived to summon him back to the set.

  ‘What we combine in EastEnders,’ said Leslie, ‘is a bloody good story with believable characters who explore problems that are usually only tackled on Channel 4 at 3.30 a.m. EastEnders works because it reaches the parts other soaps don’t reach.

  This week EastEnders celebrates a triumphant first birthday. One can only wish the super soap many happy returns . . . and hope that for Leslie Grantham the bubble never bursts.

  Lord Hailsham

  THIS PIECE WAS written in May 1985, when there was some speculation that Lord Hailsham should be replaced as Lord Chancellor by a younger man. Happily he survived this minor storm and was only replaced after the Election in June 1987. Happily, since then he has has also remarried.

  ‘Forgive me if I don’t get up,’ said Lord Hailsham. ‘My leaping days are over.’ Not so Spotty, his Jack Russell puppy, who, totally unawed by his master’s splendid office in the House of Lords, leapt all over the desk, scattering papers, bulldog clips and white quill pens.

  ‘I am no good at training dogs,’ said Lord Hailsham. ‘My spaniel, Mr Jones, always sang with excitement when I took him shooting and never passed his O levels retrieving. Sit, Spotty.’

  Spotty took no notice.

  ‘Only Maggie can control him,’ sighed the Lord Chancellor. ‘A word from her, a steely look, and Spotty capitulates: he recognises the ultimate authority.’ Envisaging a thrilling new Barbara Woodhouse career for Mrs Thatcher, I said I didn’t know she liked dogs.

  ‘No, no, Maggie my driver. The PM is always Margaret.’

  His eyes creased with laughter. He is a huge tease.

  The round face, full of wisdom and kindness, has a beaky nose, pixie ears, and rather wild wrinkles on his forehead, as though the wind had blown them askew. Like a garden gnome rigged out for town, he wore striped trousers and a black coat, softened by a scarlet handkerchief and a scattering of dog hairs. Nearly seventy-eight, his mind is as needle-sharp as Spotty’s teeth.

  As Lord Chancellor heading a ten-thousand strong department, he runs the courts, appoints judges, and has instigated many reforms in civil law. As a senior minister, he also provides one of the few voices of distinction and scholarship in the cabinet. Mrs Thatcher not only finds his waspish humour invaluable for pricking the bubbles of her more pompous colleagues, but is also reassured by his wealth of experience.

  He is unshocked, for example, by the increased thuggery in the House, Mr Kinnock calling Mrs T a twister, David Owen being howled down by Labour yobbos.

  ‘Politics was far rougher before World War One. Feeling ran much higher. Asquith was repeatedly howled down, and I remember my uncle telling me how Ronnie Macneil, who later became Lord Cushendon, hurled Erskine May across the House.’

  ‘Who was he?’

  ‘He was a very large book,’ said Lord Hailsham kindly.

  The pedagogic precision is always tempered by dramatic pauses and great wheezes of laughter like a huge bellows.

  Quintin Hailsham was born into an intensely political and legal family. His beautiful American mother was a judge’s daughter. His brilliant lawyer father went straight on to the front bench, as Bonar Law’s attorney general, became Lord Chancellor and was strongly tipped as a future leader.

  Little Quintin’s now famous qualities of unassailable loyalty and eruptive temper had established themselves by the age of two when his nanny was sacked for hitting him.

  ‘I was devoted to Nanny, even if she did hit me. When my mother – whom I held entirely responsible for Nanny’s departure – came to say goodnight afterwards, I quoted Beatrix Potter, with whose works I was already familiar, and shouted: “Go away you ugly old toad.”’

  At six he showed further evidence of independence.

  ‘I had heard my father discussing the Irish Question, and announced in the nursery that I couldn’t see why the Irish couldn’t rule themselves. My half-brother sneaked to my father, who gravely chided me for being a very silly little boy. I have been a Conservative ever since.’

  The cleverest boy ever to go to Eton, a double first at Oxford where he notched up more alphas than anyone since Gladstone, he secured Oxford for the Tories in 1928, and made such an impressive maiden speech that MPs tipped him as a future Lord Chancellor.

  All dreams of a political career where shattered when his father was offered a peerage.

  ‘I begged him not to take it, correctly divining that the House of Lords would not be the way to the top. Unfortunately my stepmother, a country parson’s daughter from Kenya, not the calibre of my mother, rather Memsahib in fact (again
the bellows wheezes of laughter), was attracted to the peerage and persuaded my father to accept. Alas, a step up for her was a step down for me.’

  As a future peer, realising he would be forced to play for the second eleven, he turned to his first love, the law. But, as with his contemporary at Eton, Randolph Churchill, this second brilliant career was halted by the war. Although he was repeatedly offered high-powered desk jobs, Lord Hailsham ‘having voted for the war’ was with characteristic integrity determined to fight in it. Joining the Rifle Brigade, he was wounded in the Western Desert.

  In his lifetime, he has served under seven prime ministers. Chamberlain, he stresses, was much maligned.

  ‘He saved the country at Munich. He knew if we’d gone to war in 1938, we’d have been hopelessly unprepared.’

  Churchill, by contrast, was a genius brought in by providence. ‘If Winston had not been in the wilderness until 1940, he’d have been hopelessly compromised by his earlier decisions. As it was, he got it as wrong as anyone. He told me France would hold out and mobilise millions, that Turkey would come in on our side. He was wildly over-optimistic.’

  After the war, Lord Hailsham returned joyfully to the bar. But in 1955 – at a fraction of the salary he was earning as a lawyer – he somewhat reluctantly accepted the post of First Lord of the Admiralty in Anthony Eden’s government. Immediately he was catapulted into the Suez crisis, where at the beginning Eden kept him very much in the dark.

  ‘Ships were mobilising without my knowing anything about it, it was rather a shock.’

  Later Lord Hailsham and his wife were giving a children’s party at Admiralty House.

  ‘Hoards of little ones sliding down the bannisters, when suddenly Eden summoned me. He sent for the Secretaries of State for War and Air as well. We all arrived with our trousers padded, bearing files to justify whatever misdemeanour we were supposed to have committed, only to be told Eden was resigning. He was not a prime minister – too much of a fusspot, too preoccupied with detail, and what other people’s departments were doing.’

  Lord Hailsham’s great triumph, which he refers to in legal terms as ‘my most important case (unpaid)’, was as party chairman orchestrating the Tory landslide of one hundred seats in 1959, after Tory popularity had hit rock bottom two years before. With his bicycling to work, bell ringing, and bathing at party conferences, Lord Hailsham made himself so well known in the country that Macmillan became jealous and for a time relations were frosty between them.