Alan Rickman

by Maureen Paton

  Jane met Alan and Catherine over lunch in a French restaurant in Kensington Park Road on 10 June 1993.

  ‘They showed me their draft. They said they would tidy it up a bit; I made a few suggestions, such as extra figures here and there. It was not absolutely clear at that time that Thelma Holt was committed to the project.

  ‘Time was already very short, because I understood that the shortlist was to be drawn up on 15 July. I said I would take their bid to lain Coleman, the Leader of the Council, to canvass him on the monetary situation and also because he was quite close to the Chair of the Riverside Trust, William Hunter. That was how it was left.’

  What Alan and Co. did not understand were the manifold pressures on councillors with so many causes clamouring for cash. Given that Alan’s partner Rima had been a councillor in the neighbouring Kensington & Chelsea for seven years by then, one would have thought she might have advised them. But anyone with any integrity – and Rima prides herself on that – would take care not to get involved with an issue in which there was a personal interest. So she stayed well clear.

  ‘I didn’t get the bid document from the Rickman group until 22 June, because I had been away for a long weekend,’ says Jane. ‘I arranged to see lain Coleman on 24 June. The main gist of that meeting was on another subject, but I left him the Rickman submission.

  ‘We set up another meeting to discuss the matter on 5 July. To be fair to lain Coleman, we didn’t talk at length about the Rickman bid. I asked him to look at it and hoped that if he considered it worthwhile, he would speak to William Hunter.

  ‘One of my main reasons for seeing him was to sort out whether we were going to be able to fund all three venues for the same year. Both the Lyric and Riverside had a deficit, and we are the smallest London borough after the City.

  ‘I was really deeply concerned that we weren’t going to be able to fund both of them. There were rumours every day about what was going to happen. I used my contacts in the theatre to see if there were other options to fund the two of them. The selection process was going on for the next elections; I had to go up north; and I was also writing a paper on the future of the libraries, because I was anxious that we were going to have to cut them.

  ‘I wrote to Derek Spurr, Director of Hammersmith’s Leisure and Recreation, on 28 June. I was still scared that the Lyric would have to go. Catherine and Alan thought I was working against them because I was talking to other organisations, but I was trying to explore all the options for both the Riverside and the Lyric.

  ‘At very short notice, lain cancelled our meeting on 5 July. He’s a very busy man. I spoke to his PA because I said all the submissions have to be in and I had to see him.

  ‘The earliest we could set a meeting was for Tuesday 13 July at 6 o’clock. I thought to myself, do I approach Hunter directly? I had previously indicated to him that there might be another bid. I was in a quandary. Then during that week I heard there had been a meeting of the leadership of the Council – and it had been decided not to fund either of the two theatres. I felt I must clarify the situation once and for all with Coleman.

  ‘In the interim Catherine Bailey had confirmed to me that Thelma Holt would be involved, which had not been absolutely certain up to that time. And because of my knowledge of her work, I became even more convinced that the consortium could administer and develop Riverside.

  ‘I saw lain Coleman on 13 July. He was very candid and confirmed to me that the council could not fund Riverside’s deficit. He said “We will definitely be funding only one of the two theatres in the forthcoming year.” I pushed him on it and asked if it would be Riverside. He said it would. I tried to ring William Hunter that night, but he wasn’t in.’

  What appeared odd to Alan Rickman was the legal situation. Jane explains: ‘Because both theatres might become insolvent or be liquidated and there were councillors on both boards, there had been concern about councillors renewing their membership of the board. The Council’s Legal Services recommended that councillors should resign.

  ‘Subsequently I think that Legal Services rather changed that view, but the important thing about it is that I resigned because the Council suggested I should – not because of any dealings with Alan, Catherine or Thelma.

  ‘Jules Wright was definitely offered the Riverside directorship,’ according to Jane Hackworth-Young, ‘but my understanding is that she had decided not to go ahead with the financial risk. What was ironic was that she must have known more about the financial risk than anyone else, because she had been a member of the Riverside Board.

  ‘To be fair to William Hunter, he did ask me whether the bid was coming in. He behaved honourably; and when I finally reached him on the morning of the 14th, he agreed that he and members of the Board would meet me before their “shortlisting” meeting the following evening. But I was still aware that he might be biased towards Jules.

  ‘The council officer who was dealing with Riverside also spoke to me on the morning of the 14th, as he had been approached by Catherine Bailey who gave him a copy of the bid. I explained to him what had happened – and about my conversation with William Hunter – and we agreed to go down together to see Hunter and members of the Board. The officer’s advice to the members of the Board that evening was that they should consider the Rickman bid, and the members agreed to consult with the Board.

  ‘We were informed that the Board had agreed to consider the bid over the weekend, yet within hours Jules had been approached about running Riverside.

  ‘lain Coleman had even said to me that he didn’t think the Rickman bid was a particularly good one, though I thought it was very businesslike. But I think lain was terribly busy with the decisions on cuts for the forthcoming year.

  ‘I categorically did not withhold the bid. I passed it on. Alan, Catherine and I had agreed I would take it to lain Coleman, but I hadn’t had dialogue with him. It was not a case of withholding the bid, but of not being able to put their case in good time.’

  The timing of the actual decision now seems terribly vague.

  ‘Hunter said the Rickman bid was in late; I said “I thought you were looking at all the bids, not making a final decision,”’ says Jane. ‘I had opened Rickman’s bid on 22 June and passed it on. There were other bids from the Royal Opera house, the Old Vic, Carnival Theatre, Jules Wright’s WPT and the English Shakespeare Company.

  ‘I was a bit of a scapegoat because I felt that lain Coleman didn’t support me in processing the bid or subsequently when the matter got to the Press.’

  When the public storm broke, Jane was frustrated by the fact that she had to stay silent. ‘I could not tell the Press that the council had made a decision to fund only one of the venues. Other funding bodies, such as the Arts Council, would have withdrawn funding from the Lyric, as some funding was dependent on the local authority matching it.

  ‘It would have produced a disastrous domino effect. So I couldn’t say a thing publicly without endangering the Lyric. Since that time, the Lyric has launched an appeal which has resulted in attracting funding that has wiped out its deficit.

  ‘I had given the Rickman proposal to lain immediately I received it. The only reason I had then delayed was because I had understood there would be no funding for theatres at all, which might well not be made public until after people had committed themselves to Riverside.’

  In retrospect, Jane could be said to have panicked from the worthiest of intentions. Clearly she didn’t wish to lumber Alan’s team with a building that carried a deficit of a quarter of a million pounds and had just had its funding withdrawn . . . otherwise she might have been guilty of dropping them in it.

  ‘I think the Rickman application was good; I also think some of the others were good. I didn’t think Jules’ application was amazing.

  ‘My sadness was that I wasn’t able to explain fully to Alan, Thelma and Catherine what had happened. I did try Catherine’s phone and left a message; she never rang me back. She was away on and off during that tim
e.

  ‘The decision by Hammersmith and Fulham to continue funding the Lyric from 1994 to 1995 was taken in the autumn/winter of 1993. The lawyers didn’t want me to go to the Press at all, and they wanted me to keep my explanatory letter to Thelma very, very short. It was really just an apology.

  ‘Thelma and Alan rushed to the Press. If only they had held for 12 hours, I felt I could have done something. I wish they had talked to me before they went to the papers.

  ‘In retrospect, I don’t know what I would do differently. I don’t think it would have had a different outcome if they hadn’t used an intermediary. There was nothing anti-Alan about the whole affair at all.’

  In fact there was a certain coolness between Jane Hackworth-Young and William Hunter that hardly helped to advance the Rickman cause. A one-time political rivalry meant that she was not, perhaps, the best choice of cleft-stick messenger under the circumstances.

  ‘Hunter was Treasurer and I was Vice-Chair of Hammersmith Labour Party. We both stood for the Chair, and I got it over him.

  ‘Alan’s consortium just saw the problem as a threefold one: the deficit, the future funding and the fact that Jules had been on the Board. They had deep concerns about being treated fairly because of that.

  ‘And it was also very strange that the Riverside Board didn’t go back to the other original bidders after Jules decided not to go ahead. They offered the directorship to William Burdett-Coutts instead.’

  Burdett-Coutts himself was equally mystified. ‘I went through a rather strange process with this whole thing,’ he admits. ‘I went for an interview in July, but I thought that Rickman had got it. Then as soon as they approached me, I phoned up Alan. We must have had three or four meetings about ways in which his team could work together with me, but I never really got a final response on that.

  ‘Thelma did once request both the main studios gratis while I ran the building; they didn’t even offer to pay rent. But I would still happily work with Alan. I’ll work with anyone; I’m in the business of survival,’ added William, valiantly trying to keep his head above water.

  Riverside was forced to close for five months from April 1994 for a face-lift under the directorship of Burdett-Coutts, who had made his name by running the Edinburgh Fringe’s Assembly Rooms. He moved the entrance from the side to the front and gave it the look of a trendy art gallery instead of the student hang-out it was before. Fingers, not to mention legs, have been crossed ever since.

  ‘It’s all fallen flat,’ Catherine Bailey later said to me in 1995 with grim satisfaction. Asked to comment on Jane Hackworth-Young’s performance in the great drama, she rolled her eyes, and hummed and hawed.

  In 1995, Council Leader lain Coleman confirmed to me the rockiness of the Riverside funding at the time of the Rickman/Holt/Bailey bid. ‘It has been public knowledge since 1993 that the support we gave to Riverside would have to be curtailed and eventually abolished. We gave the Trustees of Riverside as much notice as possible of our future intention.’

  Hammersmith & Fulham Council combines the positions of Chief Executive and Finance Director in one job that carries the title of Managing Director. There is an odd postscript to the Rivergate story that suggests the Rickman consortium made a second attempt to succeed. On 10 August 1993, the Managing Director of the authority received a letter from Catherine Bailey Limited on behalf of Catherine, Thelma and Alan.

  They enclosed a copy of their proposal, which had been rejected by the Riverside Board. In it, they declared that they would only reveal their sources of start-up money – at last, the dreaded S-word – if the Council maintained funding. ‘You will note our omission with regard to finance, should the two funding bodies reduce the level of funding, and we wish to state our willingness to reveal our sources of start-up money should the matter proceed.’

  In other words, the Rickman consortium appeared to be playing a poker game and keeping their financial cards close to their chest. You show me your willy if I show you mine . . . then we’ll see who has the biggest. With cash-strapped councils, however, it doesn’t work like that.

  ‘Although we had no direct locus in the matter, the Council’s Managing Director did meet with Thelma Holt and Alan Rickman on two occasions,’ admits Iain Coleman. ‘This was done to have a fallback position if the Riverside Board had to cease trading, in which eventuality the site reverted to the local authority.’

  In other words, the council would have to pick up the bill. ‘I am advised,’ concludes Coleman, ‘that the meetings were inconclusive. The proposals continued to be a wish-list of artistic programmes without any of the financial back-up being substantiated.’

  So the sticking-point was money all along. The apparent delay in submitting the application had been a red herring which made people suspect a fishy conspiracy. ‘Jane did pass on the bid to Iain Coleman because he and William Hunter had worked together as long-standing members of the local Labour Party. But it wasn’t passed on to Iain as a formal submission; just as an informal consultative exercise,’ says Peter Savage, who was head of the Council Leader’s office.

  ‘But the crux of the problem all along was money. One bid was underfunded; the other wasn’t. But it was all taken personally, which was a shame. Thelma, Alan and Catherine were given plenty of time to come forward with information about sponsors.

  ‘And they had just the sort of image that we were looking for; so there was absolutely nothing personal. It was a pity that it was interpreted that way.’

  Savage explained to me that it’s essential to see the colour of the applicant’s money first before other funds are forthcoming; it’s a delicate balancing-act.

  ‘For instance, we are supporting William Burdett-Coutts in his Lottery bid. That means we would look at practical ways of supporting Riverside, e.g. giving them the freehold or perhaps cash funding. But all this would only happen if he was given money from the National Heritage fund. We wouldn’t be able to fund him if the Lottery bid wasn’t successful. Our help can only be part of a package.’

  Nevertheless, London’s artistic community was fired up on Alan and Thelma’s behalf, sensing an outrageous and unforgivable snub by the Riverside Board. Frankly, William Hunter’s rather rude letter to the Standard on 10 August had done nothing to correct that impression.

  In his feature published on 12 August, the Evening Standard’s chief theatre critic Nicholas de Jongh demanded that Riverside’s Board must go as a result of the Rivergate fiasco. He compared Alan’s bid with that of Jules Wright, calling the Women’s Playhouse Trust proposal ‘four pages of pipe-dreams, aspirations and vague platitudes’.

  A cut-out of Alan’s head was thrust like an Aunt Sally above the parapet. So far as the Press and the general public were concerned, his was the best-known face in the consortium despite the fact that he was only one of the trio who drafted the wording of the bid.

  And now to the second scapegoat in the affair.

  This is where connections become terribly incestuous in the close-knit world of theatre. The President of Jules Wright’s WPT was, paradoxically, Alan’s old friend and co-star Geraldine McEwan. Even more strangely, Alan Rickman was among the ten actors credited with a close connection to the WPT as one of those who was approached to lead the teachers’ workshops. (Unsurprisingly, he hasn’t yet taken up that option.)

  Those who did lead the workshops were Kathryn Pogson, Prunella Scales, Timothy West, Anton Rodgers, Neil Pearson, Fidelis Morgan, Janet Suzman, Gary MacDonald and Celia Imrie. So the Riverside row appeared to have bust up a beautiful and fruitful friendship between Jules and Alan that had brought together some of Britain’s best-known, most adventurous thespians. No wonder there was a feeling of betrayal and treachery.

  Thelma was publicly bitter about Riverside. She told the Hammersmith and Fulham Post on 5 August 1993 that the apologies received from the Board and from Jane Hackworth-Young had been completely unsatisfactory.

  ‘It would be difficult to think how a consortium led by Alan Rickman w
hich put forward such ambitious proposals for the Riverside did not even merit an interview.’

  However, Jules Wright says: ‘As I understand it, no application from the Rickman consortium was submitted before the closing date, before the interviews or before the Board of Riverside and the representatives of the London Arts Board and Hammersmith & Fulham Council had met to decide how to go forward. I don’t understand that.’

  Alan forced himself to be philosophical to the Press, telling Michael Owen in the Standard on 22 October that year: ‘There’s no point conducting an inquest now, it’s so depressing. There was a positive result in the amount of discussion it opened up. I felt we’d started a new wind blowing through the London arts scene. But at the end of the day, I do believe a great opportunity has been lost. It comes down to the stifling, grinding mediocrity we have so much of at home.

  ‘No one is prepared to accept the challenge of making a brave decision, to take a risk on something that might come crashing down or really break through to something new.’

  Jules Wright saw things very differently. ‘Thelma and I have not spoken since, which is very sad. None of them knew that I spent £5,000 on lawyers . . . and was unable to pursue it because I couldn’t afford it. It was just a waste of money.

  ‘I suspect that Alan’s group might have thought there was public money around; but they would never have got involved if they had known the state of Riverside’s finances. I’m glad the WPT didn’t get involved either, in the end.

  ‘It all began when I was pursued non-stop for eighteen months by the then Artistic Director Jonathan Lamede to join the Board of Riverside. I finally did in November 1992.

  ‘But then Jonathan was removed in an extremely brutal Board meeting after a financial crisis. He was asked to leave the room and then William Hunter, the Chair, said, “I think it’s time for Jonathan to go.”