Spectacles
Page 5
My brother received a Prince cassette deck for Christmas in 1985 and immediately set about taping every TOTP he could. To do this, you had to get your recorder, depress the Play and Record buttons together and hold the machine directly against the TV speaker for the duration of the programme. The main problem with this method was that not only did it record everything on the television, but everything that went on in the background too.
What strikes me, listening back to these tapes, is not the quality of the music, but the relentlessness of my family’s pesterings, particularly my mother, who made a beeline for us any time TOTP was on. Partly out of interest, partly out of an instinctive feeling that there was something not quite right with the presenters.
Transcript of tape recording made 28 February 1985 featuring Paul Hardcastle’s ‘19’
Narrator:
In 1965 Vietnam seemed like just another foreign war. But it wasn’t. It was different in many ways – and so were those who did the fighting. In World War II, the average age of the combat soldier was twenty-six.
In Vietnam he was nineteen.
In-in-in-in-in-in-in in Vietnam he was nineteen. [Repeat]
Mum:
[shouting from nearby room] David!
Narrator:
The shooting and fighting of the past two weeks continued today twenty-five miles west of Saigon.
Mum:
David, are those your trousers in the bathroom?
Soldier:
I really wasn’t sure what was going on.
Narrator:
Ni-ni-ni-ni-nineteen, ni-nineteen, ni-nineteen, nineteen.
David:
Mum, shut up – I’m taping!
Narrator:
In Vietnam the combat soldier typically served a twelve-month tour of duty, but was exposed to hostile fire almost every day.
Mum:
Can you please come and pick your trousers off the bathroom floor?
Narrator:
Ni-ni-ni-ni-ni-ni-ni-ni-ni-ni-ni-ni-ni-
Singers:
Nineteen!
Narrator:
Ni-ni-ni-ni-ni-ni-ni-ni-ni-ni-ni-ni-ni-
Singers:
Nineteen!
Mum:
They’re a trip hazard, and you know what will happen if your dad gets his foot caught in them.
Narrator:
Ni-ni-ni-ni-ni-ni-ni-ni-ni-ni-ni-ni-ni-
Singers:
Nineteen!
Narrator:
In Saigon a US military spokesman said today more than seven hundred enemy troops were killed last week in that sensitive border area. Throughout all of South Vietnam the enemy lost a total of 2,689 soldiers.
Mum:
He could put a toe into the gusset and fall. You know how clumsy he is.
Singers:
All those who remember the war
They won’t forget what they’ve seen
Destruction of men in their prime
Whose average was nineteen.
Mum:
David! Are you listening?
Singers:
De-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-destruction.
Mum:
This isn’t a hotel.
Singers:
De-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-destruction.
Mum:
I’m not a chambermaid, you know. You’re thirteen years old …
David:
Mum!
Narrator:
According to a Veterans’ Administration study, half of the Vietnam combat veterans suffered from what psychiatrists call post-traumatic stress disorder. Many vets complain of alienation, rage or guilt. And some succumb to suicidal thoughts.
Mum:
You’re big enough to bend down and pick up your own trousers, aren’t you?
David:
Mum. SHUT UP!
Narrator:
Eight to ten years after coming home almost eight hundred thousand men are still fighting the Vietnam War.
Mum:
Don’t you talk to me like that! You’re not too old for a wallop, you know …
Singers:
De-de-de-de-de-de-de-destruction.
De-de-de-de-de-de-de-destruction.
Mum:
I’m coming down. I’m leaving your trousers for you to deal with. Bert!
Narrator:
None of them received a hero’s welcome.
Singers:
Ni-neteen.
Narrator:
Saigon Saigon Sa-Sa-Sa-Sa-Saigon Saigon.
Singers:
Ni-neteen.
Soldier:
I really wasn’t sure what was going on. [Repeat]
Dad:
What now, Ann?
Mum:
There’s a trip hazard in the bathroom! What on earth are you listening to, David?
Narrator:
Ni-ni-ni-ni-ni-ni-ni-ni-nineteen.
Mum:
Is there something wrong with the sound or does that man have a stammer?
Narrator:
Vietnam Sa-Sa-Saigon Vietnam Sa-Sa-Saigon.
Mum:
[sound of heavy footsteps coming into the room] And that’s enough of that.
Tape ends.
Bitten
Everyone’s first, and sometimes last, experience of acting is the school Nativity play. Remember the part you played? It’s pretty easy to recall, isn’t it, seeing as the cast of characters has remained unchanged for over two thousand years. Take a guess at what I played.
You:
How about Mary and Joseph?
Me:
Oh, don’t be silly.
You:
Little Baby Jesus?
Me:
Per-lease.
You:
The three shepherds around the manger?
Me:
Nope, not even close.
You:
[getting exasperated] The Three Kings who came from the east, bringing gold, frankincense and myrrh?
Me:
Still wrong …
You:
One of the angels?
Me:
Now you’re just taking the piss. Come on! There’s only one character left … Yes?
You:
Sorry, I’ve no idea.
Me:
The fox! Yeah, you remember! The fox! You know, the fox. The fox at the Nativity? Come on, you must remember. Just to the left of the crib. The fox. You know – the fox.
Yes, that’s who I played. A fox. I was the imaginary vermin that might have bitten the boy child Jesus and given him rabies had I existed. Though God only knows, had I been allowed to extend my role into biting the Saviour, I might just have done it, such was my frustration at the pitiful nature of my role.
A year later, after much jostling I graduated to fourth shepherd. Out of three. I didn’t care; I got to wear a tea towel with a bit of old rope wrapped around it. I was living the dream.
Finally – after frantic lobbying bordering on stalking – I got the big one. An angel. Once again I rocked the Damian fringe, which made me look, in retrospect, less Right Hand of God and more Left Armpit of Satan.
It’s no wonder I didn’t get plum roles or perfect casting opportunities: I was freakishly pale and perpetually odd. Added to which, I was terribly shy with a mild stammer, and I couldn’t look anyone in the eye. I know – fun, eh? Don’t you want to invite the young me to all of your parties?!
So there I was, a weird conflicted kid, split down the middle, as riven as a floor tile. Desperate to be at the centre of it all but too afraid to do anything but loiter on the margins. A friend once described me as ‘backing into the limelight’, which is about the most accurate description of me I can imagine hearing.
At the edge of the school playing field, where grass met path, there was a run-down shed which went by the genteel description of ‘the Pavilion’. The name conjures a village green – young men with oiled moustaches and pressed flannels endlessly rushing at one another, the soprano hurrahs of the assembled wives, the chink of bone china as the sun sets on Empire.
Our pavilion, however, amounted to a single cold room – no heating – with a desk at one end and a few chairs at the other. At that desk, one day a week, sat Ms Carole Schroder, manicured and perfect, the sort of character you find in a Roald Dahl novel – suspiciously prim at first but who turns out to unexpectedly save the day.
I walked into that room a gibbering wreck. Week after week I was encouraged to stand up and read out painful, faltering renditions of Shakespeare, Wendy Cope and Pam Ayres. I began to learn about breathing. Cadences. Intonation. I began to relax. My voice became less staccato. I raised my head and looked out at the world. A few years later I walked out of that room able to speak clearly. Fluently. Finally, the voice coming out of my mouth matched the chattering inside my head.
Ms Schroder gave me the gift of speech.
And in doing so she created a monster.
In the early spring of 1983 the school production was announced, something modest that would befit our tiny little educational establishment in south London –
The Hobbit.
When J.R.R. Tolkien wrote his fantasy dystopian masterpiece, I believe he knew, deep down, in the back of his mind it could only truly be realized by a gang of thirteen-year-olds. I also feel The Hobbit was a particularly appropriate choice for a single-sex girls’ school, since there are just so many women’s parts in the book.
It became clear early on in rehearsals that we were all merely pawns in a much larger game, namely fulfilling the hitherto failed ambitions of a litany of English and drama teachers that had gone before us. Ambitious simply wasn’t the word. Ridiculous, however, comes close.
Now I was able to speak properly, I had hoped for a starring role, a Gandalf or a Samwise Gamgee, but, as always, I ended up with something derisory – in this case third dwarf from the left. I was incandescent. This was, remember, WAY before Peter Dinklage as Tyrion Lannister made smaller folk sexy. In 1983 they were just, well, small.
I was Oin, brother of Gloin, distant cousin of Thorin Oakenshield (if you’re interested). I had read the book and noted that they were northern dwarves, so gave my character a rich Yorkshire twang, based on a guy I’d seen birthing a calf in All Creatures Great and Small.
My line, and it was JUST ONE LINE, was: ‘Never any sun.’
As parts go, it was pretty weak, though I fared better than my friend Sarah Ebenezer, who played a sheep. Now I don’t especially remember sheep in Tolkien – though I’m sure some media student will have done a meta-critical study of ungulates in the Shire and will let me know otherwise. Having said that, I don’t remember foxes in the Christmas story, and this casting came from the same imaginative source. Sarah’s role, as the unnamed grass-muncher of the piece, was to wear a zero-visibility wire-mesh animal head festooned with cotton wool and make it through ‘the forest’ without shattering her coccyx. Crucially, she managed this for only two out of the three performances.
There were several problems with the show from the outset, not least my costume – a millefeuille of heavy woollens, with hessian pedal pushers that rode dangerously high up my dwarfish arse crack. Added to which my make-up made speaking virtually impossible. I say, make-up; it was essentially orange panstick and a beard.
Yes, a beard.
This was basically wire wool fashioned into Brian Blessed-style face-fuzz and glued to my chin with spirit gum. For those not used to spirit gum, let me illuminate – it’s an industrial resinous adhesive with a high alcohol content. It’s a solvent. My dwarf was about to become a glue sniffer.
So … to the show. My job was simply to say my line, then crouch down and hold a piece of cardboard battlement next to a load of other dwarves holding battlements. Together we formed a vast, yet ultimately recyclable, wall designed to withstand an orc invasion. And, indeed, the sight of a line of schoolgirls about to hit puberty would have been enough to repel all marauders.
Finally, after what seemed an age of crouching and listening to other people mumbling through facial hair, it was my turn. I was baking hot, mouth dry and cracked, and feeling woozy from the glue fumes. I got up to speak and immediately wanted to vomit.
‘There’s never any t’sun!’ I roared in a broad, generically northern burr. Silence. The silence I now identify with so many of my subsequent performances.
I waited. Nothing. I waited a little longer. Sadly, it seemed the udders of appreciation were dry.
I sank back down behind the cardboard battlements and once again felt the thick material of my costume chafing my Middle Earth.
‘What the massive fuck was that?’ hissed my friend Karen Flanders – also in full beard.
‘What do you mean?’
‘You’re increasing your part!’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘You’re supposed to say, “Never any sun,” said a goblin who may or may not have been Helen Renwick.
‘You said, “There’s never any sun,”’ spat Karen.
‘So what?!’
‘That’s a 25 per cent increase!’
‘And what’s your point?’
‘Actually, that’s a 33 per cent increase,’ said a nearby elf, helpfully.
‘SHUT UP!’ yelled the hobbit to my left. ‘And hold that battlement straight, you twats.’
‘Don’t call me a twat,’ said Karen.
‘You are a twat,’ I ventured, cleverly.
And so it went on.
As the Battle of the Five Armies raged above us, a battle of our own was developing behind that cardboard wall, which was now shaking with a mixture of hysteria and righteous rage.
‘Some of us are holding our fortifications still,’ said a smug little dwarf further down the line.
‘Good for you! GOOD FOR YOU!’ I responded.
‘Your wall is wobbly.’
‘Well, so is your goatee!’
I can’t remember who won that day, but we can safely say it was not a victory for theatre.
That production stayed with me for a very long time – or at least the beard did. It took nearly three weeks to remove it completely, despite the best ministrations of my mum. Her medicine cabinet had been stocked with weapons-grade exfoliants in preparation for its removal, but that glue was stubborn stuff. For weeks afterwards my jawline was mottled with reactive red lumps and residual grey wisps. I looked like a pensioner with PCOS. In the end Mum went back to basics.
‘Bert! Get the Dettol!’
Subsequently, I have watched the Peter Jackson films. I liked them. Although for me they will never have the rich dramatic resonance, the dizzying emotional range of that glorious, definitive 1983 stage adaptation.
The next year at school we did Finnegan’s Wake.*
After The Hobbit I graduated to something a little simpler – Peer Gynt, a five-act play in verse by Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsen. I played Peer’s mum, Ase, an ageing peasant. If that wasn’t already way beyond my range, this particular production was set, for reasons still unknown to me, in Northern Ireland. For three and a half hours the cast roared at one another like kids doing an impression of an adult doing an impression of the Reverend Ian Paisley.