by John Challis
Carol, of course, had organized a party with the Woodards and the Heffers and very jolly it was, with the added delight of the unexpected. What she had arranged for the next day was even more unexpected. After an inexplicable visit to Ann’s Pasty Shop at the Lizard, purveyors of allegedly the best pasties in the world (with or without VAT) and a strange sojourn in the pub with everyone behaving very vaguely, until at what was clearly a pre-arranged signal, we all sauntered off. At this, I found myself in a state of amused detachment, ready for whatever fate was about to chuck at me.
After a short car journey we arrived at one of my favourite Cornish destinations, the Lizard Lifeboat Station, where the whole staff of the Lizard Lifeboat was waiting for us, including Carol’s coconspirator, Ned Nuzum. Coxswain Phil Burgess approached. ‘Glad you’re here, John. We’ve got an exercise today and we’re a bit short of crew. Can you help us out?’
Could I? I couldn’t wait.
Going out on a lifeboat was something I’d dreamed of doing ever since I was a kid. Rob Woodard looked on with a big grin as I was togged out in oilskins, helmet and boots. I was hustled on to the lifeboat in its little house and we were off down the slipway.
It was utterly thrilling – at least as exhilarating as the rides in Margate during the Jolly Boys’ Outing. The English Channel was pretty calm but we still made a terrific splash. I realized why I’d been placed right at the stern of the boat when a plume of water shot up and hit me on the backside.
We turned to starboard (I think) into Mounts Bay, and I was given a go at driving, with some anxious tweaking from Phil as we veered too close to clusters of submerged rocks, of which, of course, I was blissfully unaware. It was a wonderful experience, and it was very good of the crew to let me do it.
We headed back and as we were winched back up the slipway, Carol, Richard, Belinda and Rob smiled benevolently at this wellknown character off the telly, temporarily turned into a small boy let loose in a sweet shop.
Afterwards I was asked if I would become an ambassador for the Lizard Lifeboat in the RNLI’s attempt to find funding for a new boathouse and a state- of-the-art replacement for the current craft. I was more than happy to agree and part of the proceeds from the sales of this book is dedicated to the RNLI.
In 2011 Carol and I were invited down to witness the launch of the new lifeboat, Rose. The band played, the people cheered and the sun came out as Rose smacked the water to begin her service in saving lives at sea.
Back in ‘real’ life, I was asked to be in an episode of Last of the Summer Wine. Unlike my outing with Robert Lindsay in My Family, there was no question of disloyalty in a guest appearance on the much-loved Summer Wine. I met up again with Jean Fergusson, with whom (those of you who have read Being Boycie will know) I’d shared digs in Harrogate in 1969, when we become good friends. It was a pleasure to work with her again in her role as Marina, a longrunning (and cycling) character in the show.
Everyone had been thinking that Last of the Summer Wine was on the last of its summer legs. It had been running since 1973, but people kept watching it simply because there were so many wonderful old turns on it, still strutting their stuff – Peter Sallis, one of the only remaining original cast members, Frank Thornton, whom I seemed to have been watching since the flood, Burt Kwouk, revered as Clouseau’s mad assistant in the Pink Panther and Brian Murphy who, with Yootha Joyce, had spun off from Man About the House to George & Mildred.
Also in the regular cast was Mike Grady, whom I’d last seen wandering disconsolately from the floor at Pinewood Studios under the steely gaze of Anne Robinson, after I’d voted him off.
Mike was philosophical about his humiliating experience. ‘You fucking bastard!’ he told me at the time. ‘I’ll never speak or work with you again. You’ve completely wrecked my career, my family have disowned me and after I’ve killed myself, you’re next.’
I found myself in scenes with Jean Alexander – the immortal Hilda Ogden from Coronation Street. The roster of famous old names that had appeared on the show went on and on but sometimes as we sat around under our umbrellas, waiting for the rain to stop, we would glance around at each other and wonder if this was, in fact, God’s waiting room for actors.
Soon after that we were filming The Green, Green Grass again – eight new shows for broadcast in the first quarter of 2009. When they were in the can and the studio work completed at Teddington, I had been hoping for further news of a fifth series which had been discussed informally with John Sullivan and Gareth Gwenlan, still producing. The viewing figures for the third series as a whole had been respectable and the fourth series felt as tight and funny as ever.
In For Richer, for Poorer, the last episode, Boycie and Marlene are renewing their marriage vows. Their relationship had naturally come under greater focus and had been examined more closely in our series than in Only Fools and had developed in a very natural way. The affection between them had been more obvious and endearing in a way that gave the whole series an extra dimension. It was one of Sullivan’s qualities as a writer that he gave as much humanity and realism as he could to his characters.
However, while we’d been making this episode, we’d all commented that it felt uncomfortably like a final, final one, although we’d been assured that this wasn’t the case. Indeed, two weeks after we’d said our ‘goodbyes’ to everyone and wished them a Merry Christmas, John Sullivan was on the phone sounding highly excitable, to say that the Beeb definitely wanted a fifth series. I can remember now, putting the phone down and feeling things couldn’t get much better.
We’d all had such fun in the 33 shows we’d made so far, the public were watching loyally, the local community enjoyed their involvement and were proud of the fact that their little corner of Herefordshire featured so strongly.
John Sullivan and Dewi Humphreys, our director, had rightly celebrated the stunning countryside, full of quirky little corners, rambling villages, pubs, quaint old post offices and village halls. Local friends had become involved – happily appearing as extras – and nearby farmers had provided invaluable advice, livestock and farm machinery for the show; Wigmore Abbey itself had become an iconic feature as the Boyce’s Winterdown Farm.
For Christmas 2008, my pantomime schedule took me back to Llandudno, the best seaside resort in North Wales, to play King Rat (again) in Dick Whittington. It was a nostalgic trip for me, as I’d had one of my earlier jobs in rep there in 1964, when I’d met Carol Robertson who became my first wife. Then I’d worked in the magnificent Palladium Theatre, which sadly is no longer a theatre, but was been well-preserved, nevertheless, as a J D Wetherspoon’s mega-boozer. The Grand Theatre, where I’d seen my colleague, Ken Platt, and Arthur Askey recording a BBC Light Programme Variety Show, was now the Broadway Nightclub and Disco.
Shortly after Dick W had finished its run in early 2009, the fourth series of The Green, Green Grass had started airing to good audiences, in spite of the newest planners at the BBC moving us around the schedules like a counter on a snakes-and-ladders board. I hadn’t heard anything about the proposed fifth series and I was beginning to get twitchy, when I had another call from our producer, Gareth Gwenlan. ‘Sorry John, they can’t confirm the new series. There’s a new regime here at the BBC and they’re cutting everything.’
The global economic catastrophe that had emerged in 2008 was showing no signs of going away and, indeed, looked as if it would get worse. Within this big, gloomy picture, our show was shunted into a siding and we were given the impression that when things had settled down, The Green, Green Grass would get a green light. In the meantime, our fourth series was being put on directly after a floundering comedy show with Caroline Quentin and in the middle of two very popular reality shows on the independent channels. Our figures suffered, although not by a very significant amount. Six months later, the word came through that our show had hit the buffers.
Perhaps it was mainly a matter of the new regime at the BBC, headed by Jay Hunt, simply not liking our sort of trad
itional situation comedy, where previously we’d had good support in key quarters. With that support removed, the odds had been against us.
Gareth Gwenlan had pointed out that ours was not the cheapest shows to make because John Sullivan was so keen – quite rightly in my view – on the strengthened reality offered by location shooting. And in this case we couldn’t tell a story about Farmer Boyce trying to live in the countryside without showing the countryside. The job had been made comparatively cheaper by the designer building most of what was required in and around Wigmore Abbey. Elgin Sparrowhawk’s shed had been created from the ruins of derelict farm structures in a rick yard just fifty yards from our back door.
The series had also been used to bring on new writers. John’s own son, Jim, came up with some great ideas and scripts. Daunting though it must have been to follow in such a famous father’s footsteps, Jim’s offerings had genuine flair and originality. When we were told that all this was no longer required, John was incensed.
We were in shock. We had been told at the end of the second series that ours was the BBC’s flagship comedy; now, two years later, it looked like the flagship had hit the rocks. The final episode, For Richer, for Poorer, was shown in March 2009.
By that stage in my career, I’d learned that it’s better for one’s peace of mind and general wellbeing to be philosophical when things beyond one’s control don’t work out. Hard though it was, I took a deep breath and started thinking about the next project.
Chapter 16
Time for Reflection
The idea of writing an autobiography had first entered my head when we were making an episode of The Green, Green Grass the previous year in which Boycie decides to write his memoirs. In I Done It My Way, I was speaking into a recorder, relating Boycie’s life as he saw it – full of triumph and free from disaster. Without any irony, he thinks he’s generous, magnanimous even, a man to look up to, a pillar of the community. The episode was, naturally, peppered with clips from previous episodes, not just of The Green, Green Grass, but also scenes from thirty years of Only Fools & Horses, which offered a strong dose of nostalgia for a lot of people.
Boycie’s absurdly deluded image of himself, started me thinking about how I saw myself – probably very differently from the way others did.
I was used to the business of writing. I’d often jotted notes – sketches, characters observed, snatches of conversation overheard and personal experiences, particularly at more critical moments in my life. When I’d written all my impressions of South Africa after the Stoppard tour in 1977, I had put them together as a play, Cut the Grass, We Can’t see the Elephants, which was subsequently produced in London, Amsterdam and New York.
I’d had some help then organizing the material for the play and now I thought it might be wise to get an outside eye to look over what I was doing. Tim Hales, a friend who’d held a party for Bonhams at Wigmore Abbey seven years before, was married to journalist and magazine editor Celestria Noel. Over lunch one Sunday Carol and I asked her if she could recommend someone suitable.
She suggested Peter Burden, who had worked with Leslie Philips on his autobiography Hello! and with the late David Hemmings on his book Blow Up, and Other Exaggerations.
I’d met David, iconic star of Antonioni’s 1966 cult film Blow Up when we were both opening a jazz festival in Marlborough a year or so before he sadly died making a film in Romania. David’s widow, Lucy was also a friend of Carol’s chum, Anna Hall/Barley, and she agreed with Celestria’s suggestion. As an added bonus, Peter lived just ten miles away from Wigmore Abbey in the middle of Ludlow.
Once he had seen all the material and had started to pull it together in some sort of shape, he suggested there was so much to tell, I should do it in two volumes – Being Boycie to lead up to 1985, when Marlene first appeared in Only Fools & Horses, and the book you’re reading now. It turned out for me to be a great experience trying to relive and re-examine the stop-start progress of my chequered life.
I’m sure it’s only from the security of the wonderful marriage I now have that I could have looked at these things with something approaching objective equanimity.
With a little more time on my hands and the house and garden at least in maintenance rather than development mode, I took the chance to relax and look around at more of the local culture that surrounded me and get involved in a lot of local activities and initiatives.
A local primary school threatened by a falling roll call asked me to help publicise the imminent danger of its closure. The local arts organization responsible for putting on an annual Shakespeare production at the long-standing Ludlow Festival approached me for support and a number of local clubs and organizations wanted to hear about what Carol and I had done at Wigmore Abbey, in the Abbot’s Lodgings and in the gardens we had created.
One curious aspect of local culture that I wanted to have a closer look at was the trotting racing that goes on in the Marches of Mid- Wales. For reasons still obscure, a number of Welsh farmers in the 1930s developed a taste for racing their Welsh cobs in harness, from a tw0-wheeled sulky. As these races became more popular and competitive, ambitious trotting owners started importing Standardbred horses from America, where the short-coupled breed is best suited for lateral trotting, a special ground-covering gait known as ‘pacing’. Although trotting is a hugely popular in Canada, the US, France and Australia, it has never caught on in a big way in Britain. I don’t know why, because it can be the most exciting variant of horse racing there is, from a spectator point of view.
My first visit to the trotters (no pun intended) gave us a good day’s sport, with advice from the excellent landlord of the Lion pub in Llanbister, Ray Thomas (also a trotter owner and skilled builder). The trotting fraternity, who unlike the point-to-point punters, tend not to wear a lot of tweed, were very welcoming and invited me to autograph their mobile bar, a first for me. I haven’t bought a trotter for myself yet, but I’m thinking about it; even if it never won, the manure could come in useful for the dozens of rose trees that proliferate around our Abbey garden.
While pressing on with my book, I had to prepare once again for my annual pantomime. My more or less regular date with Captain Hook took place for the 2009-2010 season in the Sunderland Empire, a splendid old, 1,9oo-seater Matcham Theatre. Carol came up to do wardrobe and we were billeted at the Marriot Hotel on the sea front at Roker where we soon settled in.
One night we got back from the theatre to find that all the furniture in our room had been changed. The familiar tables and three chairs in the bay window overlooking the windswept coast and grey, whiteflecked North Sea, just down from where they’d dumped the bodies out at sea in Get Carter, the comfortable armchairs and sofa were all gone, and had been replaced by inferior substitutes. The bed at least seemed the same but we looked at each other and wondered if maybe we’d gone mad and we were in the wrong room or had got caught up in some kind of time warp.
I shook my head. Was I in an episode of the X Files? I thought I’d better go down to reception and ask. On the landing I encountered a man I hadn’t seen before, dressed in an anonymous grey suit, evidently with other things on his mind and wires sprouting discreetly from one ear as he cursorily looked me up and down.
More apprehensive now, I pressed the button for the lift. Like any CSI addict I was expecting it to open to reveal the corpse of a young woman with no discernible cause of death and an aroma of something inexplicable, like liquorice.
The red lights winking above the door told the lift was on its way up: one, two, three, four – a pause, a rattle and the doors slid open. No corpse.
I tried to rein in my paranoia; I got into the lift and descended to the lobby. As the doors opened, I saw another pale-faced man in a dull suit peering at me from over his paper. This man looked distinctly suspicious. ‘Good evening,’ he said, continuing to regard me closely.
I made my way to the reception desk, where an unfamiliar young woman lurked.
‘Excuse me,’ I sa
id, trying to disguise a nervous tremor. ‘I notice that the furniture in my room has been changed and not entirely for the better.’
‘Oh... Just a moment?’ the girl said, with what I gather is called the interrogative upward inflection. ‘Could I have your name, please?’
‘Challis.’
‘And how long have you been staying with us?’
‘Several weeks.’
She tapped away on a keyboard and gazed blankly at the screen in front of her. ‘I’m afraid I have no record of your credit-card details.’
‘No, you wouldn’t have. I’m here for the duration of the pantomime and it was agreed that you wouldn’t need them for all that time,’ I said, beginning to feel quite grumpy.
‘Oh, no? I’ve been looking in the wrong place? We’re all at sixes and sevens at the moment – you’ll never guess – we’ve got royalty staying with us? Here at the Marriot?’ Every sentence ended in the interrogative uplift, as if each was a separate question – very annoying to those of us who weren’t brought up on Neighbours and Home and Away.
‘The whole place is in a state. Some poor couple even had their furniture taken out to put into the royal room?... Oh my God!?’
So that was it. It wasn’t the X-Files. Prince Edward and Sophie had breezed into town as Sophie had charitable connections in Sunderland. They’d decided to stay the night and had nicked all my furniture. This was outrageous, I told the girl.
Word of the outrage somehow got out, perhaps because I told the story so many times and the local press were on to it.
I was asked for a quote about the high-handed attitude of the young royals demanding the best possible treatment and probably raiding Boycie’s room knowing full well he was tricorn-hatted and thighbooted at the Empire to entertain the shoeless, ragged-trousered children of the under-privileged north-east.