The Two of Us

by Sheila Hancock

  Campari’s advice to young actors was, ‘Always do every job that is conceivably possible. Keep working.’ John did his best to stick it out in Liverpool, but he was hating every minute. Auntie Beat went to a matinee of Round the World in Eighty Days. People were ambling in late after the interval, still drinking their tea. She was mortified when John came on for the second half and, seeing this, said, ‘Stop. If they can’t finish in time, neither can I,’ and ordered a cringing assistant stage manager to bring on a mug of tea, which he drank slowly, sitting on the stage, before continuing with the action.

  The final straw was a Christmas production of Brer Rabbit. Barry greatly enjoyed bouncing around as a frisky bunny, but John was far from happy in his furry fox hat. At one point, for some reason, they were jammed in a box together on the stage while children in the audience were being very rude, catcalling and running to the loo. Rising above the insults, the rabbit perkily washed his whiskers, while the fox cowered behind him quietly groaning, ‘I can’t put up with much more of this – this is fucking embarrassing.’ Shortly after, he broke his contract and left the company.

  It was a wise move. He had been spotted by people from Granada Television, but he still had his RADA-induced belief that theatre was the thing. In press interviews he talked of his preference for a live audience. He did a play at the Royal Court in which he was rather grumpy about the size of the part. Lindsay Anderson’s comment to him, that there are no small parts, only small actors, became John’s benchmark, but he didn’t practise what he preached. When television offered him longer parts, the theatre lost its charm.

  Now, back at Highbury Crescent, life was becoming exciting again. When Tom and John were filming The Loneliness of the Long-distance Runner they were picked up in a battered Rolls-Royce, chauffeured by Bert. He would ring with their time to be picked up the next day and on to the message pad would go, ‘Bert rang’. Eventually, Bertrang became his name and the message read ‘Bertrang rang’.

  John dated several attractive girls but he still hankered after Jennifer. He played the field a bit, but with no great pleasure. Being deeply in love was more his style. Tom had an involvement with a delectable French actress who used to sigh, ‘Oh, ze life’, and when they rapped at the bathroom door would enchantingly call, ‘Ahm in ze bas.’ Both were added to their shared repertoire of sayings. John started to go to decent restaurants, and frequented Gerry’s, a haunt for actors, and the more sleazy Jack’s Club, favoured by the Joan Littlewood crowd and Alec Ross.

  1 October

  John had a breathing crisis. I was out. Jo drove him to the Harley Street Clinic in a panic. He couldn’t breathe, was gasping and choking and then she realised he was also laughing. Had seen a restaurant on the Edgware Road with the name ‘The Beirut Express’ in neon lights. The man is extraordinary. They sorted him out at the clinic and all the while he was making them laugh about the incongruity of the café’s name. He’s so bloody brave.

  John and the Highbury gang visited the Seven Stars Restaurant, part of the Lyons Corner House in Coventry Street. It was the most popular place for actors to go and let their hair down after the show, a huge room where you could help yourself to salads or have slices of juicy beef, accompanied by jacket potatoes with the chef’s unique sour cream and chive dressing. The main attraction, however, was not the food but the clientele. Sir John Gielgud held court, scattering his famous faux pas to the delight of all: ‘Oh, I thought you were that dreadful old bore, Ernest Milton.’ It was. John considered the Kenneth Williams and Sheila Hancock table overly theatrical and raucous. Campari knew them all. One night Tom and John were falling about with laughter and, when challenged, did an impersonation of him greeting everyone in the restaurant with royal hand gestures and silently mouthed, ‘Hello, how are you?’

  To Alan Plater, one of Tom’s friends from Hull, the inmates at Highbury Crescent seemed the height of sophistication. That said, he was bemused when he showed them the model of a Jaguar he had bought for his son and they were happy spending hours pushing it round the floor making ‘Vroom, vroom’ noises. Alan was to become one of the leading new TV writers. A grammar school boy like so many of them, he had seen the film Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and it had set his brain on fire to realise he was not the only one to feel like that. Very soon everyone was flattening their vowels and dropping their ‘h’s and claiming to be common; in fact Alan suspected that there were workshops on the subject, but he and his ilk were the real thing. Writers were given their head on television. If they were good they just had to produce an idea on a scrap of paper and they were commissioned. The only stricture was that they were not allowed to say ‘fuck’ or show explicit sex. These restrictions proved no obstacle to truthful drama like Cathy Come Home in 1966 which opened everyone’s eyes to the problem of homelessness. Before Thatcher’s children took over, with their obsession with ratings and budgets, a programme could be any length, no fitting in a slot between adverts. Say what you’ve got to say and then stop was the order of the day. The preoccupation was with quality and the audiences lapped it up. The thought of dumbing down never entered the writers’ heads. They respected their audience. These guys – and they were nearly all men – wanted to change society.

  7 October

  Oh God, here we go. We are bombing Afghanistan. Grow up, you stupid bastards. This is a new kind of war. You don’t beat terrorism by killing people and making more people hate you.

  When the opportunity arose, Alan suggested John for a role in one of his plays. At their first meeting, Alan had found him a bit intimidating, but there was something about John that made Alan want to earn his respect. It seemed important to do so. Granada had already heard of John’s work at Liverpool rep and were delighted to employ him. When Alan watched him work in the studio, he realised that there was a quality that, if you just pointed a camera at it, was very exciting. Over a drink one day, John asked him how to play one of his roles. Alan had no idea how to direct actors so he said, ‘Climb inside and say the words.’ Probably the best note he ever had.

  John had found his métier. From the start, he was completely at home in front of the camera. Authors wanted him for their plays and the plays were ground-breaking and thrilling. He worked for all the top writers emerging in TV. This was where it was at. In spite of the upsurge of production of good British films, by the likes of Schlesinger, Richardson, Lindsay Anderson and Karel Reisz, cinemas were closing. The country was enraptured by the telly and ordinary people were becoming the stuff of drama. Coronation Street had a huge following. The old order changeth, and up there with the changes, loving every minute of it, was the twenty-year-old John Thaw.

  Alan received a summons from the great John Hopkins to write for Z-Cars. It was a Papal blessing for a writer. Based on an idea of Troy Kennedy-Martin, with writers like Troy, Hopkins, Alan Prior and John McGrath, and directors of the calibre of Ken Loach, James McTaggart, Shaun Sutton and Herbert Wise, Z-Cars had changed the face of police series. Gone was dear old Jack Warner plodding the beat and in his place were cars and witty, quick-talking coppers. Alan had the idea of introducing a bent cop, a shocking idea for TV in those days, and what’s more, he wanted it to be one of the regulars. This was deemed impossible, but he was told to write in a new character for a few episodes and then bend him. Thus, in 1962, John played his first TV copper. Not only that, but he met John McGrath and Troy Kennedy-Martin and his brother Ian who were to influence his career in the future, as well as becoming good friends.

  In the same year, Granada chose John for a new series called The Younger Generation. A small team of young actors did a series of plays, at first on stage in the Stable Theatre in Manchester, then on screen. It was a great opportunity which John grabbed with both hands. An article in the press summed it up thus:

  They are the lucky ones. They have grown up in a young actor’s paradise, a time when the men seemed to be old at forty and screenplays were full of teenage villains and twenty-year-old heroes. A time too when di
stinctive accents – which ten years ago might have banned an actor from success – came to be accepted, exploited and finally worshipped. These seven men must bless the day ten years ago when ITV came on the air. Then they were in their teens, most of them still at school, tomorrow they could be idols. They are the young lions of TV.

  Despite his growing success as a ‘young lion’ of TV, John did not completely desert the theatre. He fitted in a couple more plays at the Royal Court in Sloane Square and Women Beware Women at the avant-garde Arts Theatre. He also continued to study other actors’ performances closely, particularly those of his hero, Olivier. He visited Chichester where the embryo National Theatre was performing Uncle Vanya. John wandered backstage to find a crisis unfolding. The Russian musicians had lost their way and the curtain was due to rise. He cowered in a corner and saw his idol, Sir Laurence Olivier, Knight of the Realm, burst into the dressing room of Sybil Thorndike, eighty-seven, venerable Dame of the British Empire, and proclaim: ‘Shit, baby, we’ve lost the band.’

  Shortly after, in 1962, John got his dream job. Not only did he get a very good part in a West End play, Semi-detached, by David Turner, but the star was Laurence Olivier. Unbelievably, he was also called upon to understudy him. It was strange that a twenty-year-old New Wave, ultra-naturalistic actor should worship such a member of the establishment, but John relished Olivier’s flamboyance. He recognised a great actor who could mesmerise an audience and felt privileged to be working with him. He greedily vacuumed up any advice. When Oliver said, ‘Do as I do, baby, amaze yourself at your own daring,’ he did his best to comply. For the rest of his life.

  21 October

  John in Luckington. Me to London on my own for a meeting. First time on my own for some time. Even when he is in hospital I stay with him in a camp bed in his room. Alone, I let go and sobbed with fear and frustration. I would do anything to make him better. If there only was a devil I could sell my soul to I would gladly let him have the poor tattered thing. Anything, anything to have him fit and well.

  Olivier had a curious relationship with his audience. They adored him, but John would watch him spying on them through the curtain before the show, revving himself up by muttering, ‘Fuck pigs.’ Maybe it was because the role was not one of his triumphs. He was off ill for several nights and a terrified John had to go on for him. The groan when it was announced over the tannoy that Olivier was going to be replaced by a little-known whipper-snapper changed to cheers at the end. Truth was, that even though too young for the part, John was more suitable for the role of a working-class man, and it was generally acknowledged that he was better in the role. Heady stuff for a relative beginner. Olivier was endlessly generous to him, as he was many years later when John beat him to a Best Film Actor award. On that occasion John was so embarrassed that he almost refused to go on to the platform and collect his statuette.

  After the fiery dedication of his television work, it was fun, in Semi-detached, to be directed by the louche Tony Richardson. Egged on by James Bolam to wear make-up, John appeared on stage at dress rehearsal smeared inexpertly with theatrical Five and Nine panstick, ‘slap’, as it is somewhat sadistically known. He was greeted by one of Richardson’s shoulder-heaving laughs. The director’s nasal, lock-jawed voice drawled: ‘I mean – I mean – John Thaw, what have you got on your face? You look like Ivor Novello playing a Red Indian.’

  Assistant stage manager on the production was a young woman called Sally Alexander. She had been at RADA a year below John and, like so many of the girls, had worshipped him from a distance. When she walked into the rehearsal room on the first day and saw the leather-jacketed, bejeaned vision she had so fancied, she was overjoyed. A middle-class girl, attractive, long-legged, intelligent but shy, she was just John’s cup of tea, and very soon she was putting in appearances at Highbury Crescent. He was still raw from his loss of Jennifer, but over time he began to trust Sally and eventually to love her. His career was on the up and up. He felt secure enough to contemplate marriage more sensibly. Whereas a couple of years earlier he had said, ‘If ever it becomes clear that I’m not going to make it, I’ll give it up,’ now he was confident of the future. A bewitched woman journalist reported: ‘“What I want,” he said, fixing me with eyes like twin aquamarines set between sideburns, “is to be respected. People are going to think of John Thaw as an actor who played good parts often and well.”’

  The nineteen-year-old Sally respected his talent, was in awe of it, and wanted to help him. Again he was welcomed into a wealthy family with great warmth. When they got engaged John took her to Manchester to meet his family. Although she loved his relations she had never seen such poverty as the flat in Daneholme Road that he had grown up in. There was almost nothing in the room – rudimentary furniture, no flowers, no ornaments, just an HP Sauce bottle on the table. It opened her eyes to a way of life she had never encountered before.

  They had a lavish wedding with the reception in Sally’s father’s house in the Home Counties. There was a marquee in the garden and champagne round the pool. Tom was best man and John’s motley group of friends were bowled over by the glamour of it all. Vic Symonds, Michael Blackham and Ken Parry were impressed but worried about the John they knew embracing the hated bourgeoisie. Auntie Beattie, Charlie and the family travelled down to Berkshire in the van. Beattie forgot her hat and they had to stop off at C&A in Oxford to buy another. They splashed out on lunch at a posh restaurant where the waiters frightened Beattie to death by flambéing her steak. They had never known anything like it. Beattie proclaimed it ‘the day we lived’. Uncle Charlie had to take Ray out of the church because he predictably sobbed his heart out. He was even more heartbroken when, shortly afterwards, he bade John and his father goodbye and emigrated to Australia.

  John’s friend from RADA, Nicol Williamson, behaved, as was his wont, disgracefully at the wedding reception. Auntie Beat and the family watched aghast as he leaped into the pool in his underpants, took them off and squeezed them dry into the champagne glasses waiting to be served. Since his student days, he had become even more of a melodramatic madman after a few – no, a lot – of bevvies. In the year of John’s marriage, 1964, he proved himself a superlative actor in John Osborne’s Inadmissible Evidence, and was considered likely to follow in Olivier’s footsteps. John admired him profoundly and they were devoted friends. Drink could make Nicol cruel and dangerous but entertainingly outrageous. He took to walking off the stage if he didn’t feel like performing, and during a dress rehearsal of Macbeth in Stratford, the revered director Trevor Nunn, who can go on a bit, was dithering about the most effective way to kill one of the Macduff children, when from the stalls Nicol drawled, ‘Why don’t they take him into the wings and you can bore him to death?’

  7 November

  Beautiful autumn weather. Old fart mode again. A picnic with Thermos and papers in the car at Badminton Park.

  One of those conversations you can only have if you have been together for aeons.

  Along the lines of:

  There’s a bit here about . . .

  Yes, I saw it.

  Was he married to your friend . . . ?

  No, that was . . . er you know . . .

  Oh yes . . . er . . . er mudger.

  We met him when you were at the RS –

  No I was at the National with –

  No you weren’t, that was before.

  I tell you – what was his name?

  Began with a P.

  No it didn’t.

  An odd name.

  It’ll come to me in a minute.

  Had a funny voice.

  Er . . .

  Oh bugger, I’ll get it in a minute.

  M – N – P –

  Oh, I give up. He was a rotten actor anyway.

  John and Nicol were part of a group of idealists, left-wing and passionate, who worked together on a wonderful film called The Bofors Gun, directed by Jack Gold, who had come from documentary and news and didn’t know how to direct actors,
but knew how real people behaved. His only note ever was: ‘I don’t believe it,’ which they all understood. (In his later career, after a superlative take John would often mutter, ‘That was almost believable’.) Jack went on to an illustrious career in movies after his beautiful telly feature about Quentin Crisp, The Naked Civil Servant, but being a man of huge integrity, he chose committed work over making a fortune in Hollywood. The film was produced by Tony Garnett, and written by his Z-Cars pal, John McGrath. In the cast were Ian Holm, David Warner, Nicol and John, all of whom later had battles with demons of various sorts, but at the time they were young, hopeful and brilliant.

  Every now and then over the years, Nicol rampaged back into our lives for a while, but – whatever happened to Nicol Williamson? The last time John came across him was in Harley Street, when Nicol walked straight past him. John was convinced Nicol had seen him. Ken Parry waited for Nicol to come out of a stage door in New York, only to be pushed aside like Falstaff by Prince Hal with a curt ‘My public is waiting.’ Nicol was in London when John died and it was in all the papers. He had lunch with one of their mutual friends, but never mentioned John’s death. A brilliant, self-destructive nutter, much loved by John.

  It was not only Nicol that John drifted apart from. He lost touch with most of the other people who had been so important to him in those early years. Some, like Ian Kennedy-Martin, were hurt by his neglect. Others – Ken Parry, Barry J. Gordon, Jennifer, Vic, Geoffrey and Tom – accepted that it was part of the business. Propinquity. Close and affectionate and then move on. Over the years they heard about one another on the grapevine. All except Michael Blackham.