The Two of Us

by Sheila Hancock

  ‘Noblest of men woo’t die?

  Hast thou no care of me, shall I abide

  In this dull world, which in thy absence is

  No better than a sty?’

  13

  It Took Two of Us

  AFTER THE PEACE AND love of the sixties, the seventies were full of violence. Maybe it was always there but television was showing it to us in detail. Marshall McLuhan said, ‘TV brought the reality of war into the comfort of the living room. Vietnam was lost in the living rooms of America, not on the battlefields of Vietnam.’ We saw the results of the My Lai massacre in which GIs inexplicably slaughtered 347 Vietnamese villagers. The Americans saw their men slaughtered in a pointless war. In England, the IRA and the Loyalists were bombing all and sundry. The Yom Kippur war raged in Israel. Arafat ominously threatened the United Nations in New York, ‘Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand.’ Crazed American citizens had killed three good guys: John and Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King. The US landed themselves with the corrupt, foul-mouthed gangster Nixon as president. In the sedate Mall in London someone took a pot shot at Princess Anne in an attempt to kidnap her. Similarly, the Queen was attacked at the Trooping the Colour. Respect for authority was declining fast. The aristocracy were despicable figures of fun. Milords Jellicoe and Lambton cavorted with prostitutes, Lord Lucan killed his nanny having mistaken her for his wife and then disappeared, protected by his gambling cronies. In literature, Solzhenitsyn revealed the horror of the Russian gulags. In films, the violence was reflected in A Clockwork Orange and One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest. British TV was still relatively restrained, yet audiences were not in the mood for pretty entertainment.

  22 February

  My birthday. I found his contract for another year with Carlton, signed, on the piano. We are all distraught. Me numb. Busy, busy, busy, anything to stop thinking. Beautiful bunch of flowers from Highgrove and lovely, handwritten letter from Prince Charles. He is a sweet man. Apparently huge reaction to John’s death. He would be astounded. I don’t want to think. More Shakespeare keeps coming to my mind. Lear on the death of Cordelia. Or is it the Fool?

  ‘No, no, no life,

  Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life,

  And thou no breath at all? Thou’lt come no more,

  Never, never, never, never, never!’

  That’s it exactly.

  Lloyd Shirley, George Taylor and Ted Childs came up with a proposition for a pilot leading to a series based on the police Flying Squad that was more in tune with the times. John’s great friend Ian Kennedy-Martin had thought of it, and considered him ideal casting for the rough, tough leading role of Regan. John was hesitant to do another police series after his supporting role in Z-Cars and the lead in Redcap, but he could see this was different, and Ian and Ted were so persuasive that he chose to take a chance on the pilot show of Regan written by Ian, rather than another series of Thick as Thieves that had been mooted by Clement and Le Frenais. Ian and Dick turned that show into Porridge, starring Ronnie Barker, with spectacular success, so everyone was happy.

  Ted Childs, the producer of Regan, remained John’s mentor for the rest of his life, coming up with most of his best projects, sometimes writing or directing them himself. A quietly spoken man with a smooth line in mockery of himself and the world, he is dedicated to television. Like most of the best, his roots were in documentaries and he is always ahead of the game in his ideas. He could see it was time for a change in police series. When the show erupted into the drawing rooms of Britain in 1974, there were strong protests at its violence, especially from dear old Mary Whitehouse and her warriors, but Ted was more in touch with the real world than they. Regan was a success and a spin-off series was commissioned, called The Sweeney – from Sweeney Todd, rhyming slang for Flying Squad. This division of the police are a hard-hitting lot, who race about in cars, wearing civilian clothes and operating at the coalface of crime. The opening shot of the series set the mood. Regan slams a man up against a wall and snarls, ‘We’re the Sweeney, son, so if you don’t want a kicking . . .’

  Ted assembled an impressive team for the show. Tom Clegg and Terry Green were two of the brilliant directors, and scriptwriters included Trevor Preston, Roger Marshall, Ranald Grahame and Ian’s brother Troy Kennedy-Martin of Z-Cars fame, the writer of the all-time TV classic Edge of Darkness and the film The Italian Job. They were based at Colet Court, a disused school building in Hammersmith where they operated with little interference from the bosses and accountants which abound nowadays. There was not even a script editor to tamper with the scripts until later on they were joined by Chris Burt, who was on their wavelength anyway and would continue to work with John in various capacities for the rest of his life. Dennis Waterman was the inspired casting for John’s sidekick. He was streetwise and larky, on and off the screen. Dennis, who once said, ‘My family are all boxers, except my mum, who’s an Alsatian,’ had a similar childhood to John.

  The writers built on Dennis and John’s friendship to bring a quirky, natural humour to the script. In one episode, they were leaning against a wall after nicking some villains and were asked to fill in with something. John took out a packet of cigarettes, at which Dennis said, ‘Can I have a cigarette?’

  John: ‘I’ve only got one.’

  Dennis: ‘I only want one.’

  Each episode was shot in ten days, so with fights and stunts there was a lot to get in. ‘A kick, bollock and scramble.’ If things got tense during filming, John would leap on a desk to do a cod tap dance and sing what became his theme song:

  The sun has got his hat on,

  Hip hip hip hooray,

  The sun has got his hat on and is coming out to play.

  The day after John accompanied me to Buckingham Palace to receive my OBE in 1974, the crew awaited the arrival of his car. They filmed it coming on to the lot, with someone recording a commentary à la royal broadcasts: ‘There is a car coming into view now. I think it’s him. Yes, yes, it’s him.’

  As John got out they unrolled a red carpet. Stifling his laughter, John gave a V-sign version of the royal hand wave and everyone stood to attention singing an anthem-like version of ‘The Sun Has Got His Hat On’. This clip was played at the end-of-picture party. Their inclination to burst into song and dance inspired Troy to write a scene in a pub with John and Dennis performing a wonderful drunken routine.

  I’m not quite sure what gave Troy the idea of giving Regan a liking for sleeping with ladies naked but for a steel Nazi helmet.

  So once more, Silver Bollocks was in pace with the times. A copper who snarled, ‘Shut it’ and, ‘Put your trousers on, you’re nicked,’ ‘We’re the Sweeney and we haven’t had our dinner yet, so be careful,’ became a folk hero. The Sweeney was anarchic and anti-authoritarian. The policemen were as devious and violent as the crooks. They mocked and disobeyed their superiors, usually in the guise of the superintendent portrayed by Garfield Morgan. They were especially cynical about the law. ‘You nail a villain and some ponced-up, pinstriped barrister screws you up like an old fag packet on a point of procedure and then pops off for a game of squash and a glass of Madeira. He takes home thirty grand a year, and we can just about afford ten days in Eastbourne and a secondhand car.’

  Some high-ranking police officers objected to the portrayal of the Flying Squad as such rogues, but the rank and file loved it. There was outrage at the bad language, although by today’s standards it was pretty mild. Four-letter words being out of bounds, the writers got round the restrictions with colourful phrases like, ‘I’m utterly and abjectly pissed off,’ which in John’s inimitable style sounded pretty rude. One man who accosted him obviously thought so when he said, ‘There’s too much fucking swearing in that fucking programme of yours. I’ve got a little kid at home and I don’t want him sitting in front of the TV listening to that fucking language every fucking night. He’s only fucking eleven.’ When there were complaints about the effect of the violence on young children, Ted Ch
ilds retorted that most of the series’ fans were over sixty. ‘If our critics are right, shopping precincts would be full of marauding, gun-toting senior citizens, beating the rest of us over our heads with their pension books.’

  The Sweeney was shot on film, edited to make it fast and furious. There were some exciting car chases, often done in the old playground round the back of Colet Court. The violence was leavened with humour. For one chase all the cars went backwards. The boys did their own stunts. They mucked in with the crew, working like a co-operative. They had no caravans, so nowhere to change costumes. They had to use the backs of cars and pub toilets, and sometimes crouched behind a wall in the street, which could be awkward when fans descended on them. They got a chair each at the end of the second series. ‘We’ve cracked it, kid.’ There was little time to sit down, however, so tight was the schedule. John learned to conserve his energy. One shot showed him and another policeman arriving after a long chase. The other actor, an earnest young man, used his Method training and ran round the block in preparation. John assessed the size and length of the shot and when the panting Brando-aspirant arrived, stepped in to join him at the last minute. At rushes the next day, John’s acted exhaustion looked much more real, with the added bonus that, unlike his wheezing fellow actor, you could hear what he was saying.

  24 February

  He was my whole life. Everything was in reference to him. Without him I don’t exist. I can’t bear this crippling pain. I can’t write it down. No words. My mind and body are paralysed.

  ‘His life was gentle, and the elements

  So mix’d in him that Nature might stand up

  And say to all the world, “This was a man!”’

  The Bible’s useless, I am searching my Shakespeare for comfort.

  Filming the shows involved long hours of gruelling physical work, not to mention the mental exhaustion of learning lines every night. They needed to unwind at the end of the day. Their hostelry of choice, as strangely it had been with Alec, was a grubby pub in Hammersmith, near the studio, called The Red Cow. John was not really a pub man but he needed a drink and he enjoyed the company.

  Not always, however. Nobody was interested in serious debate after a hard day’s slog. During the election of 1976, John was pontificating on how they should vote. Dennis goaded him, ‘Why do all you people with big motors vote Labour?’ and turned his attention back to the performance of the seedy stripper writhing around on the pub floor. During the dance a discarded cigarette stuck to her buttock. Political discussion was further hampered when Dennis challenged everyone to bet on how long it would take to drop off. John was incensed: ‘You bloody stupid sods. I’m discussing the future of the country and you’re worried about a fag end on a girl’s arse.’

  As the viewing audience grew to nineteen million, it became less easy for John to go to The Red Cow or anywhere else in public. Redcap had turned him into an ‘I know that face, who are you?’ kind of actor. Or the more existential, ‘Are you anyone?’ (Better than one I later received: ‘Weren’t you Sheila Hancock?’) Now, however, there was no mistaking him. Or rather, they did completely mistake him. They prodded and pulled at and tried to provoke someone they thought was an aggressive in-your-face kind of guy. The man that cringed from their familiarity was a guarded person, who turned his back on trouble. The aggression was there, but firmly suppressed except when he was being Regan. It was one of several images imposed on John, which stemmed from the characters he portrayed rather than his own nature.

  I was used to public recognition from The Rag Trade, although on nothing like the scale John found himself suddenly plunged into. When he was challenged by men in The Red Cow, usually showing off in front of their girlfriends, and didn’t respond, things could turn ugly. I knew how volatile the public’s reaction could be. I told John about a time, when Alec was ill, when I had done a show in Gloucester and had to change trains at Swindon. I was slumped on a seat on the railway platform, contemplating the latest dire bulletin on Alec’s condition. A porter yelled across from the opposite platform, ‘Cheer up, Sheila, come on, give us a laugh.’ I was able to raise no more than a feeble smile, incapable of merry badinage. Having laid himself on the line as a friend of the stars, the porter felt insulted by my lack of response in front of his mates and a few other waiting passengers. Very soon his chirpiness had turned to insults in which he was joined by some of the others. ‘Well, I don’t think you’re very funny anyway. Who does she think she is? Stuck-up cow.’ And on and on.

  John began to get piles of mail from fans and was bewildered by their devotion to a stranger. One in particular presented a problem. He received twenty-page letters and long rambling tapes from a woman called Eileen. They got more and more odd, culminating in her accusing him of fathering her child, presumably by post, and informing the police, her local MP, the Prime Minister and the Queen of the happy event. She changed her name by deed poll to Thaw and took to journeying to London and lying in wait for him. He always avoided her. When he starred in Tom Stoppard’s Night and Day in 1978, I suggested that if she came to see the play, he should invite her backstage and talk kindly to her, showing that he was not Jack Regan, with whom she was in love, but an ordinary bloke. The visit failed. Somehow she slipped past the stage doorman and was lurking behind the door of his dressing room when he came offstage. She was tiny and wearing a red mac. He leaped out of his skin when he saw what he thought was the homicidal dwarf from the film Don’t Look Now. She continued to haunt him for many years, as well as threatening my life. Then, suddenly, the communications stopped dead with no explanation. She lived in Hyde and was always talking about visiting her doctor. Dr Shipman, the mass murderer, was based in Hyde.

  On the whole, John tried his best not to disappoint his fans. On one occasion he played a whole charity football match with a broken arm rather than let Regan be stretchered off. He fended off female embraces as politely as possible. When approached in a supermarket he was known to say to autograph hunters, ‘Sorry, no,’ and if they persisted he would snap, ‘Fuck off.’ If I remonstrated with him, pointing out that he was dependent on the public so should at least be polite, he would explain his reluctance: ‘I don’t want to have to be Mr Nice Guy all the time. I do my job, now leave me alone.’ Eventually he stopped going to public places unless he had to.

  25 February

  Rushed cremation to avoid the press. Sad little nothing ceremony. Strauss’s last song sung by his beloved Schwarzkopf, a bit of the Elgar Cello Concerto, some Charlie Parker and silence. Flowers and leaves from the garden to put on his coffin. Just the family. No priest, no palaver. We will do more later. Then home to lunch with the people who work at the house. Suddenly desperate to be alone so I asked the family to go back to London and leave me. When they’d gone, I howled like an animal, prowling round, looking for traces of him. I can still smell him but he has absolutely gone. Utter despair at his absence, his total absence. I feel as though a whole part of me has been hacked away, leaving a bleeding gaping wound. I sit, lie on the floor, crouch, trying to stop the physical pain of it. I weep and weep and weep. I can’t do anything without him. Watch TV, have a cup of tea, cook, it is all linked with him. I’m talking to him as if he were there, but he’s not, he’s so not.

  The children could not hide away. Joanna was too young to be riled at being called the Teeny Sweeney, but Abigail and Ellie Jane found the limelight disconcerting. They were not allowed to watch the show as it was too late and, I thought, too violent for nine- and ten-year-olds. It could be disturbing to see your dad beating people to a pulp, not to mention hopping into bed with nubile women who were definitely not their mum. This put them at a disadvantage when kids in the playground discussed the finer points of last night’s punch-up or hummed the theme tune at them in the corridors. Harry South’s music contributed hugely to the success of the show as, later, did Barrington Phelong’s Morse theme. It was a show everyone talked about next morning in the bus queue and, whilst giving the girls street cr
ed, it was confusing to equate the man slaving over the Sunday roast with the title of Thinking Woman’s Crumpet. Unusually for such a popular show it was a critical success; more importantly to John, it was admired by his peers. John was the first to win the highly esteemed BAFTA Best Actor award, normally reserved for weighty drama and venerable actors, for a prime-time series.

  The awards mounted up for the programme and John. It was a mixed blessing. He was honoured but his sweaty hand would cling to mine as we walked up the red carpet between baying photographers and fans. The brevity of his terrified acceptance speeches was welcomed in the endless evenings, if sometimes appearing a little graceless. The most enjoyable accolade Dennis and John received was to be invited on to the Morecambe and Wise Christmas Show. In return they persuaded the two comics to appear in an episode of The Sweeney. A great deal of liquor was imbibed, before, after and during the filming. The script was peppered with inspired ad-libs from Eric, and Ted Childs had difficulty in bringing them to order. He frequently arrived on set to find everyone ‘rolling about laughing with their legs in the air, having a lovely party but not doing a lot of work’. When eventually John reeled home he would recount Eric’s latest bons mots with glee, and the more he fell about with laughter, the less I was amused.