The Mammoth Book of Losers

by Karl Shaw

It was his dandy-ish dress sense that attracted the most curiosity. By day, he always wore furs, even in the hottest weather, and always carried with him a cane with a huge diamond-studded handle. In the evenings, he went about in a pale-blue military overcoat covered with braids, tasselled Hessian boots and wore on his head a brightly coloured bandana underneath a large cocked hat. He was covered from head to foot with diamonds – diamond buttons on his shirts, diamond buckles on his trousers and boots – giving him the alternative nickname of Diamond Coates. He travelled around Bath in a vast, heavily gilded coach shaped like a giant scallop shell, drawn by a pair of white horses. The carriage door bore its owner’s crest – a life-size cock with outspread wings below the motto: “While I live, I’ll crow”.

  Coates put in an appearance every morning in a local coffee room for breakfast. The diarist Pryse Gordon was there one day and recorded seeing him:

  He shortly attracted my notice by rehearsing passages from Shakespeare during his morning meal, with a tone and gesture extremely striking both to the eye and the ear; and, though we were strangers to each other, I could not help complimenting him on the beauty of his recitations, although he did not always stick to his author’s text. On one occasion, I took the liberty of correcting a passage from Romeo and Juliet. “Aye,” said he, “that is the reading, I know, for I have the whole play by heart; but I think I have improved upon it.”

  About three months after his arrival in Bath, the local theatre manager overheard Coates reciting Shakespeare in the coffee house over breakfast. On discovering that Coates was very partial to the role of Romeo and even kept his own costume for the part (which he claimed he’d often played back in Antigua), the manager offered him the chance to perform in the play in Bath.

  He made his début on 9 February 1809. A handbill advertised the event: “ROMEO, BY AN AMATEUR OF FASHION”. The show sold out. Everyone in Bath wanted to know who the mysterious, dusky stranger in their midst was. Word had also leaked out from the rehearsals that Coates’s interpretation of Shakespeare was “different”.

  From the moment he made his entrance as Romeo, it became obvious to everyone that they were witnessing a very special talent. He bounded to the front of the stage wearing a huge grin, then took a “bow”, which involved thrusting his head forward and bobbing it up and down several times. His stage costume was like nothing worn by a Romeo before or since: a sky-blue silk cloak, red pantaloons and a large cravat. On his head he wore a huge, curly Charles the Second-style wig, topped with an opera hat sprouting ostrich feathers.

  The entire costume was covered from head to toe with so many diamonds that he sparkled like a disco mirror ball. It was so tightly fitted that he could barely walk and he jerked across the stage like a mannequin. He even looked awkward when he was standing still and not delivering lines. During the first Act, his pants burst, revealing a slash of white silk underwear, visible every time he turned round. At first the audience thought this might be part of the act – an intentional spoof on Romeo and Juliet. But then it slowly dawned on everyone that Coates was oblivious to the wardrobe malfunction and the reaction it was getting. There were roars of laughter from the audience, although some people in the balcony booed and threw fruit and there were cries of “Off! Off!”

  During the balcony scene in the middle of Juliet’s speech, Coates produced a snuffbox. Someone in the audience shouted, “Romeo, give us a pinch!” Coates strode over and offered his snuff. For the rest of the scene the spectators’ roars of laughter drowned out the actors’ voices.

  The audience sat open-mouthed as Romeo appeared wielding a crowbar, trying to open Juliet’s tomb. Then, when Romeo is supposed to carry Juliet’s corpse away in sorrow and grief, according to a local theatre critic, Coates “dragged the unfortunate Juliet from the tomb, much in the same manner as a washerwoman thrusts into her cart the bag of foul linen”, and dumped her on the stage.

  The highlight of the show was Romeo’s death scene. He produced a silk handkerchief from his top pocket with a mighty flourish and dusted the stage with it. Then he carefully laid down the handkerchief, placed his plumed hat on it and arranged himself on top of the hat. The audience roared again. Coates, bemused by the reaction, addressed them directly: “Ah, you may laugh, but I do not intend to soil my nice new velvet dress upon these dirty boards.” His “death” lasted for several minutes, as he gasped and grimaced, writhing on the floor.

  Even now, no one was quite sure what they were watching. Was it comic genius or the buffoonery of a talentless idiot? Fearing the worst, the theatre manager dropped the curtain. For a minute or so, the audience sat in stunned silence, then they broke into wild applause. Coates was very pleased with his stage début.

  Word soon spread that “Romeo” Coates would more or less guarantee a sell-out audience. If that didn’t persuade theatre managers to book him, he would simply bribe them. He toured the British Isles in what was to become his signature role, creating mayhem wherever he performed. Theatre-goers travelled great distances to see for themselves if he really was as bad as his notices.

  In Cheltenham, when it got to the bit where Romeo is supposed to exit after a scene, Coates remained on stage, crawling around on all fours. “Come off, come off,” hissed the prompter to no reply. After a while, Coates replied loudly that he had lost a diamond knee-buckle and would only leave the stage when he had found it.

  The shows were so unpredictable that managers had the police on hand in case the spectators got out of control. If Coates thought the rowdiness was getting out of hand, he would challenge the audience directly. But nothing, not even the sound of his audience baying with laughter during a death scene, could put him off his stride, or dissuade from his belief that he was, in his own words, “the best actor in the business”.

  In 1811, Coates moved to London and took up residence in the Strand, where his shell-shaped carriage caused a commotion, providing him with another nickname – Curricle Coates. He became the subject of frequent newspaper gossip and his notoriety as a rich bachelor attracted a large posse of hangers-on and many begging letters. Just as he was oblivious to criticism of his acting talents, he was also a soft touch when it came to money. The more pitiful the begging letter, the more generous he was. One day, a poor widow approached him for help and he immediately offered a benefit performance. By means of rehearsal, Coates arranged a one-night stand at the Theatre Royal in Richmond. On 4 September 1811, Coates played Romeo to a packed house. This time London’s rowdies – the Regency equivalent of football hooligans – came prepared with armfuls of ripe fruit, but when it came to Romeo’s death several of them were so convulsed with laughter that a doctor in the audience had them removed from the theatre for first-aid treatment.

  Coates appeared at the Haymarket Theatre on 9 December 1811 in the role of Lothario in Nicholas Rowe’s gloomy tragedy The Fair Penitent. Every role was a challenge to him, but this was a particularly difficult part that he had never attempted before. The Haymarket had to turn thousands of people way and touts were offering tickets at an outrageous £5 a seat. Among those who were lucky enough to get in were some friends of the Prince Regent, including Baron Ferdinand de Géramb, who had become an ardent Coates fan. Coates came on stage and made a special bow to the Baron, which seems to have needled the crowd and there followed a cacophony of whistles and boos. Despite the hostile atmosphere in the house, Coates blundered blithely on but, by the end of the fourth Act, the heckling was so bad that the actors couldn’t hear their lines. A review of the evening described how Coates amused himself during the interruptions by standing centre stage and twirling his sword, which “he did with wonderful dexterity”. The other actors gave up and walked off. Coates, finding himself alone, “gave another speech, made a very fine bow, and left the stage, snapping his fingers at the audience”. The curtain was brought down and, after more jeers and catcalls, the audience filed out, disappointed.

  Although audiences loved Coates’s fearless interpretation of the classics, the critics
were less kind, especially in London. In January 1813, Coates appeared again as Lothario twice at the Haymarket. Both performances were well attended and passed without incident, apart from the usual riotous laughter, although one critic speculated later that “a baboon” or “a bear, a Newfoundland dog, or a full-sized tom cat” might have done a better job in Coates’s role.

  Coates performed Lothario again at the Haymarket on 24 February, to a standing-room-only crowd. The Rowdies were out in full force again and the heckling was so fierce that, before the curtain rose, three members of the cast came out to address the audience and beg for courtesy. The heckling abated briefly until Coates appeared. The actor playing Horatio left the stage in disgust.

  Coates, who by this time was styling himself “the celebrated Philanthropic Amateur of Fashion”, appeared again at the Haymarket in April, returning to his favourite role, Romeo, to another full house. The audience reaction veered from raucous laughter to outright abuse. The actress playing Juliet was so traumatized by the experience that she clung to the set with her arms fastened around a stage pillar until the row died down. When the duel between Romeo and Tybalt was about to start, Coates was struck by a flying bantam cock, which one of the Rowdies had smuggled into the theatre. Coates grabbed the bird and threw it off stage, then continued duelling as though nothing had happened and completed the scene. When it got to the bit where Romeo kills Paris, as Paris lay “dead” on the stage he was jarred back to life when he was hit on the nose by a flying orange. Paris got to his feet and stalked off in a huff. At the next production of The Fair Penitent at the Haymarket, the Rowdies again bombarded the character’s corpse as they had Paris’s dead body, hoping to get the same reaction.

  Despite public ridicule and critical panning, Coates continued to perform on the stage until 1816, but the public had long since tired of laughing at him. The Celebrated Amateur of Fashion retired from public performing at the age of 44.

  As his star faded, so did the remainder of his inheritance. In 1830, he was forced to sell his ubiquitous diamond and ruby-encrusted sword at auction. The following year, his finances were further reduced by slave revolts in his native Antigua. He got married and went to live in France, but returned to England in 1848 after reaching an arrangement with his creditors.

  On 15 February, Coates was on his way home from a concert at Drury Lane when he realized he’d forgotten his opera glasses. He had barely dismounted from his famous “curricle” when he was run over by a taxi cab. He died only yards from the doors of his beloved theatre.

  “Is This a Banana Skin I See Before

  Me?” Most Accident-Prone Show

  There are two superstitions attached to Shakespeare’s Macbeth. The first is that it is bad luck to refer to the play by name, except during rehearsal or performance; to many, it is “the Scottish play” or simply “that play”. The second is that the play itself brings bad luck to cast and crew. If the stories are to be believed, in its 400-year history it has definitely been dogged by some unnecessarily tragic events.

  Beginning with its first performance in 1606, Shakespeare himself was forced to play Lady Macbeth when Hal Berridge, the boy designated to play the lady, became mysteriously feverish and died. One version has it that Shakespeare played the role so badly that he forbade his fellow actors to mention “that play”, thus starting the tradition of not referring to it by name. When King James I saw the play, he was so spooked by the “realistic” witches that he banned it for five years.

  When performed in Amsterdam in 1672, the actor playing Macbeth substituted a real dagger for the blunted stage version and killed Duncan with it in full view of the audience.

  As Lady Macbeth, Sarah Siddons was nearly ravaged by a disapproving audience in 1775. In the same role, Dame Sybil Thorndike was almost strangled by an actor in 1926, and Diana Wynyard sleepwalked with her eyes closed off the rostrum in 1948, falling fifteen feet into the pit.

  In August 1896, the London illustrated newspaper The Sketch reported that Mr Gordon Craig, playing the part of Macduff, got carried away and attacked his fellow actor “with such an excess of zeal that the unfortunate Macbeth suffered somewhat severely about the head”. Macbeth, however, gave as good as he got and the stage fight cost Macduff both of his thumbs.13

  In 1937, when Laurence Olivier took on the role of Macbeth, a twenty-five-pound stage weight crashed down within an inch of him, breaking his sword, which flew into the audience and hit a man who later suffered a heart attack. During the same run, Old Vic founder Lilian Baylis died on the night of the final dress rehearsal.

  During the 1942 Macbeth production headed by John Gielgud, three actors (Duncan and two witches) died and the costume and set designer committed suicide.

  In a 1953 production starring Charlton Heston, a sudden gust of wind blew flames from a realistically staged battle scene on to Heston. He was severely burned because someone had soaked his tights in kerosene.

  Two fires and seven robberies plagued the 1971 version starring David Leary.

  During the 1980 Macbeth at the Old Vic, Peter O’Toole unexpectedly exited the stage smack into a wall.

  In the 1981 production at the Lincoln Centre, New York, J. Kenneth Campbell, who played Macduff, was mugged soon after the play’s opening.

  In 1990, at Hampstead’s Pentameters Theatre, the plastic retractable dagger failed to retract and Lady Macduff (Dr Annabel Joyce) had to be rushed to hospital.

  The biggest single disaster associated with Macbeth occurred in 1849 when two rival actors staged competing productions in New York. The British Shakespearian actor William Charles Macready was booked to perform the play at the Astor Place Opera House; meanwhile, American-born Edwin Forrest was also scheduled to perform in Macbeth a few blocks away. Forrest’s fans, whipped up by the newspapers’ anti-English sentiment, went into full riot mode. About 20,000 people amassed outside the opera house, tossing rocks through windows and attempting to set it on fire. National Guardsmen fired on the crowd, injuring rioters and innocent bystanders. By the time the riot was finally brought under control, more than twenty people had died and a further thirty-one people had been injured.

  Least Successful One-Man Show

  On 7 December 1974, only one person turned up at the 225-seat Centurion Theatre, Carlisle, to see David Gooderson’s solo performance of The Castaway, a play based on the life of the hermit/poet William Cowper.

  The sole audience member outnumbered the cast – Mr Gooderson had cried off with a heavy cold.

  “Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.”

  Arguably the worst piece of economic analysis in history from Irving Fisher, economics professor at Yale University in 1929, days before the Wall Street Crash.

  Least Successful Opening

  In the early 1980s, The Plymouth Theatre Company toured the West Country with a production of The Golden Pathway Annual with a company of just six actors learning twenty parts between them and their stagehands taking ten hours to erect the scenery. Before they took their play to a 200-seater theatre in Ashburton, a small market town about twenty miles from Plymouth, they blitzed the surrounding area with free tickets and posters as part of their publicity campaign.

  When the curtain went up on their first performance, only a single seat was occupied, by a man in the stalls. At the end of the play, he applauded loudly and left.

  The theatre’s administrator, Wendy Lost, was optimistic: “Last time we went there, with The Winslow Boy, nobody turned up at all!”

  “It will be gone by June.”

  Variety magazine passing judgment on rock ’n’ roll, January 1955

  Least Successful Audience Participation

  At an open-air charity performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in the grounds of Woburn Abbey, a group of theatre lovers, including the Marquis and Marchioness of Tavistock, were startled when a character dressed as Adolf Hitler ran on stage and demanded, “Vas ist going on?”

  The Hitler impersonator, Ian
Hinchcliffe, later told local magistrates that he had been invited to a fancy dress ball and had been wandering around for several hours trying to find it. “I thought I had found it at last,” he explained.

  Chairman of the bench, Mr Herbert Dell, fined him £10, warning him, “We don’t stand for this sort of thing in Woburn.”

  “Democracy will be dead by 1950.”

  John Langdon-Davies, A Short History of the Future, 1936

  Least Successful Animal Act

  America’s only performing cat act, the Rock Cats Trio, features cats on guitar, piano and drums, as well as a tightrope-walker, barrel-roller and skateboarder, among other moggy performers.

  Manager of the Rock Cats, Samantha Martin, admitted to the Chicago Tribune that the cats’ music “sucks”. She elaborated, “When they’re playing, they’re not even playing the same thing.” Martin added that she had two back-up drummers because her regular drummer was prone to “walking off in a huff . . . this is why you don’t see trained cat acts . . . the managers can’t take the humiliation.”

  “And for the tourist who really wants to get away from it all, safaris in Vietnam.”

  Newsweek, predicting popular holidays for the late 1960s

  Most Disappointing Magic Act

  The American magician William Robinson performed under the stage name Chung Ling Soo, “the marvellous Chinese conjuror”. The stage persona, like his stage act, was an illusion. He didn’t have a drop of Chinese blood in his body but maintained his role as an Oriental scrupulously, always performing in silence and speaking only through his personal interpreter when talking to journalists.

  His final performance was at the Wood Green Empire in north London on 23 March 1918. The theatre was buzzing in anticipation as Chung Ling Soo prepared to perform his trademark trick, which involved catching two bullets fired directly at him by his assistants.