It was Thursday afternoon and we were needed for the technical run-through, but we had to race off in a taxi to hospital instead. Meantime the rumour went round the studio that we’d had a real fight and Graham was quite badly hurt. As we were dashing into the hospital, with Graham bleeding profusely from above the eye, a woman came up to us and asked us for our autographs! Luckily, the medical staff were able to stitch him up quickly and we were even back in time for the run-through, though only just. With a bit of make-up to hide the wound, he carried on.
Things seemed to happen to Graham. In the days when each episode was shot straight through without a break, he had a scene in which he had to enter the Rover’s, order a pint of beer, play the scene and at the end the stage direction was: ‘He finishes his pint and leaves.’ He then had to dash off behind the set to the next scene, which was a love scene with his girlfriend. In the meantime letters had been coming in saying that the head on the beer in the Rover’s did not look real and the prop man had taken this very much to heart.
The dress rehearsal went well, as Graham did not actually drink the beer. When we came to do the show, he entered the Rover’s, ordered a pint of beer, played the scene, finished his pint of beer and left. As he dashed off for the next scene he threw up all over the back of the set, then played the love scene with his girlfriend.
Apparently, in his eagerness to make the beer look real, the prop man had made it out of gravy browning and soda water. Never again!
As I have said, one of the more flamboyant characters in the cast was Pat Phoenix, who played Elsie Tanner. She was always lively and sparkling with energy and was an accomplished actress. Unfortunately, quite early on we clashed over how to play a scene. Ken was confronting Elsie Tanner and Ena Sharples, who had been ganging up on his wife, Val, and the idea was that they should be stunned into silence as he told them both off and then stormed out. Pat didn’t think that Elsie would just stand there and take this from a young chap like Ken and suggested that she would say, ‘Oh, go on, get off!’ or something like that as he made his exit. This completely ruined the dramatic moment as it had been written but unfortunately the director was influenced by Pat.
After that she had even more ideas for the scene and as we were getting ready to run through it again she came up to me and suggested that I should pause at the door so that she could pick up an ashtray and threaten to throw it at me. This was the last straw. I said, ‘No, I will not. You know exactly what you have done to this scene. You are being totally unprofessional, and you know it!’
In the end the scene was neither one thing nor the other. Pat did not talk to me for two years. The feud was so subtle that I don’t think that any other members of the cast were even aware of it. It was awkward, though, and I’m glad to say that finally we did make it up. On her birthday one year she decided to hold a party at her house. She had invited the whole cast apart from me, but that afternoon we were shooting a scene together and as we were waiting to go into the Rover’s, she said, without looking at me, ‘If you want, you can come tonight.’
‘Thank you, Pat,’ I replied.
That night at the party we talked a lot and got on well. The incident was never mentioned again and we put it behind us. As time went on we gained a lot of respect for each other and in later years, when Pat became interested in spiritual matters and joined the Rosicrucians (a mystical organisation named after the Rosy Cross, which you can follow on the Internet or by post) she would come to talk to me almost every day. I really enjoyed these discussions and they went on until she left the show. Then she lost interest in the Rosicrucians and took up with politics via her relationship with Cherie Blair’s father, the actor Tony Booth.
I always had quite a serious attitude towards things and this came out in the early days of the show when we started a poker school. I couldn’t just go and chuck some money in and have a bit of fun, as some people did; I had to get books on the game and really work on it. I even had a special bag of money that was my poker money, and if I was ever down at the end of the week I was really cross with myself. In the end I actually got quite good and so did Alan Rothwell, who played my brother. We thought we were so good that we went along to a professional poker school at a club in Manchester, the Cabaret Club, to watch the games. One Saturday night I was determined to sit in. I took along £60, which was quite a lot of money in those days, and ended up playing with a silent trio of professional gamblers. I was out of my depth and I knew it. Poker is a game of percentages and you learn to make the best of a good hand; fortunately, I had one really good hand and managed to leave the table in the early hours of the morning with exactly the same amount of money that I’d arrived with. But I felt absolutely drained. That was enough for me. After that I lost the desire to play, but learned the lesson that if you must play, make sure that you play with people of your own level.
Later, the cast moved on to play bridge. I found that very enjoyable and became a good instant teacher of the game.
A system for generating the storylines was established fairly early on and, broadly speaking, it is still followed today. About 14 writers, about three or four script editors and a producer form a storyline committee and create the overall storylines for the next three months. Then the script editors break those down into episodes and each episode is handed to one of the writers to put the dialogue in. So those who do the dialogue have been involved in the creation of the storyline and no single writer is ever responsible for the overall continuity. It’s a very good system. To ensure continuity there is also a ‘bible’ listing all the characters’ past histories.
As time passed by, playing Ken became second nature to me. When you’re on the stage, going from play to play, you have to understand a new character all the time and then take that character through a set of circumstances. Actors in a serial have to take their character through many different sets of circumstances. Working on Coronation Street for so long, I obviously got to know Ken really well.
Also, Coronation Street was always character-based rather than story-based. That was one of its strengths. So people knew, more or less, how the characters were going to react. Ken was the intellectual, the university graduate from within the street, and there was a time when the writers used to portray him as intellectually arrogant and a bit pompous. He was a schoolteacher and he was living a very proper and upright life – well, some of the time! I wasn’t like him – I was from a middle-class background and Ken wasn’t; I’d have a go at most things, but Ken wouldn’t. Fortunately, all I had to do was like him, understand him, believe him and, as I’ve said, take him through the circumstances that were written for him. And that was fine. That I could do.
In the early days a lot of people used to confuse me with Ken, however. At that time we weren’t allowed to give interviews or appear on celebrity talent shows or variety shows and so on, so people couldn’t see what we were really like and often believed we were like our characters. Now those rules are much more relaxed and there are so many behind-the-scenes features anyway that it’s less of a problem. But it does seem that people will always believe that if you’re playing someone there must be a bit of them in you.
In a way, there was, because later on Ken played the trumpet. The first occasion was at a Christmas concert at Ena Sharples’s mission hall and the second was when Ernie Bishop (Stephen Hancock) formed a band. It consisted of Ernie on piano, Billy Walker (Ken Farrington) and me on trumpet and Alan Howard (Alan Browning) on the guitar. We played ‘Yellow Bird’ in front of 16 million people. But I have to admit, I played as badly as ever.
Years later Tony Warren told me how I had landed the part of Ken. Apparently he had seen me when I had been recording Marking Time and had brought the casting director, Jose Scott, out to see me. Their minds had been made up on the spot.
I was very grateful for it. Suddenly I was famous, fêted and wanted for personal appearances. People wanted my opinions, I could get tables in restaurants and all sorts of invitations came my wa
y. There were lots of advantages and almost a feeling of safety in being well known. Initially it was highly enjoyable.
Everything seemed to be going very well. The year after Coronation Street was first broadcast was when I married an actress I had met at Nottingham Rep.
‘The government of your life is a matter that lies entirely between God and yourself, and when your life is swayed and influenced by any other source you are on the wrong path.’
On the surface I had everything anyone could want. Coronation Street was more popular than ever. I was also able to take time out to do some theatre work – Richard Gordon’s Doctor in Love at the Alhambra Theatre, Bradford, and John Bowen’s Disorderly Women in Manchester and London – and received some very good reviews. I was famous, had some money, the obligatory flash sports car and was free to do whatever I wanted. I should have been happy, but I was not. In fact I felt completely lost.
Whether my state of mind had anything to do with it or not I don’t know, but it was around this time that I had an unnerving experience at our house in Islington. In a spirit of experimentation, we decided to have a table-rapping session one evening with a group of friends. We wrote out the alphabet and the words ‘yes’ and ‘no’ on scraps of paper and laid them out in a circle on the table. Then, each placing a finger on the bottom of an upturned wine glass in the centre of the circle, we asked if anyone was there.
The glass started to move very positively and to give clear messages. After a while it became more energetic and started to spell out ‘Kill,’ ‘Kill,’ ‘Kill.’ The speed and strength of the movement were alarming.
After this had gone on for a few moments we asked if anyone was there.
‘Yes.’
With amazing clarity we were told that it was a man who had lived in the attic of the house. He had been an ostler (the man who looked after the horses in the days before motor cars) and had been unfaithful to his wife, who had found out and murdered him.
Suddenly the glass rushed around again, spelling, ‘Kill her,’ ‘Kill her.’
We were really getting quite frightened by now, but then one foolhardy participant took it further.
‘Can you appear?’
‘Yes,’ came the answer, to our great alarm.
‘When?’
‘At midnight.’
At that some of us wanted to stop. But my friend persevered.
‘Where?’
‘In the mirror in the hall.’
That was it. We all stopped and most of the company made a hasty departure. Of those who were left, none went into the hall at midnight, or at all that night. It was a scary experience and not one I would wish to repeat because you can contact entities that are stuck on the astral-plane looking for opportunities to get into this one and you have idiots and bad people there just as you have anywhere else. You are not going to be getting angels or higher beings on that level, you are only going to attract the lower entities and, believe me, that’s not good. Such beings are earth bound spirits who can be vicious and who refuse to ask for the help that is readily available to them. You can get some information from them, but it’s not reliable and you open up a channel which is best not opened.
After this the atmosphere changed in the house and it felt much less friendly. The cleaner refused to go into the top flat, which had been the attic. A dog that was visiting the house wouldn’t go into that flat either. We left soon after that. The move had already been arranged, but I was glad to go.
If you want proof of the existence of other realms, don’t try it yourself, as we did. Go to a Spiritualist church. Or, better still, if you want to find out more about spiritual matters, ask your higher self for understanding and see what comes along. Your higher self is always there and you only need to ask – in your mind, don’t speak it – especially before you go to sleep at night. Those thoughts have energy, those thoughts are listened to. It is true prayer. Every thought that is asking for understanding is answered. Your higher being will find a way of getting that answer to you. It may come as a dream, as a thought that comes into your mind, a chance meeting. Remember, there is no such thing as coincidence. It’s also worth knowing that in the next world there are houses, schools and universities – even concerts. It’s just as real as here. What we refer to as dying is really going home. Where we are now is quite a frightening place. Thank God it’s only temporary.
If only I had known all this then, but the simple fact is I did not. I didn’t have a clue. Material success had not brought me happiness – in fact it had made me realize the true emptiness of my life. By the time Coronation Street had been running for ten years, I was at my lowest point. I had never felt so depleted. Indulging my appetites had not satisfied me but drained me physically, emotionally and mentally.
I was still afraid of death and infinity and could take no comfort in what the Church had to offer. I knew that there had to be more to life than this, but what was it? Where was it? How was I ever going to find it?
CHAPTER 9
The Master
‘When the pupil is ready…’
The dream was vivid and full of detail. I was in the ramshackle study of Thomas Maugham, a homeopathic doctor I had met just a week or so earlier at his home in south London. He was seated behind his large roll-top desk surrounded by endless books and papers, just as he had been when I first made his acquaintance. He leaned forward, looked at me closely and said, ‘Why don’t you come and join us, Bill?’
That was all that happened, but the dream was so clear, it stayed with me. I was baffled; quite frankly, I had no idea what to make of it.
The following day I had an appointment to see Dr Maugham in his homeopathic capacity. As I walked into that study he looked at me just as he had in the dream, that half-smile on his face, and said in the calm and rational voice I was to come to know so well, ‘Did you get my message, Bill?’
‘Yes,’ I heard myself reply somewhat feebly.
Then, very simply, Dr Maugham said – much as he had in my dream – ‘You’re very welcome to come and join us, Bill.’
I was stunned. I felt a tingling in my spine. I could hardly believe what I’d just heard. It was absolute evidence to me that things happen on a higher plane beyond our five senses. I was tremendously excited to have experienced something so wonderful. The doctor and I had no discussion about it: we both just knew. That was perhaps the greatest experience of my life – a truly life-changing experience. It moved my understanding up into a higher level and took away all my doubts and fears.
‘Miracles are not contrary to nature, only contrary to what we know about nature.’
And that was how Thomas Maugham – a man I now refer to as ‘the Master’ – came into my life. Some time earlier I had been talking to a friend about how low I was feeling and she told me about a homoeopathic doctor who lived in Dulwich – Dr Maugham. She said that he was an unusual man and was rumoured to be more than just a doctor. She gave me his number and I made an appointment to see him.
His home was a modest private house in a tree-lined road. I rang the bell and the door was opened by an attractive woman who smiled and ushered me into the waiting room. It was quite large, with long benches placed against the walls and in three rows in the middle of the room. I thought that it seemed somewhat excessive for a doctor’s practice.
After a while the woman said the doctor would see me and asked me to go up the stairs, where I would find his study – ‘It’s the room with the door open.’
I duly went up the stairs, through the open door and into one of the most untidy rooms I had ever seen. There were, as I’ve said, piles of books and papers against the walls and on the left-hand side a small curtained area, which I subsequently learned was where the doctor kept his homoeopathic remedies.
Dominating the room was that large roll-top desk, behind which sat a most extraordinary man. He was small, bald and wiry, with a long grey beard and the darkest brown eyes imaginable. Though elderly, he seemed strangely ageless. I had
been told that he was in his nineties, but if it had been said that he was 60 or 200 years old, either would have been believable. This was Dr Maugham.
As I walked towards him his look was penetrating yet gentle. I had the peculiar feeling that he could see into my very soul.
He motioned me to sit down in a chair next to the desk and said in a good clear voice, ‘Why have you come here?’
‘I feel empty – depleted physically, mentally and spiritually,’ I replied.
He stared at me for some considerable time. This should have been unnerving, but it wasn’t. I felt comfortable with him and very safe. Then he stood up and went behind the curtained area, emerging a few minutes later with a small brown bottle from which he tapped a pill into my hand and told me to dissolve it slowly under my tongue before tapping others into a brown envelope for me to take away. These were homeopathic remedies (never to be touched by another’s hands), of which I have since become a staunch advocate.
‘Take one of these tonight, one tomorrow morning and one tomorrow night,’ he said. ‘They will make you feel better.’
Then he added, ‘I have meetings in my waiting room every other Thursday at seven. Why don’t you come along?’
‘Thank you, I will,’ I replied. Looking back, I can see I was being guided, though I had no idea at the time why I was willing to be so compliant.
I left, but his presence stayed with me for a long time.
The following Thursday I went along to the meeting. The waiting room was packed and people were spilling out into the hall. There must have been 50 or 60 there. I noticed that they were all about my age or younger. Most of them seemed to know each other and were chattering away. Some appeared to be in charge of the arrangements and one of them beckoned me to a space on one of the benches.
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