Biggins

by Christopher Biggins

  ‘Please don’t let the dragon be there. Please don’t let the dragon be there,’ I mumbled to myself as I walked up to the theatre. The dragon was there.

  ‘Can I see Mr Salzberk,’ I said, mispronouncing the theatre manager Mr Salsberg’s name because I was so nervous.

  ‘Wait over there,’ the dragon said, clearly unimpressed, and pointed to a bench on the other side of the theatre foyer.

  But for some reason I hadn’t understood exactly where she meant. And I was too scared to risk her wrath by asking again. So I waited, for more than an hour, on the other side of a wall in completely the wrong place. When I ventured out, who should I find but Mr Salsberg, who, bless him, was still looking for me.

  ‘I want to be an actor,’ I blurted out. Six incoherent words. Not even a ‘hello’ or a ‘how do you do?’ I was the nervous little boy from nowhere. The boy who knew no one and nothing. Mr Salsberg should have laughed me out of town. Instead he looked me up and down and gave me my in.

  ‘Well, I’m doing She Stoops To Conquer. You can come to that.’ Two sentences in the man’s lovely, low nasal voice. It was enough. It proved that if you don’t ask you don’t get. As usual, I thank my wheeler-dealer father for giving me the confidence to learn that lesson.

  As I left the theatre I wasn’t quite sure what the manager had meant. Was this a part in a play? Was I just being asked along to watch? Or was it a job? When I turned up at the theatre the next day I found it was the latter. I was in. There is a small comedy role as a servant in She Stoops To Conquer. It was mine. In truth, it was just a glorified walk-on part. But it did have a few lines. And that was enough. I was on my way. Within a few weeks I had signed a proper contract with the Playhouse. I started out on £2 a week as a student assistant stage manager. I would stay there for two years. It was just the most wonderful period of my life.

  The theatre was on Fisherton Street near the river and the railway station. In truth, it wasn’t a real theatre at all. The building used to be a Methodist hall, then something else, until finally it was turned into a theatre with a proper stage and seating. I’d been in the audience a few times with my parents and on school trips. I’d always adored the glamour of the lights, the thick velvet curtains, the plush carpets and all the trappings of theatre. I had also always dreamed that to go backstage would be like going to some kind of Narnia. And so it was – only in reverse.

  ‘Mind that!’

  ‘Careful!’

  ‘Coming through!’

  It was chaos. Backstage certainly wasn’t quite the magical world of glamour and beauty that I had imagined. Salisbury Rep was falling apart. There was a tiny set of different stairs and rooms and corridors but there was nowhere to pick up a cat, let alone swing one. And yes, there was the high, intoxicatingly rich scent of make-up and hair spray. But there was also the smell of mould, mildew and damp. The roof leaked all over and most of the buckets were used to protect the seats in the auditorium. Backstage water just drained away wherever it could. Water soaked into almost everything and, however much heat our big old radiators banged out, it was never enough to dry it all out. Backstage the light bulbs died and weren’t always replaced. Old sets, old costumes, long-forgotten props piled up in corridors and corners. Who knows what crawled among them. But who cared?

  I always thought of that recruitment scene in Oh! What A Lovely War when the prospective soldiers are mesmerised by the radiant image of Maggie Smith. They all rush forward and find that when they got up close and personal she was a hideous, ravaged old hag. Salisbury Rep was my Maggie Smith. I rushed towards her with all the passion and idealism of youth. But I never ran away again when I saw the ugly truth. I loved her close up just as I had loved her from afar. I wasn’t going to let a little bit of reality get in my way. I never have. It was clear from day one at Salisbury that I was so much younger than everyone else in the company. But for me, of all people, that wasn’t a problem. I’d been around older people all my life. It suited me.

  So did my role. As a student assistant stage manager, I was everyone’s general dogsbody. I helped research, track down and collect the props. I was on the book, ready to prompt at each performance. I swept floors, picked up rubbish, even cleaned the toilets in the auditorium. And I barely had time to think. We worked on a fast, tough regime, putting on new plays every second week. Cast, read through, rehearse, perform, repeat. It was relentless. It was intoxicating.

  My parents came to most of the shows, especially when I had a role. And we had fun. It was like a little game to see how many items from around their home they would see on stage in each production.

  And my magpie tendencies were only one part of my poor mother’s problems. If I wasn’t ‘borrowing’ things for my latest production, Dad was still selling them to make a quick buck and enjoy the fun of the deal. No wonder Mum always had to check before she sat down in her own front room. We’d both take the chair from underneath her given half a chance.

  ‘Excuse me, son. Do your parents know you’re out in the middle of the night?’

  Being stopped by the local bobbies at 2am was another regular part of my new routine. At the end of each play’s short run, I got lumbered with much of the get-in and get-out process. I would start packing up the props and pulling the scenery apart in the wings while the actors were still on stage out front. Then I would put down the screwdrivers and join them for the curtain call before getting on with the job. Most times the clear-up took well into the early hours, hence my moonlit walks home.

  What an innocent age that those walks should attract the attention of the police. How grown-up I felt when I told them about my job.

  ‘I work in the theatre,’ I would say. What a wonderful phrase. I wasn’t even 17 but I had already found my calling.

  At the Rep I wasn’t just learning how to put on plays. I was getting a master class in the whole theatrical experience. I loved it. Lesson one came when our passionate stage manager, Jan Booth, told me off for the way I had addressed our star, the marvellous Stephanie Cole, who is a dear friend to this day.

  ‘Here’s your script, Stephanie,’ I had said as I bounded on to the stage.

  ‘It’s Miss Cole to you,’ Jan told me in a fierce whisper afterwards. And so it was – at least during working hours. I liked the hierarchy. I could see that luvviness only lasts so long. Being in rep taught me that theatre is a business and that, if something goes wrong, backstage or on stage, then someone has to be held accountable. Everyone needs to know what their roles and responsibilities are.

  Unfortunately, I didn’t always get to grips with all of mine.

  One of our early plays was a murder mystery set in deepest Devon. When the curtain rose, the first thing the audience heard was a carriage clock (from my parents’ house) strike midnight. The second thing they should have heard was the ringing of a phone. I was on props one night and was watching from the wings as the sole actor on stage listened to the clock and then froze. I froze with him. I had forgotten to put the phone on the table. And I had absolutely no idea what to do about it.

  Once again Jan showed me the way.

  She picked up the phone from the top of a pile of boxes backstage, walked to the back of the set and knocked on the door.

  ‘Who is it?’ our lead actor asked, with no idea what might be coming next.

  ‘I’m here to install your telephone,’ replied Jan.

  ‘Do come in.’

  ‘I’ll put it here.’ On stage, in her ordinary clothes, Jan walked to the table, placed the phone on top, tucked the wire under the carpet and turned to leave.

  ‘Goodnight, sir.’

  ‘Goodnight.’

  Then the phone rang and the play began. What class.

  Fortunately I wasn’t the only one to mess up occasionally. Dear Jane Quy, one of our assistant stage managers, was ‘on the book’ in my place one night. For us this meant raising and lowering the curtain as well as being ready to prompt. It’s not the most exciting job in the business, so you rea
lly need a hobby to help pass the time. Jane’s hobby was to knit. She was a champion knitter and would work away – fortunately in total silence – while the performance went on to her left. She never once missed her place in the script.

  But it did all go wrong one night when she was finishing a stitch as the end of the first act approached. Her knitting, her needles and two balls of bright-green wool all got caught in the curtain’s pulley system. For some reason this short-circuited the whole contraption. The curtain itself barely moved. But Jane’s colourful knitting made a slow procession all the way around our makeshift proscenium arch and all the way back again.

  It got us the biggest round of applause of the night.

  I don’t think I could have stayed an actor for the next 50 years if I hadn’t had that grounding backstage in Salisbury. I don’t think my love affair with theatre would have survived if I hadn’t seen all its warts from the start. But at the time the props, the curtains and the book weren’t enough.

  I wanted to learn how to act. And fortunately I was in very good company. Stephanie – sorry, Miss Cole – was an inspiration. I would watch her in rehearsal, and from the wings in a performance. She could grab an audience. She made bad writing sound good. And, oh God, did she make us all laugh.

  She became a true pal, despite her lofty position at the top of the Salisbury tree. I think I first fell in love with her when she was in rehearsal for Mrs Hardcastle in that first production of She Stoops To Conquer when I was still a nervous little new boy in the company. She had to go down three steps while reciting three key lines. But that first rehearsal she tripped. ‘Oh, f**k, c**t, shit,’ she spluttered as she tried to regain her balance. I was such a little baby I barely knew what the words meant. I certainly didn’t know that a woman could use them.

  But I think I realised that Stephanie would be great company in the years ahead. I was certainly right about that.

  Stephanie wasn’t my only teacher, of course. Oliver Gordon, the Rep’s director, gave me some tough love lessons from the start. His message was pretty simple: ‘Don’t muck about. Go on stage left, say your lines, then piss off stage right.’ That was pretty much the way he saw it. In rep there was no faffing around, no rocket science and no method-acting silliness. Oliver’s message was that if you’re good you get re-hired. If not, try working in a shop. It was sink or swim. Oliver was a real Arthur Askey type and he was also a perfect pantomime dame. His Widow Twankey in Aladdin was a template of mine for years. And we were such a close, tight ship in Salisbury. Oliver’s brother wrote lots of our pantomimes, was married to Stephanie and was another big influence on me.

  Everything we did in Salisbury was on a shoestring, but the audiences would never have known it. If she had been asked, I swear that our wardrobe mistress, Barbara Wilson, could quite literally have made a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. In fact, she could probably have made six. We pulled together and it all felt fantastic. For me, the lonely boy who had always felt just a little bit different, it was a revelation. I was in the world I had dreamed of. I was in my element.

  For pretty much the only time in my life I also felt as if I was in the money. My £2 a week was pretty paltry. But I was living at home and in my second year at Salisbury my wage rose to £8 a week. After a few more months I hit £12 a week when I was made a full stage manager, while still living at home and paying next to nothing to my parents. Dad’s garages were all doing well and he was always giving me cars and vans to drive. Life was just wonderful.

  Staying at home protected me from a lot. It stopped me from growing up too fast and from getting into trouble. But it didn’t entirely shield me from reality.

  My sexuality was still pretty much a mystery to me in the late 1960s. I wasn’t in denial and I wasn’t tortured by any sort of sexual angst. I simply had too many other things whizzing around my mind to think about that side of life. But it seemed that plenty of people were prepared to think about it for me.

  The wonderfully outrageous Raymond Bowers was clearly one of them. ‘There’s that Christopher Biggins. He’s so queer he could be a lesbian,’ he roared out above the crowd as I walked into the coffee shop at the Playhouse one afternoon. Robin Ellis, who would one day be Ross Poldark to my Reverend Ossie Whitworth, was in the coffee shop with Ralph Watson and his girlfriend Caroline Moody, who died so tragically young. The whole room seemed to fall about laughing at Raymond’s words. I blushed so deeply I nearly fainted. Queer? Lesbian? I didn’t know what any of the words meant, let alone understand the overall sentiment.

  But, public embarrassment aside, Raymond turned from someone who could – and indeed did – scare me, into a close pal. He also proved to be a useful role model in an age when visibly gay people seemed few and far between. He lived in The Close in Salisbury with a chic older man called Geoffrey Larkin. Their big town house had a room painted entirely in yellow and contained nothing but a black grand piano. I thought it was the peak of sophistication. Maybe it was.

  Raymond and Geoffrey upgraded Great-Aunt Vi’s table manners for me. Serviettes became napkins and the living room itself became a drawing room. The pair were top-notch entertainers and threw the most wonderful dinner parties – or was I supposed to call them supper parties? I forget. Either way I would head home from the events reeling that such stylish and elegant people existed, let alone existed in Salisbury. I was just thrilled to be part of that world. While Geoffrey has sadly died, Raymond is still very much here, working at the National Theatre. I still smile every time I think of him.

  Back at the theatre we put on so many productions. We had so many different directors, who all taught me new skills. I was 17½ when I got my Equity card, which was essential back then. It was only a simple piece of cardboard. There was no photograph on it and it wasn’t even laminated. But it had my vital Equity number. It was easily the most precious object I had ever owned. After two amazing years I felt I was doing all the right things. But was I learning enough? Was I going in the right direction?

  ‘You need to go to drama school,’ said Stephanie one day – and I do hope that she meant it in a nice way.

  ‘You mean in London?’

  Something about that scared me. I was too young. Too confused about who I was.

  ‘It doesn’t have to be there. You should try the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. They’re as good as anywhere in London but you won’t be distracted by being in the big city and we’ll still be able to see you. Try Bristol,’ she said.

  And so I did. But would I get in?

  ‘Auditions will take place over the course of a weekend and you should be prepared to take part in a variety of exercises throughout your time with us.’ I was floored by the first word of the instruction on the application form and don’t think I ever made it to the end of the page. Auditions? Plural? These would be the first formal auditions I had ever done. A weekend of them would be a little different to collaring dear Mr Salsberg in the foyer of his theatre and saying I wanted to join his company. I feared auditions back then and I loathe them to this day. Do they ever really work? Can’t you spend years perfecting one four-minute piece but be lousy at everything else you are called upon to do? Maybe that’s why Bristol did ask so much more of us all.

  Over the two-day assessment we all danced, sang, did our key audition piece and any number of other readings. Six or seven of the theatre school’s people were watching us all the time, scratching things down on note pads, building up the tension with each stroke of the pen. I think it was the first time I’d ever been really nervous. My subconscious must have known how important this was. But after a few weeks of agony I got the acceptance letter. I’d made it past dozens of other keen candidates. I was on my way.

  ‘I will never, ever experience anything as good as this again.’ Excuse the drama, but that was what I felt. It was what I kept saying, through a ridiculous amount of tears, when I said my goodbyes at an end-of-season party at Salisbury Rep. I remember a few moments when everyone else left me alone in the ba
ck of the stalls – a sensible move on their part. I looked around. Yes, it was only a converted church hall. It wasn’t the West End, it wasn’t Broadway. But it had been so good to me.

  I would even miss the damp and the smell of all the mildew. I blubbered so much that night I probably added quite a bit to the problem. I left my mark on that place in tears, if nothing else.

  But more seriously I was right about it being the end of an era. Actors starting out today miss out enormously now that the old repertory system has passed. I needed that place where I learned so much from other people’s experience. I needed a refuge where I could fall in love with drama. Putting on a new show every few weeks isn’t for the faint-hearted. It’s a hard slog. But it’s worth it. In Salisbury I found out that in the theatre anything can happen, and it usually does. A bit like my life, as I had just discovered.

  3

  Stage School

  ‘Christopher, I need to talk to you. I’m pregnant.’ No, it wasn’t a girlfriend talking to me – that really would have been a story. It was my mother. But bearing in mind that I was 18 and my mother was 40 it was still a pretty newsworthy event.

  ‘How can you be pregnant?’

  And why did I ask that question? Obviously I wasn’t that naive. Though the thought of my mother and father still at it wasn’t something I liked to dwell on.