But somehow Roman managed to track down the correct dialling code and get through. Though my dear mother was not as impressed as she could have been.
‘I’ve just had dinner with Roman Polanski,’ I told her.
‘Raymond Huntley? Oh, I love Raymond Huntley.’
‘No, Mother. Just go back to bed,’ I told her.
I got back to my hotel in the early hours and was called for a meeting by the pool later that morning. How Hollywood was that? This was when the talk about my part in the film got more serious. ‘You’d be perfect,’ Roman told me.
But it wasn’t to be. Apparently Roman had needed extra funding from the Italian government and part of the deal he struck was to use more Italian actors. Elocution lessons meant I had long since hidden my Oldham roots, but even I couldn’t become Italian overnight. My great European film career went on temporary hold. Where it remains to this day, funnily enough.
From dinner at Roman Polanski’s villa in Rome to lunch at the BBC canteen in East Acton. Life soon taught me to take the rough with the smooth. And anyway, the transition wasn’t as bad as it sounds. However much the Two Ronnies and all us luvvies might have joked about it, the BBC canteen was a fine place to be. I thought I was in the old star system in a Hollywood studio when I first ate there. In those days almost all the BBC’s big shows were filmed in-house at Television Centre. So on every table there seemed to be someone yet more famous than on the one before. It was the ultimate place for table-hopping, and I’m pretty certain that’s where the phrase was first coined.
When London Assurance closed, I had been in and out of work like every other jobbing actor. I had done a few short tours in the provinces. And I was doing my fair share of television, even though I could be in awe of my surroundings and sometimes unaccountably nervous in front of the cameras. In Man of Straw, directed by Herbert Wise, who would also direct I Claudius, I was alongside Derek Jacobi – who, incestuously enough, would also be in I Claudius. We were all playing students and the costume department gave me a pair of small, wire-framed glasses to wear. They didn’t have any lenses in and as I’m short-sighted I tended to keep them in my pocket and wear my own glasses right up until the last moment.
Except that on one important take I forgot to do the switch.
‘Brilliant. On to the next scene,’ called Herbie.
As we all got ready to move I realised that I had been wearing the wrong specs. Should I tell someone? Could I? I felt like a little boy again. There were so many people involved in every scene. The unions were all-powerful and everyone lived in fear of wasting precious minutes and forcing the producers to pay the crews overtime rates if you did too many retakes. So I kept my mouth shut. So far I’ve never seen the show included on any of these ‘continuity disaster’ compilations. But I expect it will soon pop up now. At least I wasn’t wearing a wristwatch. Or at least I hope I wasn’t.
After passing my first anniversary of living in Fulham I felt I’d really put down roots in London. I had even made up some fancy printed cards with my name and address on to make me seem professional, successful and older. It turned out they were nearly the downfall of me. Ifield Road was an inconveniently long one-way street. Driving out to the Fulham Road, which you needed to do to get almost anywhere, was a real pain. So I always did an illegal turn and headed down the wrong way, trying to feign ignorance at any angry motorists who tooted at me. This normally worked. Until one day the angry motorist in question was a policeman in a panda car.
‘Did you realise that this is a one-way street, sir?’ he asked.
‘A one-way street? Really? I’m not from around here and I had absolutely no idea, officer,’ I replied shamelessly. It was worthy of an Olivier Award.
‘Do you have any identification on you?’ He could hardly have been more stern-faced. I was in serious trouble.
‘Here’s my card,’ I said, spotting in the instant that I passed it over that it had my address, 142 Ifield Road, London SW10, on the front. Not so easy to pretend I was a stranger in town now.
‘Put both your hands together and out in front of you, sir.’ Oh, God, he’s going to arrest me. I’m going to be handcuffed in the street. What will the neighbours say? What will my mother say? But there were no handcuffs. Instead, the policeman looked me in the eye, tilted his head and slapped me on both wrists. It was pretty much the campest thing I had ever seen – and, trust me, I’ve seen a lot. Two minutes later I was back on my way again. Don’t you love the British bobby?
I’ve never lived a racy enough life to have a tabloid-style ‘drugs hell’. For all the laughs, I was brought up to be a grafter. I would never have had time for six months in rehab. Apart from anything else, I’ve always had too many parties to go to, too many restaurants to visit. But that’s not to say I haven’t had a few extraordinary moments.
The first came way back when I was living above my means in Ifield Road. Two old pals from drama school, Gillian Morgan, who had been on a celebrated world tour with the RSC, and Hazel Clyne, were taking A Midsummer Night’s Dream around the world and I could barely be more jealous. They performed in some of the world’s greatest theatres. And wherever they went the Royal Shakespeare Company’s reputation swept all before them. No bean counter should ever underestimate the value of that name. I said before that the RSC’s vast subsidy was often misspent. Even so, it was worth every penny. It makes me proud to be British.
Gillian called me from Chicago. She had met a man called Randy Eaton. Later I would see first-hand that he was spectacularly handsome. He was also one of the richest and most charming men I had ever met. Yes, you really can have it all – or at least Gillian could. She was so in love that she quit the RSC and didn’t work under Trevor Nunn again. But for a long time it seemed as if all’s well would end well. She married Randy and they raised two fine boys. Back in the 1970s, though, we were all thick as thieves. It was on one of the pair’s transatlantic visits, before their children arrived, that Randy made the proposal.
‘Christopher, I’d like you to join me on a trip,’ he said.
‘Lovely, where to? Brighton?’ I asked, though I was secretly hoping for Florence, Venice or somewhere equally glamorous.
‘No, I want you to do LSD with me,’ he laughed.
And I said ‘OK’ without a moment’s hesitation. There was always something in Randy’s manner. He was what counts in America as old money. His family owned a string of newspapers in Chicago and the Midwest. That gave him confidence. And he made it infectious. You always felt that whatever he suggested would come out right. When you were with Randy it always felt as if nothing could go wrong. So off I went on my little trip.
I met Randy at my house in Fulham. Both of us had a little flake put on our fingers. It looked so tiny, so silly. I was convinced that it wouldn’t do a thing to me. So after putting it on my tongue and sitting around for a while I got bored. I started doing some tidying up.
Later, I sat on the back doorstep and looked around the garden. How absolutely incredible, I thought. ‘In all the years I’ve lived here I’ve never noticed that island before. I’ve never seen how the ocean laps up at the walls of the house. Why have I never sat here before? It’s so beautiful, so peaceful, sitting in the sun listening to the lapping of the waves.’ I loved that house in those moments. I was so pleased I had chosen to live there, right up beside the sea in Fulham. Oh dear, oh dear.
We left the house and I dozed off on a tombstone in Brompton Cemetery. I was desperately hungry and thirsty, so I tore off to the corner shop I used every day. I knew, with complete clarity, that I had to choose food by colour. So I picked the most colourful things I could see. Scouring pads. Dish cloths. Even a big red bottle of floor cleaner. I piled it all on to the counter in front of the dear Indian owner, who got his wife to very carefully put it all back.
Now, if I’m being serious, I’ll say I know all too well the horrors of drug addiction. I’ve seen the destruction that drugs have done to some theatre pals’ looks, thei
r lives and everything from their family to their finances. But that day in Fulham was innocent and wonderful. It was one of the most extraordinary experiences of my life. And there would be one more to come.
The next one took place in Fort Lauderdale in Florida. Again I was with Randy. His fortune was still intact at this point and he had paid huge sums to buy and renovate a vast boat. ‘Come with me. We’ll go to the Caribbean,’ he said. I could hardly get to the marina fast enough. This was the kind of life I was desperate to enjoy. These were the kinds of people I wanted to be with.
On board there was a mad character, who I’ll call Freddie, who sailed the boat while his equally off-beat girlfriend was there to cook and make us drinks. Well, that was the idea. Everyone except Freddie and I got horrifically seasick. Possibly he escaped it because he was stoned. All I know is that most of the time I seemed to be the only fully conscious person on deck. And hour after hour we never seemed to get that far from the Florida coast. ‘Do you think everything is all right with the boat, Freddie?’ I asked towards sunset.
‘I’ll go check, dude,’ he told me. And everything turned out to be very wrong. The engine room was full of water. Freddie turned on some pump or other but it made matters worse.
‘Isn’t that supposed to be taking the water out?’ I asked, an expert all of a sudden.
‘Sure is, dude.’
‘Doesn’t it look to you as if it’s sucking the water in instead?’
‘Looks like it.’
There seemed to be an unnecessarily long pause.
‘What does that mean?’ I asked finally.
In Freddie’s considered opinion, it meant we were going down.
‘Should we get help?’ I asked, not entirely clear how I, of all people, had become the captain of the ship.
But getting help was a problem too. The radio hadn’t been fitted properly. We could hear people, but they couldn’t hear us. Presumably the same people who had done the pump had done the radio. In the end the Miami Coastguard spotted us and headed over to find out why we weren’t moving. My last memory of that boat is of us all treading dirt and oil and seaweed through the sodden, brand-new cream carpets as we abandoned ship. It may well have sunk, I don’t remember.
‘Biggins, we feel terrible. But I’ll make it up to you. Let’s go down to the Keys.’ Randy’s good old American hospitality knew no bounds. I felt it would be impolite to decline the offer. And when we got there I had my second and last tab of LSD. This time we were by the sea, but I didn’t see it. Instead I mainly saw food, fish and animals.
I walked down to the beach. I became a huge fish eye. We decided to go tenpin bowling. (Why? Why on earth was that ever going to be a good idea?) And it was a disaster. Everyone there was a fish to me. One handsome bald man was a seal. Someone else was a frog. They started to kiss.
It was all Disney’s Fantasia writ large. And even without the drug the whole trip was surreal. This fabulously wealthy man and me, his soon-to-be famously easy-living and theatrical friend, weren’t staying in some bijou boutique hotel or some five-star palace with hot and cold running waiters. We were camping. In one of Florida’s biggest electrical storms. My tent collapsed in the early evening but I didn’t even notice. Randy said all he could see was my not inconsiderable outline, tightly wrapped in tarpaulin-like clingfilm. Apparently I looked like a vast, oven-ready chicken. I could have been barcoded and sold in Safeway.
7
Living Large
Back in Britain I was developing ideas above my station. Living in a gorgeous house in Fulham, then spending time with American millionaires, had been a very bad idea. That would be the story of my life. Most people get led astray by bad company. I was always led astray by good company. I never noticed when I was out of my depth.
Anyway, my old love of antiques and bric-a-brac had pretty quickly developed into a love of art. When I was on a brief tour to the Watermill Theatre in Newbury, Berkshire – one of the most picturesque theatres in the country – I saw a painting at an art fair for £80. My weekly wage back then was just £40. But still I bought it. Pictures really do tell stories, for me. They trigger wonderful memories, because I buy them when I’m in a good place, physically or mentally. It’s a testament to how many good times I’ve had that I’ve got thousands of paintings now, far more than I ever have room to hang. I really should stop buying, I know. But I can’t. After leaving the jungle, Neil and I bought a lovely Anne McGill picture of a couple dancing to remind us of those lovely days. The sad thing about life is that events can sometimes get in the way of these simple pleasures. When I was young and careless I could buy luxuries like paintings whenever I got a new job. Now when I get some good new work, all I think about is the mortgage and the taxman. Or at least that’s what I say.
I was still in Fulham when a group of us went to the first night of Company, easily my favourite Sondheim musical. It was a big night and the show had a huge American cast, hot over from Broadway. Clearly it was the kind of night you dress up for. So I did. I wore a vast, desperately ornate silver kaftan. And in the process I made an important (but fortunately temporary) enemy. Across the theatre Cameron Mackintosh apparently took an instant dislike to me. ‘Who on earth is that fat geezer wearing that horrible outfit?’ he asked his suitably stylish, black-clad friends.
‘Biggins,’ came the one-word reply. And my card was marked.
Meeting Cameron again in a professional capacity could have been a disaster. That happened when the director Veronica Flint-Shipman, a very important lady in my life, was producing Winnie the Pooh with Bob West. No prizes for guessing that I was Pooh. We toured the show, then Cameron took over as producer. And did he remember me as the fat geezer in the ridiculously gaudy kaftan? Oh yes. But this time we clicked. Soon we were the very best of friends.
Over all the years to come I would gravitate back to Cameron whenever I was out of work. I’d help him out behind the scenes on his productions or even in his makeshift offices. Those were his early days, when we had to transfer funds from one bank account to pay another if we wanted the shows to stay on the road. It was high-wire stuff, but it was thrilling. As usual, there were some incredible laughs. Some of the best came with Rock Nativity. I was watching the dress rehearsal in Newcastle – and everything, absolutely everything, was going wrong. At that time there weren’t any wireless mikes you could attach to your face or hair. This show had traditional rock mikes – all of which had long leads attached. By the end of Act One, there was a spaghetti junction of wires knotted up over the front of the stage. Some of the performers had to kneel down to sing because they couldn’t get any more slack to pull their mikes more than a foot from the floor.
‘At least it can’t get much worse,’ I whispered to Veronica. How wrong I was.
In a moment of sheer frustration the Virgin Mary let out a roar of anger and tried to throw the baby Jesus into the audience. She missed. The doll slammed against the proscenium arch of the theatre and fell, in pieces, to the floor of the stalls. As a moment of pure theatre it was hard to beat. And once we had all stopped laughing – and untangled the microphone leads and glued baby Jesus back together – Rock Nativity did go on to open well. Veronica and I looked after the show for quite a while. And looked after means doing whatever it takes to keep it on the road.
Up in Scotland we were in the middle of a flu epidemic and our cast fell like flies. By the time the evening’s performance was due to start we had a real problem.
‘Biggins, you’ve got to go on.’
Desperately trying to remember the lines I joined the chorus and had my Peggy Sawyer moment from 42nd Street. I was going on a nobody, hoping to come off a star. Though not everyone really noticed. My old pal and dance legend Dougie Squires happened to be in the audience that night. He called me the next day. ‘Christopher, I don’t know who he was and I couldn’t find his name in the programme, but there was an actor in Rock Nativity last night who could have been your double.’
Going on tour wit
h a show can be one of the most fun – and most gruelling – things any actor can do. It’s a hard slog. New digs, new theatres, new faces, week after week. Sometimes you play to full houses and feel like the king of the world. Sometimes you come off stage and cry.
I’ve done my share of both.
Playing Pooh, for example, was a surprisingly physical task. The show was adapted, with music, by the lovely Julian Slade. As Pooh my costume was hotter than hell. I had a tight hood, a vast thick suit and, unaccountably, a set of long johns to wear. At the interval I had to wring the sweat out of all of them into a bucket. Ah, the glamour of theatre.
To make matters worse, with Pooh our first theatre wasn’t a theatre at all. It was a tent. The Royal Ballet was about to use this supposedly mobile construction for its tour, but we were the guinea pigs to test it out down in Plymouth. The whole structure was innovative and exciting. But it’s fair to say we had a few teething troubles.
‘Biggins, I need a word,’ Bob West, the company manager, called me over one night when the clouds above Plymouth were rumbling with thunder and alive with flashes of lightning.
‘Will the audience be able to hear us over all this?’ I asked as the rain lashed down on our canvas roof. But that was the least of our problems.
‘Just put the word out to the rest of the cast not to panic but not to touch anything metal during the performance,’ Bob said. During the interval he came up to me again. ‘I need you to make a short announcement to the audience.’ So I stood in front of the closed curtain.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, will you kindly take your seats as this evening’s performance will begin again in five minutes. Can we remind customers that this is a non-smoking venue. And in view of this evening’s inclement weather can we ask that no one touches anything metal for the rest of the evening. We hope you enjoy the show.’
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