I admired Robert’s skills and I loved how passionate he was about his work. And I loved the man as well. He was a real cockney East End boy with a huge, warm and wonderful family. We laughed so much. I was 25 and in love, fully in love, for the first time in my life. We were together for a year. A year that gave me so much confidence and joy. But after we had gone our separate ways he decided he wanted to move on in his career as well. He wanted to produce. But, for all the fun and frivolity, theatre is a cutthroat business – as Robert knew only too well. Sadly, things didn’t work out for him on the other side of the box-office counter. He lost a lot of money. Then he disappeared. He vanished off the face of the earth. He was such a special man, adored and loved by so many people.
But now an awful lot of years have passed. To this day none of us knows where Robert is or whether he is alive or dead. For someone like me, a man who values friendships above all else, that’s one of the hardest admissions I have to make.
After Robert and I said goodbye I was never lonely. Many dear friends have lit up my life for a while – some for months and years, some for just one night.
In the theatre you’re always going to have plenty of opportunities to meet dear friends such as these. Simply because they were the only places open late enough to serve us, back in the 1970s we would all troop down to some very gay bars in Soho after a performance. But the whole bar scene never really worked for me. I was never an obvious leading man on stage, nor was I an obvious person to pick up some stranger in a bar. I never liked the games people played, the attitudes, the poses, the ‘don’t even think of approaching me’ confidence that clearly hides some sort of insecurity. Staying away from bars probably helped me when I was doing so much work on children’s television. In the 1970s and early 1980s, some parts of the press still hinted at some awful link between homosexuality and paedophilia. So at least I didn’t need to worry about being photographed coming out of the wrong door in the wrong part of town.
Anyway, I have always met dear friends in far lighter, nicer places. Waiters in wonderful restaurants. People who smile as they serve the drinks or meals. Many is the time that they lit up my life.
I enjoyed it all, on a very uncomplicated level. I’ve enjoyed sex all my life and I’ve never seen why we need to be so prudish about it – though I know this probably has more to do with selling those tabloid newspapers than people’s real attitudes. And in the 1970s and early 1980s it wasn’t as if gay people were the only ones having fun. Everyone was having a party in my world. Single, straight, gay, married. None of it seemed to matter and, if you’ll excuse the pun, everyone was having a ball. How quickly everything changed.
I remember the first time I saw the word ‘Aids’ in a newspaper, sometime around 1980. Then you saw it almost every day. It always chilled me. Somehow I knew very early that everything was about to change. The spectre of that disease hung over everyone – and the theatrical world was hit harder than most. No one knew what the illness really was in the early days. The theories, and the fears, ran out of control. Tabloids took the line that all homosexuals were killers. No one saw us as victims. But I saw so many people waste away and die. Those first deaths were terrible and terrifying in equal measure. With no treatments and so little medical knowledge, strong men did simply fade into themselves. I lost so many fine friends, we all did. We sat at so many bedsides, went to so many funerals. And you never knew who might be next.
I look back on my life and I’ve seen homosexuality go from being invisible to being fully accepted, to being cast into the dark ages, and now, back to respectability again. When I became King of the Jungle and ran over that rope bridge towards the cameras, it wouldn’t have occurred to me for a second that I shouldn’t kiss Neil. To the whole crew’s credit, it didn’t occur to them either. It was only months later when I was chatting to a fan in the street that they said I had made a little bit of television – and perhaps social – history. It had been ITV’s first live prime-time kiss between two gay men. I’m as proud of that as I am of winning the show. If it has made life easier for even one other young gay man, I’m thrilled. I will tell the story of Neil and I later in the book. But knowing that he would be waiting for me outside the jungle made I’m A Celebrity bearable.
It took me many years to learn how to make relationships work – and maybe you never quite crack it. I’ve had phases of being possessive and jealous. I fought that. I’ve struggled with rejection. It’s tough if someone leaves you. But that’s life. You have to move on, to get on with it. That’s been true in every aspect of my life. Move on, get on with it. I’m like that when jobs pass me by. I force myself to be the same with lovers.
I know I’m not necessarily an easy person to live with. I’m selfish, though I’m always trying to be better. But I’ve always liked being in a relationship. I like having a partner, someone who’s there for the highs and the lows and will talk about all the minutiae of the day. That’s what Neil has been to me for 14 wonderful years. Two years ago we signed our civil partnership in Hackney Town Hall before heading off to a party at Joe Allen, where, as dear Barbara Windsor pointed out, we celebrated with everyone from Joan Collins to my cleaning lady. Don’t ever let it be said that I’ve forgotten my roots.
Neil and I don’t describe our commitment as a marriage. I’m not political about these things and I actually like the word ‘partnership’. That sums it all up to me – the highs and lows and the mutual support of a proper, grown-up relationship. What I have with Neil is so important. It will need some pretty impressive developments in medical science for us to beat the 63 years my parents have already clocked up as a married couple. But if I am to go the distance with anyone it will be with Neil.
Anyway, long before I met Neil one of my performances was making waves in the gay community – and I was making enemies. In the early 1970s Gillian had found me that first job in LWT’s comedy series Doctor at Large. My memory of all this isn’t what it should be. But I think I played a mildly effeminate intern in that. A few years later I was asked back for Doctor at Sea. This time my character could hardly be forgotten. I played an outrageous, flamboyant, bitchy and bouffant-haired old queen. I thought it was absolutely fabulous. But I was pretty much alone.
The attacks began immediately. I came in for a lot of stick from the gay community for perpetuating outdated stereotypes. People wrote critical letters to the papers about it and I had some heated ‘discussions’ with friend and stranger alike on the issue. ‘Why are you doing this?’ people asked. ‘Why are you feeding people’s prejudices about homosexuals?’
My answer was always simple. Outrageous queens did exist – a quick look around the BBC canteen proved that. So why shouldn’t they get reflected on screen? Why should I hide the kind of people who made life more fun? I didn’t win all of these arguments. But they were the least of my worries. In career terms I was being warned that playing that role in Doctor at Sea could have had me typecast – not just as a gay man but also as a light-entertainment figure. I had won some decent cameo roles in mainstream dramas such as Upstairs Downstairs and The Duchess of Duke Street in the early 1970s (Upstairs Downstairs was great fun – my car-dealing father loved that I was cast as a dodgy car salesman in an episode about the advent of the motor car). But I knew that my frothy performance in the Doctor at Sea series could have stopped me getting considered for bigger, meatier roles elsewhere.
For a while my time with the RSC helped me through. Because I’d acted in the RSC, and trodden the boards alongside the likes of Judi, Donald and Dame Peggy Ashcroft, people took a little bit more notice of me. I had a hefty supply of professional credibility back in the mid-1970s. But I knew it wouldn’t last for ever. And heaven knows where it all is now.
Anyway, I wasn’t perhaps as bothered by the light-entertainment tag as I could have been. What’s wrong with popular, frothy programmes anyway? I’d seen first-hand how hard it is to make good television comedy when I’d been cast in my first of two episodes of Some Mothers
Do ’Ave ’Em back in 1973. The first was the one where Frank Spencer was trying to become a pilot – a very scary prospect for all concerned. I was a student at the flight school and a witness to most of his navigational errors. In the second episode, a few years later, I was a student in a canteen and after all the usual disasters I ended up covered in baked beans and gravy. It was great fun – and a step up the food chain from my first TV role with that chicken leg. Between those two episodes I was to have another master class in television sitcoms.
Gillian set up a meeting for me with Sid Lotterby, the director and producer of a new BBC show to be called Porridge. With that show almost everything about my career would change.
I won the part of Lukewarm, a cleverly drawn character who was gay, but not too gay. I toned down my Doctor at Sea act, though I didn’t want Lukewarm’s sexuality to disappear altogether. I thought it was really important that they kept in all the references to his love life on the other side of the prison walls. That was a pretty big deal in 1974. Don’t ask why, but it was my idea to make Lukewarm knit. I had a feeling this might help get the message about him across. Perhaps I did that to take my mind off the way my character was described in the script. ‘A rotund young man,’ it said. ‘Young’ I liked. ‘Rotund’ I could have done without.
Being in Porridge was an incredible experience – to this day it makes me smile to think of it. And playing such a fun part, with such a classic Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais script, was only one great piece of the Porridge adventure. Working with Ronnie Barker and the dear Richard Beckinsale was the other true joy. What a lovely man Richard would have grown to be, had the fates allowed.
Ronnie, meanwhile, was a revelation. He was a huge star and could have been a nightmare to work with. He wasn’t. And while most comics want everything to be about them, Ronnie was the true exception. Of course, his wonderful Fletcher dominated every minute of the show. But he was a truly generous man, always happy to give away part of a scene and let others soak up the applause for a while. He gave me and my character a lot more space than most other comics would have done. That’s class.
We filmed Porridge in the BBC’s East Acton studios and, despite how high-profile and important the show was, everyone had a ball. It was one of the easiest and most relaxed shooting schedules I remember. My favourite episode was the one where Ronnie wrote the same letter for all the lags to send to their wives and girlfriends – and for Lukewarm to send to his young man. The ruse is discovered when the partners all travel on the same bus to visit on the same day.
After the first series Ronnie gave all the regulars an engraved silver tankard as a thank-you gift. It read: ‘Slade Prison: 1974’ above our characters’ names. Ronnie had given me an initial, so I was Lukewarm P. I think I can safely say that no one has ever drunk out of that mug without checking the contents with care.
When the show aired, I think we all knew it was going to be good. But at the time you can never quite know how much impact it might make. We could hardly have made more. Porridge was prime-time television. More than 16 million watched us every Thursday night; nearly 18 million watched the Christmas special. Our scripts became catchphrases. I might only have had a recurring role, but I was still recognised in the street. This truly felt like the big time.
What’s interesting about being in a hit show is that you never know if you’re simply riding a zeitgeist or if your show will stand the test of time. Three decades later and it’s clear that Porridge has done that. Fletcher is one of the most popular characters in comedy history – and deservedly so. And financially speaking I’ve certainly enjoyed the benefit of this timeless popularity. I got £90 an episode when I was on the series in the 1970s. If they repeat the show now, I get something like £1,000. What a bizarre industry this is. How I wish they would repeat it more often.
Just before I’d got the job on Porridge I’d been moaning about the lack of really imaginative new characters. They don’t write them like they used to, I would say. But it turned out that they did.
One hot June night in the early 1970s I went to the Royal Court Theatre on Sloane Square in London. To the Royal Court’s very hot, and very small, studio theatre upstairs, to be exact. It was opening night of a bizarrely named show – with an equally bizarre plot. Ladies and gentlemen (and everybody in between), I give you The Rocky Horror Show. It was the most extraordinary, exhilarating evening. What an amazing show – and to see it in such a tiny, intimate theatre was mind-blowing. Tim Curry was magnificent. The whole performance was overwhelming and because I knew a lot of the production staff I was able to party away with them afterwards.
I wanted to be in that production more than anything – but its short run soon ended, so I never had the chance. A year later, towards the end of 1974, I heard they were going to make the show into a film. Twentieth Century Fox, if you please, and with big names like Susan Sarandon and Meatloaf on board. Dammit, Janet, I was determined to be in it too.
I got my wish. We had a two-month shoot (in Berkshire, not Hollywood) for which I earned the princely sum of £100 a week. I bought a sofa bed with my payments. Who says there’s no glamour in the film business? But, as usual, the money wasn’t the point. I think some of those involved spent part of the shoot stoned – and what a cast of characters we were. I met Gaye Brown and Annabel Leventon on The Rocky Horror Picture Show and they are still wonderful friends to this day. Then there was tiny Sadie Corre, whom I agreed to pick up and drive to work each morning. Was that a mistake? She talked so fast and was relentlessly chirpy. Lovely girl, but enough of the tiny details of life chez Sadie. Especially at dawn, when I’m never at my best.
The rest of us encompassed every shape and size you could imagine. One new pal was Fran Fullenwider, who did lots of shows in mainland Europe, where men apparently love big women. Poor Fran had a bad night at dinner with me back then. I was flat-sitting for some friends who lived on the fourth floor of a flash Mayfair block where the only downside was the lack of a lift. Poor Fran looked like she had run a marathon when she finally arrived. But this wasn’t the end of it. She had to leave early and after saying our goodbyes the rest of us carried on partying upstairs.
Three hours later I headed down to nip to the corner shop for some tonics and there was Fran, sitting all alone on the scuffed carpet of the communal hallway. The door to the street was locked and the poor girl simply couldn’t face going back up four flights of stairs to tell us she was trapped. Fran’s no longer with us. But if she was I’d never let her out of my sight again without checking she had a mobile phone.
Going to the Rocky Horror premiere was a huge thrill. It wasn’t Polanski, but I was still convinced it could be the start of something big. It seemed I was wrong. This was the year that the only film anyone seemed to want to see was Jaws. The critics hated us. We were slammed and we flopped. The so-called experts didn’t understand this mad cross-dressing, pan-sexual plot line, and as the film was soon pulled from the cinemas the audiences didn’t get much chance to enjoy it either. Try as you do not to take critics personally, it was deflating, to say the least. I’d loved that film. I was certain it deserved better.
But then something magical happened – just as in my life something magical very often does. We had a limited release in America and it seemed that little patches of the country fell in love with us. We were as camp as hell and we soon had a cult following. People began dressing up for midnight screenings. Word of mouth made us a hit. It’s funny now but looking at the film it’s obvious it would be a classic. But just like Porridge, like I Claudius and like several other shows I’ve been in, it’s touch-and-go if others will see it that way. I was thrilled that Rocky Horror made some kind of history.
In 2006, so many years later, I was back on the live show as the narrator. We went on tour – over a year or so I dipped in and out and did gigs everywhere from Truro to York. It was an absolute blast – on weekends in particular the audiences were wild. So many people dressed up. So many knew every word. A
nd because I’d been in the film I seemed to get extra attention from the real fans. Most nights I had a three-minute ovation just for walking on to the stage. How many people get that? Sometimes it seemed amazing that I was being paid for all this. Thank God, the producers didn’t know I was so happy I would almost (but only almost) have done it all for free.
But I do have one admission to make. One night on that tour I did something I’d not done since London Assurance back with Dame Judi and the RSC. I fell asleep during the show. As the narrator I had a lovely comfortable armchair to sit in at the side of the stage. Too comfortable. One night I nodded off and missed all my cues. The cast apparently thought I was joking. Eagle-eyed people in the audience thought I was dead. Sadly, my performance in The Rocky Horror Picture Show didn’t really trouble the judges of that year’s Academy Awards. But shortly afterwards I did still get a Hollywood moment of sorts. Lauren Bacall was in town, slated to do a film version of the play Applause Applause, in which she was performing in the West End. My agent got the call. Would I like to be a partygoer in a scene with the great lady?
I think that would be a ‘yes’.
I was thrilled to get close to blue-chip, cut-glass, rat-pack glamour. All I could think about was Bogie and Bacall and the golden age of Hollywood. This could be the start of something huge.
When my big day came I was on set at 9am for my 10am call. At 10am we heard on the grapevine that Ms Bacall had just got up. At 11am I was in full make-up. At 12 noon we heard Ms Bacall was on her way. At 1pm we were told she was in a foul mood. At 2pm we finally met her. Everyone was terrified, literally terrified of putting a foot wrong and facing the wrath of this wild woman. I was first to be introduced. And guess what? She was utterly charming.
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