Joe Allen had wonderful staff – many of whom lit up my life, for a while, along the way. Tim Clarke was one who lit things up the brightest. He was one of the maitre d’s and our really important relationship turned into a strong friendship.
What a lot of people don’t know is that Joe Allen himself does exist, though he spent most of his time looking after the restaurants in the States. In London the new restaurant was run by Joe’s right-hand man, Richard Polo. For the manager of such a marvellous, theatrical restaurant, Richard is a surprisingly quiet man. But when he does talk he is very funny, very dry and very good company. In rare quiet moments he would join Jack and I at our table. I said once that I had never quite got into opera. So he asked me to join him there one night to see if I got the bug. He enjoyed introducing people to new areas of life, though this didn’t always go to plan. A good example was when he decided I should join him on a ski trip to St Anton.
‘See you at lunch. Good luck!’ he called out as he headed up to the top of the mountain on day one. I was off to ski school, where my instructor was about to learn that I wasn’t a model pupil.
‘Follow me,’ he yelled at the group in a sexy foreign accent.
‘No, no, no!’ I yelled. ‘I can’t start because I don’t know how to stop. None of us does. We’re not following anyone, anywhere. You need to teach us here.’ A mini-rebellion began. And by the time I met Richard at lunchtime I’d handed back my skis, cashed in all my lift passes and was preparing for a different challenge. I wanted to master the art of après-ski. Shopping, saunas, steaming hot drinks. Turns out I’m world-class at all of that. All these years on and Richard is still a good pal. His wife, Tricia, is the creative genius behind the Designers Guild empire and made the vast curtains in my double-height living room at home. Her brother and his wife, Simon and Alison, have also become great pals and I’m godfather to their two boys, Sebastian and George. So many good people – all because I fell in love with dinner in Covent Garden.
In the first few glory years of Joe Allen the bar would be full of everyone in theatreland, all desperate for a table. They’ll kill me for writing this, but here are a few secrets. The rows of tables are all numbered. The 50s are furthest away from the door as you arrive and 52 is one of the best in the house. You can see everyone arrive from there. I saw it as my home from home.
Table 40, meanwhile, is in chilly social Siberia. Tucked away in a corner I chose to ignore. Until one particular day.
‘Oh, Chris, would you mind sitting on 40 today?’ I was asked at the desk.
I was appalled. ‘Well, yes, I would mind actually. Why?’
‘There is a reason but we can’t say. Would you mind please just trusting us?’
So I agreed. Though walking through the restaurant to my social-death corner was mortifying. Forget the rope bridge on I’m A Celebrity. Walking across that was a breeze compared to my humiliating trudge across Joe Allen’s that day. I ordered soup – perfect food for a social outcast. And as I waited for it to arrive I was fuming even more. What I couldn’t understand was that table 52 – my table 52 – remained empty. It sat there, inviting, alluring, teasing. ‘Why can’t I sit there? Why?’ I was screaming in my head like a sulky teenager. Then I found out.
In walked Elizabeth Taylor.
Everything in the restaurant seemed to freeze. You think time can’t stand still? It can when Ms Taylor is in the room.
I found out later that the manager had wanted me at table 40 because they wanted the closest people to Miss Taylor to be the kind of guests who wouldn’t spend the whole meal gawping. Bad call. Gawp I did. Some men, in the presence of those extraordinary lavender eyes, would have dribbled soup down their chin. I was one of those men. My friend Jeremy Swan and I had half risen from our seats as the great lady had arrived. We felt the least we could do was to welcome her to our little corner of the restaurant. When she and her companion left (there was no way on earth I was leaving before her and missing a single second of the show) we half rose again.
‘Gentlemen, it’s been a pleasure,’ she said.
Pure class. And those eyes. Oh, those eyes.
‘A decaff cappuccino, please.’ Apparently, that was my catchphrase at Joe Allen. Back then it wasn’t as common or as easy a drink to make as it is today. And at one year’s staff Christmas party I had agreed to supply a bunch of pals to turn the tables on the staff by waiting at the tables for a change. The wonderful Patricia Hodge was one of the many who answered my call, as was my then agent, Jonathan Altaras. And how we all worked. We were all dripping with sweat by the time the desserts were served – even the famously cool-as-ice Patricia.
‘Can I get anyone a coffee?’ I asked one table of four at the end of service.
‘Yes – a decaff cappuccino,’ yelled 80 people in perfect unison.
I love that place.
Must all good things come to an end? They haven’t at Joe Allen, but they have certainly changed. The restaurant world has been in a state of flux for some time now, probably since Jeremy King, Joe Allen’s beloved maitre d’, and Christopher Corbin, the extraordinarily tall manager at Langan’s Brasserie, joined forces to start building their marvellous new restaurant empire. The boys took over the Caprice when its old chef left but they had some very tricky times.
Business was slow and the bills were adding up. So enter, stage left, Mr Biggins. They asked me to organise some Sunday-night cabaret. What an absolute hoot. I was in my element. We had a piano and I brought in drag acts from all sorts of dodgy East End pubs. It was a riot from start to finish. I can’t claim that my Sunday nights were why the Caprice did ultimately offer the hottest tables in town. But it did certainly heat up.
The boys are now at the Wolseley, the former bank turned Wolseley car showroom near the Ritz on Piccadilly. Breakfast, morning coffee, lunch, afternoon tea, dinner, late dinner. I’ve enjoyed them all there. Their newer place, St Alban in Regent Street, is just as good. As someone who adores New York, I have to say that London is still so far ahead in the glamour restaurant stakes. It’s equally far ahead in the glamorous restaurateur stakes. Jeremy, Chris, Richard Polo, Richard Caring and all the others. I love them all. And I particularly love that they always give me a table.
After three seasons doing panto in Darlington, Peter Todd moved down to Brighton – and I moved down with him. We did three seasons at the Theatre Royal, starting with Aladdin with dear Dora Bryan. As a boy I had seen Dora dominate the stage in Hello Dolly, and now it seemed so amazing that all these years later I wasn’t just sharing a stage with her, but also had top billing over her. It was actually slightly embarrassing, though very, very wonderful. How extraordinarily the world can turn.
My Brighton years ended with Dick Whittington with Sheila Burnet and the underrated cabaret performers Kit and the Widow. I’m glad to say love was still in the air in theatreland that year. Kit met the model Katie Rabett and I was thrilled to see them marry shortly afterwards. They’re a lovely couple and fabulous friends of mine.
I’d been happy on the south coast because I like doing several years in the same place. Every year you seem to get better reactions. The audiences seem to like to see familiar faces in the casts. Coming back adds to the sense of occasion. The local papers and radio stations like it and you can earn a little extra cash doing some openings and personal appearances around the towns. When you don’t have much other work lined up for the year ahead, that kind of thing is a useful bonus.
Just along the coast I had a good and bad experience in Eastbourne. I had agreed to do Nosferatu – with just one week to rehearse, learn the lines and get ready for the opening. I had one particularly complicated big number but as we used taped music rather than an orchestra I thought I had a way to make life easier. I wrote out my lyrics on huge cue cards and put them in the orchestra pit so I could read them in an emergency.
Then the audience arrived. Every old lady in Eastbourne seemed to be in the house. All of them had big coats. And all the coats in the front
row were draped carefully over the edge of the pit, obscuring all my vital cue cards. The moment I saw what was happening from the wings I started to laugh so much that I forgot my first-night nerves – and I did the show without getting a single line wrong. But would my pal Peter Straker, playing the vampire, be as lucky? He had a big number in a bed scene with one of his victims – and he had put pages of sheet music all over the sheets. Luckily for him, even Eastbourne’s redoubtable old dears couldn’t scupper that plan. He was word-perfect as well. Cambridge is another city where I put down some strong panto roots. I did five years there in the late 1980s and early 1990s and all this time on people still ask me when I might be taking a show back there. My answer is always the same: ‘As soon as someone gets the right budget and makes me a good enough offer.’ The Cambridge Arts Theatre is a beautiful place to perform – and the city is a wonderful place to live for a few months. It was also where I learned a big new part of my craft.
‘Do you want to do several seasons with us?’ producer and pal Ian Ross asked me when I first got the booking there. He too knew the value of having familiar names back year after year and wanted a way to tie me down. ‘You can have a completely free hand. You can cast, write and direct as well as star.’
How could I say no?
We started with Jack and the Beanstalk and I was on cloud nine to be in control. I’m at my happiest when I’m in charge of a whole production. And that has to be good for everyone concerned. If the man at the top is on good form the whole company does well. I was on good form in Cambridge. I had the marvellous Michael Kirk as my co-writer – and he was my clear first choice for each year’s new villain. His Abanazah in Aladdin was particularly good, though my Widow Twankey wasn’t too shabby either.
But now we’re back to all the swings and roundabouts of my life. The good times in Cambridge became a memory when I moved on and locked myself into a new two-year panto contract to perform with Cannon and Ball. It was at the height of their fame, but it’s hard to realise now just how popular they were. They were box-office gold. Audiences went crazy for them. On stage they were hilarious and could do no wrong. But off stage it was all a little bit different.
After seasons in Birmingham, I joined the boys at the Mayflower in Southampton, a lovely theatre where I’m opening again in Cinderella in December 2008. Book now to avoid disappointment. I’m hoping for fewer crises this time. With Cannon and Ball I was Nurse Tickle in Babes in the Wood. I had a short ra-ra skirt for one scene, and when I bounced on to the stage wearing it I always got one of the loudest laughs of the night. Maybe that was the problem. One night, halfway through the first act, I was in the quick-change room and found that the skirt had been lengthened so it fell well below the knee. I couldn’t believe it. But there was nothing I could do. I only had seconds to change before heading back on stage. My entrance had no impact at all. It got precious few laughs and my whole first scene went flat.
Now I very rarely get angry. I very rarely lose my temper. But, when I do, be very afraid. I got angry after that performance. I tore into the two stars so ferociously that little Bobby Ball ran from the theatre to get away. ‘Why are you spoiling things for the audience? Why don’t you want them to have something to laugh at? Why does it all have to be about you?’ I’d shouted.
Years later Bobby wrote to me saying it had been a misunderstanding. He said the skirt hadn’t been changed because they wanted to stop me from overshadowing them. It was because they hadn’t thought it appropriate that the kids in the audience should see my knees. If that was their opinion, then they were wrong. Not only were my costumes perfectly acceptable for kids, many of them had actually been designed by them. ‘Design a dress for Biggins in panto’ or some such phrase had been a Blue Peter challenge earlier in the year. At this point I’d had a close and happy relationship with Blue Peter for some time. They’d suggested the costume competition when the theatre first said I was going to be Nurse Tickle. Thousands upon thousands of entries came in – I still have them in a book at home and they’re extraordinary. So there was no question that kids – or their parents – wouldn’t approve of my ra-ra skirt. It was panto, for God’s sake. That’s what we do.
Funnily enough, the boys were very nice socially. The skirt aside, we always got on well backstage, just as I have got on well with almost everyone else I have worked with. It was on stage that they seemed different – and that’s a pattern you see repeated time and again with comedians. It’s incredibly hard to find generous comics. The stress of making people laugh does terrible things to people – that’s why so many comedians get divorced, turn to drink or die young. That’s why a lot of them do all three.
10
Panto Dames
For far too long I felt I was always fighting against the snobbery about panto – and I couldn’t get too angry about it because I suppose I had felt it myself when I’d first been approached for the gig. The gentle mockery has come and gone in waves. There were years when I heard people in box offices talk about ‘has-beens’ in the casts. ‘But these are the same has-beens you need to win your biggest audiences of the year. And win them we do,’ I wanted to scream. In fact, I probably did scream it on several occasions. So, to whoever it was whose ear I bent, I apologise.
I got irate because box-office staff of all people should know the industry a bit better. In the lean years – lean decades even – panto money saw me through many bad times. For some theatres panto money keeps their lights on when all their other worthy productions play to half-empty houses. So don’t knock it or mock it. Admit that you need it.
Also, I know it sounds a bit of a cliché, but panto really is a breeding ground for new audiences. We bring in first-timers as kids. We let them get comfortable with the inside of a theatre and we show them true magic. We only need to get a few of them hooked to secure our futures. I’m sure Ian McKellen got new bums on seats when he first did panto at the Old Vic in London in 2004. I didn’t really like that production. But Sir Ian did make a most sensational Widow Twankey.
And don’t knock panto performers either. Panto is the hardest work I do all year. It is relentless. My dear pal Paul O’Grady had something like 19 costume changes when he did Snow White at the Victoria Palace in London in 2005. He says he used to thank God for good old hook-and-loop fasteners every night and I know just how he feels. You need flu jabs and you need to be fit and fast to survive. Forget matinées on Wednesdays and Saturdays. With panto we do two shows a day, six days a week. I sleep in my dressing gown with my make-up on between them. Then I wake up, try to eat something, touch up my face and it’s show time all over again. I’m savagely anti-social. Even if I’m near home I like to stay in a hotel so I can know the towels on the bathroom floor will all be picked up and replaced for me and for a few brief weeks I won’t have to worry about running my house.
If you’re going to make it in panto, you need to have quick wits as well. At best we have two weeks of rehearsals. Sometimes it’s just a week of technicals, then you open. And the big shows are mini-musicals. If the money is there we can have a cast of 20, a full band if not an orchestra. We have dancers, lavish sets and, yes, a seemingly endless series of costume changes. And, oh yes, we have some of the most challenging audiences in the business.
‘There’s a bit of a lull here. The kids all talk through this bit,’ one producer said to me during a run-through years ago.
I was immediately at my imperious best. ‘My dear, no one talks through my songs,’ I declared. And no one did.
It’s harder to achieve this effect now, as kids’ attention spans get ever shorter. As performers we either give in to all this and go on to autopilot or we fight back. I fight back. I think laterally, come up with ideas, devices, movements, visual jokes, anything at all to keep the kids’ eyes on stage and on me. Talk through my songs indeed. But while the challenge of panto is to win over a new audience, the reward is to see it in their eyes when you succeed.
It’s worth it when you do. Richard Br
iers wrote me a lovely note four years ago after a show in Richmond which his family had loved. Other letters have meant just as much. Here’s one I’ve treasured for years.
‘I would like to make a strong complaint about your pantomime and would be grateful for a refund for 14 tickets in the upper balcony. We came in a gang of 14 and among us was my elderly mother who unfortunately gets a big confused occasionally. She is a lady who had a protected upbringing but has had great experience of the world having been a General Practitioner in Airedale, Castleford, for 40 years before her retirement. She has experienced many strange things in her life as you may now realise, since Yorkshire people are a little odd. However, I do not think she ever expected that she would experience the strange sensation of some chocolate fudge being fired up her skirt from a catapult by a woman wearing a hat containing a dozen eggs and a chicken. She has never been the same since.’
Fortunately my correspondent, a Dr R Sloan, added a postscript. ‘Seriously, we enjoyed the pantomime very much indeed and wish you all success.’
What I also love is to see the faces in the front rows to gauge whether or not they’ve got it. Catchphrases always help with this. How I love them.
‘Now, you’ll probably have noticed I’m a little on the plump side,’ my Mother Goose said in one of the early Darlington years. ‘I’ve always got a carrier bag full of sweeties ready in case I feel a bit peckish. But I’ve got to stop eating them all the time, so if you see me reach for the bag can you all shout out, “Naughty, naughty” to stop me? Will you do that, boys and girls? Will you?’
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