Biggins

by Christopher Biggins

  Will they ever.

  The kids deafened us throughout all the years I used that line. And they never missed a thing. If all I did was move my hand to my side, even in a moment when I wasn’t the centre of attention (and I hated not being centre of attention), at least one set of kids would scream out their warning.

  But for all that hullabaloo I sometimes think I like it even more when the kids go completely silent. When they’re captivated and transported by the story or the spectacle. I respond to the kids who are feeling it. Back in Darlington in the early years, one little boy was certainly doing that. His hair was perfectly combed and he was all smartly dressed in his Sunday best – a blue sweater with a shirt and tie. He was only about seven and he seemed adorable – something about him told me he was proud to be looking all grown up, but still nervous about the whole occasion. I responded to that.

  The only odd thing was that, every time I looked over, his mum seemed to be talking to him. And, as I say, no one talks through my numbers. I redoubled my efforts to draw everyone’s eyes to me. I got my reward when we got to the song sheet. The little lad from the front row was first to rush up on to the stage, pushed around a bit by some of the older, bigger kids but determined not to get left behind. I picked him to talk to and was blown away. He was so confident, so thrilled to be there and he helped me win so many extra laughs. At one point I looked down at his mum to check she was enjoying it – and saw her dissolve into tears. Odd.

  At the end of that number I would dash into the wings for my final, and fastest, costume change of the night. I had a whole new outfit for the finale. But my usual helpers were, frankly, useless. They were all crying too. What the hell was going on? ‘Tell you later, Chris. Do us proud.’ And I was pushed back on stage.

  My little friend was beaming with pride in the front row as I did the curtain calls. His mum, meanwhile, was still wiping away tears.

  ‘He’s blind, Christopher,’ the director told me when the curtain finally fell.

  I’m not sure, really, why that story means so much to me. I never saw that little lad or his mum ever again, though his mum did write me a lovely thank-you note for taking him up on the stage. I so hope he never lost the magic of that night. It would be wonderful if he’s working in the theatre in some way. It would prove that fairytales don’t always end.

  I got my next big job offer in 1975 and I was determined to resist it – just as I had been determined to resist the call to do panto. So much for my so-called professional judgement.

  Jeremy Swan made the call. He was in charge of a new children’s show about a group of ghosts trying to become millionaires. To be honest, it did sound like a bit of a hoot. But I didn’t want to know. ‘I’m a serious ac-tor,’ I declared, yet again. Sure, I had enjoyed my various guest appearances on Blue Peter and the show even gave me a special silver Blue Peter badge for a lifetime of services rendered. It may well be the closest thing I’ll ever get to a knighthood from the Queen, especially bearing in mind my excruciating ‘Puck, Philip’ incident, which I will also get to later.

  Anyway, back in 1975 I turned Rentaghost down. Then, just like panto, I was asked a few more times and eventually caved in. Thank God. All my years on Rentaghost were extraordinarily happy times – which I think shines through on the screen. Jeremy, a mad Irishman and one of the funniest men I know, helped create that perfect atmosphere. In the past I’d done a few Jackanory Playhouse shows with him and Willie Rushton and had a feeling it would be good to be back in company. I was oh so right. In my Rentaghost days, we had Michael Staniforth, already a big West End star, playing the lead. Another great pal was Anne Emery, one of the maddest and most talented women you will ever meet. It was Anne who taught Wayne Sleep how to tap dance and I saw her recently giving a tour-de-force performance as the grandmother in Billy Elliot in London.

  Back to Rentaghost. The show wasn’t just camp. It was way beyond camp. It was actually surreal, which is quite an achievement for what people constantly denigrate as ‘just’ kids’ TV. The show was also stuffed with a roster of wonderful performers and over-the-top performances. I was Adam Painting, the department-store owner who was always being plagued by the ghosts’ failed ventures.

  All the episodes were bizarre and kitsch and hilarious, but our first totally surreal Christmas special still stands out in my mind. I come down a flight of steps singing ‘Santa Claus is Coming to Town’ as the whole set around me vanishes in a whirl of glitter, lights and totally fake snow. It was really an MGM-style fantasy sequence, though it was all done on a budget of, well, almost nothing. BBC penny-pinching at its best – but we made something wonderful out of it, just the way professional entertainers always do. If you’ve got enough talented people around you, and if everyone thinks laterally and goes the extra mile, the cheapest sets can still look fantastic. And the show will be great. The Rentaghost era turned out to be a hugely important part of my life. Kids loved the show – and today those kids are 30- or, more likely, 40-something people who haven’t quite forgotten it. I’m sure it could stand a revival and, yes, I’m available.

  What else do I love about kids’ TV? The things that go wrong that only the adults spot. On another Jackanory Playhouse, we were once filming a scene where six beautiful princesses sleepwalk into a fantasy world where they dance with six handsome princes. I’m one of the princes, believe it or not, and one of my favourite ladies, Edward Fox’s wife, Joanna David, was one of the princesses. Now Joanna likes a laugh as much as me. Embarrassingly enough, it proved to be her downfall.

  ‘Now you have to do this in a single shot because we can’t go into overtime,’ came the call from the directors. In those union days overtime was the producer’s biggest fear. This sequence was particularly important – we had to get it right first time.

  The main camera was at the centre of the set and the 12 of us were to dance fast and furiously around it. Just before we got the call for ‘Action’ I told a joke. The good thing was that everyone laughed and as we were supposed to be having fun it made it all look good when the camera did roll. The bad news for poor Joanna was that she laughed so much that she peed herself. The worse news for everyone was that the mini centrifugal force we set up in our circular dance meant that the effects of her little lapse spread far and wide.

  Then there was the Rentaghost episode with Sue Nicholls when I unaccountably farted at the end of the scene. We both fell about laughing and Sue, understandably thinking we would have a break and then do a retake, signalled past the cameras for someone to get her a cup of tea. What she didn’t know was what a slave-driver Jeremy was. Retake? Just because someone farted and someone else made a ‘T’ sign to her colleagues behind the cameras? No way. ‘Let the audience see what amateurs you are,’ was Jeremy’s verdict. So we just carried on with the next scene. It’s something else I’ve not seen (or, more accurately in my case, heard) in a blooper show. Or at least not yet.

  Shows like Rentaghost bring one big benefit to a social butterfly like myself. You do a lot of filming in a very short time. Then you get plenty of time to do other jobs, spend all your money and have fun. I did all three.

  On the work front I’m proud to say that I was in one of Cameron Mackintosh’s last straight plays, Touch of Spring, and in one of his first hit musicals, Side by Side by Sondheim. His is another friendship that I treasure. He is someone else I think was born laughing.

  The Sondheim musical review was the brainchild of dear old Ned Sherrin. Ned was the ultimate theatrical raconteur. He was one of the funniest men I had ever known – and I’ve known a hell of a lot of them. I always hoped he would do me the honour of reading the eulogy at my funeral. How awful, in October 2007, to have to go to his. He was loved, and he is missed. Maybe that’s the best eulogy any of us can wish for.

  Anyway, back in 1977 Ned was my idol. He loved Sondheim’s musicals and created Side by Side himself with Julia McKenzie, Millicent Martin and David Kernan at his side. The show opened in the most unlikely of places – a t
heatre at Guy’s Hospital near London Bridge. The story behind the venue makes me laugh to this day. Apparently, a Shakespeare-loving, theatre-mad doctor is behind it all. When he died, leaving a large bequest to the hospital, his eccentric explorer of a wife was asked what should be done with his money.

  ‘Build a new theatre in his memory,’ she said, before setting off on her travels.

  So the trustees found the land, got the builders in, created the auditorium and when she got back from her latest journey they invited the doctor’s widow to the gala opening.

  She walked through the doors and stopped in horror.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ they asked.

  ‘I meant an operating theatre,’ she replied.

  I do hope that story is true. But, either way, the doctor’s – and perhaps the hospital’s – bad luck is our good fortune as actors. It’s a bijou but lovely performance space. And that night in 1977 it staged some pure musical magic. I was buzzing with excitement after the curtain calls and got a pile of 10p pieces to ring Cameron, in New York, from the phone box in the hospital’s main entrance. ‘Cameron, you have to buy this show.’

  So he did. Sight unseen.

  He raised the money to take the production to the West End and, after a hugely successful run, he wanted to take it on tour. Unfortunately, the members of the original cast were committed to other shows, so it had to be recast. Everyone told Cameron that he had to cancel the transfer as no one else could play the key roles. It was ridiculous. Doom-sayers got even more negative when I was mooted to replace dear Ned. ‘Biggins can’t play that kind of role,’ went the rumour.

  ‘Biggins will be brilliant,’ said Ned. And Cameron listened, so I got the job. It was a marvellously flexible contract. The likes of Michael Aspel and I took turns to be narrator in various theatres around the country.

  What fun that so many years later I was able to renew my connection to a more modern version of a Sondheim classic.

  ‘Biggins, Biggins, Biggins.’ In 2008, the crowds outside the Empire Leicester Square were screaming my name as Neil and I arrived for the premier of Sweeney Todd. I probably sound like a classic luvvie, but there really were tears in my eyes at that reaction. And once inside the cinema I loved the film, I loved the ridiculously underrated Helena Bonham Carter and I loved Johnny Depp. There was a suitably big party afterwards – for some 2,000 people, I believe. Neil and I fortunately got let into the VIP area and in the corner I spotted director Tim Burton talking to Johnny.

  I decided to go for it – if Tim is ever casting another Sondheim film I want to make sure I’m the first person he calls.

  ‘I just wanted to say congratulations, Mr Burton. It was a brilliant film,’ I gushed shamelessly.

  ‘No, congratulations to you, Christopher, for being King of the Jungle,’ he replied, to my huge surprise and pleasure. To think that Tim Burton watches I’m A Celebrity! Less surprising was the fact that Johnny Depp clearly didn’t have a clue who I was.

  ‘This is Christopher Biggins and he has just won a really big reality-television show,’ explained Tim.

  ‘Christopher, how fascinating,’ said Johnny, not entirely convincingly.

  I decided it was my cue to melt back into the crowds. But I await a call from Tim. Once again, I am available.

  11

  The Reverend Ossie Whitworth

  Now, I’ve never really seen myself as a wicked, sex-crazed vicar. But others did. In the Queen’s Silver Jubilee year of 1977, I got my greatest, meatiest television role so far. I was cast as the monstrous Reverend Ossie Whitworth in Poldark. It was probably the most delicious part I could have imagined.

  The show was based on the books by Winston Graham, a pal whose own life was as fascinating as his fictions – though not always in the way he might have wanted. He had written a novel called The Walking Stick, he told me. And the moment it got published his wife came down with a mystery illness and had to use a stick for the rest of her life. But what an inspirational woman Jean was. Her disability never got in her way. It never stopped her living, or having fun. Big groups of us from the cast went for days out on the beach in Cornwall with them and once I joined them on holiday in Menorca. To this day I can picture Jean swimming around in a rubber ring and yelling, ‘Get me a gin and tonic, darling,’ as I watched from the shore.

  One other time that week we were all laughing because a lady sunbathing near us was reading one of Winston’s other novels. So when she went into the sea for a swim he dashed over and signed it. Did she see him? Did she ever notice the signature? Did she dismiss it as a joke? Who knows, but it was lovely to conjure up a mystery for her. Maybe she can solve it by reading this.

  All the exterior scenes for Poldark were filmed in Cornwall and cast and crew were all put up in hotels there for around six months at a time. Six months of pure bliss. As usual, I’d fallen on my feet and found myself surrounded by wonderful talents. Angharad Rees and my friend Robin Ellis from Salisbury Rep were the two leads and dear Jane Wymark was my wife. Trudie Styler, who had been at drama school a year below me in Bristol, was Emma Tregirls. Now, years earlier I had been sitting on the floor at one of my old friend the actress Miranda Bell’s parties next to a serious and seriously handsome teacher from the north called Gordon Sumner. He talked a lot about music, but who knew that many years later he would get divorced, meet and marry Trudie – and become richer and more famous than all of us.

  Anyway, back to Poldark. Our lovely bonding time in Cornwall was about to come to an end. There was a lot more work ahead.

  For the interiors we rehearsed in London all week, then went up to Pebble Mill in Birmingham to record them. One of my favourite scenes was where the doctor had to tell me I was too heavy to have sex with my pregnant wife. ‘Too heavy?’ I had to say, appalled, in a tight close-up. It wasn’t acting. I wasn’t thrilled to have my weight drawn to the nation’s attention. But this was far from the most embarrassing of my love scenes. The worst one – though not for me – was when I had to make love to my on-screen wife’s sister’s feet. Yes, to her feet. Poldark was as complicated as that. And that’s why it was so hysterical.

  Dear Julie Dawn Cole had tried to make everything as wonderful as possible for this tricky scene. All week in London she had spent every moment she wasn’t on set down at Dr Scholl’s to keep her feet in tip-top condition. They were pummelled and pumiced into the feet of an angel, she swore. On the day we filmed the scene she bathed and scented them before being carried on to the set and placed on the bed for her big moment.

  ‘And, action.’

  In a typically tight close-up I loomed up to Julie’s feet and out snaked my tongue to do its thing on her toes.

  My tongue’s big moment was ultimately cut from the show. The producer told us that after much consideration they had decided that the public weren’t quite ready for a vicar with a foot fetish. All that effort from poor Julie to have the most fragrant feet in the land was all for nothing. Secretly, I had to admit I quite liked being cut – it made me feel a bit racy, as if Mary Whitehouse herself had deemed me a threat to the morals of the nation. And on this subject I did have a little bit of form. One other scene of mine that ended up banned in America was from I Claudius. I had gone to see my mother, played by Barbara Young, to complain that my wife had said she wouldn’t have sex with me. ‘There are other things you can do,’ she said, deliciously suggestively as her hands pulled mine south on her body. We broadcast the scene in Britain, but not in the States. They’re happy to show someone getting out a machine gun and killing dozens of passers-by. But suggest a little consensual incest and the networks go crazy.

  When Poldark was broadcast, the world seemed to go mad. It was a huge hit for the BBC and we all had such good times doing publicity for it. I was voted ‘Most Hated Man on Television’ by the Daily Mail. Which of course I absolutely loved.

  One day when I was in the BBC’s marvellous rehearsal studios in the wilds of East Acton, I found out that everyone who was anyone was watc
hing. The three main studios in west London were where almost all of the Corporation’s main shows were put together. I got into a lift one time to find myself standing next to none other than Eric and Ernie.

  ‘Oh, hi there. How are you?’ I asked them, relaxed and friendly as you like. I didn’t feel as if I needed an introduction because I felt like I knew them. In Britain we all did. They had been in all our sitting rooms all our lives, after all.

  To their huge credit they were charm itself in response. Apparently, they loved my sex-mad vicar in Poldark, so they said they thought they knew me as well (which is a little worrying, now I think about it). That lift journey was the start of a lovely friendship. A little while later they both asked me to come on a Morecambe and Wise special, which was about the biggest honour in showbusiness. But then Eric died and it never happened. We all lost a great man that day.

  Did Poldark cast too long a shadow? Perhaps the Reverend Ossie Whitworth was too hard an act to follow. Either way I got a little lost as the 1970s came to their recession- and strike-hit close. Yes, I won several one-off and cameo roles. Crime and comedy dramas were doing well and I had bit parts in Shoestring, Minder and all the big shows in those worlds. I did a mini-series called Crime and Punishment. I still did my wonderfully well-paid pantos each year. I toured with some great theatrical companies. And I spent a lot of money and travelled the world meeting some quite extraordinary new friends – of which a lot more later.

  But in the shop-window world of prime-time television I was in danger of fading away.

  ‘Something’s going to come up,’ I told myself, the way I always have. And in 1981 something did. My career was about to take another bizarre turn. I was on my way to Hollywood.

  12

  Hollywood – and Back

  I was cast in a big-budget American television film called Masada. It was serious stuff, telling the story of Mount Masada in Israel. Legend has it that high up on that plateau the Jews had a secure little piece of paradise. They kept their animals, grew wheat and other crops and lived self-sufficient, totally impregnable lives. The Romans, though, wanted some of the action. Our show followed the final assault by the Romans, who apparently built vast ramps up the hillside to the encampment. When they broke in, they found that everyone in the settlement was dead. It was a huge mass suicide and it all added up to a marvellous drama. So much for me being typecast in light entertainment and panto.