Life's What You Make It

by Phillip Schofield

  ‘What the fuck is that?!’ she said.

  ‘It’s the Skittles submarine.’

  She weighed up the advertising issues an enormous, branded submarine would throw up and after a moment’s thought picked a colour.

  ‘Paint it red, now.’

  Another year had an Indiana Jones theme, so I was dressed as Indy. Two of our mates were dressed in suits of armour behind me. Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine were on the bill. The show was over-running and Janet was scything through the running order in the truck out the back. She said she was going to start fading tracks out, but that was really going to piss off the artists. Funnily enough, I asked her not to fade Carter because it wasn’t a long track to start with and I liked it. She faded it anyway. The band were rightly angry. Carter threw his mic stand and I watched it arc perilously through the air and skewer the ground between two girls who were dancing in the front row. I said, ‘That was clever.’

  Carter saw red and ran at me. To be honest, it was a brilliant rugby tackle. We both disappeared from frame. Janet must have been looking down and missed it because in my ear I heard her exclaim, ‘Where the fuck has he gone?’

  What made us all laugh as we watched it back were the two guys in the armour who were standing behind me. They both clanked forward to help me, then realized that neither of them could bend over so they were going to be of little help, so they both turned around and left me to it. One of them was Roger Wright, who went on to have his own very successful singing and acting career, including the lead in The Lion King in the West End.

  Jason Donovan was appearing one year, and he told me he had a secret and I couldn’t tell. I pride myself on being the very best secret-keeper. People have always confided in me and I would never betray a confidence. Okay, so what was the secret? He told me that he was going to be in a musical. It hadn’t been totally signed off, but he was going to be Joseph in a new stage production.

  ‘That’s amazing,’ I said. ‘We did it at school, but my music teacher wouldn’t let me be in it because he didn’t think I had a good enough voice.’

  It was soon announced that Jason would be appearing in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s brand-new production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat, directed by Stephen Pimlott, at the London Palladium. It sounded like a great idea. I’d definitely have to go to watch.

  After Joseph had been running for a couple of weeks and after I’d heard how good it was, I bought tickets so that Steph and I could see what all the fuss was about.

  Jason and I shared the same kind of fan base so when we arrived and took our seats it caused a bit of a stir. In the interval we were whisked out to a private room because it was getting a bit out of control, and at the end of the show we had to be fully rescued. The production was every bit as good as it had been made out to be. Stephen Pimlott’s direction was brilliant. It was clever, very funny, colourful and short! The perfect night’s entertainment – a real feel-good show. Everyone leaving the Palladium had a smile on their faces. I was really pleased for Jason: he was in a major West End hit. Whenever any friends came to town, we always took them to see Joseph. Though I thoroughly enjoyed watching West End shows, I had absolutely no thought, desire or ambition to actually be in one!

  I got a royal seal of approval for Going Live that thrilled the team when, at a lunch, I was introduced to Princess Diana. I don’t often get starstruck, but that was a big deal. She was absolutely beautiful, with stunning sapphire-blue eyes – yes, I’m definitely an eye man! She turned to me and smiled, and I thought I’d better tell her who I was.

  ‘Your Royal Highness, I’m Phill—’

  ‘I know who you are!’ She laughed. ‘You and Sarah keep me and the boys entertained every Saturday. We sit on the floor in our pjs and have breakfast. How’s the Gopher?’

  I never told Gordon. He would have been intolerable.

  I may also be the only person to have said no to Margaret Thatcher and live.

  I was asked to present some children’s awards, I think at the Guildhall. As soon as I arrived I knew something was going on. There was extra security on the door, sniffer dogs checking the place out. Someone famous was obviously coming. I knew better than to ask, though. I’d be told in good time, and if I wasn’t told, then I’d see them in the audience as I hosted the ceremony.

  With about half an hour to go before the event started, one of the organizers came up to me and said, ‘You may have spotted the extra security.’

  ‘Yes, I did notice.’

  ‘You should know who your co-host is today.’

  ‘My co-host?! I thought it would be someone in the audience.’

  ‘No, no, your co-host will be Margaret Thatcher.’

  ‘Oh, right.’

  I heard the police whistles outside as her car pulled up. The doors opened, and in she strode, handbag in hand. She took the seat beside me and said hello.

  ‘Do you know what I’m expected to do?’ the Prime Minister asked.

  ‘How much do you want to do?’ I asked. ‘Do you want to share the links, read out the names?’

  ‘I don’t think so, do you?’

  ‘Perhaps not. How about I actually start it, I read the names, you hand over the awards and then perhaps say something at the end?’

  ‘Yes, that will be fine.’

  It was time. After I’d introduced the event and thanked everyone for coming, including the Prime Minister, I read out the first name. It was a young and particularly accomplished girl who had cerebral palsy. As I read out her name, the audience clapped and she stood and began to walk towards the stage. Her steps were very slow, but solid and unfaltering. We all waited for her to make her way to us.

  The Cabinet Room at No. 10 and a PM.

  ‘I’m going to go down and help her,’ said the steely voice beside me.

  ‘I don’t think you should,’ I said to Margaret Thatcher.

  ‘She needs help.’

  ‘No, she doesn’t. She’s doing fine.’

  ‘I’m going to go down to meet her halfway.’

  ‘No, don’t!’

  ‘What?’ She turned to look at me with a smile that could have blinded a snake.

  I stood my ground.

  ‘This is her moment. She has won this award because of what she has overcome. A walk to this stage is the least she deserves. She’s perfectly capable.’

  Margaret Thatcher looked directly into my eyes. I thought I might turn to stone. She was thinking, and her eyes softened and she said, ‘You’re right. Thank you.’

  My heart resumed its steady rhythm.

  I was sitting in the kitchen of my house in Chiswick one day when the phone rang.

  ‘Hi, mate,’ said Russ. ‘Bit of a weird one. I’ve just had a call from the Really Useful Group, asking if you can sing.’

  ‘I dunno! I sing in the shower and in the car, but I have no idea if it’s any good. Why do they want to know?’

  ‘Well … Jason is taking six weeks off Joseph and they’re wondering if you’d be interested.’

  I burst out laughing.

  ‘Russ, it’s a wind-up. Phone the number back and see who picks up. It’ll be a bloody sex hotline.’

  He dialled the number back and heard a cheery ‘Really Useful Group’ at the end of his phone and hung up.

  ‘Shit, mate, it’s really them. What do you want to do?’

  ‘I suppose we’d better meet up and find out if I can sing!’

  Russ called them back. They were deadly serious. A meeting was set up. It was to be totally secret, and could I learn ‘Any Dream Will Do’?

  On Friday, 1 November 1991 I was in the Going Live production office on the twelfth floor of the East Tower. Sarah, Trev and Simon and I had all spent the morning messing around. In the afternoon, we’d wandered over to TC7 to run through anything we needed for the show the next day.

  That lunchtime, I excused myself. I met Pete outside the building and he drove us the ten minutes it takes to get to the Lyric Theatre in Hammer
smith. A door had been left open for us. We walked into the auditorium and waited. What the hell was I doing? Why was I even taking this seriously? Was I really about to sing for Andrew Lloyd Webber? If it hadn’t felt so surreal, I think I would have laughed, but my overriding emotion was confused disbelief. It was too soon to feel out of my depth, but the water was about to rise. Five minutes later, a guy who introduced himself as Paul arrived. He said he’d be playing piano for me and would I like to warm up. Warm up? What did that mean? A workout? A Jane Fonda-style exercise class? I obviously looked even more bemused, and he explained a vocal warm-up to me. I explained that I genuinely had no clue how to do one and Paul said we’d better leave it then.

  Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber (the Lord came later) slipped in through the doorway. We all said our hellos. We had met once before on Going Live when he appeared as a guest. He wasn’t mucking around and asked me to go onstage to sing.

  ‘Where would you like me to stand?’

  ‘In the middle might be a good idea,’ came his voice from the darkness of the stalls.

  I looked to the back of the theatre. Pete has always rubbed his hair when he’s stressed, and he was vigorously rubbing his head now, as if trying to summon a genie that could help me.

  I sang ‘Any Dream Will Do’, but I couldn’t remember how to finish it. I went round and round a couple of times, Paul on the piano dutifully following me, until Lloyd Webber could take no more.

  ‘Okay, thank you, you can stop,’ he said, putting me out of my misery.

  The clandestine meeting broke up, and everyone left suitable gaps before walking through the door, which had been left ajar. Pete and I left last. I closed the door behind me. What an utterly bizarre experience. We drove back to Television Centre and I carried on as though nothing had happened.

  On Saturdays, when Going Live was on air, I usually got up at around 7 a.m. Work was only twenty minutes away so it was all nice and leisurely. I’d get up, get dressed, have a cuppa, pad around for a bit, then go and do a couple of hours of telly. At about 7.30 a.m. on this particular Saturday, I heard the tell-tale roar of Pete’s Porsche in the road. He’d never driven over on a Saturday morning before. Why was he here? Surely there was no way he would give me bad news before I was about to go on TV. The rule was simple: you always got shit news as you came off. He walked up the path and I opened the front door.

  ‘You got it.’

  ‘Got what?’

  ‘Mate, you’re going to be bloody Joseph!’

  ‘What?’

  Not for one second did I think I would get the part. After the mediocre audition the day before, I’d moved on in my head. Now the entire world stopped for a moment as I absorbed this news.

  What did this mean? How would I fit into the world of theatre? Oh God, I didn’t know anything about it! I’d be a big pretender, they’d hate me. What if I cocked it up? The day before, I had auditioned out of simple curiosity and nothing more. The only ‘theatre’ I’d ever done were the annual school pantomimes. I had the first panicked ‘What am I getting myself into?’ moment. If I didn’t feel out of my depth yesterday, at this moment the water was up to my very tight throat. I let out a kind of strangled ‘sheeeeesh’ as I leaned back against the open front door, staring into the sky.

  ‘Bloody hell, Pete, this is huge.’

  ‘Yes, it is, mate! It’s massive. You’re going to be on the stage of the bloody Palladium.’

  The water rose to just beneath my nose. Should I stop this right now? Put an end to this madness before it got out of hand? Pete left and I ran upstairs to tell Steph what had just happened on the doorstep. As I had to leave for the studio, I woke her up and garbled the conversation I had just had. For someone awoken from a deep sleep, that must have been a particularly bizarre moment. By the time she had fully woken and come to the conclusion that she hadn’t in fact been dreaming, I was on my way to Going Live. I fretted about it for the full show, not breathing a word to anyone in case I changed my mind and pulled out. That afternoon, back in Chiswick, as we sat in the kitchen drinking tea, Steph said something profoundly true: ‘All you have to do is agree to take it to the next step. They will decide if you’re shite.’

  We continued to keep it under wraps. I went to meet Mike Dixon, the Musical Director for the show, in the Really Useful Group (RUG) offices for the first time. Mike, alongside so many people I was about to meet in this entirely alien world, would become a friend for life.

  Mike asked me to sing.

  ‘Okay. Not bad. We can work with this,’ he said afterwards.

  ‘Well, that sounds reasonably encouraging,’ I replied.

  ‘You’ll be great.’

  There was plenty of time, surely? It was the beginning of November and I wouldn’t be onstage until January. I had two and a half months to learn an entirely new set of skills.

  When I told my family, they were a little stunned but, as always, totally supportive. I think they always relied on the fact that I must know what I’m doing! My brother just burst out laughing, which was a very grounding, brotherly reaction. We were certainly not the Von Trapps and seldom sang with each other, unless we were singing along to a song on the radio.

  A few days later, the press release was sent out. Now there was definitely no going back. Everybody knew.

  Twice a week, I was sent to Mary Hammond in North London for singing lessons. At the time, she assured me that what happened in those lessons was between us: every bum note stayed within those walls. She admitted years later that as soon as I left her house she was straight on the phone to Really Useful to tell them that I was going to be fine. Of course she was. I was naive to think that a singing unknown would be put onstage to front a multimillion-pound production with a million quids’ worth of advance bookings and that someone wasn’t going to reassure them that their money and reputation were safe. A few people I came into contact with were less enthusiastic. After one singing lesson with Mary, I climbed into the back of a black cab. We set off down Camden High Street and the driver looked in the mirror and did a double take. He then actually pulled over and stopped! He turned around to look at me. He had obviously read the announcement in the papers.

  ‘What the actual fack are you doin’, mate? You are so goin’ to arse this right up!’

  He roared with laughter, but when I got out he wouldn’t take my money and thanked me for the laugh!

  I was really self-conscious trying to learn the songs. I made Steph turn her back so she couldn’t see me as I sang. She was so encouraging as we sat on the sitting-room floor in Netheravon Road. When I look back at moments like that, I can’t help thinking how complicated our heads are. I can present in front of millions of people without a twitch, I can make up an instant speech off the cuff in front of Royalty and actually enjoy myself, but at that moment I was so embarrassed to sing out loud, sitting back to back with Steph. She kept reassuring me: ‘You’ll be fine, you have a lovely voice.’

  It didn’t help that I couldn’t belt out the songs because I knew I’d annoy the neighbours, so one Saturday night I put the cassette that Mike Dixon had recorded for me in the car and set off down the M4. On my own, I could let rip with no embarrassment. I drove to Bristol, did a couple of circuits of the city centre and then drove back. Just enough time and distance to get it in my head. If I thought it would have taken longer, I would have driven to Wales! By the time I arrived back in Chiswick it was 3 a.m. and I knew every note, every song and all the colours of Joseph’s coat.

  I know there are actors who take on a role and, in a very thespian way say, ‘Dahhhhhling, I haven’t watched any other production or anyone else in the role. I want it to be authentic and pure, with no outside influences.’ Well, sod that! I was constantly at the Palladium. I knew nothing of theatre life, and I didn’t want any surprises. I learned the thrill of the backstage Tannoy calls:

  ‘Ladies and gentleman, this is your half-hour call. Half an hour, please.’ Then the quarter, and then, ‘Ladies and gentleman, this i
s your Act I beginners call. Beginners to the stage, please.’

  I got confused by that one and asked Jason if that was for show newbies. He laughed and explained it was everyone who should be there as the music started. It all seemed so polite and everyone was incredibly kind to me as I hovered backstage. I also wanted to watch everything, multiple times. Every night I’d see the show from a different vantage point, either in the wings or hidden in the auditorium. It was all sinking in. I knew myself well enough to understand that I had to have it absolutely committed to memory by the opening night, because I knew I would be galvanized with fear otherwise. I learned very quickly that there is a huge difference between the nerves at the start of a new TV show – nerves that I’m used to feeling – and the nerves before you launch yourself on to the stage of the London Palladium with absolutely no theatrical experience in front of 2,500 paying customers in a show with an unblemished track record. This was becoming terror on a scale I had never experienced before.

  I hope Jason won’t mind me saying that those weren’t his most ‘lucid’ years. Onstage, he was triumphant every night. Offstage, slightly less so. We’d have lunch and, the next day, he wouldn’t remember that we had. Or we’d get to the end of lunch and he’d say, ‘I made sense today, didn’t I, mate?’ and we’d both burst out laughing. I think the correct and kindest phrase to use would be to say that for a fair proportion of the late eighties and early nineties Jason was ‘chemically assisted’. He lived in Holland Park, just a couple of miles from my home in Chiswick. Each night after I’d been rehearsing and watching the show, I’d drive him home.