The last Going Live was broadcast on 17 April 1993. Another awesome adventure had come to an end, and it was extremely painful. Trev and Simon joined us for a final ‘pant-swinging session’, Sarah and I stepped forward, and we thanked everyone who had been so wonderful over the years. I kissed her on the cheek and had to turn round as the tears started. Going Live had ended. I would never work in TC7 again.
I was too distracted by Joseph and family to take much notice of TV opportunities. Jason’s dresser, Tina, had moved on. I interviewed a few people for the job and gave it to a young woman called Petra Hodgson, who obviously loved the theatre. Petra fitted into the team beautifully and contributed to the laughter. She fitted in so perfectly that she later married my brother, Tim, and they have two terrific kids.
Steph was getting very close to having our first baby. The understudy was on alert in case I had to make a run for it. We had booked into The Portland, which was moments from the stage door.
We had both decided that it would be better to bring up a family a bit further out of London, so I had sold the house in Chiswick and we moved to a home in the country that needed an incredible amount of work doing to it but had huge ‘potential’. We’re still working on it now!
On Saturday, 10 July 1993 I had just done two shows at the Palladium and driven home. Steph was tired so had gone to bed. I decided to play with the flight simulator downstairs. I had just safely landed a flight from Heathrow to Edinburgh when she called down to me.
‘I think my waters have broken.’
They had, and we jumped in the car and raced into London. Steph is good at pretty much everything, including having babies. She was amazing; it was a miracle to see. I did get shouted at, though, a couple of times; first, for interviewing the anaesthetist. When I asked, as the epidural was being administered, ‘Is this classed as an invasive procedure?’ I quite rightly tipped Steph over the edge. The second time was, as she was concentrating very intensely on actually giving birth, I sprayed her with water! I was feeling completely useless. Of course, in those circumstances, I was completely useless, just a bit part in a drama starring someone else who was far more important. I think, more out of pity than anything else, one of the nurses gave me a ‘cooling water mist’ spray. I could lightly ‘mist’ Steph’s brow, should she start to feel hot. At a fairly crucial ‘pushing’ moment I sprayed her face. It went in both her eyes and made her cough.
‘What the hell was that?’
‘It’s a misting water spray, it’s rose fragrance.’
‘Don’t do that again.’
‘Okay.’
Molly May was born in the early hours of the Monday morning. In that moment, Steph and I had gone from being a couple to becoming a family. I had never in my life seen anything more beautiful or realized just what fierce, protecting love could feel like. Molly had a touch of jaundice so looked a little tanned. She has always been organized; she became one of my managers for a while and was brilliant at her job. Her organization that day was a mark of things to come. She had arrived so perfectly, my schedule was unbroken. I didn’t miss a single show.
Mike Dixon, the Musical Director of Joseph, knocked on my dressing-room door.
‘Andrew would like you to record “Close Every Door” as a single.’
Hello Molly!
‘Oh God. Okay, that scares me to death.’
‘It’s okay. There’s nothing to worry about.’
The day of the recording, I had the beginning of a cold. I’d interviewed many stars in recording studios but, obviously, I’d never recorded a single. I seem to have a two-tiered nervous system. TV, radio and public speaking seldom ever make me nervous. On countless occasions, someone has come up to me and said, ‘Would you mind saying a few words?’ and I’m never horrified or scared. However, the minute I have to sing, it’s an entirely different ballgame. I hated literally any singing performances I had to do on TV. I think it’s because you can sing a song a hundred times perfectly in the theatre, but if you screw it up live on TV, it’ll be on YouTube for ever.
So, I’m out of my depth in a recording studio. Mike Dixon, who was my rock to hold on to, wasn’t there, there was no vocal warm-up and I was getting a cold. I sang it two or three times, and that was it!
A week or so later, I was sent the track. Halfway through the song, I knew I went a bit flat. I sang that song twice in every show – at that point, I had probably sung it over seven hundred times! I knew I could do it better. I knew I was never flat when I sang it. My office tried to get it re-recorded.
‘It’s fine,’ came back the answer.
‘No, it’s not fine. It’s not good enough. It’ll haunt me!’
‘Everyone says it’s okay, Phil.’
‘I have to do it again.’
When I first joined the show, Andrew Lloyd Webber had given me his personal number, saying, ‘If you ever need me, this is the private number to my desk. If it’s not picked up, it’s because I’m not there. If you have any concerns or worries, don’t go through the office, call me direct.’
I had never dialled the number, firstly because there had been no need and, secondly, because I didn’t like to be a nuisance. Now, though, I had to dial. Andrew picked up.
‘Andrew, it’s Phillip. I’m sorry to bother you.’
‘Hi, Phillip. I know what this is about, you’re worried about the track.’
‘I’m flat on it, Andrew. I have to do it again.’
‘It’s funny,’ said Andrew. ‘I’ve just put the phone down to Barbra Streisand. She’s worried she’s flat on something we’ve recorded, but she isn’t. She’s a perfectionist.’
‘Andrew, there is a world of difference between me and Barbra Streisand, principally because I am flat.’
‘Okay. If that’s what you want, we’ll re-record.’
‘Oh my God, Andrew. Thank you so much.’
The phone call ended, and I was thrilled, but I later heard that Andrew had said straight afterwards, ‘How the fuck did he get this number?’
Though I was loving being Joseph, I still had one eye on television. After all, that was my day job, and I didn’t plan to stay in theatre full time. However, the BBC weren’t being particularly dynamic with show ideas. Was there anything they were working on? Anything that might have my name on it? There really wasn’t. The final show proposal that was pitched to me was ‘Phillip cycles across the country, interviewing people along the way’. And so, another big decision had to be made. ITV had been circling for a while. I decided to change channels.
It would be a big psychological change for me. The BBC had been in my DNA since I was ten; it had never entered my head that I would switch channels. It was also quite a big deal for ITV, and they had some very interesting ideas. I was soon to say, ‘We’ll be back after the break,’ for the first time. The channel switch was a big story in the press. ITV said they were thrilled to have me on board. Now, all I had to do was find a show to present.
Joseph was coming to the end of its run in London. It was to finish in October. I would miss the Palladium enormously; it had played such an important part in my life. I had worked on the world’s most famous stage, but had got there completely by accident. What has remained is a wonderful legacy for me. If there is a documentary on the Palladium, I’m often asked if I’d like to take part, and I think I’ve said yes without exception. Those filming days are always such fun – I’ve swapped tales with Bruce Forsyth and Jimmy Tarbuck, Tommy Steele and Michael Crawford. In my mind, I will always remain the imposter, though.
I may have been signing off from the Palladium, but before I completed my West End run I agreed to sign up for the national tour. The last time I’d been part of a travelling team had been the Roadshow. Now I was going on the road with a huge West End smash hit.
My final show at the Palladium was on the evening of
Saturday, 2 October, 1993, the day before I, sadly, attended the funeral of Pat Hubbard. The tempest would rage no more. At the end of the show
, I hung up ‘the Coat’ and got changed. As I packed up my things I kept looking over at it. Every Joe had their own, and each was subtly different to all the others. I had worn this coat in the first dress rehearsal in front of Piers Morgan, and for every show since then. Up close, it was looking a little tired. What would they do with it? Where would it go? Storage? Would someone else wear it? Would it mean the same to anyone else as it meant to me? I kept looking at it. And then I made my decision.
It was coming home with me.
I am not a thief, but I am a bit of a magpie. I like keepsakes. Something to remind me of a place or a show, or a person or a moment. I’m hopelessly sentimental, but I was very aware that taking a Technicolour Dreamcoat was bigger than sentimentality. It was worth about twenty-five grand!
I rolled it up, packed it into a carrier bag and, when I left the building, I threw the bag casually into the boot of my car. If they kicked off, I would obviously give the coat back.
I turned to look at the Palladium. Briefly, it had been mine. Now, every time I returned in the future, it would be someone else’s. I had been shown its secrets under the stage by the crew. The ‘revolve’ was controlled by a beautiful purple ‘genie’, like a light in a big valve, almost a living entity. I had been up to the fly floor and on to the roof. I might not have performed there as many times as all the greats, but I bet most of them hadn’t been up to the ‘spot box’ or down into the hidden, dusty rooms below. And I bet most of their dads hadn’t conducted the orchestra! Mine had. One evening, during one of my parents’ visits to London, they came to see the show, again. Unbeknownst to me, a secret conversation had been had. My dad had been collected from his seat and taken to the orchestra pit. As I ran onstage at the end of the show, I looked into the orchestra pit and my dad was – briefly – conducting! I’m not sure who had the biggest smile, me onstage or him at the conductor’s stand.
Goodbye, London Palladium. I know your secrets … Oh, and I’ve got a stolen coat in the boot.
The next morning, it kicked off!
The head of wardrobe (Sheila) had gone nuclear. Where was ‘the Coat’?
Paul called me.
‘Mate, hi, good morning. Er, well, I’ve got a bit of a tricky question. Sorry.’
‘Hi. What’s up?’ I knew what was coming.
‘Er, Phil, the Dreamcoat went missing last night after the show. I’m sorry to ask, but … do you have it?’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘Oh, shit, mate … you stole “the Coat”.’
‘In the cold light of day, I admit that it doesn’t look good, but yes, I did.’
‘Phil, they’ve gone bloody spare, mate.’
‘Okay.’ I sighed. ‘Tell them I’m sorry. It’s perfectly safe. I’ll drive it over to them later.’
‘Leave it with me for a bit, mate,’ said Paul.
About two hours later, he called me back. A compromise had been reached. I don’t know who was involved in this high-level ‘Dreamcoat Summit’, other than Paul, but the negotiations had gone well.
I was going to go on tour with a brand-new coat, which they wanted to keep pristine for the theatres. Obviously, there would have to be a lot of publicity photos. If I was prepared to use the coat I had ‘liberated’ for all the publicity shots, I could keep it. It was a genius compromise. Not only did I get to keep my Palladium coat, but its memory currency was also increased exponentially. All the shots of me outside wearing the coat on that tour were my coat. On the beach in Blackpool, by the River Liffey in Dublin, by the castle in Edinburgh. It is still a star and, when friends come round, everyone wants to wear it. It was last worn by Declan Donnelly and Holly Willoughby when we had a party at home.
After a successful run and to celebrate my agreeing to go on tour, Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber invited Steph and me, along with Russ, Pete and Paul, to his house in Eaton Square for dinner. Andrew and Madeleine were perfect hosts. It was pointed out that the beautifully patterned oriental bowls we were eating from had been purchased at auction and were part of the ‘Nanking Cargo’. The intricate porcelain had been on board the Dutch East India Company ship The Geldermalsen when it sank in 1752 after hitting a reef in the South China Sea on its way to Holland. The huge haul had been rediscovered in 1985 and finally made the trip to Amsterdam to be auctioned. The bowls we were eating out of had lain, untouched, at the bottom of the ocean for 233 years. We were the first people ever to eat from them. I was suddenly terrified every time my cutlery touched the side. I can’t imagine they went into the dishwasher.
During dinner, Madeleine had said that Edward might pop over with his new girlfriend.
Edward?
After dinner, Prince Edward and his girlfriend Sophie duly arrived and were both charming. I, however, used a word I’m not sure I’ve ever used before. The couple had just been out to dinner, and at any other time in my life I would have simply said, ‘Lovely, where did you go?’ Now, for whatever reason, I said, ‘Do you have haunts?’
Haunts? What the hell did that mean? Why was I speaking nonsense? Sadly, it got worse. Everyone there turned to look at me.
‘Do you have haunts?’
‘I’m sorry?’ said the prince.
‘Haunts, do you have haunts?’
The prince put both his hands to the top of his head and said, ‘Not the last time I looked.’
Oh God, no! Not horns!
The first stop for the Joseph tour was Bristol. I didn’t want to spend any longer away from Steph and Molly than I had to, and some venues, I could drive to, like Bristol and Oxford, but most of the others I had to be away for weeks at a time because there wasn’t enough time to get there and back between shows. When I was in Edinburgh, we hired a lovely flat in the city and Steph, eighteen-month-old Molly and I were all together. Oddly, Steph was less enthusiastic about spending most of the winter in Blackpool, so I was on my own for most of that part of the run.
Whether onstage at the Palladium or night after night
on a tour, I never found performing the same show even remotely repetitive. Firstly, there was always something that would make us laugh – a noise from the audience, a tiny mistake from someone, even though the audience never knew. Secondly, unlike TV, a nightly show that was essentially the same meant that I could play with each part of it, change it a little. I could work out whether, if I altered a move or a look, was it funnier? Could I get a bigger laugh? Rather than being bored, I was fascinated by the way I could concentrate on a different part each night to see if I could make it better. Every night, the roar of the audience let us know that we were in a great show and that they were going to leave feeling good. A standing ovation never gets ordinary!
Ria Jones had joined as the narrator and had the devastating skill of being able to make me laugh onstage without laughing herself. She can do an excellent impression of Shirley Bassey, and as we stood together singing the finale of the show, every so often I could hear Shirley belting out beside me. It would always make me laugh, and it got to the stage where the sound team on the mixer desk at the back of the auditorium fined me fifty pence every time I couldn’t sing the final big note for laughing. You may have read recently that Ria was the understudy for Glenn Close as Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard when Miss Close went off sick. When Glenn’s sickness was announced to the auditorium there were boos and catcalls and some members of the audience left and demanded their money back. Thankfully, though, the majority stayed and witnessed one of those rare fairy-tale moments when the understudy becomes a huge star. Ria was, as her friends already knew, astonishingly brilliant. The audience that had started out booing gave her a six-minute standing ovation at the end. I bet there was no Bassey in that performance.
Ria bought Molly a pair of tap shoes, which Molly called her ‘tapping shoes’. We have the best video of a three-year-old Molly wandering naked up the patio, tip-tapping as she goes.
In a fantastic example of ‘the show must go on’, during a matinee in Oxford something happened that even those who
had worked in theatre for forty years hadn’t experienced before. Act I ended and the interval began. If you have been to the theatre, you’ll have seen the safety curtain brought in during the interval. In the theatre, it’s called ‘the iron’. At various points of the show, that is, the start of the show, the beginning and end of the interval and at the end of the show, the iron would be flown in or out. As the interval in Oxford started, the iron was flown in. Backstage, we heard the most incredible heavy clattering and banging from inside the fabric of the building. One of the heavy chains to control this very heavy curtain had snapped, and it had then whipped up over the top of the upper pulley and crashed back down into the depths of its shaft. There was no way it was going to be fixed without serious heavy-lifting gear. A meeting was held backstage. We looked, unseen, from the wings, at the depth of the stage between the stricken curtain and the orchestra pit: it was about five feet. Could we do any sort of performance of Act II with us all onstage at the same time? We all thought we could. The company manager looked at me.
‘You’ll have to tell them.’
‘Tell who?’
‘You’ll have to go out and explain to the audience that they’re going to get a concert-style Act II. If they want their money back, they can leave, or they can stay to watch.’
Thus came true one of those ‘panic dreams’ you have before a big event or the start of a new job. In my career, I’ve had many such dreams, about not being able to speak in a big live show or things going hideously wrong during a theatre production. For me, they usually began as I started rehearsals. I have dreamt of hostile audiences, of getting things so wrong that I was booed off. Having to walk out and confront a potentially angry auditorium had been one of my panic dreams, and now I was about to do it for real!
I stepped from the wings on to the stage, and the buzz of the audience resuming their seats after the interval quietened as they looked at me. I explained the stuck curtain and said we were going to do a performance unlike any other we’d done before. It would be fun and very personal. Not one person stood up to leave. I think that second act was probably the most fun of any I’ve done. We all stood or sat together, dangling our feet into the orchestra pit. We acted as best we could, but we were all so close it just made us laugh. The cast loved it and, more importantly, the audience loved it. The show must go on.
Life's What You Make It Page 22