Life's What You Make It

by Phillip Schofield

  The crew and the gallery were in hysterics, and extremely disappointed when Billy ran in with a minute to go with perfectly turned-up trousers.

  Years later, Billy was dressing me for a day’s recording

  of The Cube. He was making me laugh by telling me about

  an opera singer he had worked with who kept losing their temper and throwing things at him. One day, the singer had chased Billy down a corridor, throwing shoes at him.

  As Billy left my dressing room, I chased after him, shouting, ‘And stay out!’ as I threw various shoes in his direction, being very careful they didn’t actually hit him. When I looked beyond the running dresser, I saw the Cube audience being led into the studio. We both tried to explain that it was a joke, but I’m not sure anyone believed that I wasn’t throwing a hissy fit (which, for the record, I have never done!).

  Dresser extraordinaire Billy Kimberley.

  Life was hectic, with TV and the theatre running concurrently. A simple question would reveal that life would be even busier, but in the best possible way.

  ‘Would you like a cuppa?’ I asked Steph.

  ‘No, thank you, I don’t really fancy one.’

  We both looked at each other.

  We are both committed tea drinkers. If I have coffee first thing in the morning, it gives me an instant migraine. A morning cup of tea, though, is an essential start to the day. The only time Steph had gone off tea before was the moment she became pregnant with Molly.

  We bought the tester kit. We had been touched by another miracle. Steph was pregnant again.

  When Ruby was born, I was in Oxford with Joseph and, in another remarkable example of organization, she arrived on Sunday, 28 January 1996. With no show scheduled that day, the understudy was again denied the opportunity to perform.

  And then there was Ruby.

  A very excited Molly with her new sister.

  As we set off for the hospital, Steph became upset. How could we possibly love another baby as much as we loved Molly? How was that possible?

  Ruby was perfect – tiny and beautiful – and we realized that the heart has a remarkable ability to expand and accommodate equal quantities of endless love for each child. Molly fell instantly in love with her sister and was very protective, telling others to ‘be careful’ when they picked her up.

  Ruby is the endless sunshine in all our lives. Only Ruby can make Molly laugh helplessly, and she has been doing that since day one. Molly always stuck by our side in the house. We were never out of her sight and always knew exactly where she was, so we got a hell of a shock when Ruby started to crawl and disappeared. We weren’t used to that.

  We’re incredibly lucky. Both sides of the family get along and family get-togethers are always great fun. The Schofield/Lowes are a good team. When Steph and I decided to take the girls to Disneyland Paris, we took both sets of grandparents. At the end of a long day walking round the park, we were all relaxing in a little bar in the hotel. Molly was, as usual, by our side … Where was Ruby?

  A sunny holiday at Euro Disney with ‘vanishing’ Ruby at the front.

  One moment she was there; the next, gone. We all split up. My mum stayed with Molly. Steph and I ran for the door, as did my dad and Steph’s parents. We were distraught. We combed every inch of the hotel, every step more desperate. She couldn’t have walked this far – had she been taken from under our noses? How could that be possible? Frantically, we called; desperately, we searched. She was gone. Tearfully, we gathered back in the bar. The park would have to be alerted, the police called. My dad heard a little giggle. There, wedged tightly between two chairs, perfectly hidden and impossible to spot, was Ruby. Hmmm. We knew then that we’d have to keep an eye on this one.

  Our gorgeous girls.

  Having two young daughters was making life on the road very hard. I hated being away from Steph and the girls. As I set off for another week away one day, Molly ran out of the back door, grabbed my legs, wrapped herself around me and sobbed, ‘Daddy, please don’t leave me again.’ It was time to hang up the Technicolour Dreamcoat. My final performance was at the Mayflower Theatre in Southampton. I had sung the show 1,147 times. So, yes, I can still remember the colours.

  Steph organized an amazing ‘end of Joseph’ party for me. I was sad to finish, but so happy to be back home. We went for a walk around the garden. As Steph and I chatted, we realized Molly wasn’t with us, which was, as you know, highly unusual. As we turned to run back and retrace our footsteps, Molly walked around the corner of the house. We asked where she’d been and she told us she had been talking to the lady. Lady? What lady? We ran into the garden to search. It has an eight-foot-high brick and flint wall all round it. No one could get in or out. The garden was totally empty. Molly was adamant that she had spoken to a lady. We called the previous occupant, who had been an aged housekeeper and had lived in the house for many years. ‘Oh, that’ll be the Grey Lady,’ she told us, an entirely benign ghost that patrolled that part of the garden and was only ever seen by children. We were told that Molly was lucky: sightings were very rare. That proved to be true. She has never seen the Grey Lady since; however, it has made for some great storytelling around the fire.

  Up until about five years ago, all my diaries were big, padded Ryman ‘week at a glance’ ones. I still have them all and have been referring back to them for dates and memory jogging. The first one was given to me by the band Talk Talk’s record company. It’s my 1986 diary and on the front is written ‘Life’s What You Make It’. It rang true then, and it rings true still. I’ve never kept a personal diary; these ones are all full of work things. Going through them for this book has been fascinating. There are entire TV shows I’d forgotten. One in a Million happened after the end of Joseph, as did Predictions. Apparently, I even wrote a book to accompany the One in a Million series: it seems to be on Amazon. I literally don’t have a clue!

  About five years ago, the office persuaded me to ditch the paper diaries and have the whole year on my phone. I was resistant at first, because in the cupboard where I keep my long line of diaries, mapping out my career like rings on a tree trunk, my life seems to stop in 2014.

  I very clearly remember presenting GMTV with Emma Forbes for a few weeks, because we had a lot of fun, even though it was way too bloody early for me. I also remember Schofield’s TV Gold, which I made with Paul Smith and Celador again. I mentioned their winning team earlier. Over the years, I’ve been lucky to work with many very talented writers, but Steven Knight and Mike Whitehall, who wrote TV Gold, were very special indeed. They probably don’t remember, but I do. I absolutely loved delivering their lines. It came as no surprise that Stephen Knight went on to create Peaky Blinders, among other things.

  In 1997, the TV series Friends was huge. Obviously, it still is today. I don’t often use my name to get me in anywhere, principally because I’m always terrified the person on the end of the phone is going to say, ‘Who?’ But with Friends I was prepared to take the risk. In a stroke of sublime luck, one of the publicity team for the show was a Brit and a bit of a fan. If we were in Los Angeles, would there be any chance of watching a show being recorded? ‘Of course.’ Holy shit!

  The timings worked perfectly. Steph’s sister, Georgina, was producing David Bowie’s fiftieth-birthday-concert film at Madison Square Garden. We found ourselves back on Concorde, only this time I stayed in my seat with Steph instead of going to the flight deck. After watching Bowie, we flew on to LA to watch an episode of Friends being recorded. I’d never seen anything like that scale of operation before. Even the warm-up guy was incredible. We were all served pizza, and that was even before the cast were introduced. As a telly geek, I was captivated; as fans of the show, we were beside ourselves. If a gag didn’t get the laugh they’d hoped for, they stopped, rewrote the scene, learned it then ran it again. The episode we watched had Joey putting books that scared him in the freezer. Rachel suggests he reads Little Women. If you find the scene on YouTube, he delivers the line, ‘These litt
le women, how little are they?’ It was a line that I loved. I burst out laughing, first and loudest. I knew that if they didn’t re-shoot the scene, my laugh would be on Friends. They didn’t, so it is.

  The cast travelled to London to shoot a couple of episodes (Ross marrying Emily). They shot the interiors at Fountain Studios and Steph and I were once again in the audience. When Ross said Rachel’s name instead of Emily’s, he was standing on the chipped part of the floor where the drop-box nearly killed me.

  My favourite subject at school was biology, and I studied hard because I was fascinated. I’m pretty handy in the ‘human body’ round in a pub quiz or, in lockdown times, a Zoom quiz.

  So when I was asked if I’d like to present City Hospital from Southampton General, I was all over it. The team was Suzi Perry, Nick Knowles and me. I absolutely loved it. Being behind the scenes at the hospital was amazing. Actually, I’m really good with someone else’s blood, but terrible with my own. If I have blood taken, I have to look away or I will faint. I’ve fainted in front of many a medical professional over the years. I fainted when I broke my toe by catching it on a door frame. When I looked down, it was poking out to the side. That’s where I learned the trick of ‘going low’. Get as low as I can, then, when I, inevitably, faint, I don’t have too far to drop. The last time I fainted was when I had a mole removed from my leg. However, I was lying down, so I fainted and recovered and they never knew.

  There was no chance of fainting on City Hospital; it was all about other people. I loved the dark humour of the medics. One lunchtime conversation was about all the things they had removed from people who had ‘accidentally fallen on them’! One medic told me he was removing a mobile phone and, just as they had successfully removed it from the gentleman’s bottom, it rang. They handed it to him and said. ‘I think it’s for you.’ One of the ‘falls’ must have been particularly acrobatic. The team removed Barbie and then, in a shock twist, they found Ken.

  9

  I had read the Dr Dolittle books by Hugh Lofting, and I’d loved the movie with Rex Harrison. I was about to be asked if I’d like to be the doctor in a brand-new musical. Joseph had been a wonderful theatrical experience, but I had taken over from Jason. Only the original actor gets to record the soundtrack album and be part of shaping the production, and that was an experience I was keen to have. The meetings began – it was going to be huge. At the time, it was one of the most expensive musicals ever staged. The state-of-the-art animals would be created by Jim Henson’s Creature Shop. Dolittle was one of those shows that had had to wait for the technology to be created before a live theatrical production could really be considered.

  The whole idea had come about when Roger Moore had appeared on The Muppet Show. He had asked Leslie Bricusse, who had written the Dolittle music and lyrics, to go with him. The two discussed a stage show of it, but Leslie conceded that, at the time, they couldn’t make animals that were realistic enough. The innovations created by the Creature Shop had suddenly made such a production achievable. The genius of the animals was that they were realistic but also had character, and that made them immensely endearing. Wonderful Mike Dixon, who had nursed me through my terror in Joseph, was back as Musical Supervisor, with Mike England as Musical Director. Stephen Pimlott would direct. I’d worked with him on Joseph; now I’d get to see him create something from scratch. Mark Thompson would design, again ex-Joseph. This was going to be epic.

  There was no chance I was going to learn this one in a round trip to Bristol. Leslie Bricusse didn’t write one word when twenty-five would do, so learning the thing was going to be a slog. Later, when the show’s producer, Adrian Leggett, asked if Leslie had written him a hit show, Leslie replied he’d done better than that, he’d written two! I set up a rehearsal room in the attic at home so I was well out of the way to learn my lines. I knew that this was going to be a challenge – the good doctor hardly left the stage throughout the whole performance.

  Julie Andrews would play Polynesia the parrot, and even though she would record the part, she wanted to attend the rehearsals. That was a hell of a day when Julie Andrews as a parrot stood beside me for the first time. One of my most precious memories of the entire experience were the two evenings Julie and I spent in the studio recording ‘Talk to the Animals’. She was so lovely. On one line, she made a small mistake and said, ‘Sorry, I’m new in the business.’

  Rehearsals were an absolute delight. The cast were wonderful and such fun. The team from the Creature Shop introduced us to the animals as they were finished, and the way they proudly unveiled them was so endearing. It was fascinating to watch everyone at work. I had never been involved in the process of building a show of this magnitude from the ground up. Watching Stephen Pimlott direct was like watching a masterclass. I marvelled at how he began to build the show, putting the flesh on the bones. Stephen was also a genius at teasing the best performance from his actors, and watching him direct a duck was a great moment. One day, over lunch, this Shakespearian director, a man who had also directed extravagant operas, looked up from his lunch and said to me, ‘No, do you see? You have to quack as a question.’

  He said that was the single most bizarre note he had ever given.

  I had lessons in how to make the correct noises. The right depth of bark for conversing with Jip the dog, for example. And I worked hard on my duck and my pushmi-pullyu, which, it transpires, is very similar to llama.

  As I stroked Polynesia, I was told that was the wrong way to stroke a parrot, and the doctor would know exactly the right way, so I was duly instructed.

  Stephen Pimlott said one morning, ‘Can I have the three principal actors over here, please?’

  I didn’t move. I had no idea I was a principal actor. I couldn’t quite believe that I was any kind of actor!

  By the time we got to the Apollo in Hammersmith most of the sets were completed. Mark Thompson had created something truly magical. Dolittle’s study in Act I and his ship, the Flounder, were so beautiful I just walked around them in awe.

  The Creature Shop were in full creative flight. It was clear that the animals were going to steal the show, and quite rightly. Day after day, they were introduced to us. The pushmi-pullyu was hard to control, with two operators inside, one moving forwards, the other backwards, in perfect, elegant synchronization. However, we were the ones to howl with laughter before that synchronization was perfected as we watched it trip up and fall over, to cries of ‘I can’t see a fucking thing!’ coming from somewhere inside.

  During rehearsals, and actually pretty much every night of the future performances, I loved watching Andy Heath control Gub-Gub the pig during the storm that sank the Flounder. Andy was lying, high up, in a tin bath with the pig on his arm, and what he managed to get that puppet to do was comedy perfection.

  The only time I saw Stephen Pimlott come close to irritation was the evening during rehearsals when the curtain rose and we all saw the great pink sea snail for the first time. It was huge, with three people operating it from the inside. As Stephen valiantly attempted to concentrate on rehearsals, the expressions and noises they got out of it had the cast utterly helpless on the stage. As we all laughed, so did the snail, and we were all incapable even of breathing when the operators threw its head back and someone shouted, ‘It’s like a twenty-foot erection!’

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen … and those in the snail, would you please try to focus!’ called out the exasperated director.

  As in Joseph, I got a fabulous finale, but rather than being lifted into the air trailing a billowing Technicolour Coat behind me, I flew above the heads of the audience in the cavernous Apollo sitting on a huge, flapping, giant lunar moth.

  The production was spectacular on every level, including, unfortunately … length! As the first preview got closer, it was obvious the show was too long. There was a reluctance to trim it because no matter what was trimmed, something beautiful and expensive would have to go.

  The night of the first preview had arrived. Some
said it was the only show they had done that finished on a different day, it went on so long. As I ran up the stairs at the back of the auditorium to board the moth, I passed scores of people leaving, calling, ‘Sorry, Phil, I’ve got work in the morning.’

  The edit was swift and brutal. Whole swathes of the show which had been tirelessly rehearsed were chopped out. A stunning dream sequence with beautiful fantasy animals never saw the light of day. I can’t imagine how much money was wasted.

  That wasn’t the only teething problem we had as the show started. ‘If I Could Talk to the Animals’ was a nightmare to learn. Julie Andrews had recorded the entire song, I had learned the entire song, so it was possible to keep changing who sang what. For example, ‘I think we’ll try Julie singing that line today, and you sing the two lines after,’ or, ‘It’s better if you do those lines. The parrot can sing the one after.’

  On my long dressing-room mirror, I had every interchangeable line on Post-it notes: I was blue; Julie was yellow. I could swap them over and then relearn the song. Sometimes I sang a different version in the matinee than in the evening. Each time I sang a new version, I felt like a train travelling down very rusty tracks. Eventually, I had to put my foot down. ‘You have one more show to pick the definitive version,’ I said, ‘then that’s it. No more changes.’

  I think the final version was the best.

  One of the other issues was the venue. The Apollo in Hammersmith was vast – the capacity of the auditorium was about 3,300 people. If you had tickets further back than halfway, the skilful acting of the pig and the subtle head tilts Iestyn Evans got from Dab-Dab the duck were mostly lost. There was no question, the show was spectacular, but it wouldn’t really come into its own until we took it on the road to slightly smaller theatres of around 2,000-capacity. Only then could the true magnificence of the animals and the set be fully appreciated by everyone.