Halfway To Hollywood: Diaries 1980-1988 (Volume Two) (53 page)

A meal, which far surpasses anything we got at the Oxford Union. I don’t really enjoy such celebrations
before
the debate as much as I would after and I have to do some polite talking and listening to the wife of one of my opposers on one side, and Tony Ridley, head of LT (trains), on the other. Ray Buckton [leader of the engine drivers’ union] is making them all laugh down the other end.

Ray is the only one of us who has not observed the request to wear a dinner jacket, and he is here with one of his advisers, a nice, quiet man who lives in Savernake Road. In a very earnest tone he tells me how much like ‘The Missionary’ is Michael Meacher MP, his new boss-to-be. ‘A cross between Michael Palin and Joyce Grenfell,’ he says.

Buckton speaks largely without notes. His speech is a mixture of astute and skilful attack and a lot of revivalist, preacher-like waffle. But he has a natural warmth and humour that is very much the stock image of the trade union leader. He can laugh at himself. He suggested before the debate began that, as we were all enjoying the port after the meal so much, he should cancel the debate by calling the speakers out on strike.

Despite feeling a degree or two under manage to write another satisfying scene for ‘The Vikings’, when Thangbrand becomes maudlin and sentimental with Stovold, and also invent a seer who is not good at the immediate future, but can foretell that a Viking will win Wimbledon. No-one knows what he’s talking about, of course.

I am enjoying writing again and, like fresh-struck oil, the jokes, characters and dialogue are now beginning to flow freely – for the first time since we started writing in February.

TJ comes up at lunch. He hasn’t hit a similar writing streak for the last couple of weeks, but is pleased with the way it’s heading and we have a constructive afternoon session, despite the fact that TJ only had three hours’ sleep last night. Terry did shake his head rather ruefully as he arrived and say ‘Oh,
when
will I grow up?’

At 3.30 Malcolm M, Mark Shivas and Alan Bennett call for me in a small Volkswagen and we head out to Broxbourne to look at the pigs. They are quartered in amongst a very sad collection of buildings, animals and ‘attractions’ called Paradise Park.

The pigs are very friendly and bouncy and have been hand-reared since birth, about four months ago. We all remark on their little pink, naked provocative botties. Hope the crew will not get over-excited. We’re shown a Vietnamese Black Pig – a mournful creature who was in a film with John Cleese – a crow which has been on TV-AM and a lion which once worked for the Post Office.

Make or break day on ‘The Vikings’. Down to Terry’s by 9.30 and we begin to work through the script. I sit at one desk and read through and whenever we come to a character who needs a name, or a line that’s superfluous or a joke that doesn’t work or a plot-line that’s inconsistent, we stop and go back over it. We deliberately try and avoid major rewrites, but we’re continuously changing and correcting. With few interruptions we work through until 7.45.

One of the interruptions is David Frost ringing – in buoyant mood –
to ask if I will appear on an April Fools’ Day programme and announce some new pressure group or lobby group – he suggests ‘height-watchers’. It’s all to be done very straight. Ken Livingstone will be on, frightening people with plans to make Londoners drive on the right-hand side of the road.

Camden Council are sweeping the roads an awful lot these days. One thing Thatcher has done by introducing legal restraints on both the GLC (abolition) and Camden (rate-capping) is to stimulate both authorities into an orgy of PR. Nary a day goes by without a petition to be signed, or a new sticker to be stuck up, or a fresh slogan – Camden vehicles now carry: ‘A Camden Service’, ‘Too Good to Lose’. Suddenly they’re all on their best behaviour.

To Baker Street for a chiropody lesson in preparation for playing Gilbert Chilvers. Malcolm is there as well as a man called Graham, who is the ‘chiropodial’ adviser. He shows me the kit I shall have and we discuss various finer points, such as would I spread the patient’s toes aside for examination (or, in Malcolm’s case, a better shot!) and are the feet erogenous? The adviser is a bit cagey on this one, as if he doesn’t want to commit himself.

Then we sit in on a consultation by another chiropodist, Nigel Tewkesbury. Tewkesbury anxious to show, quite convincingly, how a good chiropodist should relate to feet, by holding and touching and grasping them firmly, which gives the patient confidence. I leave with my consultant’s bag – to practise at home.

Have a long, slow breakfast and read (quite thoroughly for me) a
Guardian
page about the various ways in which government and police can snoop on us. I should think that my £1,000 donation to Greenpeace has not gone unnoticed.

At four o’clock to Fortnum’s to have tea at the invitation of Amanda Schiff, who is Sandy Lieberson’s deputy at Goldcrest.

Amanda – ‘I don’t eat meat and I don’t eat fish’ – tells me of the Goldcrest/Samuel Goldwyn scheme to make a series of small-budget contemporary comedies for a ceiling of £800,000 each in England, with
British writers and stars which will hopefully be made on a continuous and regular basis like the Ealing comedies. I like the idea.

After tea back into the real world. Jermyn Street is silent, many of the shops closed, sealed off to all cars. Policemen stand at the corners diverting the pedestrians. I want to buy some shaving cream from Ivan’s the barber’s, but he’s shut. A few feet from his door a blue polythene sheet is stretched from a rough scaffolding frame over the entrance to the street leading to St James’s Square where the Libyan Embassy is under siege after yesterday’s killing of a policewoman.

At the bottom of Lower Regent Street the Great British Public crowds around hoping to see some action. The police, who seem to be the only government-supported agency with money to burn these days, are everywhere. Behind the polythene sheets are the tense faces of flak-jacketed marksmen – a far cry from the jolly, helmeted presence on Jermyn Street.

At a quarter to eleven I’m away down to see Maggie S in West Sussex. Through Frimley, Farnborough and Aldershot. Army and car parks. Then through Hindhead and Haslemere, in narrow, claustrophobic little valleys past houses that all have names – ‘Uplands’, ‘Nutcombe’ and the like – and a forest of Conservative local election stickers in the window. I wouldn’t have thought they’d need to advertise.

We start by sitting outside sipping champagne. Toby, Maggie’s second son, is there. He’s been buying weights and muscle-building equipment. Maggie is a little alarmed because, as she puts it, ‘their father was rather interested in that sort of thing for a while’.

I’ve brought Maggie and Bev
¹⁰¹
a pretty white vase that looks a little like a hospital specimen jar, with some blue and white everlasting flowers from Neal Street East and a pot of Gospel Oak marmalade. All the flowers have the price on them. Maggie removes the tags with great speed, skill and discretion.

She’s cooked tagliatelli con carne and there’s fresh bread and white wine and we have a really easy, delightful lunch.

They’ve just returned from holiday in Ischia with Sir Larry and Joan Plowright. Sir Larry ga-ga much of the time, says Bev. Had a habit of
asking about who someone was, very loudly, right in front of them. Maggie and Joan were spotted by paparazzi in a steam bath.

Maggie throughout looks lovely. Her red hair suffuses a softly-tanned face with a glow of health and attraction. But, as ever, I feel that sometimes she is going through the motions of life – there is always a part of her – the passionate, instinctive part which makes her a great actress – which is in abeyance or being held in reserve – somewhere in there, private from us all.

At a quarter to four, after some chat about the hotels in Yorkshire (this aspect of filming always concerns Maggie) and the script itself – neither of us think the ending satisfactory – I say my goodbyes.

When I get home, I practise chiropody on Helen.

At ten minutes to midday we all set off for Henley for a lunch party in Aunt Betty’s honour.

Richard O
¹⁰²
makes a short and effective little speech reminding us that tonight Aunt Betty and Mother will be sleeping in their old home together for the first time for 53 years. Aunt Betty looks a little frailer than Ma, with a fine head of vividly white hair. Mum, in her 80th birthday dress, looks in good colour and full of life. Together they look like two china figures from a set; absolutely alike and quite different from anyone else there.

After lunch there is croquet and a lot of photos are taken. Clare, my goddaughter, is a great joy. She tells me with disgust how her headmistress had forbidden a videotape of
The Missionary
to be shown at the school club. I suppose I must have the attraction of the notorious.

Sleep well and wake about half past seven. The sun shining from a brilliant blue sky as I gulp half a cup of tea and, armed with script and chiropody kit, set off for my first working day on ‘Pork Royale’ [As
Private Function
had become, for a while].

Go via the Body Centre, where I have an hour’s massage – from an ex-actor who worked on Alan Bennett’s
Forty Years On
.

He does come out with rather disturbing observations, viz my right leg is shorter than my left and this can ‘put my whole body out’. I have small, hard deposits of crystallised fatty substances on some of my nerve ends, which are not being properly disposed of owing to tensions. I question him about this and he reveals that everyone has these deposits, adding, quite ingenuously, ‘except, of course, enlightened beings’.

Arrive at St Helen’s Church Hall, quite a grand and spacious place. Maggie and Liz Smith and Bill Paterson and Rachel Davies, who plays Mrs Forbes, and Richard Griffiths are there, as well as make-up, wardrobe and sundry others.

Alan gives a short intro to the effect that all this will work best if played absolutely seriously. Malcolm concentrates on the scenes between Maggie, Liz and myself. Malcolm is not keen on exaggerated Yorkshire accents; ‘a hint of Yorkshire’ is the order of the day for us. So into rehearsal. Alan watches some of it and occasionally guffaws loudly, but mostly sits discreetly at the other side of the hall, reading his paper.

I voice some of my worries about the ending, but Malcolm is gently firm and Alan doesn’t bite, so we’re left with it.

Mark Shivas rings to warn me that there is some fighting over the budget. HandMade want £1.3 to become £1.2. Mark says they can’t and, should DO’B call me about it, could I emphasise how much we’re getting for so little.

Rehearse with the Smiths again, and find Gilbert much easier to play with less effort. Malcolm thinks he should be ‘a bit dull’. Certainly playing him softer and gentler and more naturally seems to work. I feel much calmer after today’s rehearsal. Maggie says she didn’t sleep well last night – worries about the accent and, as she says, ‘them all thinking what a terrible mistake they’ve made’.

A curious week. Adjusting to being an actor again is proving quite a roller-coaster for the nervous system. Sometimes I feel surges of nervous apprehension bordering on panic, at others I feel the delicious sense of really looking forward to showing how well I can do something. Confidence is all-important and mine veers sometimes.

Today I have to do Alison Steadman’s feet. Not an ordeal at all, and Malcolm is quite pleased by my show of professional chiropodic skill! Real progress in the characterisation of Gilbert in the Church Hall this afternoon. Malcolm is quiet, but persistent and, on the whole, accurate in his criticisms and suggestions.

Denholm is with us for the first time today. I congratulate him on his BAFTA award. He straightaway goes into a story of how he once walked out of BAFTA with Dirk Bogarde, when Denholm had won his first Oscar. Bogarde said to him as they left, ‘So you’ve got your little piece of tin, eh?’ ‘Well,’ says Denholm, eyebrows twisting and folding as only he knows how, ‘what a ponce, I mean!’

The afternoon wears on. Maggie tries on her costumes and is instantly transformed into a thin, slight, mousy woman. I’m sure such a transformation can’t please her any more than having to say the line ‘I’m 38’, as she looks at her reflection in the polished car.

Drive down to South Ken to Le Suquet Restaurant to lunch at DO’B’s invitation to meet his new lady, Noelle. We have an enormous platter full of all manner of shellfish, which takes almost two and a half hours to crack, crunch, split, lick and prise our way through.

DO’B, Helen thinks, is anxious to find out about the film from me. It’s as if he wants to be excited but finds an almost impenetrable barrier between him and the Mark/Malcolm/Alan triumvirate. This irks him.

We get back home about a quarter to five, just in time for the most exciting news from the BBC’s teleprinter in recent memory. Sheffield Wednesday have beaten Crystal Palace 1-0 and are to be in the First Division for the first time since before William was born.

Take Helen down to the Dominion Cinema to see René Clair’s
The Italian Straw Hat
, which is being performed for one night only with a full orchestra. The occasion a little better than the film. At the end of the performance, René Clair’s wife, a very sprightly lady, makes a short, well-received speech of thanks in perfect English.

Wake, by quarter-hours from six o’clock, to first day of filming on ‘Pork Royale’. Roy awaits with his sparkling Mercedes, a neat, trim, RSM-like figure, on the corner of Elaine Grove.