First greeting

“How do you do?” 

A famous delightful line uttered by the enchanting Eliza Doolittle in the Ascot scene in the musical “My Fair Lady”. It is a very gracious way of introducing oneself, is it not? A universal common greeting but if proclaimed in another language the phrase, I think, tends to loose that air of affability that graces its delivery in English.

The bastardised South African version of “How’s it?” looses that delicate English finesse. And the Zulu greeting of, “Gungani Baba.” although slightly better still does not sit well in the mouth or convey that intrinsic pleasant tonal ring of, “How do you do?”

As for the German,“Wie machen Sie?” and the Polish, “Jak sie masz?” Enough said. Maybe the French, “ Comment faites-vous ?” and the Italian, “Come lei fa?” get closer, but then with the Frogs, and especially the Italians they’re probably eyeing up your private parts whilst uttering the greeting.

No. Stick to the English!

That’s been my motto through my years of travels. It lets people know where you stand, and the greeting, if delivered in the correct, polite and gracious manner, conveys a touch of conviviality.

If you, as I often do, give a thought to the number of times you have uttered this phrase then I’m sure you’d agree that you would consider consulting a theoretical particle physicist or an actuarial scientist.

Why, you ask?

Well with the use of such brilliant boffins one could possibly work out the probable financial gains one may have accrued had one managed to follow the relationship through after this initial greeting.

In this day and age of global communication via the Internet the solution of whatever algerbraic equation, should the boffins manage to conjure one up, must be heading exponentially to infinity.

So that means there’s money in it and that means that the idea is worth exploring.

But the problem I’ve always had is that after this initial introduction, the next inane question I have always been asked by the civilian I have had the misfortune of being introduced to usually is, “So, how do you learn your lines?”

My responses to this infuriating question have been many. The first that springs to mind is, “The same way you wipe your arse.”

You can imagine this reply, coupled with my laconic delivery, has had me escorted off the premises of many grandoise establishments.

Having this gift, well that’s what I call it, of improvisational repartee is common amongst many of our trade, but not all you’ll be pleased to hear.

My talent in this area of communication has been finely tuned from years of experience gained from mixing with the rich and famous, and the lavatory cleaners who service the underground toilets at Piccadilly Circus tube station in London.

I would like you to note that I have learnt more about the art of impromptu communication from those lavatorial cleaners, than I did from the rich and famous, with a few exceptions. The late Princess Margaret being one. A damm fine tongue for the taste of gin that one. She was always able to advise as to the right proportion of bitters with which to encircle your glass to ensure you were served the perfect pink-gin.

I digress.

I have always found that the lower echelons of society, especially my lavatory cleaners, seem to possess a greater freedom of expression, and were always more eager to let you know what was troubling them. This over-exuberance can be illustrated if I tell you about a one-time request made to a bank manger and a lavatory cleaner on the subject of a small loan.

I was in need, as I always am, of a minimal cash floatation.

Mr. Bum–Slider–Pants was his normal courteous self, and we had completed the normal formal greeting. I was asked to take a seat in the minute chair facing him across his huge oak desk. This was in the grand old days of banking when you met your manager face to face to discuss the delicate matters of your cash flow problems. 

Not like today, when you are confronted by a spotty-faced juvenile delinquent just out of his or her nappies, who is glued to their computer screen. I believe it was called “the personal touch”.

Mr. Bum–Slider and I had had many years of “the personal touch”, concerned mostly about my financial needs, and he was fully aware of the intransigence of my income earning ability. He also greatly appreciated the opening night tickets that I was able to offer him. This was still in the days of regular theatrical attendance, and he and his wife, Eucelia, a keen furniture polisher, used to revel in the foyer small talk. They would handle their interval dry sherries as if they were some exotic Caribbean cocktail.

At this particular meeting I was in dire straits. Both the larder and my “Toddie” had been empty for some time, and although I had been shorted listed for five international TV commercials in as many weeks there was no cash on the foreseeable horizon. All my normal ports of call at the local hostelries had run dry, in fact I was barred from three of them. So, as much as I hated going on bended-knees, I thought Mr. Bum–Slider was a better option than my Piccadilly lav-cleaners.

How wrong I was proved to be.

Before I move on I’d like to side-step for a minute or two, and return to the perfunctory issues that are involved whilst one is uttering that opening gambit. Especially in the western world a handshake is the normal physical action that accompanies the greeting. And a fine civilised custom it is too. This gentlemanly gesture is way ahead of the far more self-effacing and grotesque Russian and Slavic bear-hug. And is certainly more stately than the Far-Eastern and African nod of the head, and downward glance and humiliating bow. At least with this firm nominal action, and a solid eye contact you are placing yourself on a more equal footing, even though you may be in the basement when it comes to social standing.

Seated in the Spanish Inquistion’s chair, as Mr. Bum-Slider called it, I knew I was in for the usual cross-examination about my financial affairs, and I had duly rehearsed my expected-for dialogue. But the crafty old chair-seat-polisher sprung a fast one on me. I had just completed a run playing the lead in Shakespeare’s Richard the Third. Hamlet is William’s longest play but Richard the Third is the character to whom he has given the most lines of dialogue. And as he had asked many times before how I learnt my lines, I was thrown completely off balance when he said, “So, did you learn your lines for that one?”

Foolishly I replied, “The same way I’ll ram Richard’s crutches up you arse if you don’t increase my overdraft facility!”

That was the last time I did business with Mr. Bum-Slider and his bank or any other bank.

With my lavatorial cleaners however I had a far more positive response. “There’s no way you could lend me a couple of hundred, is there?”

They replied almost in choral unison like something from a Greek tragedy, “Sure Cess, no problem. But what sort of interest are you offering?

I’ll buy you all a new brush when my ship comes in!”

A peal of laughter echoed, bouncing off the bleach cleaned shining tiles.

A quick hand shake and the deal was done.

Yuletide Feast or Famine

The Christmas season across the globe, to all practising Christians and to the vast majority of non-Christians who are bombarded with the festive spend-your-hard-earned- cash-with-us advertisements that ooze from our radios and televisions, is usually a joyous time of the year.

To the jobbing actor this time of the year is no different from the rest. It is, as it always is, a feast or a famine. Except that at Christmas either the feast can be so gigantic that one needs a month after the event at a health farm to recuperate or the famine is of such dire proportions that one needs to book into the local Salvation Army hostelry. During the course of my illustrious career I have had the pleasure of experiencing both scenarios.

While most of the world is busy taking a holiday and having a break from their daily working routine, the entertainer is often required to help these hordes of holidaymakers enjoy themselves. Such work could always be, and sometimes still is, found in many diverse locations. On a luxury liner cruising the Caribbean, in an old Victorian theatre in the North of England, at a working man’s club, or at an exclusive invitation-only party thrown by the likes of Richard Branson in Dubai.

I have never been fortunate enough to receive an invitation as either a guest or a performer to a function in style similar to the last. This is perhaps because I have never moved in the right social circles or maybe because my networking skills are pretty close to zero.

 However, I have trodden the boards of several Victorian and Edwardian mausoleums in the United Kingdom. This was in my youth when the Grand in Newcastle and the Opera House in Blackpool were venues for the regular Christmas pantomimes.
 
At both these theatres I was cast as the back end of a cow. You could say that these performances were during a low point in my career, but allow me to let you into a secret: they were in fact a stepping stone to something far more catastrophic and humiliating.

I assume that you all know the story of Cinderella and, if you do, then you will know that a cow is not an integral part of the Cinders script. However, during the fifties and early sixties in England, all children throughout the country used to receive a free bottle of milk at their mid-morning break at school. This generous freebie was part of the National Health scheme and the government of the time thought that it would be beneficial to have a nation of youngsters with good healthy teeth and a regular dose of lactic acid.

The director of the pantomime, Mr Brian T. Cosy – yes, you’ve guessed it, he was a teetotaler – thought it would be novel and educational to inform the watching audience of mainly children that all that wonderful free milk they drank came from a cow’s rear underbelly. From the “Teats”, as he liked to call them. He was further directorially inspired to have Cinderella herself do the milking and the drinking.

So when the dear, gorgeous and well-endowed Cinders, played by a local beauty pageant winner, was ordered by her ugly sisters to go and pull her “Teeeets!”, the double entendre was immediately caught by the adults, and the children were delighted when on walked Mrs Lactose.

That was my character’s name.

Mrs Lactose was a beautifully costumed Jersey cow with a huge contraption strapped to the underside of her belly. Her udders were bursting with a full load of National Health milk. A fellow junior thespian, Paul, was the front end and used to guide us to our designated position downstage centre, whilst Cinders crossed to join us with her milking stool and a bottle. The main curtain then closed behind us to facilitate a scene change whilst Mrs Lactose and Cinders did the necessary.

We did three performances a day and four on a Saturday. The Lord Chamberlain’s rulings were still in force then, so there were no shows on a Sunday. The property master/chippie was no genius and the contraption he had built to contain the milk was a cumbersome and heavy Heath Robinson affair. It consisted of a large plastic container with pipes leading to Mrs Lactose’s four separate Teets. 

Cinders used to coo sweetly into Mrs Lactose’s ear. “Oooh, ooh, my dear sweet Mrs Lactose, and what have you got for me today? Please, please give me all the lovely milk you can, otherwise my sisters will be horrible to me.”

She would then settle herself onto her stool and grasp a Teet. It was then my duty to apply pressure onto a plunger system that would send the National Health elixir into Cinder’s pail.

I should point out that it was not our job as actors to fill or maintain the milk-delivering contraption. That was the duty of the assistant stage manager, who was meant to check that all the props required by the actors were in full working order before each performance commenced. All Paul and I had to do was climb into Mrs Lactose and be zipped up by one of the dressers from the wardrobe department.

We were always ready a good five minutes before our entrance and I, like the true professional I am, always used to check that the plunger was working. On the fourth performance of our Boxing Day show, it was jammed or there was some other malfunction in the system. I quickly informed the dresser and Paul but, before the assistant stage manager could be found to rectify the problem, our entrance cue came and on we sauntered. Mrs Lactose was milkless in Gaza, so to speak.

As you know, my Toddie and I hardly ever part company. But as our director Mr Cosy was a teetotaler and greatly frowned upon any member of the cast indulging in any kind of alcoholic beverage, I had been a good boy throughout the rehearsal period and the whole run of the show. 

Well, almost a good boy.

I have always been a man of great ingenuity and improvisation. I may be boasting today if I said that, had I still had been in my youth in the early eighties, I would have been perfectly cast in the role of MacGyver. Unbeknown to anyone other than Paul, I had rigged up a secret supply of cheap Yate’s cooking sherry inside Mrs Lactose’s wooden frame. It was secreted away in the padding just above Paul’s backside and it was no problem at all for me to pull it out and for the two of us to enjoy several slugs whilst Cinders was pulling on our Teets.

With MacGyver-like dexterity I quickly disconnected all four of the pipes and breathed a huge sigh of relief when I discovered that the container was completely empty, otherwise Mrs Lactose would have been dripping milk from all parts of her underbelly.

We waddled into our position gently mooing in time to our step as I pulled the cork out of the sherry bottle with my teeth. Using the simple concept of filling my mouth with sherry and then forcing it down the right pipe on Cinder’s cue, a whole two-pint bottle of the finest cooking sherry squirted out of Mrs Lactose’s udders and into Cinder’s pail.

The problem arose at the end of the scene, as Cinders had to pour the contents of her pail into an enamel mug, sample the milk and invite the children up from the auditorium to taste the wonderfully healthy liquid that Mrs Lactose had so kindly given her.

The headlines in the local newspaper the next day told the whole story. “Actor fired. Cecil Poole arrested for trying to poison local children with cooking sherry!”

I shall never forget that particular Christmas or the nine days I was kept in police custody till my trial on January the third. The press, my producer’s lawyers, the crown prosecutor and the local magistrate had a field day.

Accusations were hurled across the courtroom but, after numerous witnesses had been called, it was finally decided that I should be acquitted due to unforeseen circumstances. The Christmas of 1962 for me was certainly not a feast but then neither was it a famine. Her Majesty’s Government kept me fed and watered and after the trial I was offered at job as a barman at Yates’ Wine Lodge.

Working for Dead Time, A Cash Less Time

Working for Dead Time

I have not often dabbled in the intricacies of nuclear physics or the ramblings of prosaic philosophic dissertations, but as I sit here waiting for an electronic funds transfer of much-needed funds to make its way into my newly opened bank account, I have decided to plunge head-first into an ocean filled with floating neutrons, quarks, vertical blanking intervals, nano-seconds, electronic shenanigans and human moral values.

A simple question has sparked this venture. “Where the fuck is my money?”

My agent informs me that money for work done over a month ago was transferred, via the internet from her office computer, on Friday afternoon. It is now Monday morning and my account has still not been credited, yet her account has been debited.

I’m sure many of you, especially those of you that receive international electronic payment transfers, will have pondered on this question, as the delay in these transactions can be five to ten days, and sometimes even longer.

I have taken it upon myself to name this period of time when transferred money is neither in the sender’s account, or in the recipient’s account as “Dead Time”, and have discovered that this annoying entity does exist in the hallowed field of nuclear physics and is mentioned in many erudite philosophic works.

In the realms of physics, Dead Time is defined as “the time after an event during which a system is not able to record another event if it happens.”

Pretty apt, don’t you think?

In the world of armchair philosophy, an American minor-league baseball player for Kansas City Royals is quoted as saying, “Maybe there’s some dead-time that you have some time to talk about what just happened.” He is obviously referring to when the opposing team has hit a home run over the stadium’s wall and a replacement can not be found.

Well, just like the umpires in the games of cricket and baseball, that’s what I’m trying to do. They need to find a new ball. I would like to find this apparently non-existent dead-time-money, as in these times of the present economic downturn, I’m sure that all of us would prefer these missing funds to be in our accounts than have them floating in the electronic ether.

Another titbit of information that I have gleaned from some cursory research on the World Wide Web makes me realise that there is a definite connection between Dead Time, the electronic ether and money.

Unfortunately I am not the first person to discover this salient fact. Messers Heinla, Kasesalu and Tallin latched onto dead-time when they created the computer program we now know as Skype. This programme was turned into a multi-million-dollar business by Swedish born entrepreneur Niklas Zennstrom and the Dane Janus Friis when they founded “The Skype Group”.

But they were not the first to utilise electronic dead-time or passive-nothingness, as Aristotle called it in 400 BC.

In 1970 the clever old Beeb - the BBC - had a brainstorming session and came up with “Teletexting”. This is another brilliant use of electronic dead-time.

This method of data transmission is now used worldwide with a string of different names which either relate to the broadcast system used or the country in which the system operates. You can Teletext in the UK, Anitope in France, VPS in Germany, Telidon in Canada, or Electra in the USA. All these systems make use of dead-time by broadcasting the data in what is known as the vertical blanking interval.

In the UK 576 lines of resolution make up your TV picture, but your TV set actually receives 625 lines of information. So it is the 49 lines, the vertical blanking interval, in between frames (after the initial 576 lines have been shown as a picture, and before the next frame starts) that carry the Teletext information.

Talk about getting something for nothing!

So, where is my fucking money?

Obviously still floating in my aforementioned ocean, an ocean of crested waves that seem to defy another law of physics that states: The sine wave is the only wave that retains its wave-shape when added to another sine wave of the same frequency. It is the only periodic waveform that has this property. My ocean with its moon-guided periodic ebb and flow seems to swallow and devour any wave form that is cast into its dark depths, especially my electronically transferred money.

If I was still in my teenage years I would definitely confront my physics teacher with this startling revelation.

Mr Rambold was a small-framed wiry man who sported a GI crew cut, highly fashionable in the late forties and early fifties. He was young and good-looking, and had missed out on serving his country during the Second World War so, to bolster his macho image, he adopted the American army hairstyle. Perhaps he had observed the success the GIs had in pulling the young English girls and thought his new look would increase his chances.

Henry Rambold stalked the lab benches of his classroom with a military demeanour, eyes in the back of his head, and always carried a wooden ruler. This was his weapon of disciplinarian enforcement and was used with great regularity on my knuckles when he caught me trying to siphon the ethyl alcohol from the jar on the lab bench.

I take this short detour to extol the virtues of Mr Ruler Rambold as, without his forceful repetition of the fundamental laws of physics, I may never have made the decision to tread the boards. It was the rhythm of his ruler tapping on his desk with its metronomic beat that ingrained itself on my inner thought processes.

He used five or six basic iambic verse forms as he made us repeat out loud all the laws of physics. Boyle’s Law, Charles’ Law, Newton’s Laws and even the tenets of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity were drilled into us with the rhythmic tap of his ruler. A simple but down-to-earth method of indoctrination.

His own belief system was also pretty straightforward. If you didn’t know something, then you should be downgraded to the status of an idiot and be paraded as such in front of all your fellow scholars. This demeaning device worked well and the annual pass rate for O-level physics was always one hundred percent. As I had a particular aversion to being mocked and ridiculed, I quickly latched on to the fact that the laws of physics have a definite poetic nuance, particularly when they are repeated to the rhythmic bounce of Rambold’s ruler.

I soon began to understand that all prose, text, the written word – call it what you like – has an innate rhythmic flow. This knowledge certainly helped me when I had to commit massive chunks of boring dialogue to memory. My bruised pubescent knuckles offer a gracious “Thank you” to Mr Rambold.

He passed away in the mid-eighties and I was delighted to discover that his grandson became a celebrated rap-artist when this metronomic style of singing came into fashion.

You should now appreciate why I am trying to tackle the problem of “Dead Time” and expose the fact that this actual physical entity is being used with criminal intent by the world’s banking system.

“So where IS my fucking money?”

My employer hasn’t got it! I haven’t got it! So who the fuck has?

The obvious answer must be the banks. So we have to ask ourselves where they hide these missing funds. Do they have encrypted accounts floating in the electronic ether. Do they employ special undercover IT nerds who are empowered to snatch these floating millions from the oceanic ether, and with a click of a ravenous mouse secrete them away in a hidden vault in a fictitious land called the “Dead-Zone”?

The mind boggles.

To let them know that I’m now fully aware of their devious immoral actions I’ve composed a short poem set to a Mr Rambold standard ruler tap.


“Where is my fucking money?

You dead-time thieves ?

My agent ain’t got it!

I ain’t got it!

Someone must have it

And I know it’s you!”

Please memorise this refrain and next time you visit your bank and join the queue, voice this ditty with your fellow customers in Greek choral unison and let them know that you know just what the United States law enforcement agencies already know.

They are sounding the alarm about strong cryptography in general and untraceable digital cash in particular. Untraceable digital cash is here.

And it’s locked in “Dead-Time!”

Hazards Pleasures & Angels

Hazards Pleasures & Angels


Touring with a production and performing at Art Festivals can be hazardous, but it can also provide the jobbing thespian with a great deal of pleasure.

Most of the hazards are usually directly related to the production in-hand, like working on an absolutely diabolical play, dealing with an obnoxious director, and discovering you have a fly-by-night producer who can’t pay you. The pleasures often arise from the wide variety of the “civilian” population one meets on ones travels. Or from residents of the town you are performing in.

I have performed at well over twenty Arts Festivals and been engaged to tour with at least fifty theatrical productions. Festivals in Edinburgh, Adelaide, Munich, Recklinghausen on the Rhine valley in Germany, Colchester in the UK, the K.K.K. Afrikaans Festival in Oudsthorn, and the annual South African National Arts Festival in Grahamstown have all been graced by my presence.

The latter town of Grahamstown was part of my staple diet in my younger years.
However in the late seventies, after I had delivered five gruelling performances of the leading role in Heiner Müller’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s Scottish play in two days, I made the decision never to visit the place ever again.
The reasons were many.

Firstly I swore never again to appear on a stage covered by slippery plastic sheeting while a garden hose with an attached high pressure hose sprayed me with a vile smelling and icy-cold theatrical blood. Theatrical ironic imagery is one thing, accidents and the safety of the artiste are another.

The second reason was directly related to the town itself.

Grahamstown is situated in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa approximately half way between Port Elizabeth and East London. The festival is always held at the end of June, which coincides with the winter solstice in the southern hemisphere. So to say that I have suffered several sub-zero winters of discontent in this beautiful town which was founded by the 1820 settlers from the UK, would be no exaggeration.

In the year in question I had hired and towed a small caravan from Cape Town. My salary and my per diem were insufficient to cover the cost of a private hotel room, and a caravan seemed to me, at the time, to offer privacy to my unattached, youthful and sexually active self. I now with hindsight admit that my choice of this style of habitat was inappropriate and unsuitable. My sexual partners and I suffered from frozen backsides and my “secreting appendages” seemed to be constantly in their “brass-monkey” state. It was an exceptionally cold winter with the temperature well below freezing, and the sight of seeing a thin layer of ice on the top of an unfinished espresso when I woke in the morning, were the primary cause for my dislike of Grahamstown.

The final reason and the deciding factor was a simple factor of remuneration and the financial gain.

We were performing in what was, and is still known as the Monument Theatre. A high tech theatrical complex perched atop a windy hillock just outside the town. After my third and last evening performance of the final day, I visited Lappies.

Lappies Labuschagne was an enterprising young boer who had set up a soup and hot-boerwors-roll stand outside the front entrance to the theatre. He was wisely clad in long johns, sheep skin boots, an S.A.D.F (South African African Defence Force) combat jacket, and his small modified Kombi oozed with the warmth of two blazing gas burners and a hot griddle. His soup was homemade and the wors in his rolls was made following his grandpa’s recipe. An excellent culinary feast for a jobbing actor who had ploughed his way through three performances of Germanic Shakespearean gibberish.

Lappies was also fond of a “dop”. His poison was the Afrikaaner’s national drink, Klipdrift and Coke. Mine at the time was Irish whisky. So with similar hobbies, alcohol and the fairer sex, Lappies and I struck up an immediate friendship.

It was around five in the morning, after we had exhausted all chances of picking up a “cherry”, the local vernacular for a young pretty damson, we returned to the icy sanctuary of my caravan. Lappies and I chewed the fat and discussed the financial pros and cons of being a jobbing actor and selling boerwors rolls.

I have never presumed to be a fundi of mathematics, but my ability to tot up scores in a 501 or 301 game of darts, told me that enterprising Lappies had made a profit from his two week venture, which was ten times the amount I had been paid for 4 weeks of gruelling rehearsal and two days of performances.

A sledge hammer struck in my grey matter. I was a wors-roll and a bowl of soup away from ever treading the boards again!

As the sun rose and the icicles melted Lappies and I bade our fond farewells. I hitched up my caravan and hit the road to Cape Town. With a fourteen hour drive ahead of me there was plenty of time for me to ponder on the fact that a seller of boerwors and soup could make more money than an actor performing at an Arts Festival. I decided that this was a monumental injustice, and I would only return to the Grahamstown Festival if I were to sell my favourite childhood dishes of tripe and onions, or roasted pig’s head.

Needless to say, I never did.

I did however bump into Lappies many years later in the quaint town of Dullstroom about 400 ks east of Johannesburg. His entrepreneurial skills had been drowned in brandy and coke and in his middle age he was serving behind the bar at the local hotel. He was servicing his addiction by taking the tourists to this trout fishing haven on wild mushroom hunts. The youthful magic of his wors was now in his mushrooms and his ability to “maak n’plan” was still with him.

“Making a plan” is an intrinsic attribute of all South Africans.

Three decades later in my latter years a plan devised by another equally enterprising, talented and entrepreneurial young South African named Nilus de Koppen, twisted my arm.

So, in the year the soccer World Cup vuvuzella-ed into Africa, I returned to Grahamstown and performed in a new play entitled “Tree-Boy”.

For those of you in-the-know, I am no boy. So I set your minds at rest.

I played the part of the Tree.

A lonely, lost and grumpy old tree who set his roots in an eco-forest on the outskirts of a Transvaal mining town after returning from the second world war. To appease my inner apprehension regards my return to Grahamstown, I seized on the idea that hermit Archibald Drupe, my character, could quite easily roast a pig’s head and boil his tripe over his camp fire, and should any member of the audience fancy a quick snack I could make a buck or two on the side.

In the final production however the camp fire never materialised as the fire regulations didn’t even allow a cigarette to be smoked on stage, so as my director explained, “No, Cess! No fire! No food! but you can have some mud, scattered leaves, a suitcase, a wheelbarrow, an upturned bucket, an old army coat, and some saplings.”

The three-handed, multi-media production was a financial and critical success. Its seven performances played to full houses and the three actors, the director, the writer, the producer and the technical fundis all received highly favourable compliments.

For my dear self the pièce de résistance was that I managed to cook my own tripe in my digs, and Toddy was never empty. Italian Grappa was the order of the day.

Enough of the pleasures. Time for the hazards.

Head of the list must be transportation.

It can be luxurious, safe, reliable, comfortable, expensive, by automobile, by coach, by ocean liner across the sea, on land, in the air, late, on time, or it be can be uncomfortable, unreliable, cheap, hazardous and at times non-existent.

It for these reasons I have always chosen to travel whenever possible under my own steam. Steam in this case means making use of a nineteen seventies Nissan Champ 1400 bakkie which I have had the pleasure of owning since 1981.

“Champie” has been round the clock three times, had its heads re-bored twice, been stolen, returned with a police clearance number, and has been my close companion if and when it has been able to start.

When I was invited by Nilus de Koppen to feature in his newly written play Tree Boy; salary, per diems, transport and accommodation were all discussed. As rehearsals were to held in Durban and be over three weeks I decided to haul dear old Champie out of semi retirement. A complete service later, with new brake pads and a cleaned carburettor, Champie stood ready for her six hundred kilometre trip to the KwaZulu-Natal coastline.

Jurgen-the-German, my friendly back street mechanic in Joburg assured me that she would definitely make the trip to Durban. The return journey he said, “May be a bit tricky, but vith da vinger crossed, she vud do it!”

How right he was.

The downwards journey from the icy winter of the highveld to the warmer sub-tropical climes of Durban was uneventful. A couple of stops for petrol, toll-gates and coffee and in six hours Champie cruised sedately past the newly erected and magnificently beautiful Moses Madhiba soccer stadium.

The return trip however made me wish the allies had never destroyed the concentration camps in Eastern Europe. Jurgen-the-German was about to become the first new-age visitor to the chambers his ancestors had created. And I vowed by the time I eventually arrived back in Joburg that S.A.A. (South African Airways), and the entire board of F.I.F.A.’s committee could join him.

Because the World cup was in full swing when the production closed in Grahamstown we had to drive to Port Elizabeth, return the hired company Kombi, and board a scheduled flight to Joburg, although we wished to get to Durban.

It was at the Port Elizabeth airport that I faced the first of three hazards and six angels, on my forty-eight hour return trek to Joburg.

Being a highly inconsiderate and addicted chain smoker I was confronted by the fact that there is no smoking lounge in the departure lounge. Unless?

Unless you divest oneself of one hundred and fifty Rand and make use of the cash offer in the executive business suites. Having always been a bargain hunting thespian in search of either a freebie or a good offer, I quickly ascertained that for this reasonable sum, I could consume, a slice of quiche, a toasted ham and cheese sandwich, a beer, a double whiskey, three glasses of excellent wine, an espresso coffee, a shot of Grappa, and smoke in solitude.

I also met a wonderful Xhosa waiter, who was intrigued why a scruffily dressed heavily bearded man, who was obviously not a businessman, was in his salubrious lounge.

“E - hello.”

“Good day my good man.”

“E - what is you?"

“I beg your pardon?”

“Where you from? What is you? You here for the soccer?”

“I is a human being and not I’m not here for the soccer, I’m here to smoke.”

A huge laugh erupted from his semi-toothless mouth and the ice was broken.

“You Liverpool supporter?” he asked as I was sporting my Liverpool beanie.

“ I was, but I’m now looking for some tangerine or orange underpants.”
Another hysterical gurgled laugh emerged from his lips.

“E-underpant?”
“Yes, tangerine or orange, I’m switching my allegiance to my hometown team Blackpool. You got any?”

Giggling uncontrollably he answered, “No, but we got the orange liqueur. The Curaçao. She Portuguese. You English eh?”

“Affirmative my good Sir, born, bred and educated there. And you?”

“Eeekeeythamlamanazi,” was the phonetic utterance from his grinning face.

“And where’s that?”

“E-English, is the Bathhurst?”

“Ah the Bathhurst. Good goats cheese there,” I said, having sampled the produce while I was in Grahamstown.

“You know it?”

“The cheese yes, the town no.”

“I want to live in London.”

“My God why?”

I was astounded that this reasonably educated, friendly, amusing and talkative young man would want to leave the lush hills of the Hogsback Mountains for the smoggy, expensive, overcrowded, and very un-English city of London.

A swift conversation about the economic woes of Sterling, the Dollar and the Euro followed, which I punctuated with Rand conversions for the price of a cigarette, a sandwich, and a roof over his head. Ending with, “And a Black Label beer would be about forty Rand!”

“Eeish, ma dada! I stay here.”

My boarding call tinkled through the public address system, and I said goodbye to Amos, a cherub with angelic possibilities.

Having made use of the incredibly good offer of the executive suites, I left with my shoulder bag and jacket pockets stuffed with biscuits, alcoholic miniatures, crisps and sweets that I could share with my less enterprising fellow thespian travellers on the flight to Johannesburg.

The hop to Joeys was uneventful, but then we had to wait three hours to board a delayed connecting flight to Durban. Spain versus Germany at the Madihba stadium that evening was the apparent reason for the delay and our circuitous route.

The flight to Durban usually takes 50 minutes to an hour.

I had a joyous and imbibing time on the flight, meeting two youngsters from Preston which is only a half hour drive from my hometown of Blackpool. We occupied the back row of seats, so we were in constant and close contact with the air hostess, who kept us supplied with our liquid sustenance. Greg and Stuart had tickets for the game which kicked off at eight-thirty. So did ninety percent of the other Spanish and German passengers, so as we circled over the King Shaka airport for the fiftieth time tensions were rising. We had been in the air for over two and a half hours and we were stacked with twenty four other flights waiting for permission to land. Luckily we were fourth from the bottom of the stack and at seven forty five we touched down. I heard later that evening we were the second to last plane to land. The remaining flights all had to be diverted to other airports. So, approximately five thousand travellers learnt that night that my observations penned in paragraph thirty-one of this tome are correct.

The baggage and arrival hall was full to the brim with irate and screaming soccer fans, and I caught a glance of my friends from Preston, who screamed, “We’ll make it!! We’ll crash on the beach! Is that OK?” Before I had a chance to advise in the negative they disappeared as fast as Aladin does from his lamp.

I was collected by Nilus de Koppus’s mother and was a guest at her and husband Trevor’s house in Cowies Hill for the night. The following morn, I arose early and loaded up Champie.

As Champie had lain idle for two weeks during my sojourn in Grahamstown , I was expecting to find a flat battery. She was parked, luckily, on the sloped driveway of Nilus de Koppen’s driveway. I light push and she turned over into a gurgled and jerky motion. I shouted, “Thanks!” to Nilus as he waved from his driveway and Champie and I stuttered down the road.

It was about a kilometre later that my fingers were not so much crossed, as riveted into a contorted spasm.

“Jurgen, Jurgen, you have given me a burden. Belsen’s ovens lie in wait.”

Champie started to miss-fire and the exhaust began emit the sound of blanks from a sniper’s rifle.

At the first set of traffic lights as Champie splutterd along, I suddenly caught sight of a large Zulu street trader dressed as Father Christmas selling flags and vuvzellas. The gas ovens disappeared and Bing Crosby’s “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas”, leapt into my grey matter. So, I crooned gently into Champie’s wounded innards via the broken dashboard and I headed her semi-crippled being in the direction of Durban North in hope of acquiring the help of Siob, a sister-in-law.

I made use of a nineteen-fifties map aptly entitled, “Port Natal - The City of Durban”. I safely and slowly negotiated the downward run from Cowies Hill via King Cetshwayo's Drive while I was looking for Jan Smut's highway. I swung a left into Problem Mhkize's armpit or Cowie Road as it was known, travelled up Lillian Gumede's leg, via Tutu's corset, turned a sharp left and found myself on Kenneth Kaunda Road. Then I suddenly found a road that had the same name as was on my map, Umhlanga Rocks Drive.

Yes! Miracles do happen!

While pulling into the parking lot outside Siob’s office, I made a mental note to send an e-mail to all South Africa’s present politicians. I would tell them to read Percy Byshe Shelley’s poem Ozimandias, and bear in mind what happens to statues and the names of the high and mighty.

As this thought flashed through my mind the second of my angels, Siob descended.
Being one of three sisters, the eldest being the present Lady-in-Wedlock, I’d affectionately named the siblings and mother as “The Witches of Donabate”.

Siob was true to character and was totally disinterested in my dilemma. She wanted to introduce me to one of her co-workers, who had held an interest in my dear self during the high-flying soapie-star era of my younger years.

I was escorted to the office and introduced to Ricky. Having no desire or no Viagra to hand I quickly asked after the formal handshake, “Do you know a friendly mechanic?”

“As a matter of fact, I do” replied smiling angel Ricky.

“You do? Where can I find him?”

“Just round the corner.”

“A cell number?”

A quick telephone call, a three minute juddering drive, and I was in the back yard of my fourth angel, Derrick. And an angel of Gabriel class, who had named his residential backyard repair shop “The Haven”. A mighty angel with a fully stocked garage and the hands of a mechanic trained by the almighty himself.

“Head gasket’s blown!” his diagnosis of my problem took thirty seconds.

“How much? and How long?

“Two and a half G and you can have it tonight.”

A man of his word was Gabriel Derrick and at 9 pm that evening after being amply fed and watered by Siob, he phoned and told me, “She’s ready, but I need to flush the shite out of the engine.”

“The shite?”

“The oil and the water, the head was corroded, it’s been welded and re-planed, you’ll need to get it re-torqued and the timing re-set again once you’re back in Joeys……….the electrics are funny too, but she’s firing and the compression is good……….You should maybe go the Luminet route and get rid of the distributor………. brilliant bakkie this, goes forever, my father’s brother had three of them………You’ve got to watch the prop shaft tho’……….I had one once, I put three five nines on………Oh and I’ve put in a new coil………. the one you had was Chinese shite!………. My uncle’s………………. ”

Derrick was on a biblical roll from the gospel of sixty-five year old mechanics and as with all dedicated and committed bible punchers, he suffered from verbal diarrhoea.

So it was decided that I would crash the night on Siob’s sofa and pick up “Champie” after I had visited the auto-teller in the morning.

By 10 am I was cruising up the N3. Champie purred gently as we by-passed Pietermaritzberg and began the climb of Howick Hill towards Hilton. I was amazed to note that I was still in 5th gear and the rev counter hovered on the 3500 mark, never before had Champie behaved so magnificently.

Then suddenly Beelzebub himself descended!

The tappets stopped tapping, the cylinders ceased cylindering but thankfully with the momentum I had attained, I free-wheeled and guided Champie in to a well positioned lay-by.

In an instant I downgraded Derrick the Archangel Gabriel to the fallen angel of Milton’s Paradise Lost and I prayed to every deity I could image that he would join Jurgen-the-German in Belsen.

I called Derrick from my second-hand cell.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

Not good enough.

“Is anyone around?”

“I’m stuck on the fucking N3, not a house in sight, just cars and lorries hurtling past a foot or two away!”

“Have you got a spark?”

“A what? The only fucking spark I’ve got is on my cigarette lighter!”

“Is she firing? Unplug your distributor and hold it close to an earth. Turn it over and see if there’s a spark.”

“How the fuck can I do that! I’m on my own!”

“Is there nobody about? Flag down a car!”

And at that moment a heavenly ghost pulled in. The celestial body took the form of a jackal of the highways, a tow truck. Out stepped Mohammed himself in the form of an Indian man, whose surname name was Sulliman.

“You got a problem?”

“No, I just thought I’d pull over, open my bonnet, scream into my cell phone and have a picnic.”

“You’re joking eh?”

“You want a Mozie’s pork pie? I’ve got twenty in the cooler box in the back.”

“What’s wrong with it?”

“I think it’s electrical. Do you mind holding the distributor cable against the engine?”

“Sure.”

I jumped in the cab and turned the ignition, “Any spark?”

“Nix.”

Back onto the cell.

“Sorry to have kept you Derrick, no spark”

“It’s your points, I told you. Should change to “Luminet” ”.

“Yeah, yeah, thanks. Look I’ve got a tow truck here. I’ll call you when I get to another mechanic. Ta.”

Back to Islam’s angel.

“How much to the nearest mechanic?”

“That would be Howick, Mr. Smith. Eight fifty.”

“Fuck off!”
“Five fifty is the best I can do.”

“Make it three fifty and you can use my jacket as a prayer mat.”

An angelic Islamic smile crossed his face.

“Done!”

Thirty five minutes later I, Champie, and Sulliman were pulling into the yard of Javelin Trucking Co in Merrivale just outside Howick.

“How’s it Mr Smith?”

“Lekker Sulli, how’s Landi?”

“Up to her usual shite.”

“She still with that toss-pot?”

“Ja, he took to Hallies last night.”

“And?”

“She threw up inside his coupe”

“So what’s the problem?”

A Chekhovian pause hung in the air, as it took me a minute or two to realise he was talking to me.

“Oh, I think it’s the points, well that’s what Derrick says, he’s the guy that repaired the head gasket yesterday.”

“An old toppie eh?”

“Eh?”

“An old mechanic?” he said pointing at the tappet cover, “No litie would use that.” as he indicated a black guey substance between the tappet’s cover and the engine.

“Yes,” I said in his sixties, I think he said.”

“He’s done a good job, cleaned the carburettor, see.” he said admiring Derricks work.

“New coil too.”

“Yeah, Derrick changed that too.”

“I hate fucking cars you know.”

“Oh…….. but you can help me?”

“Let’s take a look,” he said attaching a meter to the battery.

“The battery’s fine.”

“It is.”

“Turn her over,” he said holding the distributor cable to earth. “No spark.”

“We’ve sussed that.”

“Must be the points.” said Mr Smith scratching his pauch.

If you’ve ever been stuck on a verbal roundabout you’ll know what I felt like saying next.

I held my tongue, while Mr Smith gave Sulli a hundred Rand note, “What year is this?”

“Mid seventies, I think.”

Sulli jumped into his jackal van and drove off.

“Where’s he going? I haven’t paid him yet.”

“Get new points and condenser.” replied Mr Smith while he stripped down the distributor.

“Why’d you hate cars?”

“Drink too many Hansas, can’t get the belly over the front.” he said as he lifted his paunch and rested it on Champie’s radiator.

“Must be more difficult working on trucks?”

“Use that,” he said pointing at the scaffolding hanging over a truck’s open innards.

“Ever had an immobiliser on this?”

“No.”

“Weird wiring.”

“That’s what Derrick said.”

Mr Smith swung his paunch off the radiator so that it could enjoy it’s Newtonian equilibrium.

“You like a grappa?” I asked. “Got some in the back.”

“A what?”

“Italian mampoer.”

As I lifted Toddie of the cooler box, Sulli came screeching back into the yard, carrying a case of Hansa beers, with two small packets balancing on top. He tossed the packets to Mr Smith and seemed simultaneously to rip the tops of three cans of Hansa.

In unison the words, “You want one?” sprung from Sulli’s and my mouth.

A quick clink of cans, a shot of grappa from Toddie and the points and condenser were changed.

“What do I owe you?”

“Settle with Sulli, and you can give me fifty for the parts.”

Seldom in my life have I met a real Good Samaritan and being a spasmodic humanist with atheist tendencies, it seemed to me that I could not accept this charity. I pulled out a hundred and fifty Rand and handed it Mr Smith and paid Sulli.

“The case of Hansa is on me.”

Yes, my friends, hazards, pleasures and angels do go hand in hand on the travels of a jobbing actor.

Five and a half hours later I was safely back in the arms of my “Lady-in-Wedlock”.

Bon voyage.

No Acting Required

The origins of the often-used expression “N.A.R.-ing” in my profession are many. It has been reported that John Wayne, Burt Lancaster, James Stewart and even the legendary Orson Wells coined the phrase.

Rumour has it that “The Duke” John Wayne, when he was offered a role, used to demand a full shooting script for his perusal. He would then retire to his ranch in Iowa and page through it notating each page that he thought would require no acting. Once he was satisfied that over sixty percent of the script could be “N.A.R.-ed” he would allow his agent to continue negotiations with the producer. Another rumour tells that Big John’s personal script of True Grit, with two thick black pencil lines and the large letters N.A.R. (no acting required) scrawled across every third page, was offered at a Sotheby’s auction shortly after his death.

My own experiences with a spot of “N.A.R.-ing” go back to the mid-seventies.

I was playing the lead in a made-for-TV period cowboy drama set in the early days of the gold rush in Australia. 

The scene involved the arrival of the leading villain, the leading lady and myself in a fictitious town called Muckinbuddin. We had already shot the following scene, which showed us climbing out of the stagecoach and entering the saloon. There were a few minor lines of dialogue in this sequence.

As it was the first time the audience was introduced to the slick smooth-faced bank manager, who would fleece the unsuspecting inhabitants of their newly panned gold, several close-ups were required by the director.

It was also the first time my love interest, Ms Henrietta Sweet, played by Miss Courtney Ashbourne, appeared in the story.

Miss Ashbourne was straight out of drama school and had secured this, her first TV role, after spending an evening on the casting couch with Herr Otto Geltmann, a German with Jewish connections in Australia and Bonn.

She was very nervous and the make-up and wardrobe departments fluttered around her, especially when her close-ups were being shot. Obviously Herr Geltmann had issued instructions, and the stylists wanted to make sure they would collect their weekly wages.

A late friend of mine and a fellow student of the Royal Academy, Mr Andrew Letagé, played the crooked bank manager, Mr Cyrus McFarlane. Andrew was a tall good-looking Anglicised Frenchman and, as he was a couple of years older than myself, I looked to him when I needed advice. His advice was always courteously given, and he was dutifully rewarded with a hastily taken sip from my Toddie.

In those days I had taken a liking to gin.

I had developed a marvellous adaptation of the pink gin cocktail. Working on twelve shots in Toddie, I added thirty-two dashes of Angostura Bitters, to gain the full effect of my cocktail. To help disguise the smell of alcohol from prying noses, I arranged with the continuity supervisor that I could store a jar of pickled onions in the side-sack of her ever-present camping stool.

I can not claim full credit for this delicious drink. A wonderful white-haired ex-Major in a Gurka regiment introduced me to it while I was filming a documentary in the Nilgri tea-laden mountains in India. Apparently the “Gin-onion” was a regular pre-noon drink for many officers in the British India Army.

I’m sorry, I digress.

We had started filming the two-minute in-town scene at eight in the morning and, because the stylists carefully rearranged every stray strand of Miss Ashbourne’s lacquer-encrusted hair before, after and sometimes during every take, we only wrapped the scene at three in the afternoon. By the time the whole sequence was in the can, Andrew and I had polished off the full contents of Toddie, and sucked and chewed ten pickled onions each.

The director then suddenly announced, “I need to get the preceding scene. A single long lens establishing shot. And I want to catch it as the sun sets over there.”

He pointed to a dirt track on the distant horizon. “How long to set up?” he asked.

The assistant director quickly conferred with the camera crew and the horse wranglers.

“An hour and a half,” he said. “It’ll take them that long to get the stagecoach over there. But I can send the actors with them to speed things up.

“Good,” said the director.

I excused myself for three minutes, and darted off to refill Toddie, and replenish the supply of pickled onions from the caterer’s van.

One hour later Miss Ashbourne, Andrew and I were seated in the stagecoach atop a small hillock overlooking the town of Muckinbuddin. The camera with a long lens was positioned in the high street approximately a mile and a half away from us. The wrangler in charge of driving the stagecoach had been given a walkie-talkie so that he could receive instructions, and be given a cue to commence action. This was our only means of communication with the base camp.

The words “Stand by!” crackled through the walkie-talkie and suddenly Miss Ashbourne went into a state of apoplexy. The director, prior to our ascent up the mountain, had instructed her to look out of the stagecoach window and admire the breathtaking scenery.

“It’s the first time you’ve seen the place, and it’s going to be your home for the next thirteen episodes, that’s your motivation! OK? You got it?”

The poor girl, now in a state of near panic as the make-up department was over a mile away, turned to Andrew and said, “What about my hair? They haven’t checked it? Does it look all right?”

Andrew calmly offered her my Toddie and I gently placed a pickled onion in the palm of her hand.

“Don’t worry, ma cherie,” gushed Andrew, “we’re doing a bit of “D.O.T.H.-ing”

“What’s that?” She asked. “Dot-on-the-horizon acting, my dear. Dot on the horizon. Very similar to N.A.R.–ing.”

“Action!!”

As the sun set majestically in the background, the silhouetted stagecoach with its three pinprick dots peering drunkenly out the window weaved jerkily down the dusty track into Muckinbuddin.

Thank you, Major Maguire.

Solitude, Dagga & Daffodils

On my varied travels I have often found myself in need of that very un-social human condition, solitude.

I attribute this uncharacteristic trait of mine to study, in my youth, of Francis Bacon’s writing. He penned these words, “Whoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a God.” in his essay entitled “Of Friendship”.

I quickly assessed that at that particular time in my life I was not the wild beast of my latter years, and I was forced by my over-inflated ego to make the assumption that I must be a God.

This was a major decision in my life possibly taken after I had observed my mother’s Kama-sutra performance with Reverend Groper O’ Casey over the font at my belated christening.

The hypocrisy of the clergy on both sides of the great religious divide; I’m referring here to the division in the ranks of Catholics and Protestants, has always astonished me. I had not yet dabbled in the Middle-Eastern and Far-Eastern religions of Islam and Buddhism. That’s another story. So the hypocrisy of the guardians of Christianity never passed me by unobserved. Therefore I hope you’ll understand that for me to take this mighty leap of faith, and assume the mantle of a God was not too far-fetched.

I was at this time heavily involved in the mini film boom of the mid-eighties in South Africa and was working with the young Kung-fu-jujitsu-ko-karate-kick-boxers of the era.

Messers Bradley and Dudikof of the American Ninja series fame.

Fine young lads they were. They could both fly through the air with the greatest of ease and chop a polystyrene block in half with their little fingers. Somersaults, handsprings, double cart-wheels and demonic starring eyes were all part of their athletic repertoire. Unfortunately acting was not. Not that many acting skills were required in those all-action packed adventures set in the exotic jungles of the Philippines or the ravines of the Mountain Kingdom of Lesotho in Southern Africa.

It was great fun to watch the Yankie-lads, David and Michael, rehearsing their fight routines. I had discovered a small hill-top sun trap and equipped myself, with a camping chair, a pair of binoculars, a full Toddie, my cross-word book, my Francis Bacon book and a condensed volume of William Wordsworth’s finest poems.

I was, as I’ve explained earlier, “Hurrying up and Waiting” and seeing as I hadn’t been allotted a caravan I decided to set up my own base-camp, and was issued with a walkie-talkie should the 2nd assistant director want me on the set. My view was magnificent. I could see all the comings and goings from the set and the fight rehearsal area, and was surrounded by some of the most breath taking scenery that Lesotho had to offer.

It was the end of my third day of “Hurrying up and Waiting” that I was informed that the character I was playing would now not be required for another week.

The producers of the epic, two members of the Israeli Mafia , affectionately known as Globus & Gobshite, informed me that I could be either, housed at the five star hotel in Maseru, the capital of Lesotho. Or I could be flown back to Johannesburg in South Africa were I had temporary accommodation with an estranged widow.

Neither of these options appealed to me.

The prices charged at the hotel bar were so exorbitant that they could not be covered by my per diems and the widow in Johannesburg although sprightly-lass in her mid-seventies owned six dogs. It was my duty when in residence, apart from servicing the widow, to pick up and dispose of the daily dog droppings. “No”. I thought re-reading Bacon’s famous quote I need to be a God once more.

Acquiring the services of a production driver I had myself dropped at the top of the “God-Help-Me” pass about seventy kilometres outside Maseru. That is its actual name by the way.

It was here at the Basuto Pony Trekking centre I hired the use of a Basotho pony, a pack mule and a young African guide, Johann, for a five-day tour into the Lesotho Mountains. We loaded up our provisions, which consisted mostly of cans of the local beer, army-style Tak-biscuits, tins of sardines, and tins of corned beef onto the back of the pack mule, and off we headed into the realms of pure solitude.

I can highly recommend the trip.

Balanced securely on the sturdy pony I traveled along metre-wide ledges. Looking down one thousand metre cliff faces, bathed under crystal clear waterfalls and meandered through verdant valley floors. It was on these winding river basins that I began to understand the minds of my pony, aptly named Sure-foot, and all the inhabitants of this magnificently beautiful country.

The locals had an excellent understanding of the economics of subsistence farming.

The crops were grown in long well-tilled furrows, and I soon grasped why Sure-foot and my guide constantly changed lanes. We would amble along; mealie-corn on one-side, and garden peas on the other. After ten or so minutes Johann, the guide would lead us through the peas so we now had “dagga” (marijuana) on one side and peas on the other. Ten minutes later we would slip through the marijuana and end up with mealie-corn on our left and the dagga on our right. At each crossover the ponies, the mule, and Johann would pause, and help themselves to produce from the Garden of Eden.

This gave me a new appreciation of the Afrikaner expression, “Pad-kos” – “On the road food”.

On my third night, reclining on the front seat of a 1964 Mercedes Benz in the Chief Markoba’s hut the intricacies of the farming system were explained to me. While we partook of boiled fresh mealies, cooked in sawn-off beer cans, I introduced the chief to Polish vodka from my Toddie.

“E-mealies is for the energy,” he said. “E- peas, she is for the roughage, the making of the wind.”

“And the dagga?” I asked.

“She is for the making of the money, so we is then can buy e-everything else.”

Chief Markoba was the perfect host, and he suggested that the following day we should pay a call on his sister who only lived thirty-five k’s away. He told me that the sister’s daughter was a schoolteacher and had the “Good-English” and was in charge of the factory.

“It beautiful trek. Johann she know it. Up e-valley over e-hill.” he said as we saddled up in the four-am dawn light.

The hill at which he was pointing had a resemblance, to my untrained eye, of the North Slope of Mount Everest.

The climb was easy. Sure-foot did his duty. The descent however into the sister’s valley was slightly more hair raising. It reminded me of my childhood excursions to the Pleasure Beach in Blackpool. Try to imagine that you are you are on the “Big-Dipper”. The engines have stalled, and you descend from the highest point controlled only by the rachetted braking system. In my case Sure-foot’s front knees were the rachets.

On arriving at the sister’s kraal my first need was a cold compress for my bruised privates that had been hammered against the pommel of my cowboy style saddle. After a short lie in the fading afternoon sun, I was given a guided tour of the factory that Cheif Markoba had told me about. The factory was a small rondavel attached to the Mission school were the sister’s daughter taught.

I was expecting to be shown the inside of a storeroom where they would keep their text-books and other commodities associated with the art of learning. As Maria, the daughter opened the door I caught the soft entrancing smell of drying herbs. The interior of the rondavel was full of brilliantly constructed hessian shelves laden with drying dagga.

During the course of our evening meal of peas, mealies and canned corned beef I enquired of Maria as to where she stored her text-books.

“No text-books”, she said, “till we is being sell the dagga.”

As we enjoyed a communal pipe in the quietness of the evening, I concluded that these gentle-folk were already Gods in their own right. So I decided instead of baffling them with the philosophical writings of Mr. Bacon I would read them a short extract from my “Works of Wordsworth”, who I consider to be another environmentally friendly teacher and poet.

“For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye,
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills
And dances with the daffodils.”

Jack & Jackie

It was rather late in my illustrious career that I finally began to grasp the full subtext of what Mr Aloysius Louder, my voice teacher at the Royal Academy, had meant when he told us that, “An actor is a Jack of All Trades and Master of None.”

There were ten of us in the class when he uttered these profound words.

We were lying on our backs staring up at the flaky, peeling ceiling. Humming gently and using our inter-costal diaphragmatic breathing technique and our lower rib cages, we were supposedly increasing our lower tonal resonance. I was musing on the fact as to why the George Bernard Shaw Trust, which financially supported the Academy at the time, could not afford a tin of paint.

Gently prodding me in the ribs with his highly polished patent leather shoe, Mr Louder disturbed my contemplation.

“Would you not agree, Mr Poole?”

“Most certainly, sir,” I replied. It seemed, at the time, the best answer to give. I was wrong.

“Why?” he asked.

My mind was still locked into the peeling paint and the large damp patch that surrounded it. I was about to say something about building and plumbers, but luckily my friend Toe-Jam Hamilton piped up, “’Cause we’ll be a bank manager one day, an earl the next and with a bit of luck an IRA bomber the following week!”

“Quite right, Mr Hamilton.” replied Mr Louder. “You will have to gather information about people in all walks of life. From Lords and Ladies to the most beggarly tramp. You’ll use that information when you play all the different characters that you are cast in. But you will never be a Lord or a Lady. Or, I hope, a tramp. Yes, a Jack of All Trades but a Master of None.”

Thirty-five years later I was again lying on my back when Mr Louder’s words of wisdom floated back into my grey matter.

On this occasion I was underneath the hand basin in a bathroom at the Rotterdam Hilton hotel. I had been in residence at the hotel for twelve weeks whilst I was playing the leading villain in a Jackie Chan picture. Whilst being an astute businessman, Mr Chan is a “Star” and has an inert kindness backed by a heart of gold. He is also a man of extraordinary talents. Not only does he design, choreograph and perform all his own stunts but, as and when the mood takes him, he takes over the job of the cameraman, the make-up artist, the wardrobe dresser and even the director. A “Man of Means” is Mr Chan. As he explained to me one day on the shoot, “Ah, Sir Cless, in American picture, producer he tell me what to do. In my picture I tell lem!”

Unfortunately he had not told his producer that I was also “a Man of Means with NO Means” and the per diem I received was minimal. It didn’t even cover the daily cost of refilling Toddie with the highly refreshing Dutch jenever gin I had grown partial to.

I was therefore forced to cater for myself in the cramped surrounds of my twenty-first-floor bedroom. Dining out on my meagre allowance was out of the question, so I shopped in the local markets for my protein and fresh veggies. I borrowed a small gas cooker from a friendly member of the crew, who also enjoyed his gin, and set up my own catering department in my room.

My days “off-set” greatly exceeded my days “on-set”, so I spent lengthy sojourns “on ’oliday”, as the 2nd assistant director, Ms Lee Wung Sue, aptly called my non-working days.

It was on my ’oliday days that I toured the city of Rotterdam on the marvellous tramway system using my “Plonkie”. A Plonkie is a strip card that could be purchased for a few guilder and it allowed you to take as many tram rides as you could manage within a specified time. I hopped from tram to tram, gaily inserting my Plonkie into the automatic machines placed neatly on the boarding platforms of all the trams. I would return to the hotel in the early evening feeling young at heart, but weary, exhausted and hungry.

With diverse cosmopolitan communities resident in the city, the outer suburbs of Rotterdam had a wide selection of grocery stores, selling produce from across the globe. One day I would return with yams, pigs’ trotters and a couple of chillies, and cook Jamaican; the next it would be pasta and veal knuckles and I’d don my Italian chef’s hat. Every day I felt like Floyd diving into a new culinary experience. My little gas cooker and small wok worked wonders.

The only problem arose at the start of my final week.

I used to fillet all my fish and meat and prepare all my vegetables in the bathroom, which also served as my laundry room. I mean, a man has to have clean socks and Y-fronts, doesn’t he? It was while I was delicately filleting some pig’s tripe that I noticed my problem. A blocked drain.

Eleven weeks’ worth of fluff from my woollen socks, bones from my eels, and gristle from my pork hocks had taken their toll on the functioning of my bathroom basin’s U-bend!

Mr Louder’s words were at the forefront of my brain as I loosened the U-bend with my Leatherman. In no time at all I had disposed of the offending items blocking the drain and reattached the bend. I stood up smiling, looked at myself in the mirror and thought, “I wonder if the multi-talented Mr Jackie Chan has ever played the part of a plumber.”

I asked him on set the very next day. He replied, “Ah, Sir Cless, no I lav not. I am Jackie Chan not Jack of all Tlades."

Games

Ah, yes, games. 

We all do love them, don’t we? We all play them, and many of us often pay a fortune to watch them, especially if we are past that stage in our lives where we can hobble onto a playing field or be wheeled sedately into the nearest casino.

I now class myself as an armchair-sportsman. Or rather, I should say, a park-bench sportsman.

There is nothing more gratifying than watching twenty-two or thirty or so physically magnificent young men or women thrash the living daylights out of each other from the comfort of your favourite armchair. Or even, as I now find myself, neatly tucked up in newspapers on the pavement outside a television and hi-fi store’s window.

I find team sports more enjoyable to watch than one-on-one contests. This is strange because in my youth I was a reasonably ranked league squash player.

How, you may ask did I manage to play this highly physical and strenuous game.

Well, inter-twixt my marriages and divorces of the fifties, sixties, and even the seventies I had a pretty impressive physique.

You titter? 

Yes, it’s true. The gymnasium was always the second port of call on my daily routine. Even if I found myself in unknown surroundings after my previous night’s exploits, my tactical military training gained at the Royal Academy sprang to the fore.

Tea for the Missus-of-the-time in bed; the sprogs up, teeth brushed and a weaving drive to the nursery or primary school. That was my standard routine for many years of my early life.

The return home was the ominous part of the daily habitual journey.

Was the Missus-of-the-time still in residence? This question was of supreme importance as all my “Ladies-in-wedlock” have disapproved of my indulgences both in alcohol and in nicotine, so preparations always had to be made. Peppermints or “Fishermen’s Friends” in the vehicle’s cubbyhole and deodorant under the car seat. I highly recommend both to any husband-to-be or even to a bride-in-waiting.

Another jobbing actor’s golden rule stolen straight from my lifelong hero’s manual - Lord Baden-Powell’s scouting hand-book: Be prepared!

I digress, my apologies.

Where was I?

Ah, yes, the gymnasium. 

The derivation of this now yuppie-stock-in-trade word “The Jim” is in fact from the Greeks. Their word “youvoc” literally translates as nude, that’s bollock-naked to you less-educated Philistines.

So it’s not surprising then, is it, that a handsome young man in his prime should make the gym his second port of call on a daily basis? It also perhaps makes you realise the hidden depth of my fellow knighted businessman’s astuteness in calling his health-gaining conspiracy Virgin-Jim-nasiums?!

Now, it may seem strange that at these dens of supposed iniquity I always had the inordinate pleasure of meeting the common man. “The Civilian”, if you recall my monologue on the relation of the armed services to the acting profession. The Civilian is anybody who has either the fortune or the misfortune not to be involved in the entertainment industry.

And what an entertaining bunch they were. The plumber with a prosthetic arm, Kevin; the high-wire electrical engineer, who’d had a knife jammed through his larynx, Fennel. Prince, an African bricklayer who was in love with his Pedi tribal rain queen, Modjadji, and a well-endowed-with-glandula-mammaria Justine, who was the personal assistant to a local coffin manufacturer.

These civilians were part of my daily life for a good seven or eight years.

It is amazing what wonderful titbits – excuse the pun – of information you can glean from such a diverse crowd of people with whom you grunt, moan and sweat on an almost daily basis. Topics of conversation in the sauna ranged from the mundane hedonistic to the spiritually rewarding. In the seventies the late Bertrand Russell was the order of the day, and when we’d polished him off we still had John Lennon, Nixon, Margaret Thatcher, Castro and the ailing Breshnev to chew on.

Word association. Now, that’s a game, isn’t it?

Every child and actor has played it and, believe it or not, it’s still a game that I greatly enjoy, because in my present decrepit state it’s the only game I can still actively participate in. The great Bard himself summed it up very succinctly, as he always does, in his masterpiece Hamlet. When Polonius asks Hamlet what he is reading, the perplexed scholar and juvenile delinquent of his day, Hamlet, replies, “Words, words, words.”

So, a word of advice for you younger readers. The next time you are “googling”, “sms-ing”, “blogging” and annihilating the vermin from your most up-to-date downloaded PC game, give a thought to us armchair sportsmen who can still knock together a word or two.

Perhaps give a thought to the fact that life is not all about the nude-asium!

No Acting Required

The origins of the often-used expression “N.A.R.-ing” in my profession are many. It has been reported that John Wayne, Burt Lancaster, James Stewart and even the legendary Orson Wells coined the phrase.

Rumour has it that “The Duke” John Wayne, when he was offered a role, used to demand a full shooting script for his perusal. He would then retire to his ranch in Iowa and page through it notating each page that he thought would require no acting. Once he was satisfied that over sixty percent of the script could be “N.A.R.-ed” he would allow his agent to continue negotiations with the producer. Another rumour tells that Big John’s personal script of True Grit, with two thick black pencil lines and the large letters N.A.R. (no acting required) scrawled across every third page, was offered at a Sotheby’s auction shortly after his death.

My own experiences with a spot of “N.A.R.-ing” go back to the mid-seventies.

I was playing the lead in a made-for-TV period cowboy drama set in the early days of the gold rush in Australia. The scene involved the arrival of the leading villain, the leading lady and myself in a fictitious town called Muckinbuddin. We had already shot the following scene, which showed us climbing out of the stagecoach and entering the saloon. There were a few minor lines of dialogue in this sequence. As it was the first time the audience was introduced to the slick smooth-faced bank manager, who would fleece the unsuspecting inhabitants of their newly panned gold, several close-ups were required by the director. It was also the first time my love interest, Ms Henrietta Sweet, played by Miss Courtney Ashbourne, appeared in the story.

Miss Ashbourne was straight out of drama school and had secured this, her first TV role, after spending an evening on the casting couch with Herr Otto Geltmann, a German with Jewish connections in Australia and Bonn.

She was very nervous and the make-up and wardrobe departments fluttered around her, especially when her close-ups were being shot. Obviously Herr Geltmann had issued instructions, and the stylists wanted to make sure they would collect their weekly wages.

A late friend of mine and a fellow student of the Royal Academy, Mr Andrew Letagé, played the crooked bank manager, Mr Cyrus McFarlane. Andrew was a tall good-looking Anglicised Frenchman and, as he was a couple of years older than myself, I looked to him when I needed advice. His advice was always courteously given, and he was dutifully rewarded with a hastily taken sip from my Toddie.

In those days I had taken a liking to gin.

I had developed a marvellous adaptation of the pink gin cocktail. Working on twelve shots in Toddie, I added thirty-two dashes of Angostura Bitters, to gain the full effect of my cocktail. To help disguise the smell of alcohol from prying noses, I arranged with the continuity supervisor that I could store a jar of pickled onions in the side-sack of her ever-present camping stool.

I can not claim full credit for this delicious drink. A wonderful white-haired ex-Major in a Gurka regiment introduced me to it while I was filming a documentary in the Nilgri tea-laden mountains in India. Apparently the “Gin-onion” was a regular pre-noon drink for many officers in the British India Army.

I’m sorry, I digress.

We had started filming the two-minute in-town scene at eight in the morning and, because the stylists carefully rearranged every stray strand of Miss Ashbourne’s lacquer-encrusted hair before, after and sometimes during every take, we only wrapped the scene at three in the afternoon. By the time the whole sequence was in the can, Andrew and I had polished off the full contents of Toddie, and sucked and chewed ten pickled onions each.

The director then suddenly announced, “I need to get the preceding scene. A single long lens establishing shot. And I want to catch it as the sun sets over there.”

He pointed to a dirt track on the distant horizon. “How long to set up?” he asked.

The assistant director quickly conferred with the camera crew and the horse wranglers.

“An hour and a half,” he said. “It’ll take them that long to get the stagecoach over there. But I can send the actors with them to speed things up.”

“Good,” said the director.

I excused myself for three minutes, and darted off to refill Toddie, and replenish the supply of pickled onions from the caterer’s van.

One hour later Miss Ashbourne, Andrew and I were seated in the stagecoach atop a small hillock overlooking the town of Muckinbuddin. The camera with a long lens was positioned in the high street approximately a mile and a half away from us. The wrangler in charge of driving the stagecoach had been given a walkie-talkie so that he could receive instructions, and be given a cue to commence action. This was our only means of communication with the base camp.

The words “Stand by!” crackled through the walkie-talkie and suddenly Miss Ashbourne went into a state of apoplexy. The director, prior to our ascent up the mountain, had instructed her to look out of the stagecoach window and admire the breathtaking scenery.

“It’s the first time you’ve seen the place, and it’s going to be your home for the next thirteen episodes, that’s your motivation! OK? You got it?”

The poor girl, now in a state of near panic as the make-up department was over a mile away, turned to Andrew and said, “What about my hair? They haven’t checked it? Does it look all right?” 

Andrew calmly offered her my Toddie and I gently placed a pickled onion in the palm of her hand.

“Don’t worry, ma cherie,” gushed Andrew, “we’re doing a bit of “D.O.T.H.-ing”

 “What’s that?” She asked.

 “Dot-on-the-horizon acting, my dear. Dot on the horizon. Very similar to N.A.R.–ing.”

“Action!!”

As the sun set majestically in the background, the silhouetted stagecoach with its three pinprick dots peering drunkenly out the window weaved jerkily down the dusty track into Muckinbuddin.

Thank you, Major Maguire.