Thursday, March 25, 2010

Passports

The older you get, the more you begin to be nagged by those inner questions: Who the hell am I? What have I done and achieved? Will anybody remember me? If they do, what the hell does it matter?

I hope you agree.

For those of you who are, like myself, jobbing thespians of over fifty-five years standing, the first question mentioned is one I know you will have asked every time you picked up a play or a script, or were offered a job. And as I have portrayed the complete gamut of human personalities with social stature ranging from street beggars to kings, and even once a queen, this was always the first question I would ask. Once I’d formulated an answer, the other questions fell by the wayside.

However, with the Black Reaper hovering around my person, I decided, six months prior to a forthcoming trip to Munich, to conduct some much-needed genealogical research into my own civilian origins.


The question “Who the hell am I?” immediately developed into an enquiry of a more personal and sensitive significance. My mother, Gladys the famous fan dancer of the forties, was in hospital suffering from terminal throat cancer, and I had been informed that her time left was very limited, so speed was of the essence.

After a long rummage through chests and old suitcases, I left my mother’s small council abode in Oxford heavily laden with photographs, documents and paraphernalia collected over eighty years of a diverse, entertaining, fruitful and intriguing life. After asking the advice of my eldest-born, which was to “Hang it in down the IT café, Pop!”, I slowly grasped that he was telling me to frequent an Internet Café.

I was surprised at how easy it is, using the modern technology available on the Internet, to trace one’s ancestry. With the limited resources available to me I managed to track down a teenage barmaid, Monica Spillersbee, who had worked at the hostelry in which my mother had lodged during the Second World War. It was there, in her tiny attic room, that my mother had indulged in her extracurricular fan-dancing activities.

Monica was now a sprightly geriatric in her early eighties with a tongue as sharp as a butcher’s knife. She was a hive of information and, although a good ten years younger than my mother at the time, she too was a favourite of the returning servicemen. Armed with the collection of faded black-and-white photographs and several old demobilisation papers I had found hidden under my mother’s bed, I chatted to Monica. Beaming from ear to ear, she managed to recall all my possible fathers, Cecil, Eddie, Steven and Simon.

“ ’e’s the Polack, Eddie,” she said, pointing to a young sergeant in the fatigues of the Polish Free Air Force.

“He was a pilot?” I asked.

“No. That wasn’t even ’is name, it was Edowokwiczsky. ’E was an aerial photographer in t’ Lancaster bombers. That was ’is surname but all us girls shortened it to Eddie ’cause we couldn’t pronounce it.”

I could see a slight family resemblance but it was not enough to convince either of us that he was my father. “But he was one of ya ma’s regulars. And so was ’e,” she said, pulling another photograph from the pile. “ ’E was a Yank, a real smarmy bugger, always had lots of chewing gum and nylons. A bit of a bastard ’e was! Made us all do double time for a fucking quid! Just because ’e knew we’d be wanting the new stockings.”

“Can you remember his surname or his regiment?” I asked, picking up another photograph. It was a shot of four athletic naked young men lying on their stomachs on a beach. They were resting on their elbows looking at a very young Monica posing for them in her nineteen-forties bathing costume. Quickly she snatched it from me.

“No, but that’s ’im! Ah’d recognise that tattoo anywhere! Ah did it for ’im! A beautiful skull and crossbones on ’is right cheek! Look!

I took the photograph and used her handy plastic magnifying glass to get a better view of the tattooed rear-end left cheek. Monica was on a roll. “Bastard! Can’t remember his name right now, but it’ll come to me. ’E was only around a short while, then ’e got shipped out, but I do remember seeing a picture of ’im in t’ Blackpool Gazette a year or two later. Summat to do with do with stolen bananas, they was very scarce in them days, and old Mrs Nellie Ogden found cases of the things under her floorboards. He was one of her lodgers. They was stinking the place to high heaven, rotten as camel dung, they almost arrested her.”

“Why?” was the next obvious question.

“The smell of ‘em! All t’ neighbours were complaining.” Her eyes widened with a flash of recognition as she looked at the photograph, “Nellie then told the cops they belonged to that Yank. Ah tell ya, it was all in t’ Gazette.”

I made a quick mental note to visit the offices of the Manchester Guardian archives and search for a post-war American who’d been stealing bananas.

“And the others?” I asked pointing to the four naked backsides.

“Well,” she said, lapsing in a long gurgling laughing-cough. She gave a quick snort, swallowing the phlegm that had collected from over sixty years of Woodbine-smoking, “Them’s definitely the other two who was always hanging around ya Ma.”

“How do you know that? You can’t see their faces.”

“Ah can spot and identify a naked arse from twenty paces, Cess! That’s definitely Simon’s skinny runt and that one’s ya Polack’s, Eddie, and t’other one’s Steven. So there ya are! The Yank must be Cecil! Told ya ah’d get it!” She slapped me robustly on the knee and fell into a gleeful fit of coughing, gurgling and laughing.

I handed her Toddie, hoping she’d take a sip and stop her false teeth falling out.

“Ta, Cess. Ya Ma must’ve taken the picture with ’er little Brownie 127 ’er other Yank, Todd, give ’er! ”

“He also gave her that,” I said, trying to disengage her gnarled arthritic fingers from Toddie.

“Ah, ’e was a nice one, that Todd. ’E was like you, Cess, an actor. A real gentleman. Ya know, ’e could be ya dad too. Might not be one of this lot!” she said, as she stroked her fingers over the naked bums.

“But I thought she only met Todd when I was about five or six?”

“Ay, that’s right. That was ’is second visit over ’ere. But ’e was around at same time as them lot as well.”

So I had now five possible fathers, not four. It looked as if the problem was deepening. “So we’ve got Todd, right? What about the others, can you remember their surnames?”

“Well, bone-head Cecil was one of those American-Paddies, you know, their granddads went over in t’ potato famine, y’ll get his name from t’ Gazette. Simon and Steven were posh English lads, some public school down south, and ah’ve already given ya Eddie’s!”

“Edowokwiczsky, right?”

“Ay, Polish Free Air Force!” she repeated. “The one with the huge backside, there’s a bit of ’im in ya, Cess, the cheekbones and the eyes. But ah’d follow up on Todd ’cause of ya business connections!”

Old Monica was starting to sound like Agatha Christie in full swing. “But the two English lads? Whereabouts in the south?”

“Ah, give us another sip, Cess, that stuff is really’elping with t’ memory.”

I passed her back Toddie, which I had tried to hide in my crutch, as supplies were running low.

“Ta,” she said, and then knocked back the remaining contents. “Not bad, Cess, tastes just like that nettle wine Nellie Ogden used to make. Ah suppose that’s what she was doing with them bananas.”

“The English boys?” I quickly asked, trying to get her back on track.

“Oh, yes, that one!” she said, as her finger jabbed the second biggest bum on the photograph, “That’s Simon. He also liked the wine. Wouldn’t drink the beer, said it give him the squirts. He was a mate of Steven’s, went to the same school but his old man was a South African. That’s right, I remember now, Van der Spay! Simon van der Spay. We always called him Van the SS! Used to piss ’im off really bad! ’Cause you know some of them boers was supporting t’ Jerries back then! And look, ’is arse is darker than t’others’! Loved the sun, that one!”

My God, I thought, I’m in for a bloody history lesson as well, I’d better quickly steer her in the right direction. “But what was the name of their school? Or even the name of the town?”

“It was somewhere down East Anglia way, I think; could’ve been Grantham. They went straight in the RAF, ’cause, as ya know, most of our air bases was down there. They snatched the poor little sods straight off t’ school cricket pitch! I remember that. Both of ’em used to love their cricket. We ’ad games of “hit-it-u-run” down on Pilling Sands. Bit like them twenty-twenty games ya ’ave today. Great fun!”

If Monica was Agatha Christie, I reasoned, with a flash of creative genius, that I must don my Sherlock Holmes hat. I have never played Conan Doyle’s masterful creation but I immediately knew what he would do in this predicament. He would light his pipe, have a large glass of dry sherry, play his violin, and send out his Doctor Watson to do the groundwork. But seeing that I had neither a Doctor Watson nor enough ready cash to buy a small sherry, and I didn’t play the violin, I chose the next best option. I packed up my mother’s memorabilia, gave Monica a little peck on her ravaged cheek whilst I filched her pension book from her open handbag on the sofa, and bade her farewell.

My next port of call was Yates Wine Lodge down on Blackpool promenade opposite the North pier. I knew I would find old Larry-The-Fingers there, perched on his usual stool quaffing his nightly pint of sweet sherry. Larry was a pickpocket and had a lot of contacts on both sides of the criminal fence. Monica’s pension book would end up in the hands of one of Larry’s forger friends and I would be able to give her back at least five brand-new pension books, so I felt no guilt as I slipped it into my pocket. I also knew that Larry would stand me a pint and point me in the right direction of a bent copper who could use the data files stored in the police computer’s mainframe.

Five months later Larry gave me a large sealed brown paper envelope. “It’s all in there, Cess. The lot!”

“What do I owe you?”

“Ah, nowt, lad. Ah did it for Monica! It were grand seeing the lass again after all them years. Ya know when I gave her back them pension books, ya know what she said?”

“No, how could I?”

“ ‘’Ave ya still got that mole on ya scrotum, Larry?’ ” He laughed like a cat who’d remembered licking the best cream he’d ever tasted, albeit sixty years ago. “Tek ’em, lad, they’re on the house, enjoy ya trip to Munich. Give them Jerries summat to think about!”

And think about it they did. It is not surprising that the German secret service interrogated me after they had arrested me on the pavement outside the Franz Josef Strauss International Airport.

It was post 9/11 and I was in possession of five passports, one Americian, one Irish, one Polish, one British, and one South African.







Broken in Transit

All working people experience that wonderful exhilarating feeling that you get when you receive your weekly wages or monthly pay cheque.

A gratifying sense of achievement, a job well done!

The head of any family has a sense of security; the larder can be replenished, new shoes can be bought for the kids and maybe a couple of pints of grog can be supped in the local. The famous line from the musical Cabaret, “Money makes the world go round”, has an unnerving ring of truth to it.

The feelings of a jobbing actor are no different.

When his agent calls and says, “My darling, you remember that job you did last year?”, of course he bloody well remembers! It was the only one he did.

“Well, the Israeli-Lebanese producer, Mohamed Reuben Punter, has just finalised the deal with the American distributors in Hong Kong and he’s finally paid! You can come and pick up the cheque.”


Often the only problem the poor actor has is that he hasn’t got enough readies to buy a bus ticket to get to his agent’s office. I do not care to remember the number of times that I have been in that predicament. But I always fell back on those lovely words sung by Frank and Nancy Sinatra, “Those boots were made for walking,” and plodded off down the Strand whistling the happy tune.

Or I made a plan and tried, like many of my fellow Thespians, to secure an evening’s work behind the bar of a local hostelry. Unfortunately there was never a bar within fifty square miles of my abode where I had not already established an over-extended tab. So I had to resort to finding a sideline that could keep my Toddie well stocked.

In my youth I held a job at a cash-and-carry liquor outlet in the northeastern town of Billingham on the edge of the Durham coalfields in the UK.


At the time I was employed by the local repertory company and was moonlighting at the store on the days I was not required for rehearsal. The production was a modern-dress version of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.

I was playing the role of Octavius, who only appears in the fifth act, so I was able to nip off down the road and offer my services to Mr Higginbottom at the newly opened “King Geordie Liquor Market”. 

The rehearsal schedule suited my activities perfectly. I even managed to hold onto the job after the show had opened. So Octavius Caesar became a heavily laden carrier of liquor by day and an Emperor of Rome by night.

Fridays were always the busiest day. The store opened at eight o’clock in the morning, and by nine there were at least three delivery trucks lined up waiting to unload their wares. Scottish and Newcastle Brewery’s was always the first. The draymen were a crafty bunch, and I quickly learnt to keep a watchful eye on them. They had the fast moving and dexterous hands of a magician and could extract a bottle of ale from the flying crates with ease. This meant that, after they departed, I would suddenly discover that several crates were a bottle short. I had been fleeced of a couple of crates of Newcastle Brown Ale, the highly popular local poison.

Mr Higginbottom was no slouch went it came to tricks of the trade. He was a retired coal miner. “Why ay, lad, divina worrit, we can claim ’em as lost in transit. Fill in t’ form!” He quickly instructed me how to fill in the required requisition form and the following week the brewery supplied us with the missing crates.

It was, however, from his artful son that I learnt my own trick of the trade. Jim Higginbottom Jnr, like his father, had gone down the mines, but because of the miner’s strike and Ted Heath’s three-day working week he had been forced to spend the last two months above ground, as no proud-hearted Geordie would lower himself to be a “Scab”. Besides, Arthur Scargill was a close family friend and it was through comrade Arthur’s connections that Higginbottom Snr had got the job as the liquor store’s manager.

One Friday Junior and I were loading cardboard boxes of vodka onto our trolleys, wheeling them into the store and stacking them near the entrance ready for the evening rush. I suddenly noticed that one of my boxes was extremely damp. I mentioned it to Junior, who immediately said, “Pass it o’er ’ere, Cess!” 


I passed him the box. Taking it firmly in both arms and positioning it a full arm’s length away from his body, he gave the top edge of one side of the box a violent jab with his knee. Junior was a rugby league player and his movement reminded me of the similar action often delivered by a prop forward on the nose of the opposing hooker. His aim was deadly accurate. His large, bony knee crashed into the cardboard box exactly four inches below the top. I heard the muffled sound of glass breaking and watched the telltale damp patch appear on the outside of the box. “Tek it inta back,” he said.

We finished unloading the rest of the vodka and then unloaded four more trucks during the rest of the day. By five o’clock the store was bursting at the seams with newly stacked boxes of vodka, gin, whisky, rum and brandy. The Friday hordes could now descend on the store and quench their dried palates. I, of course, had to rush off to the theatre and deliver my Octavius. 


Before I left Junior said, “Meet me after y’ve done t’ show. I’ll be in t’ storeroom!”

When I returned after the performance I found Junior in the dimly lit storeroom. He had lined up four plastic buckets. In the top of each of them was a finely meshed colander with a piece of muslin cloth laid over the top. “Reet, Cess,” he said, “welcome to Higginbottom’s filtration works.” 



Neatly placed behind each bucket were several very damp-looking boxes of liquor. “Open ’em up and do it gentle like. Do ’t whisky first.”

Delicately, I ripped the top off the first box to discover five broken bottles of very expensive Chivas Regal Scotch. One was smashed completely but the other four had been broken off cleanly at the neck by Junior’s well-trained and well-aimed knee. “Lift ’em out and pass ’em over.” I willingly obliged, as my Machiavellian mind had already guessed the next step.

Three hours later we had five buckets full to the brim of beautifully filtered whisky, brandy, rum, gin and vodka. “Wash out them cloths, Cess. Mek sure y’ git all the glass out, hang ’em up to dry and we’ll use ’em again nixt wake.” While I did the washing, Junior decanted our boodle into empty used Newcastle Brown bottles and kindly filled Toddie with ten-year-old Chivas Regal.

Five weeks later the production closed and the company manager asked me if I could, with my connections at the Liquor Bonanza store, organise the drinks for a wrap party. That last Friday night after the penultimate performance Junior and I worked overtime. We slaved away till the early hours of Saturday morning. I had fully mastered the knee-jerk and we had over thirty damp stained boxes to process.

The Saturday night party went on till the early hours of Sunday morning and a roaring time was had by all. It was about five in the morning when Sir Ralph Richardson, who had been playing Brutus, sidled up to me. Sir Ralph had served in the Royal Navy Reserve during the Second World War and had developed a life-long liking for rum. Each of us was holding a bottle of Newcastle Brown. “Damn fine stuff, this,” he said, raising his bottle. “Tastes remarkably like Captain Morgan! Wouldn’t like to let me in on where you got it, would you, Cess, my boy?”

“Same place I got my Chivas, sir,” I replied, clinking my bottle with his, “Higginbottom’s filtration works; Broken-in-transit.”

Thursday, March 11, 2010

A Long Days Journey into Friendship

The second most infuriating question asked of a thespian, by either a journalist, or a civilian is, 

“What’s it like being an actor?”

My favourite reply to this inane and irritating question is, “It beats working!”

Unfortunately I can not lay claim to the creation of this sarcastic retort, but I do think it conveys an unnerving sub-textual ring of truth.

A quicker riposte would, of course be, “Better than nothing!”

This latter sharp response is however more appropriate when asked, “How’s the wife?” “How’s the girlfriend?” or “How’s the job?”

And whilst we are on the subject of conversational put-downs, have you ever been in a quandary, when asked by an ebullient over confident hostess, or a snotty maitre-de, “How was your meal?” when the plate of fodder you have just consumed, would have been better served in a trough to ravenous pigs, who were ready for the slaughter house.

“I’ve tasted a lot worse!” should stand you on firm ground, but be prepared for a hasty retreat, should the hostess brandish a carving knife, or the chef charges out of the kitchen wielding a meat cleaver.

I owe undying gratitude for all the above answers to a close dear thespian friend of many inebriated years, Mr. Richard Cox, or Cocksy, as he was affectionately known; a true cockney born and bred, and certainly a Tricky Dicky as well.

Born during the second world war in Peckham London, he often swore on his mother’s grave that on the day of his birth the bombs stopped falling for six hours, and the sound of the Bow Bells carried clearly across the Thames from St. Mary’s le Bow in Cheapside, to his war ravaged house.

The fact that the bells were destroyed on 11 May 1941 by a German air raid, and seeing as Cocksy was only born in 1942, the only place he could have heard the sound of the Bow Bells was on the BBC World Service. This was a recording made in 1926, and is still used by the Beeb, as an interval signal on their World Service.

Cocksy was a man of small stature, a gigantic heart, a true prankster, and had he been born forty years later he would have been an ideal presenter for the BBC TV show “The Real Hustle”.

Twenty five years of numerous intoxicated nights were spent with Cocksy, fleecing unsuspecting punters, and casual customers in bars of their hard earned cash. Unseen spirits rolled cigarettes along bar counters, full unopened bottles of beer were mysteriously glued into the corner of walls, coins always landed on heads, and Gypsy Rose-Lee’s psychic telepathic trick was played on many a gullible punter. He was a master craftsman in the game of matches, and always left the bar with more cash in his pocket than when he arrived.

His greatest talent, apart from his ability to make you laugh, was his capacity to produce methane worthy of a herd of the finest dairy cattle. He specialised in the silent but deadly variety, and attributed this inane skill to the vast quantity of Castle Larger he consumed. I however, as the years passed by, began to suspect another rather ominous reason for his latent skill in producing his unwelcome farts. A sudden loss of weight, and yellowing skin were tell-tale signs of sclerosis of the liver, and the possible onset of cancer, even to my untrained eye.

Mr. Cox did not start treading the boards till he was in his early thirties. He was a qualified draughtsman, and earned an excellent income guiding his dextrous fingers, pencil, crayon, or pen in hand across a virgin white sheet of paper. However his addiction to the well known brand of amber fluid did tend to make some of his straight lines a trifle wobbly, especially when nursing a severe hangover.

I first met him during the halcyon days of steam radio in Johannesburg South Africa.

This was the late sixties. The then Nationalist government of South Africa had banned The Beatles, the book “Black Beauty”, all works by Enid Blyton, Nelson Mandela, and the then president John Vorster, had named the television “The Devil’s Box”. The poor brainwashed white public of the country were starved of entertainment. So, the radio and live theatre were the only avenues open to creative minds, and the culturally starved population.

However by the mid-eighties, the television industry was in full swing, and Cocksy and I found ourselves camping in a lean-to on a desolate beach at Disappointment Bay, near the mighty Tugela River’s mouth, in what is now Kwa-Zulu-Natal in the New South Africa.

We had been hired to portray the two leading villains in a TV series drama entitled “John Ross”. Young John Ross was an intrepid and enterprising teenager of the late eighteen hundreds, and rode bare back for fourteen days through the lush sub-tropical vegetation of Natal to raise the alarm in Durban of a Zulu uprising in the far reaches of the British colony.

Our drama did not deal with this episode of his eventful life. Our story started with a ship-wreck scene on the Natal coast, and delved into how John, who was a stow-a-way developed from frightened teenager into a heroic young man.

It was a nine week shoot. Cocksy and I decided we would rough it on the set at the shooting location, rather than travel two hours at 5 o’clock in the morning from the hotel in Eshowe, where the crew and the rest of cast were billeted. This meant we could save our per diems, and as we managed to twist the production office’s arm that we should be reimbursed the accommodation costs we were saving them, we lived a life of luxury. If the TV series “Survial” had been on air at the time Cocksy and I would have been prime contestants, and possible joint winners.

Our living quarters were spacious, and the lean-to covered at least fifty square metres. We quickly acquired an old, and battered small gas-driven bar fridge, an old metal dust bin lid served as our cooking pot, and the friendly “chippy”, the set production carpenter, partitioned off our sleeping quarters. Using a few gum poles, and some fish netting washed up on the beach, we each had our own private bedroom. The production drivers eagerly offered their services for a small remuneration, and collected our alcoholic requirements and minimal groceries from the shops in Eshowe. By the end of the first week the rear wall of Cocksy’s bedroom was stacked to the roof with cases of Castle Larger.

But our secret weapon, and the hidden bonus were the locals.

“The Sugary-Coolies”, as they were affectionately known. They became our bosom buddies, as we soon discovered they too held a similar fascination with alcohol. Cane spirit was their poison. In exchange for a case of this noxious clear fluid made from sugar cane they would, at spring tides, catch crayfish for us. So, at the going rate of eighteen Rand for a crayfish tail, versus twelve Rand for a bottle of Cane, we were batting on an excellent wicket. Their method of catching these delectable crustaceans reminded me of cowboys practicing their lassoing technique before a rodeo show.

They worked in two teams of three. The main man in each team, Naidoo number one, stood up front as close to the sea as possible. He held in his hand a long nylon rope. Attached to the other end was a wire mesh funnel shaped contraption. Broken live mussels were used as bait, and rammed into the interlocking wire strands.

In Grecian chorus style Cocksy and I would shout, “Stand bye!”

Naidoo number one would then begin twirling his contraption in a small circle above his head. With each revolution he extended the length of rope until it reached a radius of six or so metres. Suddenly he would stop, and the trap would plunge into the sea and disappear. As this happened the Greek chorus would scream, “Lights!” and both Naidoos number twos, would switch on their torches.

“Camera!” we would scream.

A minute or three later.

“Action!” and Naidoo number one would yank firmly on the rope bringing the trap now laden with crayfish hurtling back onto the rocks.

Naidoo number three now sprang into action, as number two illuminated the entrapped crayfish. His seemed to be the most difficult task, as these highly sought after culinary trophies are tricky customers to catch as they hop from rock to rock trying to return to the sea.

The whole operation lasted about half an hour, and one full moon lit night, we were presented with eighty crayfish in exchange of a case of Cane.

But what about the work? You may well ask.

Well, the art of being a believable villain in a TV drama is simple. Say as little as possible, look mean, and lurk constantly in the background. Seeing as Cocksy and I were nearly always under the influence, the uttering of dialogue was a no-no, and Thank God the scriptwriter also believed villains should be seen and not heard.

As regards our costumes? We were sleeping rough, so our appearance was visibly villainous. The make-up department loved us. We were always last in the queue, as they didn’t need to daub us with dirt and soot, and the wardrobe department were also pleased, as our costumes, which we never took off, took on a dishevelled life of their own.

Our only problem area was the assistant director, a robust young man whom we gave the nick-name Sabre Tooth on our first acquaintance. He was a large bearded burly man with the voice of a regimental sergeant major, and the manners of Al-queda terrorist.

“Where the fuck are Mr.Cox and Mr. Poole?” was his opening line every morning.

“Harvesting our breakfast!” I would scream back.

We were always down on a rocky outcrop about six hundred metres from the base camp. As the location was part of a nature reserve, the rocks were teeming with edible crustaceans. The back mussels were enormous, and featured regularly on our breakfast, lunch and supper menus.

“You’re in the first scene! Make sure you’re ready!” was Sabre Tooth’s standard reply, even if it was not the case.

Being a true Cockney, and a fan of Michael Caine, Cocksy always yelled back Michael’s catch phrase, “Notta Lotta people know that!” and we would continue scraping our breakfast off the rocks.

The shoot ended in the middle of the year and we both parted company. We went our separate ways. We briefly contemplated opening a fresh seafood restaurant, but I was booked to film a documentary in India for six weeks, and Cocksy went onto another local production playing the brother of the famous gold magnate Barney Banarto. He gave a stunningly brilliant performance in this TV mini series, and I firmly believe that had he not passed away the following Christmas Eve, he would have been nominated for an award.

I had been right, cancer and sclerosis of the liver.

To this day, I also believe that his timing was deliberate, as during the month of December the whole of South Africa comes to a virtual standstill; especially Johannesburg, which is almost deserted, with most of the residents taking their summer holidays in greener, and more pleasant pastures on the coast.

That particular year I was in my Don Juan mode, and had to make a mad dash to Durban, as I had been summoned to meet the family of my third Lady in Wedlock for Christmas Day lunch.

As it was Christmas Eve the mortuary van took ten hours to arrive at Cocksy’s flat. His body was discovered at nine o’clock in the morning. By twelve noon a small party of his closest friends had gathered in the cramped confines of his dingy bed-sit. As most of us were either working, or had pressing family commitments over the festive season, another friend, Mr. Iain McPherson, of E=mc squared fame, took control of the funeral formalities.

Cocksy was cremated in the last week of December, and thus began the Saga of the Ashes.

On my return in mid January from my enforced confinement in the hands of my prospective in-laws-to-be, I was told the funeral parlour had mislaid the ashes. An administrative error they said. Cocksy at that time had no living relatives, and had never mentioned anything about his family background, so the funeral parlour had taken the unsolicited decision to send the ashes to a PO box number they found in the visitor’s book that had been placed at the door of the crematorium on the day of the service, instead of putting them in storage, as instructed by Iain.

Jobbing actors are notorious for never having a place of permanent residence. This is for two reasons. One, they can never afford it. Two, they still retain the stance of a travelling minstrel, and are always hoping that one day they will get the big break, and end up with a mansion in Beverly Hills. So, a PO Box number was the next best alternative in the days before the cell phone and e-mail.

After a week of playing Holmes and Watson, Iain and I finally tracked down the missing ashes. They had been sent to Ms. Debbie O’Nair, an old Cocksy flame that had been the first to sign the visitor’s book, as she had been in a rush to return to her lunch time Xmas pole dancing assignment at a Southern suburbs bowling club.

We transferred the ashes to an ornately decorated Zulu pot urn, and arranged a memorial service for our departed friend. The service was held in the garden of a retired diva of the entertainment industry, Joan. Food and drink was supplied by a kind film catering unit. Speeches were spoken. Songs were sung. Salutations were saluted, and drinks were drunk. The latter to such an extent that by ten o’clock that night eight of his closest friends were still imbiding at Cocksy’s favourite drinking haunt, The Bohemian Club; The Bows as we called it.

The following morning I was in a sad state of disrepair. As Cocksy used to so eloquently say, “My mouth was as dry as a Nun’s nasty!”

Orientating myself, and trying to piece together the insane actions of the previous night’s long day’s journey into drunken insanity, I stumbled towards my fridge in search of a hair of the dog. My motor functions were a trifle unstable, and as I trapped my finger in the fridge door, a loud, high pitched laugh cascaded around inside my swollen head echoing with my scream of excruciating pain.

“Oh shit!” was my first exclamation, closely followed by Sabre Tooth’s line, “Where the fuck is Mr. Cox!?”

The urn was not in its pride of place on top of the fridge.

The reasons for the choice of this resting place were four fold. One, it had been decided that I would scatter the ashes on Easter Sunday in the sea at Disappointment Bay. Two, the fridge was in constant use. Three, I would always be able to see them, so I could not loose them. And four, and the most important, it was Cocksy’s voice that had been used in a famous TV advert of the time for a coffee creamer called Cremora. “It’s not inside…… it’s on TOP!”

Frantic phone calls ensued. “No, they were on the altar in the garden.” “I last saw them while you were talking.” “Didn’t you leave them at Joan’s?” “Did the vicar take them?” “No. You had them!” “Didn’t you put them in the boot of your car?” “No, I gave them to you!” ”No, you didn’t, we put them on the pool table so he could watch the game!”

Of course the Bows! Yes, that was the place I’d seen them. But where would they be now in the none-too-clear light of day?

The establishment was being cleaned when Iain and I arrived. Hovers were hovering, and Emanuel the barman was wiping down the bar.

“Have you seen Cocksy’s ashes Mannie?”

He smiled benignly; a soft African toothless grin creased his face. He opened the fridge, revealing the Zulu urn neatly nestled beside the Castle Larger Long Toms, “Ja, ma boss, I put them inside….. Not on Top!” and there they stayed till I drove down to Disappointment Bay.

Two months later I, my Lady in Wedlock, and another local white Zulu Fergus and his two children, arrived at the corrugated lean-to. Memories of crayfish tails, a dust bin lid of steaming mussels, freshly caught fish, and a skyscraper of Long-Tom Castle Larger cases came whizzing back.

While Fergus and his kids built a fire, and my Lady in Wedlock organised some lunch I was left to my own devices. I wandered down to the rocks clutching my Toddie, a Long-Tom, and the urn containing the ashes. It was late morning and extremely hot, the mid thirties, not a cloud in the sky, or the slightest breeze. The becalmed Indian Ocean lay before me.

Selecting the exact spot from where we had harvested the mussels, I sat down, took a quick slug from Toddie, and eyed the urn.

“Now’s a good a time as any.”

I replied immediately, “Notta-Lotta people know that.”

I opened the urn and took out a small press-top plastic bag.

“That’s right. KNOCK. KNOCK!”

“Who’s there?” I said as I inspected the grey ash and small fragments of bone.

“’Aventa you got a?”

“’Aventa got a what?” I replied opening the bag, standing, and lifting my arm ready to scatter Cocksy’s remains on the still ocean.

Out of nowhere a sudden, a swirling wind engulfed me, waves crashed over the rocks, the open bag flew from my hand, and rose in the air. The ashes fell out, blew up my nose, into my eyes, my mouth, and covered my head.

The voice inside my head echoed in the wind with a howling screaming laugh, “A FUCKING BELL!”

“You fucking bastard!” I screamed as I dived into the crashing waves to rescue Toddie that had been washed off the rocks.

As I surfaced, the sun was shining and the sea still. I caught sight of my breathless companions staring at me.

“What the hell was that?” asked Fergus. “All that screaming?” continued by beloved Lady in Wedlock.

Pulling myself onto the safety of the rocks, clutching Toddie, and trying to wipe the remaining fragments of my closest friend out of my hair I replied, “Oh, just a slight gust of Cocksy’s astral wind.”

May he rest in peace.

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Peeping Tom

Can you remember what you were doing at the tender age of fourteen?

Of course you youngsters can. But for those of my generation, who have to deal with the onset of senility, Alzheimer’s and other age-related medical problems, the task is not so easy.

However, in spite of the aforementioned ailments, I can remember certain details with great clarity. The more exciting the memory, the more easily it rises to the surface. The more mundane get zipped and stored in the never-able-to-reach area of my aging hard drive. Good use of the computer analogy, don’t you think? Keeps the youngsters reading. Sex is also an excellent tool to keep the younger generations glued to either a book or a screen.

So where was I? Ah, yes, fourteen and sex.

Well, at this early stage of puberty, as we called it back then, I used to recite poetry to panels of stony-faced adjudicators who sat in on Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s “Poetry Lovers’ Fellowship” examinations, but I was also training as a “Peeping Tom”. I received this never-to-be-lost training whilst I was treading the boards at the Old Vic Theatre near Waterloo station in London.

I was performing the minor role of Third-spear-carrier-downstage-left in a National Youth Theatre production of Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra. I’ll give you the standard three guesses as to what I was peeping at.

Right first time.

Young Cleopatra’s ample glandula mammaria.

Mammary glands or bosoms, for those of you without the Latin.

None other than the now famous Dame Helen Mirren was playing the role of the voluptuous queen of Egypt who had all the local politicians of the time sporting permanent hard-ons. She was a brilliant actress, even at the tender age of seventeen, and the Youth Theatre’s director, Mr Michael Croft, had an extremely good eye for casting when it came to getting bums on seats.

There is a famous scene in the play, Act 3 Scene 2, I think, when Antony confronts the love of his life about her possible involvement with his political rival, the young, and also sexually active, Octavius Caesar. The director, an astute and clever man with an immense knowledge of the Bard, had worked the scene as if it were a good old marital tiff. As you may remember, this was the dawning of the “kitchen-sink” drama in the UK and Mr Croft, in an attempt to upstage the famous John Osborne, gave birth to one of the first productions in London to have a good dose of explicit bedroom drama.

He justified his direction by brandishing his “Stratford Edition” of the play during the early rehearsals. “What does it say, line 138? Look at the stage directions!” We all perused our scripts.

Hands were raised in unison. “He strikes her!” we all yelled. “Good. And line 157?”.

Our eyes glued themselves back to the printed page. “He strikes her again!”

Mr Croft then donned his school-teacher robe and explained.

“Shakespeare may have played this scene the same way we are playing it.” Holding the Stratford Edition aloft, he continued, “This is taken from the 1st folio edition and, in several of his plays, in Othello, for example, the stage directions clearly state that the leading man strikes his leading lady.”

For male kids of the Teddy-Boy era this was good news; among the young girls a few eyes were raised. You have to remember that this was the start of the Women’s Lib uprising. And I do concede that, back in sixteen hundred and two, there were no “Abuse-Against-Women” marches and, as young boys played all the female parts, I’m sure Mr Shakespeare did not have to deal with any picketing by irate females outside the Globe Theatre.

However, the early sixties were another ball game. There were mutterings emerging from the Australian Outback from the then naive diva of feminism, Germaine Greer. Bras were about to be burnt. Twiggy was strutting her stuff on the catwalks not needing one. And Marianne Faithfull and Mick Jagger were doing things with Mars Bars. Even “Ken the Red”, the recent ex-Mayor of London, Mr. Ken Livingstone, was up in arms, barricading the private garden squares of Notting Hill so that single mums could wheel their prams. These were heady times.

The young Ms Mirren was no slouch either when it came to airing her views and opinions. The rehearsal room was abuzz with heated discussions on women’s rights, the pill, violence in the home, and banning the bomb. Ms Mirren and her gallant on-stage partner, Mr John Nightingale, who played Antony, explored all the avenues that Mr Croft opened for them.

Rehearsals continued apace and by opening night the “Strikes” were in! Mr Nightingale gave Ms Mirren a good old wallop! Thank God!

The national press reviews the following morning gave a unanimous thumbs-up for the production and audiences flooded in. Especially after they had read the Sunday review that mentioned Ms Mirren’s mammary glands, which tended to slip out of the loose toga-like dress she was wearing. Crowds started queuing three hours before the performances so that they could get a chance of being a member of the “Peeping Tom Club”.

But, unfortunately for these eager punters, Ms Mirren’s glands were never seen again by an audience after the opening night. With the use of her brilliant technical acting skills, she had quickly developed a marvellous pirouette movement that ensured that she always fell facing upstage. I take this opportunity to thank Helen.

Two reasons. Firstly, at a later stage in my career, I used the same twirling motion when I had to prevent my own privates being seen by the audience when I had to urinate on stage. And, secondly, because she gave the fifteen-or-so spear-carriers, who were standing in the upstage wings awaiting their next entrance, an occasional chance of catching a glimpse of her glandula mammaria as they tumbled out of her dress.

As those adolescent years passed, the memories of Ms Mirren’s boobs slowly faded as I focused on the more physically present appendages of the female partners with whom I was cohabiting at the time.

My peeping-tom days were over. Are they returning? Now, that’s another story.

Finger Nails

So, have you pondered the question? Remember?

Magicians, clairvoyants, hypnotists, palm readers, tea-leaf readers, astrologists, taro-card readers, Nostradamuses extraordinaires. Who are these people?

As I told you, I have, at various times, been all of these people. I have portrayed them all on the boards, and on television and movie screens. These purveyors of the paranormal have always held a deep fascination for me, and this can be traced back to Gypsy Rose-Lee Thora Higginbottom.

I was well into my second summer season with her when she finally wheedled out of me the secret of the deckchair scam and how I always managed to buy her lunch.

Toddie, my affectionately named hip flask, was the first thing to be drawn into the light of day. On one particular morning she caught me at lunchtime across the road at Yates Wine Bar restocking Toddie.

I was marched with my ear firmly gripped in her sinewy right hand back to the booth. I was then securely tied to a chair and Toddie was placed on the table between us and served as her crystal ball. A thirty-minute lecture on the dangers of alcohol followed. At that tender stage in my life I had never heard of the Spanish Inquisition, but by two o’clock that afternoon I was sure I’d met its mother.

Rose-Lee delivered her final gut-wrenching blow well below the belt (she definitely had no knowledge of the Queensberry Rules for a fair fight). It came swiftly. Throughout the interrogation she gently stroked Toddie, now acting as her crystal ball. I tried every devious ploy I could muster to evade and circumnavigate her prying questions, and was amazed at her inexplicable knack of conjuring up the correct answers without my ever opening my mouth. Yes, from that moment I was a firm believer in both the Spanish Inquisition and the power of clairvoyants. Her final blow came as she untied my hands from behind the chair, lightly patted me on the head, and swallowed the last contents of Toddie.


“Now, ya goin’ to be a good lad from now on, aren’t ya?” she whispered into my ear as the smell of alcohol wafted up my nose. She belched loudly and handed empty Toddie back to me. Savouring the taste, she said, “Not bad for thruppence ha’penny.”

“Thruppence three farthing! I said. “I have to slip Big George, the barman, an extra farthing ’cause he knows I’m under age.”

“Does he now? Cheeky sod! I’ll give ’im a mouthful for ya when I’m over there later, Cess!”

I thought about asking her if I could come with her but I held my tongue; I was still holding back the tears that were about to start tickling down my sallow cheeks. I had grassed on my mates and “The W.S.D.C. Incorporated” was no longer a going concern.

“Right! Let’s get down to work. Whatcha know about palms, lad?”

“Nowt,” I replied.

“Right, then. Give us ya hands, lad. Both of ’em.”

And so began my learning curve.

“There’s nowt to it, Cess. It’s not palm reading and crystal-ball gazing I do, lad. It’s people reading. I sniff ’em out from t’ first moment I see a mark on t’ pier!”

“A mark?” I asked.

“Ay, that’s anyone I spot who I knows is goin’ to be a punter or a sucker. What are they wearing? What do their hands look like? How’s they walking? If it’s a couple, are they holding ’ands? Are they wearing wedding rings? ’As she got a black eye? Do t’ kids look ’appy? Them’s all t’ type of questions I be asking myself, even before they put one foot in here. And I’ve told you before, stop biting y’ ruddy nails! Y’ll be needing ‘em! Go on! Sit on y’ h’ands!”

Still in a state of shock, I quickly complied and pretended to listen, and offered what I thought was the right response, “And what answers do you get?”

“All sorts, lad. It depends on what ya see. Ya see, ’ands can tell you a lot just by looking at ‘em from a distance. If they’re big and lumpy and the man’s got big broad shoulders and ya know it’s an Oldham holiday, ya can bet y’ bottom dollar he’s a miner. Get ’im in here and y’ can see all the coal soot still packed under ’is nails. Ya got to keep y’ eyes, y’ ears and y’ nose open all the time. It’s all common sense, lad. Use ya nouse! And I’m not going to tell ya again! Get them ‘ands under y’ bum!”

Now totally confused, I put my left hand, that had found its way to my mouth, back under my backside.

“Right, she said, “Is ya listening?”

“To what?” I asked.

“To t’ noise I’m making!” she said sitting perfectly still and not moving a muscle.

“What noise? I can’t hear a thing.”

“That’s ‘cause ya not concentrating! Listen!”

“I’m sorry, but I can’t hear a thing, apart from the racket going on outside.”

“Don’t get cheeky with me, lad!”

I attempted to say that I wasn’t being cheeky. I genuinely could not hear any noise she was making, but before I had the chance to be either cheeky, or try and convince her that I was telling the truth, she gave a huge gasp of exasperation, burped and continued.

“All right, let’s get back to using y’ eyes. We’ll do y’ ears later! Get ya Mam to clean ’em out!”

By the end of my third week of training I was able to spot a white-collar worker from a blue-collar worker, a typist from a telephonist, a manual labourer from a desk-bound city slicker. And I did all this by watching and concentrating on their hands, their body language and their clothes.

The fourth week I had to study dialects and accents. This I really enjoyed, and I practised on my own, switching from Lancashire to Yorkshire to Cockney, then to Irish. Then it was back to the West Country for half an hour, then back to Birmingham and the Midlands. Finally, as the end of the season was drawing to a close, it was my nose that was in training. In no time at all I was able to sniff out disinfectants. Could be a nurse, a lavatory cleaner, a mortician.

“Use y’ head, Cess! Think, think! All the places y’d smell Dettol! Come on, lad! Must be at least twenty!”

Rose-Lee trained me to notice the difference between a cheap and an expensive perfume, and my greatest discovery was that there is a difference in the smell of farts. Mushy peas washed down with a couple of pints of Boddingtons best bitter gives a totally different-flavoured methane eruption from that of cabbage and a glass of dry white wine. And Jerusalem artichokes? Well, they produce gases that any willing wind producer could sell to Adolf Eichmann, Saddam Hussein or Colonel Gadaffi!

During the last week of the summer season and the four-week Blackpool Illumination season in September, Rose-Lee had me dressed up in an Indian pageboy’s outfit with matching turban, and I was allowed to sit in on the sessions. On a cue from her I would start swaying and muttering gibberish as the spirits talked to her and her entranced clientele.

Just before the start of my final week she informed me very casually, “Ya now a psychic, lad! You and me, we’re going to talk to each other on the higher planes! Are ya ready, lad?”

Of course I was. My ears were cleaned and finely tuned to the secret click of her fingernails and, my own nails were also long enough to make the noise. This trick of her trade required ears that could hear a pin drop in a hurricane and the concentration of Albert Einstein working on his formula E=mc².


The scam went as follows.

Rose-Lee would ask her client to empty his pockets and put everything on the table around her crystal ball. She would then explain that she and I possessed the ability to communicate telepathically. I was going to be blindfolded so that I could see nothing. She gave the blindfold to the customer so that he could see that it was kosher. Then she would ask the poor sod to touch any object on the table, his own or anything of Rose-Lee’s. The unsuspecting punter would select his chosen item by touching it. Then Rose-Lee, or sometimes the punter, would remove my blindfold, and I would pretend to be in a hypnotic trance and pass my open palm over the top of every item on the table very slowly.

Rose-Lee sat like a statue carved from solid sandstone and neither of us uttered a sound or spoke a word. There was complete silence in the booth while the sounds of the ice-cream trolleys, one-armed bandits and screaming children on the dodgems filled the air outside. Three, four, or sometimes ten minutes later, depending on how the scam was going, as sure as eggs are eggs, I would smile like a sedated Hindu priest and pick up the item the client had selected.

The mark was hooked.

“Y’wanta try it again, chuck?” Rose-Lee would ask the bemused punter. “Except this time y’ll have to grease me palm with a fiver. ’E gets it wrong, you win a tenner! ’E gets it right, I keep the fiver!”

What confounded the really over-eager punter who was keen to lose his well-earned cash was that I could perform the trick with the blindfold still on.

At the end of the Illumination season Gypsy Rose-Lee-Thora Higginbottom gave me four hundred pounds for being the best telepathic psychic she’d ever worked with, and I never bit my fingernails again!

Friday, March 5, 2010

We steal Deck Chairs

Magicians, clairvoyants, hypnotists, palm readers, tea-leaf readers, astrologists, tarot-card readers, Nostrsdamuses extraordinaires.

Rose-Lee

Who are these people? What thoughts flash into your heads when you hear these words? Have you ever met or consulted one? Are you one?

Well, I can’t answer most of those questions, even though in the course of my remarkable career I’ve been several of them, both in performance and, believe it or not, in civilian life. So I’ll leave you to ponder.

My earliest introduction to a human of this ilk and inclination was during my pleasurable childhood on Blackpool beach in the early fifties. My mother was giving an award-winning performance in a Ken Dodd summertime gala show as the leading fan dancer. During the daytime and evening shows I was left under the watchful eye of one of my mother’s closest friends, Gypsy Rose-Lee, known to her friends as Thora Higginbottom. Thora was a grand old lass in her mid-sixties, and she had had a palm-reading booth on the North pier handed down to her from a long line of Higginbottom-Rose-Lees. Her operation was, in the true sense of the expression, a family business.

My day started, as it did for all well-born Lancastrians, with at least three cups of strong tea.

The kettle was boiled on a small paraffin primus stove inside Thora’s booth. It was my job to mash the tea to its treacly strength and wash the plastic side plates before serving Madame Rose-Lee with her morning cuppa and fresh Eccles cake, provided by my mother. My daily chores done, I would stand on the pier, my mug balanced precariously on the old ornate Victorian balustrade. The seagulls swooped and soared overhead, and the smell of boiling lard from the nearby chippy rose into the air. It was from this high vantage position that I could communicate with hand signals and encoded whistles to my two friends who were deckchair thieves.

In those grand old days, when Blackpool was the hub of the English tourist industry, the summer months were the time of profit, not only for the providers of all the usual common and uncommon pleasures, but also for us beach urchins.


 
A lonely deck chair

 To secure the use of a deckchair, the casual visitor would have to cough up an old sixpence. Threepence was for the hire, and the other threepence was a deposit which would be returned to the hirer when the chair was brought back to the retailer’s stack.

Oliver, Neal and I were a team, a business, and our artful skills of deckchair theft had even been mentioned in the local rag with a page 3 headline, “Beware the DCTs”.

To give the rag’s sub-editors something to chew on, we adopted the name “C.O.N. and Associates”, not a bad acronym for Cess, Oliver and Neal.

On really busy days, and if Olly and Neal were otherwise engaged with their parole officer, I was forced to rustle up help from three other mates, Dave, Seth and Willy. On those days we became “The W.S.D.C. Incorporated”.

The procedure was simple. When I spotted a family of deckchair users leaving their chairs unattended whilst they walked down to the sea at low tide for a dip, I’d signal the position to the lads. In they would swoop, snap up the chairs, and dart back with them to our hidden stockpile under the pier directly below Gypsy Rose-Lee’s booth. When the tide was fully out it would take the unsuspecting tourists at least ten minutes to walk back from the sea line to find that their deckchairs had mysteriously disappeared.

Now, there are two rules for being successful, should you choose to follow a life of petty larceny. I’m sure, now, with hindsight, that the two rules we made are even followed by those sombre villains who deal in serious crime. Rule one is, of course, don’t get caught, especially in the act. Rule two is don’t get greedy and never cash in, or fence, your winnings till the coast is clear. The strict adherence to this second rule meant that we lived a life of luxury.

On those long summer days the sun would only start to set towards late evening. Most sun worshippers and deckchair hirers would start packing up their beachware at five-ish to return to their lodgings for an early supper, but the stragglers, as we called them, would wait till the sun finally set over the Irish Sea, which could be as late at ten-thirty. We always waited till all the stragglers, who looked a sorry bunch, sporting crimson sunburnt beer bellies and accompanied by screaming children whose backs looked as if you could fry an egg on them, departed the beach. That gave us just over half an hour till my mother came to pick me up after her evening show. We became the fittest local lads in the town.

We divided ourselves into two teams. Seth and I made up one team, and Dave partnered with Willy. Carrying, sedan-chair-style, ten deckchairs piled one on top of the other, we would run up the beach to the deckchair retailer’s canvas-covered overnight storage area. There were eight of these depots placed at strategic intervals on the one-and-a-half miles of beach that we covered between Central and North piers. We made a point of returning an equal number of chairs to each retailer. It seemed only fair, and we sussed out that distributing our assets to eight different fences would arouse less suspicion.


Robert's Oyster Bar

 The job done, we would meet up on the pier and share out our daily takings. On good days we would have stockpiled nearly three hundred chairs, that’s nine hundred threepences, and at two hundred and forty pence to the pound we’d make three pound fifteen shillings. That was enough for a carton of whelks, a carton of shrimps, and six oysters each, which we bought at Robert’s oyster bar on the promenade opposite North Pier.

For myself? Well, there was always enough left over for me to restock Toddie with a half pint of dry sherry purchased from Yates Wine lodge, which was also just across the road.


Yate's Wine Lodge

 My mother would collect me at about eleven-fifteen and enquire of Thora, “Bin a good lad, ’as ’e?”

“Nah problem at’ll. Fast asleep in t’ booth! ’E’s bin a gem. Spends most of ’is time with ’is mates. They all come up for lunch. Funny lads, call ’emselves the WDSCs, no idea what it stands for. Ah keep threatening to read ’is palm.”

“Why?” my mother would ask.

“’Cause ah’d love to know what it means and ’ow ’e always ’as enough money to keep buying me lunch!”

Needless to say, I never let her read my palm. However, I did learn some tricks of her trade, but that’s another story.

From Pool to Poole


-->
All the world’s a stage, and I’ve certainly strutted in finery across many a board.

It has been noted and reported in numerous theatrical gossip magazines that I have, throughout my illustrious career spanning the last fifty-two years, also been found lying prostrate on many a board. Deserted by party-going friends and foes alike, I have been discovered, more times than I care to remember, on a park bench clutching my beloved “Toddie” in gloved hand, mumbling, “Oh, for a muse of fire,” to many a star-lit sky.

These gloriously entertaining events have occurred with an almost curtain-up regularity, from my early days in the theatre capital of the world, London, to my latter years here in my jobbing actor’s garret in “Mr Mandela’s Rainbow Nation”.
A jobbing actor!

Now, that’s a descriptive term that is not used very often these days. I find the lack of use of this very complimentary terminology a great injustice.

Think of all those actors’ faces you’ve seen in one B-grade movie after another, or on one TV soapie in 1973, then playing the same character in another soapie in a different country in 1998. Well, I am one of those.

I’m a jobbing actor. I am privileged to belong to this large and often unsung group of fine talented Thespians who continue to earn a rather limited living and keep their noses just above the waterline.

My “Toddie” and my name were given to me at a very early age.

My mother, Gladys, found herself in the family way towards the end of the Second World War. She was a large-bosomed fan dancer entertaining the remaining American troops and returning British soldiers at the Opera House in the home of music-hall comedy: Blackpool, England. Unable to afford digs in high season, my mother, who was always willing to help anyone in distress, made use of the convoys of military trucks ferrying servicemen back to their barracks, and the free accommodation at a nearby public house.

The journey to the barracks near the small quaint town of Kirkham should have taken three-quarters of an hour but, if an obliging driver, and the accompanying M.P., could be bribed, then a short detour would be made via my mother’s hostelry, which offered an after-hours service. The landlord was a jovial, well-mannered and refined local country gent and, in spite of his name, Robert Ulrich Smelley was extremely well groomed. It was in Mr Smelley’s attic room that my mother used to engage in her extracurricular fan-dancing activities.

Mr R. U. Smelley was able to buy more deodorant than he needed, and acquire some rather expensive French perfume, using his extra bar takings and the ration tickets my mother stole from her clients’ trousers on a nightly basis, so a good time was had by all.

One such night was the August Bank holiday of 1945, and on a foggy London morning in May the following year I was born. My mother never liked hospitals. By eight o’clock that evening I was being cuddled in the muscular arms of visiting American actor Todd Stardust. Todd was young, wealthy and not too wise. He was playing the lead in one of America’s first radio soaps. He was passing through London on his way to Paris, where he hoped he could find inner depth for his two-dimensional character by visiting the bars frequented by Mr Hemingway.

At the airport, the next day, he gave my mother a beautifully engraved pewter hip flask as a momento of his passage. Toddie hasn’t left my lips since Mr Stardust boarded his flight; as my mother discovered that, if she held the open top of it directly under my nose, it seemed to stop the hideous wailing I enjoyed so much.

I was only christened five years later.

The tardiness of this event was due to my mother’s hectic schedule and the high demand for nubile fan dancers across the length and breadth of the British Isles. It was hard enough for her to remember all the newly choreographed routines, and deal with the threat of forgetting a downward fan swing and revealing to the Lord Chancellor something she should not, without having to find time for such trivia as the registration of my birth.

However, in 1952 she was faced with the problem of my schooling and, in order to register me with a local authority, she had to catch up on her paperwork. She managed to convince a friendly registrar in Liverpool that he could do it all for her. With one mighty leap my birth was registered. I was enrolled at a local primary school, and introduced to an Anglican priest who was going to christen me the following day. I sat in the front pew of the Anglican cathedral whilst he and my mother performed a highly athletic display of the Kama Sutra over the font.

The only hiccup in the registration came when the registrar asked my mother the name of my father.

She giggled sweetly at him and said, “Oh, my darling, it was such a long time ago, I can’t possibly remember. It could’ve been Cecil, or was it Eddie? Er, no, no, I think Steven or, yes, yes, dear Simon.”

The registrar smiled, his arm gently encircling my mother’s waist.

She crooned and softly whispered, “They were all such lovely boys at the Old Trout Pool.”
A brainwave filtered down through the registrar’s right hand as he neatly wrote C.E.S.S. Poole on the certificate. The added “e” occurred as my mother guided his left hand further towards her bra strap.

In honour of my mother’s giving ways, on my graduation from the Royal Academy, sixteen years later, I decided to keep my real name when I registered with Equity.