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."
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
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!
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!
Sunday, April 11, 2010
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?”
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.
Thursday, April 1, 2010
An Empty Bladder
Only the other day I was struggling. I was trying to commit some lines to my memory.
Funny thing, memory, isn’t it? Like the endless ebb and flow of the tide.
My ability to retain my lines was remarkably good. In my youth Chekhov, Oscar Wilde, Noël Coward and even the great Mr Shakespeare used to flow off the page through my crystal-clear blue eyes into my brain with considerable ease. Even after a highly festive night with my fellow Thespians, nursing the worst hangover you can imagine, my retentive aptitude was always in tip-top condition.
Time and tide, coupled with senility, wait for no man. I am now beginning to realise that over sixty years of abuse with the noxious substance stored in my never empty Toddie, has had some detrimental effect on my grey matter.
I have been asked to make a cameo appearance in a forthcoming television mini-series. This in itself will be no great problem for me, as my character is named as “the drunk in the toilet”. What is causing me a great deal of consternation and in-depth soul searching is that the script I’ve been faxed gives my character about thirty lines.
As a man with an inbred knowledge of the art of inebriation, and with a lifetime of experience to draw on in the field of toilets, I am having difficulty convincing myself that any character, in such a state of drunkenness, would be able to deliver a single word, never mind eight sentences.
It is when confronted with a problem like this that all actors say, “Thank God for the director!” It is to this captain of the filmic ship that we all must turn. However, as the director is a new young protégé of Johnnie Woo from Hong Kong, and apparently doesn’t speak a word of English apart from “Laction” and “Clut”, I’m preparing myself for a torrid time. I will have to - as most of us jobbing-actors have to - fall back on my own devices.
An old late friend of mine, the legendary Mr Oliver Reed, would have been perfect for this role. So I shall follow the advice he gave to me almost thirty years ago when he was still in his prime. It was the early eighties and Oliver was filming in Johannesburg. I was playing a young sergeant who was assisting Mr Reed’s villainous character whip some frail and tender virgins. It was a period piece and we were all respectably clad. I don’t want to give the impression that Mr Reed and I were engaged in anything pornographic.
Mr Reed had taken a shine to me during the course of the day’s shoot, as he had espied my “Toddie finding its way to my lips during those endless hours while we were “hurrying up and waiting”. At wrap he invited me to join him in his trailer and have a glass or two of an exceptionally good single malt whisky. I was then asked if I’d care to join him and three other acquaintances for a meal at his hotel.
We enjoyed a splendid meal accompanied by several bottles of a delightful full-bodied South African red wine. It was my first time in the country, but Oliver had been there many times before, and was in the position to recommend some excellent Cabernet Sauvignons.
It was well past the bewitching hour when the hotel staff suggested that we leave the hotel lobby – the bar had already closed - and adjourn to Oliver’s room. My memory of this stage of the evening is now a trifle hazy. In fact it was extremely hazy the following morning. But I do recall that at about 4am the conversation was centred around some of the most diabolical scripts we as actors had had to deal with, and I was asking Oliver for his advice.
It also transpired that Oliver had surreptitiously made an assignation with a young female during our evening meal. This nocturnal meeting was to occur in her room, which was adjacent to his.
At this point my memory limps towards total amnesia.
For some forgotten reason Mr Reed was standing naked on a small ledge that connected his balcony to the young lady’s next door. We were on the fifteenth floor and the ledge was approximately one foot wide.
With his hands placed delicately on the wall behind him, he urinated whilst his voice boomed into the night, “My dear boy,” he roared, “just hit your mark. Say your line. Don’t fall over and always empty your bladder!”
What the exact question was that I asked of him to prompt this reply now escapes me but it did, and still does, seem to be excellent advice. I shall take full cognisance of it when I attempt to converse with Mr Jackie Loo Wong tomorrow on the set.
I’m sure I will be able to convince him that I can improvise my eight sentences into a couple of monosyllabic meaningful grunts and groans, and I most certainly will hit my mark and empty my bladder!
Funny thing, memory, isn’t it? Like the endless ebb and flow of the tide.
My ability to retain my lines was remarkably good. In my youth Chekhov, Oscar Wilde, Noël Coward and even the great Mr Shakespeare used to flow off the page through my crystal-clear blue eyes into my brain with considerable ease. Even after a highly festive night with my fellow Thespians, nursing the worst hangover you can imagine, my retentive aptitude was always in tip-top condition.
Time and tide, coupled with senility, wait for no man. I am now beginning to realise that over sixty years of abuse with the noxious substance stored in my never empty Toddie, has had some detrimental effect on my grey matter.
I have been asked to make a cameo appearance in a forthcoming television mini-series. This in itself will be no great problem for me, as my character is named as “the drunk in the toilet”. What is causing me a great deal of consternation and in-depth soul searching is that the script I’ve been faxed gives my character about thirty lines.
As a man with an inbred knowledge of the art of inebriation, and with a lifetime of experience to draw on in the field of toilets, I am having difficulty convincing myself that any character, in such a state of drunkenness, would be able to deliver a single word, never mind eight sentences.
It is when confronted with a problem like this that all actors say, “Thank God for the director!” It is to this captain of the filmic ship that we all must turn. However, as the director is a new young protégé of Johnnie Woo from Hong Kong, and apparently doesn’t speak a word of English apart from “Laction” and “Clut”, I’m preparing myself for a torrid time. I will have to - as most of us jobbing-actors have to - fall back on my own devices.
An old late friend of mine, the legendary Mr Oliver Reed, would have been perfect for this role. So I shall follow the advice he gave to me almost thirty years ago when he was still in his prime. It was the early eighties and Oliver was filming in Johannesburg. I was playing a young sergeant who was assisting Mr Reed’s villainous character whip some frail and tender virgins. It was a period piece and we were all respectably clad. I don’t want to give the impression that Mr Reed and I were engaged in anything pornographic.
Mr Reed had taken a shine to me during the course of the day’s shoot, as he had espied my “Toddie finding its way to my lips during those endless hours while we were “hurrying up and waiting”. At wrap he invited me to join him in his trailer and have a glass or two of an exceptionally good single malt whisky. I was then asked if I’d care to join him and three other acquaintances for a meal at his hotel.
We enjoyed a splendid meal accompanied by several bottles of a delightful full-bodied South African red wine. It was my first time in the country, but Oliver had been there many times before, and was in the position to recommend some excellent Cabernet Sauvignons.
It was well past the bewitching hour when the hotel staff suggested that we leave the hotel lobby – the bar had already closed - and adjourn to Oliver’s room. My memory of this stage of the evening is now a trifle hazy. In fact it was extremely hazy the following morning. But I do recall that at about 4am the conversation was centred around some of the most diabolical scripts we as actors had had to deal with, and I was asking Oliver for his advice.
It also transpired that Oliver had surreptitiously made an assignation with a young female during our evening meal. This nocturnal meeting was to occur in her room, which was adjacent to his.
At this point my memory limps towards total amnesia.
For some forgotten reason Mr Reed was standing naked on a small ledge that connected his balcony to the young lady’s next door. We were on the fifteenth floor and the ledge was approximately one foot wide.
With his hands placed delicately on the wall behind him, he urinated whilst his voice boomed into the night, “My dear boy,” he roared, “just hit your mark. Say your line. Don’t fall over and always empty your bladder!”
What the exact question was that I asked of him to prompt this reply now escapes me but it did, and still does, seem to be excellent advice. I shall take full cognisance of it when I attempt to converse with Mr Jackie Loo Wong tomorrow on the set.
I’m sure I will be able to convince him that I can improvise my eight sentences into a couple of monosyllabic meaningful grunts and groans, and I most certainly will hit my mark and empty my bladder!
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.
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.”
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.”
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.
“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.
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