Bitterly Cold Weather.

Me in my 'Bates of Jermyn Street' Gatsby cap.

Recently I walked out of my front door and headed towards Eastcote Tube Station, and as I walked I could feel the icy cold wind at the back of my head. I pulled the collar of my leather jacket up but the wind caught the very top of my napper and it was then I realised that I had walked out without my very expensive Bates of Jermyn Street Gatsby Cap – given to me as a present, I might add, by the lovely manager of The Jermyn Street Theatre, Penny.

As I walked I knew that I had put it onto the radiator so it would warm my head when I came out the house and that thought made the icy blast seems even colder but then . . . . I remembered last year when I would walk out of my front door and think about my baseball cap. Should I have put it on to stop the sun from burning my hair as I felt the warmth of it on my shoulders? I was well protected with factor 30 sun barrier which would prevent that terrible red burnt look that tourists attract and which I would get if I ever forgot to use barrier cream and I was trapped in some place without shelter – from the sun and not the rain as in London – and as I thought of this in my imagination I got warmer.

I could actually feel the LA sun on my back and that kind of warmth you get around the ankles when you step off a plane in a warm climate. This was great as I carried on towards the station but as I crossed the road by Budgen's Supermarket a real big blast nearly knocked me off my feet and I was back in Eastcote.

It wasn't the coldest I had ever been. I remember once when I went to New York from Los Angeles on the red eye; this, as it sounds, is as it is; you get your flight from Los Angeles around midnight and land in New York at about 8:00 am New York time, and when we landed the temperature was zero. That's zero degrees Fahrenheit which is 32 degrees below freezing – or minus 18 Celsius.

The hotel we had booked wasn't ready for us till midday and we had to hang about, go and eat somewhere, browse a book shop and take coffee and the like till midday – Oh you should have come straight around, they said, when we told them as we were checking in.

For some stupid reason we went to the top of the Empire State Building; up there we could really feel the cold. We could feel it biting into our bones and once or twice we stayed out in the open air for at least one minute. I have to say that I took some terrific photographs in the crisp clear air but brrrrrr!!

One sort of silly thing happened: when we reached our desired floor, we were invited to have our photo taken in front of a picture of the building with the New York skyline in the background. I laughed at that but that was before I realised just how cold it was outside up there.

When we were in Los Angeles and I would see people attending theatrical first nights on the TV in London or New York I would wonder how they got to the theatre in the cold and ice or the rain but now I am back in London it doesn't seem too bad; especially after New York.

The one thing about London is that you dress for the weather and don't have to come to a decision about what to wear. No more do I have the inconvenience of having to dress in a black suit to go out for a commercial in the hot 100 degree sun and having to drive to the other side of Los Angeles in traffic with the heat and the . .. God was it really such an inconvenience?

I spent most of the time in Los Angeles in the car; you have to as it's such a huge place with very little rapid transport. Of course you can get a bus to any place but it takes so long – it's a bit like London without the tube.

So I would be wearing shorts most of the time and one day my agent called and told me I had to get to West Los Angeles and go dressed smartly in my suit as they wanted to see people about playing a King in a commercial.

So I drove home, went to the bedroom and grabbed my suit, shirt and tie and some black shoes. I put them into the car and headed out to West LA which was quite a jaunt. I got there with about five minutes to spare and got changed in the parking lot. It was a lovely sunny day and I was between two cars and I didn't care that people would see me in my underpants. Everything went smoothly till it came to the shoes. I had picked up two right shoes and one of them was a tap shoe.

I kept my sneakers on and didn't get the job anyway!!!