Big Lebowski fashion in Dublin.

Jeff Bridges as the 'dude' and John Goodman in The Big Lebowski.

Still from Pyjama Girls.

If you know me, and you knew me well, you would know that one of my pet hates is the wearing of slippers – I don't like to wear them I think they're unhygienic and they are unsightly.

I had to buy a pair once when I went in to hospital. It was the only time, so far, that I have been an inpatient and I found the wearing of slippers tiresome.

The same slippers went on every day next to the skin and some of those other patients' feet stunk. I don't know about mine, at the time, but they have never stunk nor stank or even ponged.

I was in hospital for two weeks and the only thing they did to me was to remove a ganglion from my wrist but as it was an air force hospital at RAF Cosford in Shropshire, the hospital had to take a certain amount of people in from the surrounding area; and as I was one of those. I suppose they kept me in all that time to justify their existence.

At the time I had worked in 13 episodes of Crossroads, a daily evening soap opera which everybody seemed to watch, and I was in a commercial for Guinness which was shown a few times every evening; so I was kind of recognisable from those two things. When one of the officers came and introduced himself to me he said “Ah an actor. We have a jockey in the bums and gums!”

What an actor and a jockey have in common is beyond me.

Of course I said “Bums and Gums?”

“Yes” he said “in the next ward: haemorrhoids and wisdom teeth.”

In those days we had a butcher who would come around in his van and we would buy meat from our door which meant that people would come out, into the street, wearing their slippers – apart from me.

I would always wear street shoes around the house and I still do. If I have been out in the rain with wellington boots, or I am wearing muddy boots I take them off, of course, and if I am sitting watching television I might slip my shoes off.

I just don't think slippers should be worn outside of the bedroom, never mind the rest of the house, and it is a terrible way to greet visitors.

The wearing of slippers in the street spread further to the corner shop and soon people got onto buses wearing them and went to wherever they were going wearing them.

Now it seems, in Dublin, the wearing of pyjamas by teenage girls is quite a fashion in the inner city, and has been since just after the turn of this century. Someone made a movie about it last year, a documentary, which was shown at a New York film festival in October.

The idea of the wearing of pyjamas came from the fact that the girls live in blocks of flats. They consider it normal to go from door to door in the building, still wearing their night wear, and that extended to getting on the bus, as with the slippers, and then going into wherever they were going when they got off at the other end – mostly the dole office apparently.

Pyjama wearing is now banned from schools and dole offices, it provokes furious radio debates and online rants in Dublin.

I remember years ago my wife bought a pair of calico pyjamas for me; she thought I might take to wearing them but that is something else I have never used – just a pair of shorts. So I took to wearing those pyjamas around the house – my daughter eventually took them and she wore them to go out.

But this is nothing new to the fans of The Big Lebowski – the dude always wore them and there he is above with John Goodman.

I used to take breakfast at Hugo's in West Hollywood which was also frequented by movies stars and actors and Jeff Goldblum would come in for his breakfast wearing what looked like a pair of underpants, a singlet and wearing a pair of flip flops.

He would say hello, smile but he was wearing underpants and a vest!!!!!

Oh by the way – I hate I hate flip flops too.

Actor or actress; that is the question!

Brian Croucher.

There he is, above; my old mate Brian Croucher. I have known him for more years than either of us care to remember. We kind of met when we were both in the soap opera Crossroads. When I say 'kind of met' I remember him sitting across from me in the green room, chatting away to someone else, whilst I was being warned that I was sitting in the star of the show's seat; it was her day off.

Well it's Brian's birthday today (Jan 23) and as he reads this blog on a regular basis I am wishing him many happy returns. I won't say how old he is as the IMDb will lap it up and put it there with everyone else's.

As well as Crossroads, Brian has been in many TV productions such as the cult sci-fi classic Blake's 7 where he wore an eye patch. He was also in Eastenders for a couple of years and at the Royal Court Theatre.

Unlike me, Brian doesn't like the Academy Awards – the Oscars – I seem to remember. I knew an actor in Los Angeles, Bruce French, who would drive out to Santa Monica on the day of the Oscars, cutting himself off from reality, where he would read a book till it was all over. It starts quite early on TV at 5:00 pm.

I think I mentioned before that the one thing I will miss is the awards season; everybody going to Oscar parties, buying pizza and beer from rock'n'roll Ralphs and inviting friends around or just sitting there with your loved ones, giving your whole day to the Academy Awards. The pre show starts earlier in the day, and then there are the after shows live from the big parties; a bit like FA Cup Final day in Britain – or what it used to be like.

Last week they held The Golden Globe Awards in Hollywood; compared again by Ricky Gervaise. The Golden Globes is one of the biggest and best parties held in Hollywood but people in the business don't take the actual awards too seriously; some of their awards over the years have been laughable.

The Golden Globes is produced by the Hollywood Foreign Press; these are people from local newspapers all over the world who live in Los Angeles; there's one from the Standard in London who lived in the same building as us when we lived in Hollywood. I have been to some of their screenings but there are very few of them and these few people are the ones who vote for the winners in The Golden Globes.

The rest of the world don't know this; they know that the winners of the other awards – Oscars, BAFTAs etc – are voted for by many members of the profession.

As you may know Meryl Streep won best actress for a dramatic role – okay okay I've gone on about her enough – and Michelle Williams won for best actress in a musical or comedy.

When the Oscar nominations are announced soon they will both be in the same category and also when the British Oscars, the BAFTAs are announced, that too will just be best actress. But in a couple of months there will be the SAG awards where they will be nominated, if they are nominated, as best female actor in a leading role.

Best female actor in a leading role!!!!

Now what is the matter with the word actress? It has always been used so why change it? I don't think it has anything to do with women's rights and equality – it's just a word.

I don't know anybody who thinks that women are inferior to men or that both men and women should be paid different rates of pay for doing the same job. I don't think the people who actually pay the different rates believe in it either, they just take advantage of it! I know there are people who think the male is the superior but you know what – they are men!

The Guardian has stopped the use of the word actress in their obituaries? When the actress Dulcie Gray died recently, she was very famous in Britain and was 92, The Guardian put her description as the 'actor' Dulcie Gray.

The French would have called her an actrice, the Spanish an actriz, the Italians an attrice and the Germans a Schauspielerin as opposed to a Schauspieler - I think if I were a German actress I might be a bit put out at being called a Schauspielerin but you know what I mean!

We are all actors, male and female, because we act. Actress is not like being called a poetess or an authoress; if that were the case it would be actoress.

Isn't it about time we, and The Guardian climbed down from our use of political correctness, which ties people's tongues and speech flow; it's like speaking a foreign language.

I thought that when The Guardian described Dame Wendy Hiller, in 2003, as the actor Dame Wendy Hiller they would have 'copped on.'

So there we are – happy birthday Brian; it's my brother's birthday tomorrow so – happy birthday, Pat.

An English Country Garden.

A Humming Bird.

The story so far in case you are not familiar with this blog: this is the first time for many years that we have lived in this climate; the climate of Great Britain with its four seasons.

We have been here for quite a few Christmases but that was only for a week at the most, but this time we are here all the time; there is no reprieve from this climate so we have to grin and bear it.

Some people like the four seasons, but I have never thought about it apart from appreciating it since we've been back. It was lovely to see the autumn leaves which had fallen from the trees and, indeed, I didn't mind sweeping them up and putting them into 'gardening' bags for the council to collect – they are due to collect this coming Monday and I have three full bags as there were a lot of leaves; and that was only from the front yard and the side where we park the car.

There is room for about four or even five cars at the side where we park and that is part of this property, so you can imagine the leaves, as the little car park is surrounded by trees; the car park or drive is about twenty five to thirty square yards and is surrounded by a small brick wall and a wooden fence which sheilds our rear garden.

Since we have been back, the winter has been relatively mild; not any where near as mild as Los Angeles, but we have seen a lot of sun; the sun is very weird here in the winter as it's so low in the sky it blinds you as you drive.

As I walk in this weather the fresh air hits me in the face and, because I'm walking fast, my body is warm and the thrill and comfort of getting back indoors is quite stimulating.

We are very fortunate to have central heating so the house is reasonably warm when we wake in the mornings and, indeed, I go in to the garden scantily dressed – but I wouldn't dream of sitting out like that.

I go out for a second or two to put food down for the birds and squirrels; when I do this I come back indoors and look through one of the windows, and the first thing I see is a robin; the robin must live close to where I drop the food as he or she is there in seconds.

He hops onto a step looking all around, then hops down to where the food is, takes a morsel, jumps back onto the step then flies up to the nest.

Then it goes quiet for a few minutes; next up will be a sparrow who doesn't come near the food but prefers to stay in the grass and look for seeds or whatever. Now as soon as I come in I hear the crows squawking above as if they are telling each other there is food.

The sparrow seems to ignore what's going on above but is hooshed off by the squirrel when he arrives; he eats more nuts than seeds and sits upright with whatever he is eating held between his two paws; apparently squirrels are either right or left handed. I was thinking of this when I was watching one the other day and wondering how we know that – and why!

As the squirrel eats, the crows above squawk louder and louder and I have seen a couple of crows land quite near to the squirrel to frighten him away; the few times I have seen this, the squirrel has eventually high tailed out of there with his tail – high!

As soon a he starts to run the crows take off again, their job done.

I can't stay there all day but I do notice over the hours that all the food goes; maybe the crows wait for me to go to eat.

The feeding of the birds and squirrels is only for my amusement; they wouldn't starve without me, but when it snows the state of affairs will be different; also if the ground gets hard with frost they might need me.

In Los Angeles I would see different birds on our balcony; there I would see humming birds; when you see a humming bird first of all they look a bit like big bumble bees but when you get close you can see how beautiful they are; they are the only birds who can fly backwards and that's amazing to see.

In Los Angeles, the crows eat the humming birds, so I am told, and I am also told that the crows eat 'road kill' here in the UK.

Above rock'n'roll Ralphs in Hollywood is a parking lot, and one day, whilst I was going into Ralphs, a crow flew quite close to the elevator door and flew straight into a class petition; as soon as it hit the glass it fell to the floor. I went over and picked it up and as I cupped my other hand around it I could feel he was limp, but eventually he came to and started to move. Then he turned his head right around and looked in to my face.

Someone came up to me and said 'he's full of fleas' but I could see he wasn't; then a woman came to me and disagreed with the first person and said she had nursed a few crows and they were very clean.

As soon as I felt the crow was fit I let him go and he flew to the end of the car park, by the Ralphs lifts again, and straight into the same window.

I had to pick him up again but this time, when he came round, I walked to the top of the car park, where there were no windows and when I let him go he flew off to freedom.

There were always crows by our building in Hollywood, and I noticed that sometimes they would make a clicking sound; I don't know what this meant but when I did it a few times to them I took a chance that it wasn't a mating call - but it seemed to make them quiet.

I don't know much about birds and nature and I'm sure the birds and animals of the wild don't know much about it either and don't know the names that man has given them.

One time in Hollywood I was standing on the top of a building having a few drinks with someone who was leaving the company in the building; he was keeping a couple of large owls. He worked for the wild life preservation people and it was time to let the owls go – had to set them free.

He brought one of them up to the roof and I seem to remember he had it wrapped in some kind of sheet and wore gauntlets.

The owl looked at peace and the other people that were there, inquisitively looked at the bird with caution and puzzlement; the fella holding the owl held it up and let it go.

The owl kind of dropped, then lifted up and flew into the distance flying north towards Mullholland Drive and a group of trees maybe a few miles in the distance. As soon as it took to the skies, other birds came from nowhere; crows, of course, and other birds which were a lot smaller.

It was as if the birds had the area under guard and as soon as they saw an alien – a bird of prey - they took to the skies; the owl steered its way through and a few birds went close to it but the owl carried on.

The guy told us that he knew that would happen and the same thing happened when he let the other owl go; that too flew steadfastly on.

It reminded me of the time I worked as an ice cream man in Wolverhampton, when I took the ice cream van to a new area and was approached by an Italian Mister Softie who didn't want me there and . . .. but that's for another day maybe; maybe.

Meryl Streep, Margaret Thatcher - the last word.

The Young Margaret Thatcher.

I know I have been unfair to Meryl Streep and she doesn't like it; she wrote and told me so; she said I have 'rained on her parade' – I jest of course. She will go from success to success and win loads of plaudits no matter what I say; or not.

Not many people have disagreed with me - in fact nobody has; there may be some of you who do disagree but have better things to do than to write to me about it; and I don't blame you.

My big problem with the fact that Meryl Streep is playing Margaret Thatcher is a class thing; there is something rotten in the state of Denmark and in this case 'Denmark' being Britain. The rottenness being that very same class system that we all know and love. It makes drama, comedy, literature and lots of other type of plots and stories (if there are any), interesting.

The late Janet Brown as Margaret Thatcher.

The biggest thing that stood in the way of Margaret Thatcher, being the first British woman Prime Minister in Britain, wasn't the fact that she was a women, but that she was from the lower middle classes; that strange accent she spoke, with the strange vowels and Churchillian cadences was the first false thing about her and that's what the upper classes would hate.

This accent and voice, to Meryl Streep, probably sounds posh. Probably sounds as posh as the Queen when it really is below 'RP' (Received Pronunciation); RP is how the newscasters used to sound on the BBC – in other words posh. The way Laurence Olivier sounded, Rex Harrison, David Niven and all the other posh actors – not quite upper class but posh.

I say 'used to sound' as most of the newscasters these days are Celts; it's less offensive and grating to the general ear than the old style. So now they sound like Richard Burton or Sean Connery – without the lisp.

Also when you call the BBC these days, in London, the phone is answered by a phone bank in the north of England with an accent from up there and they say 'BBC Switchbard' instead of 'BBC Switchboard.'

There's nothing wrong with the accent, in fact I love the Geordie accent, but not to answer the phone for the BBC!!! Pulleeaase!!!

Lindsay Duncan as Margaret Thatcher

Now I don't think the subtlety in the accents and the difference between one and the other would mean anything to Meryl Streep, and whilst the majority of the people who view the film wouldn't know either, it is still a relevant plot trigger to the Thatcher ascendency.

The men in grey suits, who run Britain, must have been appalled when Thatcher suddenly came on the scene, but they saw in her someone that could do the things they wanted;: get rid of the unions, bring the Chicago school of economics to Britain via Keith Joseph, who also worshipped Milton Friedman, who lead it with his cronies, work wonders for the stock market – just as they said about Hitler - and invent the poll tax.

Meryl Streep as Margaret Thatcher.

So from what I have heard about the film it isn't about class at all; it's a typical rags to riches, against all odds, Hollywood type of movie and Thatcher wasn't really that kind of hero - if a hero at all.

And I think there is a film to be made about her and how she was used, abused and dropped.

Believe me I am not a fan of hers and I never voted for her but I will have to see the film one of the days as I have said enough about it – and her.

And that's my last word on the subject and here's my favourite interpretation:

Spitting Image's Margaret Thatcher.

My week with Marilyn and my opinions!!

I'm going to talk about acting again so switch off if this is not your bag. However, I am on line as a Hollywood actor and novice novelist; the two things that everybody thinks they are experts at because they watch films and read books.

I don't live in Hollywood any more but I can still write as a Hollywood actor can't I; can't I?

There are a lot of actors who choose a voice and then go for it and some people think that's good. At the risk of being told I am going on about her too much, Meryl Streep is such and so are Michael Sheen and Daniel Day Lewis.

The difference between the latter two is that DDL uses a voice he has heard somewhere, like the John Huston voice he used in There Will be Blood whereas when Michael Sheen plays someone he uses what he thinks is their voice – like David Frost and Brian Clough.

He also played Kenneth Williams where the voice, even though I only saw clips of it, wasn't as good as all the impressions people of my age had become used to over the years – and being bored by it I have to say. Bit like hearing another impression of Frank Spencer!!!!

Some of the great recent performances of real people, in my humble opinion, have been by Trevor Eve as Hughie Green in Hughie Green, Most Sincerely, Ken Stott who played Tony Hancock in Hancock and Joan and Jason Isaacs who played Harry H Corbet in the Steptoe & Son bio film The Curse of Steptoe all on BBC TV.

You see the difference between the first three and the second three is that the first three are impressions and the latter are from the soul.

When Geoffrey Rush played Peter Sellers in The Life and Death of Peter Sellers, he looked nothing like him, sounded nothing like him but he played Peter Sellers brilliantly.
When Michael Sheen played Brian Clough he did the Mike Yarwood version and made Clough in to a clown – which he wasn't – but it worked for me and was very funny; but it wasn't acting. He is playing Hamlet at The Young Vic at the moment and is getting great reviews so what do I know?

Anyway I need to get back to the point whatever that is – and by the way Mike Yarwood was a famous impressionist in the 1970s – a bit like the Canadian, Rich Little.

All of the above, apart from Daniel Day Lewis, played real people in those roles and it has been argued that their performances were little more than impressions

I saw the movie My Week with Marilyn recently and I thought it was wonderful; I thought the girl, Michelle Williams, played a really good Marilyn without doing any kind of impression at all; there was a moment when she was out with the protagonist at Windsor Castle, and she was being herself when they suddenly bumped in to the workers of the castle and she 'turned' Marilyn on; the character Marilyn off stage became the public figure.
The protagonist in the film is supposed to be the son of the famous historian Sir Kenneth Clarke who was famous for his massive TV series Civilisation in the 1960s – 1970s.

Also in the movie is Kenneth Branagh playing Laurence Olivier.

Now Laurence Olivier is one of the two actors who influenced more actors in the twentieth century than anybody; the other actor being Marlon Brando. Brando influenced the Americans and Olivier the English.

Sometimes the English actors who hated Olivier would worship Brando and vice versa with the Americans.

They had opposite styles: Olivier would go from the outside in and Brando from the inside out. In other words Olivier would think how the character would walk, move, maybe give him a false nose and voice and think of what accent he may have whereas Brando would look for the soul of the character and let the other things come along naturally. Olivier probably used more false noses than anybody during his career but there were one or two characters that Brando played .on film where you couldn't recognise him at all – Tea House of the August Moon being one of them; and for the record I understood every word he said on film unlike a lot of the English who said he 'mumbled' too much.
I wasn't sure what to expect from Kenneth Branagh but I was presently surprised. He has, kind of, modelled his career on Olivier; they both directed and played on film Henry V and Hamlet.
Henry V, by Olivier, has the greatest action sequences in any film which influenced Branagh's Henry V and lots of 'horse' films including a very famous non-horse film Zulu.

So how did he play Olivier?

Very well I have to say; very funny in a subtle way with the right amount of pastiche. Laurence Oliver is reputedly to have said to Marilyn Monroe when giving her direction in The Prince and the Showgirl 'be sexy' – Kenneth Branagh played it exactly right.

Olivier looked for comedy in everything that he did; very few British actors can play Richard III without hearing his voice at the back of their minds.

When he made public speeches he would pepper his speech with Shakespeare – when he received his honorary Oscar in Hollywood he started it by saying 'Most potent grave and reverend signors . . ' the beginning of a speech by Othello and in the film Kenneth Branagh starts the 'read through' with those lines. He uses lines and speech intonations Olivier would use in Shakespeare and some words like 'dead' (when describing the look in his own eyes in movies compared to Marilyn's) is delivered exactly the same as Olivier said them in Archie Rice.

There are scenes where Olivier is putting make up onto his eyebrows whilst expressing his frustrations about Marilyn always being late, which are hilarious as he looks ridiculous half made up.

The fact is Olivier was ridiculous at this time trying to give a 'method' actress the kind of traditional direction used in the UK at the time – I think he even uses the expression 'can't you just act' which is apocryphally credited to him whilst making a movie with Dustin Hoffman.

Sybil Thorndyke, played by Judi Dench in the movie, said that Marilyn was tiny in personality and mannerisms which people hardly noticed but when you saw the results of the filming everybody could see it.

Olivier seemed to learn from her; his next role, after the movie with Marilyn Monroe, was Archie in Archie Rice; some say his greatest performance. Her next role was in Some Like it Hot – arguably the best comedy movie ever.