Some years ago, I was on a national tour in a play – Fur Coat and No Knickers – where I played a drunken Irish Priest. It is the only play I have ever been in where I didn't get a picture as a souvenir. I wasn't in the premiere, but took over when they decided to revive the play for a tour from the north of England, in Darlington, to the south in Plymouth. In fact those were my favourite places from that tour; I got to know them quite well and one time when we were travelling from Reading, in Berkshire, to Plymouth, in Devon, we stopped over in Somerset.
The guy, whose car I was sharing, in fact not sharing as he drove all the way, knew a writer, who would write short stories for BBC Radio 4, and we stayed in his remote cottage near Yeovil. We arrived in the dark and I stayed in a bedroom at the back of the building with, I presumed, a garden to be seen through the back window.
When I woke the next morning, I found the garden almost came up to my window. I don't know what happened downstairs, whether the back door led in to any garden but I suspect there wasn't a back door and we were built to the side of a hill; rather like Jericho, which is another story..
On Sunday morning, after breakfast, the writer took us to his local pub, for a lunchtime drink. On the way, he drove his car, at speed, straight to the place without stopping at any stop signs and ignored every other traffic sign too. One of the them was a main road and over we went at about fifty miles an hour.
'Nobody ever comes down here' he said.
Nobody has came down here yet, I thought.
The pub, itself, didn't have a bar. It was oldie worldly and the drinks were all at one side, with the pumps for the draft beer, and the whiskeys and whiskys and all the shorts were on shelves and, I think, we were allowed to help ourselves – but that might not be right. In the corner was an old guitar and I picked it up and tuned it.
'Do you play?' I was asked.
I said I played a bit, which was true – I knew a few chords and knew where to play them and as I was messing about I started to sing Teenager in Love quite easily and people joined in and they gave me a big round of applause.
But we had to get back to the writer's cottage, as our lunch would be ready, so we waved goodbye and the other guy, whom I was on tour with said, we'll see you next week on the way back.
It was probably the only song I could play at the time and I also knew All I have to do is Dream.
The strange thing is I don't really have a memory for which chord goes where in various other songs I know. I suppose I could sing a song, if challenged in a bar, but guitar chords?
When I was doing my Irish show I would sing 16 Irish songs and accompany my self on the guitar – but when I I took a break from that and then take up the show the year after, I had to learn the chords again.
There is a strange thing about memory. I have spent, I don't know 40 years – 50?? learning lines for plays. At one time I was in fortnightly rep in Northampton when I had to learn a different play every two weeks. It's called fortnightly rep: you start work on a Monday morning, rehearse, learn, rehearse etc for two weeks, then on the following Tuesday you open – Monday was for the dress rehearsal – technical etc.
After the first night the next day you start on play number 2: you rehearse that and in the evening you would do, publicly, play number 1.
So when you rehearse, you have to drop from your mind the play you are playing in the evenings and vice versa when playing.
You have to kind of learn to drop things from your memory.
Other actors reading this will say durr!
Incidentally, the first play was Night Must Fall and when I turned up for the first day of rehearsal, where everyone sits in chairs for the read through, I didn't have script. I was playing a role with loads of lines, it had ben written by Emlyn Williams, and as he was an actor and had played the leading role, it had loads and loads of lines, and, I may repeat, I didn't have a script.
An old actor, Lionel Hamilton, who had a wonderful old actors' deep voice with wonderful resonance said 'not in my day; in my day we always gave the leading actor a script.'
I think that act alone has led me to many nightmares of turning up to do a play – and it's usually 'Night Must Fall' and when I reach the theatre not only do I not have a script, I can never find the stage.
I think I sometimes I get near the stage and no lines come to me and then I leave the theatre and I am back in Los Angeles not knowing the way to down town.
Those dreams come to me on many nights and I usually wake up totally confused to the sound of the Greenwich Meantime pips at six-o-clock.
It wasn't the only time I didn't get a script: the other time it was a huge role in a play called Spokesong! The reason I didn't get script for that play is that I only auditioned for it on a Thursday, was offered the role on the Friday and started work on the Monday. Whilst walking to the theatre, in Leicester, I saw posters for the play, which was a couple of weeks away, thinking 'they'll be lucky.'
So the script was given to me at the read through and as we read the lines just churned out and the last speech had maybe two full pages.
It went well – it was a little bit avant garde but we didn't mind.
A few weeks after I'd finished that play a television director called me in – I had worked with him before in a commercial, and we had a chat and he said 'I hear you did Spokesong, recently' – I said 'yes' and he said 'do a bit for me.' Just like that, and you know, I couldn't remember a word.
When we had finished in Plymouth, a town full of matelots and artists, we drove back towards London and stopped, once again, at the writer's cottage near Yeovil. Once again we arrived in the dark and after the Sunday morning breakfast we went to the pub, speedily avoiding any other traffic at the main roads, flying through the countryside like President Clinton, on a very fast trip he took through Santa Monica, which I witnessed one day, and arrived at the pub.
Not so empty that time, quite a few people there.
I said to someone 'more people here this week' and he said 'there's a guitarist coming.'
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