Oscar odds and the hanging British Light Switch.

British bathroom hanging light switch.

Being relatively new to being back here, the mind wanders when I look around and think about what my American friends would think if they saw certain things here.

I know it's like that when you get to America; the one thing I have always known is that when you use the light switch in the USA you put it into the 'up' position to put the light on whereas over here you put it down.

Everything else is the other way around too, as you will know, like driving on the other side of the road and, which I found a surprise, the back brake on my bicycle over there was on the right handle bar.

Well I was in the bathroom the other day and I wondered what they would think of the light switch here in all bathrooms.

For the Americans who have never been to the UK, there are no electrical devices in bathrooms here, no electric sockets just a piece of string, with a weight, hanging from the ceiling - as above. This is everywhere and this is in case we would try to put the lights on or off with wet hands and be electrocuted.

By the way electrocution is death – in the USA they use electrocution when they mean a shock.

So it might be funny to them – it should be funny to us but we have got used to it. I mean we don't have the string in any other parts of the house such as the kitchen when our hands are nearly always wet. We use the electric mixer with wet hands so why don't they have hanging light switches in there - just a thought.

Now this is Academy Award weekend and I will really miss the sense of occasion by not being in Hollywood for the first time in 17 years – or 17 award shows apart from one one when I was filming over here; that was the year Helen Mirren won for The Queen and as she lived just around the corner from us we might have seen the limo.

The betting odds for the OSCARS are interesting. The best actor is a toss up between George Clooney for the Descendants and Jean Dujardin for The Artist; Dujardin is odds on at 4/6 and Clooney is slightly better than evens at 11/10.

Meryl Streep was the favourite at one time but the favourite now is Viola Davis from The Help at 8/13.

The best supporting actor should go to Christopher Plummer; at the moment he is not worth a bet as his odds are 1/33 – for those who know nothing about betting, you have to put £33 to win £1; which is hardly worth it unless you are putting £33,000 on and in that case the bookie would give you £34,000 back for your £33,000 staked. It's an easy grand but you would have to put it on in the UK where there is no gambling tax and there is a chance that he might not win – I liked Kenneth Branagh in My Week With Marilyn.

For Best adapted screenplay The Descendants is strong favourite at 1/5, but Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is a good outside bet at 20/1.

If betting on the winners doesn't take your fancy, there are plenty of other ways to spread around you money at this year's event.

William Hill are offering 6/1 on Meryl Streep losing her shoe again if she wins Best Actress (she first did it at the BAFTAs).

There's a 3/1 chance one of the winners will swear during a speech, while you get 8/1 on a host to announce the wrong winner.

Based on the above here's what I say for the OSCARS; I have no special qualifications or knowledge and also I think it's too late to get a bet on here:

Best Actor – George Clooney. Best Actress - Viola Davis.

Best supporting actor - Christopher Plummer. Best adapted screenplay - The Descendants (Alexander Payne and Nat Faxon). Best Picture – The Artist.

You can only make money on this if you have a yankee bet so drop Christopher Plummer and go for the rest – that is 6 doubles, 4 trebles and one accumulator. A £1 yankee, which is 11 bets, will cost £11.

You won't make a fortune but the accumulator on the above odds for the £1 bet would bring you will bring you about 3/1 – put Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy in there at 20/1 instead of The Descendants and it's worth doing as that is a really clever brilliant screenplay and my favourite film of the year.

My teenage love story!

The Poni Tails

Well, when I was a young man never been kissed

I got to thinkin' it over how much I had missed

So I got me a girl and I kissed her and then, and then

Oh, lordy, well I kissed 'er again . . . . .

When I was about fifteen or so I fell in love; I fell in love with three girls in a place called Wythenshawe, which was in the south part of the city of Manchester.

I was staying there for two weeks at my aunt's house and quite near to the house was a block of flats – and of course in the flats there were plenty of young girls.

I would pass the flats most days as I was staying up there by myself. I worked for the post office and had to take my holidays when they told me so everybody else was at work or school at the time.

I was kicking my heels around the house and my mother suggested I go and stay with her sister, my Godmother, and her family; their children were little more than babies so they were no good for me to pal about with; one day we went on a picnic with a maiden aunt of theirs and I went along too.

It wasn't a picnic as such, she called it a ramble – I don't know if she was part of a ramblers club or anything but she might have been in her forties and wore sensible shoes, a tweed skirt and carried a stick.

It was pleasant and at one point my little cousin sat on my lap and the aunt said 'Oh, Christopher isn't used to having little girls sitting on his lap' and I said 'no, I'm used to big girls' and her face kind of dropped.

It was the first thing that came in to my head but I got to know the girls from the flats – well some of them – and they used to sit on my lap. There was a pair of sisters – one aged 14 and the other 15 – and another girl older who was about 17 or 18.

I dated each of them and they seemed to know about each other going out with me. We went to a fair ground, which was a bus ride away, and to the movies which was also a bus ride away. In fact everything was a bus ride away as Wythenshawe, in those days, was in the countryside.

I took the older girl to see The Duke Wore Jeans, in the centre of Manchester, which starred Tommy Steele and whilst we were sitting there a fight broke out – between 2 girls.

One was sitting in front of the other and something was said, then the one in front stood up and they were fighting and pulling each others hair over the seats . . they were kicked out.

Now when I said I fell in love I mean I fell in love with a different one each day; I was only 15 and what did I know about love?

We would 'make out' on the stairs of the building in which they lived, and the pop music of the time was the sound track to our activities. The 14 year old was really gorgeous but she was too young for me – don't forget I was 15 and she was 14; I wasn't a baby snatcher!!
The song by The Pony Tails, Born Too Late, would ring in my ears when I thought of her and the same song rang out when I was with the older one.
Born too late for you to notice me
To you, I'm just a kid that you won't date
Why was I born too late?
The other one, the 15 year old, was the one who wrote to me when I returned to Birmingham and once or twice the older one wrote but never the 14 year old.
It was nothing serious, of course, but my aunt found out about it and didn't want me going with people from the flats – maybe she thought they were leading me in to a life of vice and drugs!!

One day I was due to meet the girls but my aunt said it wasn't to be; they were taking me out somewhere in the car – I can't remember where but it wasn't for a ramble.

I had to go and tell the girls that I wouldn't be there that day and when we went out in the car the 3 girls, and some of their friends, came out and got close to the car and blew kisses and waived – my aunt was disgusted.

Eventually the time came for me to go back to Birmingham and we were all heartbroken; I remember the tears welling up inside of me as the train pulled out of Manchester, Piccadilly Railway Station. I was in bits as I loved my life up there for the two weeks and then it was back to Birmingham and back to work.

I did nothing but mope around for what seemed weeks and then one night I decided to run away to Manchester. I knew where it was – in the north of England – so I started out.

I walked in to the city centre then up through Aston, which is going north; I seemed to walk for hours, in fact I did, and pretty soon it was after midnight and I was in Sutton Coldfield, which is 8 miles from the centre of Birmingham.

Near Sutton Coldfield, a car pulled in and asked me the way to somewhere – I couldn't really tell them anything and they told me they were eventually going to Manchester; oh I was tempted, I can tell you, and when they drove off I realised I was on an impossible trip, so I turned around and walked back.

After a little while a policeman came up to me and asked what I was doing – I told him I was out for a walk.

He took me to Aston Police Station, sat me down and gave me a cup of tea; then they called the police station, close to where I lived, and a copper from there went and told my worried parents that I was safe – we didn't have a telephone in those days; who did?

My dad didn't have a car so he rode across to Aston on his bike; the Raleigh that I have written about before, the Raleigh that I inherited and the Raleigh that my brother was knocked off one day as he rode along Moseley Road, which was a main thoroughfare.

When he came to the police station my dad was all smiles for me and the cops and they asked him how he would get me home.

'On my crossbar' he said 'if there are no police about.' it was against the law to give lifts on crossbars but it was two-o-clock in the morning and the coppers laughed.

On the way home he said 'we won't tell your mother you were on your way to your aunts.'

I said 'I was on my way to see my girl friend.' He didn't understand.

Young love, first love Filled with true devotion 
Young love, our love We share with deep emotion

It took me a few days to recover as every part of my body 
really ached.

In 1984 I was on TV in a series called 'Eh Brian! It's a Whopper, a drama comedy series about some anglers, and I received a fan letter from the older girl. She told me her marriage wasn't going very well and said I looked really good for 50!!!! 50??

So I got me a girl and I kissed her and then, and then

Oh, lordy well I kissed 'er again

Because she had kisses sweeter than wine

She had, mmm mmm, kisses sweeter than wine.

Jimmy Rodgers

This seems to be a very popular post; I am flattered but if you want more information write to me at bobbydelderfield@hotmail.com
or
Look for me at the Internet Movie Data Base -
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0838002/?ref_=nv_sr_1

Between the BAFTAs and The Oscars.

Well here we are half way between the BAFTAs and the Oscars – the British Academy Awards and the Academy Awards proper. I say the Academy Awards proper as opposed to the American BAFTAs which is what the Americans say about some of their things.

They described Casualty as the British ER when Casualty was on over here way before ER – it's just something they do, I suppose, thinking that anything on television started over there.

The number one TV show over there is Dancing With the Stars which is a BBC Production (they even produce it) taken from Strictly Come Dancing which is a hit over here.

Their title is better, of course, but 'Strictly' – as they call it here – is taken from a very old popular show on TV called Come Dancing which was a top dancing show for many years over here; it was a competition between professional ballroom dancers. Sometimes there would be solo dancers and sometimes formation. I have to say it was very impressive, even though I hardly watched it, and my parents and most people of their age, then, loved it.

In the 1980s TV series, Edge of Darkness, Joe Don Baker played a CIA agent and would praise to the skies Come Dancing saying what a great show to have on television – yes, by the way, the same Edge of Darkness which was a recent feature film and totally unwatchable.

So next week I will miss the Oscars which was something I really enjoyed; I enjoyed the day with the parties, the pizzas and the razzamatazz.

We lived close enough to the place where the Oscars are held each year to be affected by it and, of course, it took them a week to get the streets ready, so at the moment I can imagine the streets of Hollywood will be blocked off. Hollywood Boulevard itself will be for pedestrians only; it is interesting as you can go and look at the rehearsals they hold in the street.

Not with stars, of course, but with extras; they get out of limos and other extras are in the crowd and cheer them; it's a rehearsal for the cameras and they do as much as they can.

They have tarpaulins in case of rain which very rarely have to be used and they build a bridge across Hollywood Boulevard to use for interviews and camera shots.

All the windows opposite, in the Roosevelt Hotel and other places, are blocked off and there is nowhere you can go on the boulevard to look through windows.

The people you see cheering have tickets to sit in those places and the security is so tight that on the day you cannot walk along Hollywood Blvd without going through security cages and being felt all over by faceless security people.

Hollywood Blvd goes from east to west and so do all the other streets with Boulevard as their tag – Sunset, Melrose and Beverly.

At about eleven-o-clock on the day of the awards, the limos have to line up on Beverly Blvd with the VIPs who are attending the show.

Inside the limos the nominees are being comforted as they sit in the big line of traffic and when they reach Hollywood Blvd they arrive in a pre-ordained order.

I have noticed that the big stars arrive later and the smaller ones and the technical nominees arrive very early; when the limos drop them off they go around the corner to the Highland Centre Parking lot.

When it's all over I should imagine it's a mess of confusion trying to find your limo – one year Steven Spielberg was interviewed holding a load of coats as he waited for both the limo and his wife – just like we've all stood waiting for our women holding bags and coats.

Standing around inside the theatre are people called seat fillers; these are people dressed formally who sit in seats as soon as one of the stars gets up to either present an award, receive one of just goes to the loo.

When I moved there in 1995, I knew someone who had worked on the production side of the awards many times, and he told me about the seat fillers and I tried to get in on it, just for the crac, but I was told they didn't need anybody else.

After the awards there are plenty of parties, plenty of after the awards TV shows and interviews; some of the shows are at the parties (never inside) and the day after, the LA Times is full of the red carpet pictures and Academy Awards stories and the day after that it all stops till the end of the year; that's when all the films, who will be nominated for the following year's Academy Awards, will be released. The reason for this is that the films which come out in the first six months or so of the year are forgotten.

The Iron Lady, for example, was released in the last week of December and some films over the years have been released on December 31^st – the last qualifying day. Sometimes those films only play for one week, to get the qualification in, and are released later.

One film that would have been nominated for Oscars was Bloody Sunday which was a British film but some clever clogs put it on TV in Britain first which disqualified it.

There are Oscar shows in Australia, Britain, Japan, Norway and probably many more but there is only one Oscar show and that's in Hollywood.

This year Billy Crystal will be presenting which means that Jack Nicholson will probably go so he can sit in the front row so Billy can make jokes about him.

The show, the razzamatazz, the people, the paparazzi and everything else is great fun but it doesn't mean anything at all.

The best actor, the best film and everything else is something that cannot be defined. It's only an opinion – I mean how can you compare one acting performance to another. One of the greatest performances by an actor one year was by Eddie Murphy in Beverly Hills Cop – he wasn't even nominated!

By the way, the name of the theatre, where the Academy Awards are held, is the Kodak Theatre and the company, Kodak, have just gone into Bankruptcy. They had signed a 20 year sponsorship deal in 2000 and because of their bankruptcy they had hoped to take their name off the theatre; a bankruptcy judge ruled that they could but the owners don't want that to happen; so we shall see what it will be called next year.

Jimmy M and The Descendants.

George Clooney.

I'm going to have a little go at my friend Jim today. He writes a terrific blog about the movie business which is linked on this page to the right there and it's one of the top 50 movie blogs – can you see it there to the right of George Clooney's picture Jim Makichuk's Film Project? – give it a try.
I'm sure that he will post an answer to this; he said in one of his posts on the blog '. . . The Descendants is a Hallmark TV movie, a nice movie, even admirable, but not a feature movie, more like a TV movie. Only difference is a few curse words.'
For the sake of people who don't live in America, the phrase Hallmark TV movie refers to the Hallmark Movie Channel, sister to the Hallmark Channel, which shows family friendly movies. It is owned by the same people who own Hallmark Cards who are headquartered in Kansas City Missouri.
Not the kind of channel that would show The Sopranos, The Wire or The Singing Detective or the kind of channel that would interest me.
Family friendly movies? That's not The Descendants – if The Descendants could be compared to anything it might be to an Anton Chekhov play.
The Descendants has a multilayered script admirably performed by an excellent cast and both the script and George Clooney, who plays the leading role, deserve Oscars. They probably won't get them as Clooney already has an Oscar and – well you never know – Alexander Payne and his co-writers might get it for adapted screenplay.
But I know what Jim means; I remember seeing a movie called City Hall which was directed by Harold Becker and starred Al Pacino. Pacino played the Mayor of New York City and it was about the accidental shooting of a boy and the investigation into it thereafter. I remember sitting and watching it, thinking that I could have sat at home and watched episodes of Law and Order as it was a run of the mill cop script.
The thing about The Descendants is that it is too complicated for television; it's something you have to sit down in the dark with strangers to watch; not have it pumped out of the TV with all the distractions of your living room.
Clooney gives a terrific nuanced performance; he has been criticised by “Mister Anonymous” in the blogesphere and by people who don't understand what acting is all about. One of them said that when he was given a particular piece of bad news in the movie he did nothing. Nothing?? What did they expect him to do; if you looked at his face you could see what was going on internally.
You see he can never get passed the fact that he is a movie star and good looking and people who don't know seem to think that those things don't go together.
Years ago when he was in ER I thought he was awful; he would play every scene with his head down and look up at people but something happened when he went into movies. He met directors who told him things, gave him direction and not only did he learn from that as an actor he learned to direct too.
He directed some really good movies: Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Good Night and Good Luck, Leatherheads and The Ides of March – okay we'll sweep over Leatherheads but the others are good. He has also produced some 27 titles so he is an asset to the film business.
The Descendants will not appeal to people who prefer blockbusters or movies with special effects and computer-generated images but there is certainly room for it in the scheme of things; we can't give in totally to the 15 year olds.
As a footnote: I mentioned Harold Becker earlier as the director of City Hall. Well I was in his first full length feature film The Ragman's Daughter.
A couple of years ago, in Los Angeles, my wife went to a yard sale at a large house in the Hollywood Hills – where we lived. The house was, maybe, half a mile from us, and when she got there she saw a poster for The Ragman's Daughter and said “My husband was in that” and woman of the house said “My husband directed it.”
They were moving and all their stuff was in the front yard for sale.
The woman told my wife to tell me to come up to the house which I did.
When I got there, the poster was still in the yard and Harold Becker came out to see me.
The last time I had seen him was in 1971 but he looked kind of familiar and when we shook hands he said 'a familiar face.'
We'd been living close by for all those years. He knew what people who were in The Ragman's Daughter were doing which I thought was impressive and I see that at the age of 83 he is to direct another movie – certainly built of the right stuff.
By the way I didn't buy the poster.

Harold Becker.

George VI and school days.

King George VI

There was a kid in my class at school called Raymond Simmons, and one day he took the day off. He wasn't playing truant – playing the wag, we called it – as playing the wag is when your parents send you to school but you don't go – you do something else.

I only ever did that once – I went around to Alan Chance's house and we smoked cigarettes and played rock 'n' roll records. Proper rock 'n' roll records by Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis - maybe even Larry Williams.

On the day that Raymond Simmons played the wag, I asked if I could go to the lavatory and, when I went into the playground on my way to the boys lavatories, I saw him; he was putting a stick down a drain and wiggling it about.

I asked him what he was doing out there and he told me that he wasn't at school that day and not to tell the teacher that I'd seen him. His mother had kept him away, pretending he was ill; I went off for my pee and when I returned he was sitting on the steps.

'The King is dead” he said as a matter of fact.

“How do you know?”

“My mom told me; it was on the wireless.”

I went back into the classroom with this heavy piece of knowledge resting in my head. If I told the teacher she would have asked how I knew and I would have had to say that Raymond Simmons told me and then he would be in trouble; or his mother would be so I stayed quiet.

I knew that Princess Elizabeth would now be Queen and I salivated in this cognition knowing that for the time being I knew something important that nobody else in the class room did.

I was comfortable with my secret knowing full well that it was big news which would burst forth into general knowledge fairly soon and then into history.

I would have thought that someone, maybe the headmistress, would have come in and tell our teacher, but no; not a word was mentioned.

When we broke up and went out to lunch I told one or two of the other kids and Carol Ecclestone said “that means Princess Elizabeth will be Queen.”

“No she won't” said another “Princess Margaret will be.”

That was 60 years ago today; and it seems like – 60 years ago!!!!

That was the end of King George VI, who was in the news all last year as he was the subject of the film The King's Speech. His first name wasn't George at all. He was named after his grandfather, Prince Albert who was Queen Victoria's husband and known as Bertie, which is short for Albert.

However Prince Albert was German, and as Bertie came to the throne in 1936 when relations with Germany were at their lowest, he chose his second name to use as his title.

His birthday was on December 14^th – the same day as mine. They would commemorate it on the radio (the wireless in those days) every year and I think they would sing or play 'happy birthday' - and I would think it was for me.

I wasn't there for the first few birthdays, and in any case at that age, I wouldn't have heard it as I was a baby, but 1951 was the last time they played 'happy birthday' on my birthday; these days my children call and sing it to me.

Thought you'd like to know all that!

Nicol Williamson

Nicol Williamson.

One of the greatest actors of his generation – any generation – died just before Christmas and nobody knew until the last few days. His family announced his death last week and he was Nicol Williamson.

He died in Amsterdam, where he lived, around December 16^th.

There were rumours that he was difficult to work with, but none of these have been confirmed by the people he worked with – either directors or fellow actors.

There were a few instances which I'm sure have been blown up out of all proportion; one night whilst playing Hamlet something came over him so he turned, threw his dagger at the back wall of the stage and walked off. Then he came back on stage and apologised to the audience.

There was a tale that he walked off during his one man show about John Barrymore – I think he came to the stage before the show and told the audience he couldn't do it that night and he slapped someone across the arse during a curtain call once.

Because of these instances he was considered difficult – it's not as if he shagged a sheep!!!!

Someone was at one of the performances of the John Barrymore play, and at the end of the interval, he saw Nicol Williamson walk in to the theatre through one of the audience doors and walk casually towards the stage, notice the audience, get on to the stage and go straight into the second act; he said it was very impressive.

Nicol Williamson attended Central Grammar School in Birmingham and also went to the same drama school as I did there; I don't know why he went there, maybe for the same reason I did. It was the only drama school I'd heard of apart from RADA and I wasn't going all the way to London just for an audition.

Once in a while the Principal of the school, Pamela Chapman, would mention him but would call him THE Nicol Williamson. She didn't mention that he was expelled or the reason for it.

I never saw him on stage but I saw him perform on TV and in movies; I saw his Hamlet which was Ballsy, Blokey and heroic – he wasn't as vulnerable as other Hamlets of the day.

I also saw him play The Resistable Rise of Arturo Ui on TV, which was spectacular, and I saw him play Richard Nixon from the transcripts of the 'secret' recordings where he would say expletive deleted each time he came to a curse word.

His performance in The Bofors Gun, on film, was frightening.

This might have been the reason I didn't approach him at Heathrow Airport when I saw him there one day.

Goodbye Nicol Williamson may you rest in peace.

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.

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.

An Irish Family Living in Birmingham.

Marlon Brando as Napoleon.

It was strange, as a child, to be living in an Irish community in Birmingham; all our parents' friends were Irish and apart from our little nuclear family (a phrase not invented then) we had no relations; they were in Ireland.

We knew people with strange accents but they were the next door neighbours.

Our Irish community was in Balsall Heath, a kind of inner city neighbourhood, and even though there were a lot of Irish there, I saw post cards in shop windows offering digs, rooms to let and flats with the addendum 'no Irish' – but that was when I could read.

And I learned to read at Clifton Road Primary & Junior School and Dennis Road Secondary Modern Boys School.

We lived in a little cottage in a place called South View Terrace; it probably had a lovely 'south view' of Moseley Road, at one time, but looking south out of the front door we had a view of a factory/offices called Locomotors or Locomotives – they owned the property and it was to them we paid the rent. 8/11 per week which is about 45 pence.

When I started school I found that the other kids spoke differently from me – they spoke with English accents; so I kind of copied the way they spoke. I was quite good at it but a few words remained such as walk which I would pronounce as wark and work which I would say as wurk. And all the equally rhyming words – or wurds!!!

So it was strange – we would go to Dublin three times a year with our English accents and by the time we came back to England we were Irish again.

I would play football in Ireland and they would shout 'pass the ball here, English!' and I would say 'I'm not English, I'm Irish!'

Then when we returned to England I would play football there and they would shout 'pass the ball here, Irish!' and I would say 'I'm not Irish I'm English!'

The school I went to was a Church of England School (Protestant) so I didn't let anybody know that we were Catholics. My mother was always telling me that I shouldn't be ashamed of being a Catholic and even made me take a Saint Christopher Medal which I would hide in my pocket; this was all at the first school, Clifton Road, by the time I got to Dennis Road we didn't care.

In those days there was an examination working class and middle class children took at the age of 10 called the eleven plus; this was for entry into grammar school. At grammar school kids were expected to stay on at school till they were 16; at my school we would leave at the age of 15; factory fodder.

Grammar school kids would take 'O' level GCE, General Certificate of Education, exams and if they stayed on they'd take 'A' levels and 3 of those would probably get them in to University.

At our school we didn't have to take any exams at all which was fine by me as I didn't like school or exams.

When I took the eleven plus I didn't put anything on the exam papers at all; my mother's friend, Mrs Williams, was the supervising teacher and attested to this and my mother was disgusted.

Apparently I just looked through the window.

Now if there was one thing I remember about Clifton Road School it was that the windows were high and you could only see the sky; so maybe I was looking towards the stars even then.

What I discovered was that if I looked out of the window, during regular lessons, I would get a clip around the ear and told to get on with it, but in exams the teachers walked around and supervised.

So when I went Dennis Road School I entered all the external exams for other schools: grammar schools, art schools, technical schools, commercial schools – you name it. The art schools I liked best because I had to paint all day and I loved painting even though I was no good.

I didn't pass any of those exams, of course, and when I left Dennis Road I didn't have any GCEs whatsoever; but I took them much later when they were easier for me. Just the ones I fancied: English Literature, Sociology and an A/O level in film studies which was the hardest.

One day at school I was picked for the Road Safety Knowledge Team; we were put on the stage and pitted against another team and asked questions about the Highway Code; which is a road safety booklet with all the rules about road safety, which drivers in the UK still have to answer questions from to pass their driving test.

The school hall was full – maybe about 500 kids and teachers – and when they asked me a question I got it right but the question master couldn't quite get the meaning of what I was saying so I explained it in a conversational tone, something like 'you know when you cross the street . . . . .?' and as soon as I said this, the whole school erupted in peels of laughter; I saw our teacher, Mr Jones, with his head in his hands laughing.

What I said wasn't particularly funny but something struck a chord with the audience which made them laugh; it was a wonderful feeling to get such a big laugh and it really is the greatest sensation when working in comedy. I was always getting laughs in the classroom so maybe that had something to do with the big laugh I got on that day and maybe it had something to do with me taking up acting; I don't know.

One of the teachers was called Mr Forster and he was the PE teacher and dressed very fashionably; he wore drain pipe trousers, suede shoes and had a very fashionable hair cut – a bit like Marlon Brando when he played Napoleon, and the mothers would wait outside the school, just to get a glimpse of him, as he walked his class across the street for the morning assembly.

'Isn't he lovely?' they would say and he would ignore them. He had a friend in Dennis Road Junior School and I think they were both, really, actors. I have heard his name about the profession and often wondered if he was the same person. The one thing he never did, though, was to cast me in any of the school plays.

In one play I remember one of the boys played two roles and all I did was watch; I knew all the lines of all the characters but was never asked. The boy who played the 2 roles was called Robert Mapp and at one point he was supposed to go off, get changed, then come back on as his other character.

On the night the play went out in front of the audience, he came back wearing the same costume; he said later he hadn't had time to change; and there I was sitting there!!!

That was in the junior school and Forster did a cowboy play, one time, at Dennis Road that I dearly wanted to be in but I'd been chosen to sing at the Town Hall in the choir!!

Mark Rylance in Jerusalem.

For those who don't know or didn't read my post lately The Greatest Actor In the World I discussed who was the best actor in the world, if there ever could be such a person, as it was suggested by some pundits that the best actor in the world was one Mark Rylance who was, and is, starring in the west end in the play Jerusalem by Jez Butterworth.

Well I went to see for myself on Friday evening. The play is sold out till the end of its run in January and the only way to get a really terrible ticket is to turn up at six-o-clock each morning at the theatre and queue till ten-o-clock when the box office opens.

These are the worst seats – I believe the front row, because you can't see further back on the stage than a few feet - some seats where you cannot see all of the stage and my seat; on the upper circle above the action where you have to creak your neck.

If I sat back in my seat all I would see was the ceiling so I had to lean forward and look down. This meant I couldn't sit on my seat without tipping it up and sitting on the edge, or kneeling on the floor and then when I looked down my view was blocked by some lamps that were lighting the stage – but I saw it and enjoyed it and it will be one of those shows and performances that I won't forget; even if only for the stiff neck I have today.

But did I get up at six-o-clock to get to the theatre to queue? Not on your life.

I knew about the queuing and had mulled it over in my mind a few times and I planned to pay good money and book a seat sometime – but I never did.

It so happened I had an appointment in the west end at ten-o-clock and I passed the theatre and saw a small queue. At that moment, a few minutes to ten, the box office wasn't open so I carried on to my appointment. I had to pass the theatre again at ten forty five and thought I might go in to box office, which I did, to ask if there were any of the £10 tickets left and I was told yes – one.

When I saw where it was, I declined and said I'll take my chances for another day and that's when the box office clerk told me that the rest of the run was sold out.

I went out walked about ten yards down the street, turned around, and went back and bought the ticket.

So what was like what was it about and is he the greatest actor in the world?

First of all the title Jerusalem; it is based on the poem by William Blake which was eventually made in to a song or even a hymn. The poem is set out below and most people in England know it as as a song as it's about England – old England and . .. well judge for yourself.

England is surrounded by three Celtic countries and one of its counties, Cornwall, is populated with Celts. Who are Celts? Well we (yes we - I am one and so is my brother and my kiddlewinkles no matter where they were born) are wild, colourful people who believe and like myths and legends. We believe in fairies, giants, Leprechauns, folk lore and love to tell and listen to stories.

The English don't believe in any of this rubbish – but they did at one time. There are just as many myths and legends from England but nobody talks about them any more; the only thing that has survived is Morris Dancing; and there is a Morris Dancer in the play.

The play, Jerusalem, is about a Gypsy who lives in a caravan, which looks a bit like a railway carriage, near a new estate in Wiltshire. The cast have Wiltshire accents and apart from Mark Rylance and possible three others, are teenagers.

The teenagers gather at his caravan where they can score with drugs, booze and party all night.

The local council have been serving him, Billy 'Rooster' Byron, for many years, notices to quit; but he ignores them. He is the kind of man that would pull a steam roller with his teeth or bend an iron bar in his mouth; the kind of thing that was always on TV in Britain at one time.

The play opens with two police constables serving a final notice on him and throughout the action, both comic and serious, there us a growing threat and a feeling of impending doom.

The kids come to him also to listen to his stories as he is the old style Englander with many a tale to tell. One of the tales he tells it that he has very rare Romany blood which he sells to the local hospital for £800 every so many months.

In his youth he was a kind of Evel Knievel jumping buses on his motor bike and one day hit one of the buses which gave him a terrible limp. This is played with such authenticity that I thought it was a real injury.

Also a young girl, aged fifteen, is missing and her father comes to the caravan looking for her.

The set is incredible – there appears to be grass growing, there's dirt where he can bury an ax and behind the caravan is a forest; which looks real.

So is he the best actor in the world? Hard to say but I don't know any better. As I mentioned before it depends on taste, suitability to the role you are playing and lots of other things.

The play lasts three hours and ten minutes which includes two intervals amounting to twenty minutes. There may be ten minutes throughout the whole evening where Mark Rylance is off the stage.

It is a terrific heroic performance and he deserves the plaudits he has received – a Tony on Broadway and the Laurence Olivier Award in London.

I saw him a few years ago in Los Angeles in the Globe Theatre's all male production of William Shakespeare's Measure for Measure where he played the Duke. I think that was one of the best Shakespearean performances I have ever seen but he used some of the tricks he used in that in his performance in Jerusalem – a kind of pause at the end of a line and then dropping a whole sentence – which might become or is already his shtick. It will be interesting to see what he does with Richard III which he is due to do next at Shakespeare's Globe in London.

It will be a new production of Shakespeare's Richard III and he will recreate one of his more startling performances as Olivia in an all-male Twelfth Night. The production had sumptuous period costumes by Jenny Tiramani, handstitched down to the last corset stiffener, which took him half an hour to struggle into every night.

After the performance in Los Angeles, I couldn't find my car in the UCLA car park and wandered around for about fifteen minutes and who should I meet getting into their SUV but Mark Rylance and some of his cast. He had a very gentle hand shake and seemed a very nice fella.

Here is Jerusalem by William Blake:

JERUSALEM (from 'Milton')

by: William Blake (1757-1827)

And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England's mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England's pleasant pastures seen?
And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among these dark Satanic Mills?
Bring me my bow of burning gold!
Bring me my arrows of desire!
Bring me my spear! O clouds, unfold!
Bring me my chariot of fire!
I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England's green and pleasant land.