Ahmed Chalabi and the WMD

So what happened to Tony Blair? I read somewhere that the powers that be – the courts – are looking for a way to try him for going to war with Iraq as the lawyer for a former Iraqi general argues that the former PM should face trial due to legal precedent set during Nuremberg hearings – Nuremberg hearings? Where they tried the top Nazis – Hermann Göring, Rudolf Hess and the rest of them. Would you put Tony Blair in that company?

When I left this country to make my way in Los Angeles around August 1994 he was the bees' knees. On his way up with his super duper new Labour Party, the leader of the opposition and the scourge of the then Prime Minister, John Major. He had been a follower – a close follower - of the Labour leader John Smith and when Smith died of a heart attack Blair took over.

Rather like the time when Hugh (I will fight fight and fight again for the party that I love) Gaitskill died leaving the way open for Harold Wilson. When it was Wilson's Labour Party it was a different kettle of fish. No sooner had he taken over the party, won an election in 1964, when there was a big out-flux of investment money from Britain to anywhere else.

At one time, because of that, no one was allowed to take more than £50 out of the country when they went abroad. That's how bad it was.

Then the Chairman of the Mirror Group, Cecil King organized a coup – yes a real coup. They met in an office in Fleet Street – I remember it was a privileged place which was allowed to use a coal fire in a smokeless zone. King organised the coup and what they were going to do and . .. it didn't come off, of course. Among those at the meeting was the Chairman of the Bank of England, Sir Basil Smallpiece (aptly named), Lord Mountbatten and Tony Benn. You can judge a leader by the team he picks; Tony Benn leaked it to The Guardian and saved the day.

They didn't trust Labour then, so you can imagine the shenanigans if Jeremy Corbyn is ever Prime Minister.

With Blair, Labour did what Bill Clinton did in America by ruling from the centre – only they did it from the center as our computer spell checks keep reminding us.

He was the main actor behind the Northern Ireland Peace Process and, whilst it has not achieved everything, he is responsible, partly, for peace in that place.

Tony Blair was a million miles from Wilson and made a pact with Gordon Brown, over dinner in a London Restaurant, to decide which one of them was going to be the Premier.

As I mentioned before, you can judge a leader by the team he picks – also it tells a lot about a man if you look at what he eats. The restaurant was chosen by Blair and Brown didn't like the bill o' fare – he wanted steak and chips and Blair was an early cordon bleu aficionado possibly preferring houmus and bean sprouts.

The two agreed to have Blair as PM with Brown to take over after spending time as the Chancellor of the Exchequer – the money man. It might be said that he was the best Chancellor of the Exchequer of the century. Blair was the suit and Brown was the brains.

When Blair handed over to the reins of the party (and the PM) to Gordon (he gave away our gold) Brown, a very decent talented man, he had to succumb to the jibes of the nameless ignoramus who regularly introduced the BBC programme Top Gear for a while who, whilst being interviewed on Australian TV, said that Britain was being governed by a one eyed Scotsman – yes a nameless idiot. (Brown lost an eye playing rugby).

That one eyed Scotsman virtually saved Britain's bacon during the world 2008 financial crisis.

Since coming back to live in London, I have realised that a lot of people hate Tony Blair and blame the invasion of Iraq on to him and only him. How could this happen? One man cannot go to war without a vote in Parliament.

We lived in America during the Iraqi war; Blair never even came in to the equation on the news and neither did Ahmed Chalabi.

He was one of the main characters in the invasion of Iraq, one of the main characters in that terrible war which killed many civilians; one of the reasons they went to war was Chalibi and for Chalabi's ambition. And there he is above.

Ahmed Chalabi was an exile living in the United States when George H W Bush issued statements saying the best thing to happen would be the elimination of Saddam Hussein; the Iraqi rebels saw this as encouragement with promises of help but the Americans abandoned the Iraqis and left Saddam to murder any rebels that tried.

So between the Gulf War and the Iraqi invasion Saddam Huissan ruled the roost in Iraq with his policies of mass murder, telling all he had nuclear weapons and was about to use them. The people of Iraq and the world were looking for another leader, a Gandhi, a Mandela, a man of charisma and they came up with Ahmed Chalabi – a man who had embezzled money from a Jordanian Bank, a man who was exiled from Iraq and a man who wanted to be the Prime Minister, President or leader of Iraq – in fact all three.

He had the information that Saddam did, indeed, possess Weapons of Mass Destruction – WMD – (I won't put WMDs as it should be WsMD and that can't be right).

The information went from Chalabi to the secret powers, the spies, spooks or whatever, and this got back to the CIA.

Inspectors were sent to Iraq; Saddam had moved the weapons. 

More inspectors: Saddam was still pounding his chest, pretending to have what he didn't. The inspectors couldn't be sure and I'm not even going to go in to the fact that there was a mysterious death of one of them but . . . .

You can look all this up if you want to but when Colin Powell made the statement to the UN, stating that they had received reliable information, through the British, that Saddam had WMD he made that man – the man with him in the picture –

stand behind him. He was the leader of the CIA and that is where Powell got the information and the CIA, through the British, which was assured by embezzler Ahmed Chalabi that it was true. “Saddam was dangerous and needed removing.”

Chalabi assured the west that the weapons were dangerous, Saddam had purchased some kind of barrel, I seem to remember, and other stuff for his weapons.

At the time the vice-president, Dick Cheney, was facing impeachment threats. His company was going to be used during the war by supplying equipment as with the Eisenhower warning of the Industrial Military Complex and he with Bush, Rumsfeld and the other cronies decided to invade Iraq.

Tony Blair came along and gave them credence – they were going to do it anyway, with or without Blair; with or without Chalabi – who wanted to be Iraqi leader don't forget – and there is a time when you don't know when to go to war or not. I am not a pacifist but I don't ever want war because of that, I am against it but a few years ago there was another vote in parliament here and the Labour Party were successful in stopping the then Prime Minister David Cameron from going to war and the reason they voted against – which is what the result was – was the reaction and flack from the Iraqi war - which shouldn't be a reason.

Pantalones de orina

                                                      Dave Allen

I was watching a drama/documentary on TV the other night about one of my real favourite comedians; Dave Allen. He was a unique comedian and most of his material was to mock the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland. And who could blame him having being brought up in a catholic school in Ireland in the thirties and early forties.

There was one little scene in the film which reminded me of my time at school in Birmingham when I was learning to read; so how old would I be? Six or so.

My teacher was Miss Prime and she was a spinster of about forty; I have worked this out judging the time it was and what went on.

Now – I have told this story on stage in my one man show many times from the year 2000 to 2010 at theatres and colleges in Los Angeles and theatres in the UK.

I was sitting at the front of the class and at the other side of my tiny little desk, facing me, was Miss Prime. I can't remember if she had a book or was reading mine upside down and we shared leg space under my desk. How she made herself so tiny to do this task is beyond me but maybe she was sitting, for the only time in her life, spreadeagled? I don't think we knocked knees or anything like that but I was being tested on a page in a book; a simple book, I should imagine, and, as I have already told you I was about six.

The time was fifteen minutes before midday and the lunch break was at noon. So I had that fifteen minutes to go before I could go and empty my over filled and bursting bladder.

I have always been a bit of a pisser, never ever able to hold it. For example, when I was playing at The Hexagon Theatre, in Reading, I would travel along the motorway, after the show, to where I was staying with friends in Barnes, which is a suburb in London.

Each night we would have to stop whilst I had a pee on the hard shouder – we played there for a week so we stopped seven times – couldn't help it. (by the way I'm fine now; thanks for asking).

Back to the class room: I knew I needed a pee as the teacher sat down to test me.

If you were a casting director you would cast Miss Prime as a strict teacher; the character in The Singing Detective would have suited her. She had her hair pulled straight back from the forehead and in a very tight pony tail gripped up at the back. She wore no make up and wore very thick stockings and sensible shoes; I knew this because my mother never wore sensible shows – always high heels when out.

When Miss Prime sat down I was bursting. I had been to the loo at play time but the third of a pint of ice cold milk I drank at ten fifteen had gone through me.

At the same time as I started reading I started to fidget; I couldn't help it as my wee was nearly coming out; I was starting to leak. She told me to stop fidgeting and to read the page starting at the top line; this I did.

When she asked my why I was fidgeting I told her I needed to go to the lavatory.

'You need to go to the lavatory?'

'Yes miss.'

'Well you can go at twelve-o-clock and not until.'

So I started to read again. The words didn't come out too clear as I was really suffering.

'You can go if you want to – but you will come back and read the page instead of going to dinner.'

We all called lunch dinner in those days – I mean Dickens had only been dead a hundred years!!!

Judging from my age I was probably still speaking with a slight Irish accent, so I would be saying far instead of for, wark instead of walk and walk instead or work! So being corrected and not knowing what she was talking about made things worse; that and her stare!

I struggled on, reading and struggling and feeling the urine running in to my underpants and down my legs. I tried not to let it go and it started to hurt. She looked in to my eyes, she could see I was in pain, but she insisted on forcing me to read on.

Eventually the school bell went and I ran to the boys bogs and let it rip; so my relief so much happiness, so much steam and how cold the pee felt in my underpants.

I didn't stay to school dinner that day; I went home. I knew the way even though it was six hundred metres away which is a third of a mile or so.

I went along Hertford Street, turned left at Saint Paul's Road, right at Moseley Road and right into South View Terrace where we lived in a tiny house. There wasn't a tiny stream but there was a railway line.

My mother wondered what I was doing home and I showed her my little pair of short pants and my soaking underpants.

She took them from me, helped me get clean and fed me.

Then she walked me back to school; in her bag she carried my underpants; she came in to the class room and confronted Miss Prime.

She took the underpants out and held them up to the teacher; 'is that any way to send a child home from school' she said.

I was frightened that she was going to shove the pants into Miss Prime's face. Also I knew she had an Irish accent, which would let everybody know that I was Irish, as if they didn't know, and would say bloody a lot and I didn't want her to do that – but I can't remember much more about it.

Twenty five years later I was in a soap on television, which went out every evening at 6.35 so a lot of people saw it.

My mother was at the Alexandra Theatre, in Birmingham one evening and who should see with a load of kids? Yes – Miss Prime.

They recognised each other and Miss Prime came across and said 'we see Christopher on television a lot – we're very proud.'

And my mother said 'do you remember his pissy pants?'

Night Must Fall

I was listening to Desert Island Discs the other day and the guest was Anne-Marie Duff; now there's a name to conjure with. She is an actress, although she calls herself an actor, and hit all the headlines in her portrayal of Saint Joan at the National Theatre, here in London.

That was about ten years ago and I was still living in Los Angeles in those days so I didn't see it. I have never been to the National in any case I probably wouldn't have gone in any case.

I'm not one of those actors who never go to the theatre as I love it, but she mentioned a quote by Michael Gambon saying he never goes to the theatre as you don't see pilots going to the airport to see their pals taking off. It's a funny quote but the pilots shouldn't be performing despite some of the headlines of late.

In the interview, on Dessert Island Discs, she was asked how she felt when she waited back stage waiting to go on that first night for Saint Joan, was she nervous, apprehensive or anything and she replied that she felt full of energy. It was a huge audience and she felt as if she was going out at Glastonbury like a guitar god about to take the place apart . . . and I got to thinking if I had ever had that feeling and my thoughts went back to when I did a play called Night Must Fall.

I have done a few plays since, where I had a showy leading role, but I never got that feeling again.

Night Must Fall was written by Emlyn Williams who was also an actor so he set it up perfectly for himself: a murderer who chopped off women's heads and kept them in a hat box; plenty of quotes from the bible, in the wonderful Welsh accent, Richard Burton as opposed to Max Boyce, to be played with charm. charisma and everything any actor would die to play. The play is a bit creaky and melodramatic but, even though it's hard work for all, well worth while.

I had first heard of the play when I was at drama school: when some of you go out and into rep you will do 'Night Must Fall' although I doubt of any of you here today will play Danny . . . was the kind of encouragement we got from a very strange teacher at college who would take up about ten blogs to describe; I won't mention him by name but he was called Richard Ryan.

We moved to Northamptonshire to try and get on the housing ladder and be within easy access of London and I contacted the local theatre to see if they were doing any casting.

Some time later they called and asked me to come in for an interview and I was cast in The Alchemist by Ben Jonson – someone must have dropped out for that to happen, I thought, and that is what had happened.

So it was good to drive in to Northampton each day for rehearsals; it was my first job in the theatre after leaving drama school, although I had worked at Birmingham Repertory Theatre, Birmingham Rep, whilst still at college, and since leaving had worked on television in The Newcomers, Crossroads, Z Cars and quite a few others. It did seem at one point that I would have some kind of TV career without ever working in the theatre but it didn't work that way as for the next ten years or so I did more theatre than TV.

When I was doing The Alchemist one of the cast asked me if I would ever consider joining the company for a season and I said I would consider it, of course. A few days later another cast member asked me the same thing and said they would pay me £40 a week; that was good money for those days as I had £10 for my little episode at Birmingham Rep four years earlier. Again I said that that sounded okay.

A few days later I got a call at home to see if I would come in and have a chat with the artistic director and I made the appointment.

After the small talk the director told me that the manager of the theatre bar had been asking him for years if they could do his favourite play Night Must Fall and he would usually tell the guy that he would if ever a Danny came along.

He said 'the bar manager came to see me the other day and said we've got a Danny haven't we?'

That was me, of course; the director said 'Now about money; we always think that £30 is a good wage here' and I said 'What about forty?' he said 'thirty five' and I said 'okay!' and that was it.

I didn't hear from them for a while after The Alchemist finished; I did some filming in Belfast and Bangor in Ireland and round about the end of July, I noticed that the new season had started at the theatre; they published the cast in the newspaper and I wasn't mentioned.

So that was that; I thought I should have accepted the £30 per week.

I also noticed that a guy my age was also in the company so I got to thinking.

Mmnnn!

Eventually I got call to meet them 'in the pub' one of the lunchtimes; I went along and it doesn't take a great deal of skill to notice which ones the actors are in a pub!

I could see the guy of my age and when I was within earshot, although he didn't think I was, he said to the woman he was sitting with 'now we know.' 'yes now we know' she said.

It was quite obvious to me that he thought he was going to play Danny – or Dan as it appears in the cast list; in fact he told me this when I met him on a train about 10 years later.

After this I went to the library and borrowed the play – there were lines upon lines upon speeches on nearly every page and I thought this is going to be hard work.

We gathered on the stage for the first 'read thru' on chairs and one or two people wanted to sit by me – it was quite obvious because one said to another 'I wanted to sit by him' and 'I saw him first!'

So at least two members of the company, including the fella from the pub, thought I had a problem with my hearing.

When we broke for coffee an old grand actor, wearing a black Crombie overcoat came in to the green room to say hello and wanted to know why everybody else had a script except me as I was still using my library book.

'It was different in my day' he said in his wonderful baritone voice 'we would always give the leading actor the script first.'

Of course I remember that after all these years; who wouldn't?

There were indeed a load of lines and I had two weeks to learn them; half way through rehearsals a notice went on the notice board with the cast of the next play; another lead role this time in Alan Ayckbourn's Time and Time Again.

This went on for a further eleven months, apart from a break to do five episodes of General Hospital for ATV and it was wonderful. Going to the notice boards to see what the next play was and what you would be playing is the most wonderful thing for an actor.

But the first night of the play came; I started the play wearing a messenger boy's outfit that a hotel messenger would wear complete with the pill box hat.

The stage direction was that I was to enter smoking a Woodbine cigarette and when I came on to the well to do drawing room of an old lady I flicked ash on the carpet which got a huge laugh – so I was in.

The other thing I wore was a kind of short jacket and a bow tie. I think I had the idea, being a little charmer, that he should be like a ventriloquist's dummy.

The play was set in the 30s.

My pal came to see the first night and was with me back stage before I went on; I remember him saying 'aren't you nervous?' because I didn't look it but I knew I had it all; not in an overconfident way, as I was wary of that, but everybody else slowly left the backstage area. My pal first as he had to go to his seat, and then, one by one the rest of the cast.

The cards were there in their silence, their make up tins laye bare with their good luck charms and paraphernalia and eventually I was ready.

So I stood up and went in front of the full length looking glass in the dressing room and looked very closely in to my eyes and everything came to me; I knew it was a full-house which was just under 600 and, like Anne-Marie Duff, I could see the determination in my eyes as I strode up there to be a Guitar God!

Good Night again.

I quite like this post. For some reason a lot of people have looked at this recently. One requested I put it up again - I wrote it Christmas 2013 so not that long ago; it intrigues me that they are still being read.

For a little while – well quite some time to be honest – when I first went to America I had never actually been in to anybody's house. Never crossed the portal which separated their public and private lives. I had seen inside their houses many times through the magical world of the movies but that was fiction.

Sometimes I would sit and look at a family sitting at an airport or restaurant and try to listen in to their conversations to see if they would somehow drop the American accents and call each other mate. When the great Australian writer (and broadcaster) Clive James first came to Britain he would think the same about the English accents but he was listening to received pronunciation (RP) like Stephen Fry or John Cleese and I was expecting the more common type like Liverpool, London or even oo ah rural. But that wasn't the only thing I listened for; I couldn't believe that they actually said 'have a nice day' or 'have a good one' or even called each other honey or hun!

I would look at their clothes at the airports and wonder if the men were dressed for golf or travel as their clothing seemed strange; all the naff things from Britain seemed to be acceptable in America: baseball hats and white socks, for example.

I used to love the 1950s movies where white socks were worn – Martin and Lewis films; Superman, White Christmas etc. I longed for those fashions when I went to America and in Los Angeles I found them. I loved the 1950s look of LA, the Superman buildings downtown, the 1950s architecture and the fantastic winged motor cars on their never ending freeways but do you know what I never heard? The phrase 'good night.'

Straight away I'm going to be called a romancer or someone having problems with the truth as I did hear it from time to time, but when I stayed at various people's houses I didn't hear it at all.

I was listening to David Sedaris on the radio last night, who was talking about his family and it reminded me of this phenomenon; he said 'my family never said good night; they just disappeared.'

That's what I mean; David Sedaris lives this side of the Atlantic now and has probably noticed that over here people have the manners to excuse themselves when leaving a room and if they're not coming back it would be 'good night' or 'goodbye.'

When I stayed with people over there, or even lived with them when I first got there, I would notice that when it was bed time, they would just disappear; never a good night, kiss my arse or nothing.

One time I was watching TV with the landlady, when I first arrived and I went to the loo. I was out of the room less than three minutes and not only did she not say good night, she turned the TV off and left the room in darkness; not thinking that I might want to finish watching the programme or even moving my stuff from the chair I had been sitting on.

Sometimes she would disappear for weeks – never saying where she was going or even when she would be back; not that it was my business but you know what I mean.

That was when I first went to America; for the first eighteen months I was by myself; living in a shared house at first and then in an apartment by myself. I had gone from evenings of my children kissing me good night to me having to kiss my own arse for company and in this season of good cheer let me be one of the many people to wish you good night and if I'm the only one, you'll have to do what I did – kiss your own arse goodnight.

Which reminds me of a few lyrical lines from the days when everybody expected to be blown up by a nuclear bomb:

So when the nukes come raining down
It's great to be alive, well
World War Three can be such fun
If you protect and survive
Protect and survive

For they give us a four-minute warning
When the rockets are on their way
To give us time to panic and Christians time to pray
So when you hear the siren's going
Place your head between your thighs
Whilst maintaining this posture
You can make a final gesture
And with a little muscular pressure
You can kiss your arse goodbye

Roger Bannister

Look at that picture above; that is the great Roger Bannister whose death was announced today. He was my greatest hero and the feat he did all those years ago was deemed impossible before he did it. I remember it as if it were yesterday.

I always thought that it was live but found out later that it was on film. The news would come on the TV at 7.15 and the lead story was the race – all four laps. I went out and played being Roger Bannister for the next 60 years.

I met him a couple of years ago and told him and he said 'you played me?' He thought it was in a play.

This is a blog I wrote not long after I met him; by the time you read it he would be a mile away.

This may seem familiar to you but it should become clear. I wrote it as a post about heroes and Memorial Day in America but I just stole some of it from that post, maybe corrected (edited it) added some more thoughts and then got to the reason I used it again – see what you think:

Roger Bannister broke the 4 minute mile barrier in May 1954; I was a little boy watching my friend nearly drown at Moseley Road Swimming Baths and finding out that another friend had died by drowning in one of Birmingham's infamous canals.

I lost a lot of time at school as I suffered from conjunctivitis which developed into ulcers; I remember seeing the horrible white things on the blue of my eyes and I was told that this was because I rubbed them so much but I couldn't help it; the pain and the itching added to my problems facing the light and water would consistently run from my eyes.

That was really the end of my education as I failed the eleven plus - but that's only an excuse as I can clearly remember sitting the examination and looking out of the high windows at school and handing in a blank sheet of paper.

One day the news came on the TV, reporting the first sub 4 minute mile; the race came on and there were only 3 runners in the race that we could see; the other 3 were invisible.

Christopher Brasher was ahead with Bannister just behind, up to about half a mile, and then Chris Chataway took the lead with Bannister close by up to half way around the final lap and then on the final lap Bannister took the lead and made history; to a ten year old boy this was like an orgasm.

Later in the year was the 'Bannister/Landy Miracle mile' and that was the best mile race I have ever seen – do yourself a favour and look for both races on YouTube.

John Landy of New Zealand had broken the world record for the mile and then the two of them met in the Empire Games. Have a look - it will bring a tear to your eye and a lump to your throat.

Because of my eye trouble, I had to go a place called Burcot Grange; this was, and still is, a very large house in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire. It is a Victorian building and was donated to the Birmingham Eye Hospital by its owners to give prolonged treatment to children suffering from inflammatory conditions of the eye associated with the 'harsh city life.'

It was also a place where squint operations were performed and a lot of the other children had eyes removed because of inoperable eye injuries. Some of those children would take the patch from their removed eye socket and look in to a looking glass for their lost eye. 

One said to me that he could clearly see his missing eye 'in the corner' he said 'can you see it?' - of course I couldn't but I said I could. He had been the victim of a stray dart thrown at him in the vicinity of the renowned Birmingham inner city monstrosity called Saint Martin's Flats.

It was at Burcot Grange that I was introduced to elevenses which was a snack at eleven-o-clock; maybe a biscuit and some orange cordial.

It was like being let loose as there were 5 acres of open grounds; we played cowboys and Indians with real hills, real valleys and real big bushes to hide behind.

The other thing I did was run; I ran and ran every day just like Tom Courtney in The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner; I was going to be a Roger Bannister and I ran around those acres every day.

My mother came to see me every week, with a tear in her eye, and encouraging one in my own infected ones; I cried when she left and then forgot about her for a while when I ran.

One of the nurses was my girl friend; she was nurse Hollingshead and maybe 15 years older than me. She was very kind and wrote to the little boy that was me for quite some time after I left; I was presented with a book by Enid Blyton called, Round the Year. It was a nature book and they wrote in the inside cover to Christopher with lots of love from Burcot Grange. I still have the book which is at my daughter's in Suffolk.

As we sat there in the sun the nurses would 'time' me as I ran around the grounds. I could complete the course in about three minutes; one day one of the nurses, who had timed me, called another nurse and said 'Hey! Is it the four minute mile or the four mile minute.'

I can just imagine the four mile minute!! - 240 mph!!!!

When I eventually returned home I would run around the block and I managed to get a sucker to beat every day. His name was Roger and he looked more like Roger Bannister than I did; I would let him run ahead of me so I could run passed him along the back straight which ended just by the lane where we lived at South View Terrace on Moseley Road.

We would do the Bannister/Landy race which meant he had to look over his shoulder as I overtook him round the other shoulder; when I approached each day I would shout 'now' to make him look one way as I overtook him. Each day the race would take twenty minutes as I would time it from the public clock outside Clements the chemists; maybe more than a mile, I reckon.

That's why Roger Bannister has always been my hero; he ran for many years after that to keep fit although he retired from competitive racing early after the 'Golden Mile' to continue his studies as a doctor; he worked at Northwick Park Hospital as a neurologist and later as Director of the National Hospital for Nervous Diseases in London and a trustee-delegate of St. Mary's Hospital Medical School in Paddington.

A few years ago I bought his book called The Four Minute Mile, of course, and just as I was coming up to the Golden mile on page 224 I found the page was blank. The next page was there and from there till the end of the book many pages were missing.

I called Amazon, where I had bought it, and they referred me to the publishers, The Lyons Press, and when I called them they hung up on me.

A few years ago, I wrote an article about Harold Pinter, which was published by the magazine The Oldie and since then they have sent monthly invitations to their Literary Lunches. When I came back from America I decided to go to some of them and this month one of the guest speakers was none other than Roger Bannister.

I sorted my Bannister book out, the one with the missing pages, and arrived at Simpson's in The Strand with ample time before the lunch.

Sir Roger, for that is what he is now, sat behind a table and I was the first one to take a copy of his new book for him to sign. I asked him to make it out to 'Chris' – which he did – and then I told him that I used to play 'Roger Bannister'- “You played me?” he said, as if I'd played him as an actor and I said “No. I would run around our block pretending to be you.”

“When I first started” he said “I would run around the streets and people would shout at me 'Who do you think you are, Sydney Wooderson?' Later, many years after I had retired from running they'd shout 'Who do you think you are, Roger Bannister?”

We both laughed and I found him very tactile, tapping my hand and laughing – then I showed him the book with the missing pages - “I couldn't help that” he said “must have been published by the Australians.”

He signed my book in the missing pages saying 'sorry about this' and when he got up to speak, later, he paid tribute to his wife to whom he had been married for 60 years; he said she didn't know anything about sport, before he met her, and thought he had run four miles in a minute!!

Woody Allen

I said yesterday that I would write about Woody Allen tomorrow and as tomorrow is today I'll write it today instead of tomorrow.

I always loved Woody Allen films for as long as I remember but I remember seeing Manhattan in Northampton for the first time. 

We moved there in the 70s and I was in 13 plays (I think) at the local theatre – the Royal.

We stayed on after I had finished the season and reared our three children there.

I did an 'A' level in Film Studies at the college there which, I think, is now a university – I hate the term 'uni' – the same as the drama school I went to in Birmingham is now a university. So I have two university alma martas!!

Northampton a small town maybe of 100,000 and is one hour up the M1 from London which is why we moved there. 

One hour by car or one hour by train but everyone knows what that really means: twenty minutes walk in to the station and then maybe half an hour or so to the destination where you are working. Nine times out of ten it would be the BBC which is around half an hour away by tube. So the travelling puts four hours on the work day.

So I was surprised to see Manhattan playing at the town centre cinema. When I got there I could see a queue stretching around the block; it was a duplex cinema and the other film was Scum which was about a borstal – a prison for the young. 

I guessed that that was what the queue was for but I was wrong; it was for the Woody Allen film.

I'll always remember the first time I saw it as it not only blew my mind it kind of blew me out of my seat. It was a Saturday screening and if it hadn't have been the final time the movie was playing I would have come again the following evening.

I kind of remember some of the lines; it opens with a shot of Manhattan with the opening bars on the clarinet of George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue!

There is a narration by Woody and he is playing a writer writing a book so the first line is 'Chapter One.'

He starts a few times then goes back to chapter one and one of the lines is New York was always a city, no matter what the season, in black and white.

And that says it all.

That film is about, apart from the city, a romance between a character played by Woody and a young nubile school girl – I don't know what age she is supposed to be but it can be seen straight away that he is too old for her but, more to the point, she is too young for him. The actress who played her was 18 at the time.

When I say she was too young for him I mean – well what are you going to talk about?

That part of the action I found hard to believe but Woody wanted to make a film about the city that he loved. At the time, in real life, to use a silly phrase, Woody was dating some of the most beautiful women in the world.

These women were not after his power, or his money as they were rich movie stars. Diane Keaton for one was one of them and when we grow up we realise that women don't only go for people like Robert Redford they also go for angst intellectuals like Woody Allen, Albert Einstein etc.

Back to real life again – about twenty years ago Woody Allen married a Korean girl who was Andre Previn's daughter; his adoptive daughter when he was married to Mia Farrow. Woody was 64 and his new wife was 27 at the time.

When Woody was Mia Farrow's lover he met her adoptive daugher and they fell in love. This was something that upset Mia and Andre Previn the adoptive parents as it was like Déjà vu because when Mia was married to Frank Sinatra he was 25 years older than she was at the time and her step children were older than her – Frank Sinatra Jr etc.

So she didn't see any good in Woody and her step daughter, and accused Woody of a sexual offence against one of her daughters.

It was investigated at the time and nothing was proved and in fact another of Mia's children, a boy, said he was in the house at the time of the alleged incident and didn't believe it - and so on . . . .

But:

He has not been convicted of anything and a couple of actors have sent the fees they received from the Woody Allen films they was in to charity because of the alleged offence. 

An alleged offence that happened many years before Colin Firth worked for Woody.

I sometimes get fed up with the writings of Hadley Freeman who seems to have gone to town writing about bad men since the flood of accusations against powerful men, recently, but she, at least, kind of pointed out that Woody Allen hasn't been convicted of anything. 

And not only that but the fact that Manhattan was about an older man and a young girl shouldn't have anything to do with that old phrase – real life!

I mean look at the photo above - it's still a movie.

When I saw Manhattan that time in Northampton I kind of wished it had been someone like Robert Redford in the Woody Allen role – or even me, in my dreams, because it's a great love story.

Here is the opening – love it and be prepared to have your mind blown on two minutes - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mwZYGcbQCo

Acting

If someone was to ask me what my favourite film was I would probably give a different answer each time. Sometimes it might be Annie Hall and other times The Godfather – any of them. I loved Coppola's other films too as well as the Godfather trilogy particularly The Conversation with one of the best actors who ever uttered a word; Gene Hackman.

Another time the favourite film might be Manhattan – the pattern you can see here are films either by Francis Ford Coppola or Woody Allen but there is another director I really like and he is Martin Scorsese – oh don't forget David Lynch and . . . well you know what I mean!

Martin Scorsese wanted to be a priest when he was growing up but he was fascinated by film and as he was raised in Little Italy he was very heavily influenced in his art by the mafia, gangsters, the wise guys, the mob.

When you're an artist you are influenced by your surroundings and that's how you express yourself.

When I lived in America actors would always talk about the work, the craft! 

You see work to me is digging a ditch and craft is something you do the same all the time. 

Making a box; making a pair of trousers; pottery (although they may call that art).

My point is that art is something you either create, not knowing how it will turn out, or intemperate – like acting.

A great deal of the acting in America, where they call it a craft, is an art, and the acting in Britain, where they call it an art, is a craft.

When I first had an audition in America I learned the lines, worked really hard, and when I entered the room there was the director sitting by himself with a film camera. I was with him for about 20-30 minutes. I knew the lines, knew how I wanted to do it, and got on with it.

He said I needed to get away from the script – I had learned it too much.

I know what he meant now.

Spontaneity!

It didn't look as if I was saying the words for the first time.

I remember asking him about my accent and he was the one who said the magic line to me put 2 English actors together and the first thing they talk about is an accent.

And he was right!

In my time there I saw many other American actors in their auditions saying their lines as if for the first time even when reading. Over here we decide what voice we need to use; what accent.

Over there it is their own voice and however they speak.

If you put the radio on here and listen to Front Row, for instance, and they are interviewing a well known British star, you can tell straight away whether you are listening to them being interviewed or whether they are playing a clip from their movie. 

In other words you can tell when they are acting.

So to all the people who have worked with me over the years!

That's why I don't learn my lines.

I'm kidding, of course, but it's something we have to think about all the time – even at this lofty age.

There's more to the difference between Americans and the British than the way schedule is pronounced or whether it's sled of sledge.

I was going to talk about Woody Allen but I'll do that tomorrow.

The Busby Babes; Big Duncan is gone.

You may have noticed, whilst perusing these random thoughts from time to time, that the football team I follow – or support – is Aston Villa. Other Villa fans include King Billy and Tom Hanks. Tom Hanks gave someone his autograph once and the guy shouted after Tom 'what are you thanking me for?'

Think about it!

King Billy, of course, is Prince William who can be seen sitting in the stands, when he is around, by himself.

I would see them every time they played at home, when I was a lad, and, in fact, I nearly played there – I was the solo drummer in the army cadets band.

I can't really remember too much about any of the football matches or incidents, apart from Stan Lynn missing a penalty (but he scored from the rebound) and the visit of the Busby Babes – Manchester United.

Yesterday was the 60^th anniversary of the Munich air disaster when half of the football team, together with others, were killed on their way back from a cup match in Munich. The aircraft tried three times to take off in the snow and crashed on the third attempt.

One of their most famous players, and a genius if you can call a footballer a genius, was Duncan Edwards; he died a few days after the crash at the age of 21.

On the day United played Villa, I remember one of the United players skied a ball and I was standing next to the great man on the pitch; the ball seemed a long way from him and for a short time I thought it was going to hit me – but he stretched out his muscular leg and trapped it dead.

I wasn't playing, of course; I was just a little lad who had invaded the football field when the players came on; we would do this at every match and we were usually ushered off.

Eventually because of the reaction of the authorities – and most stadiums – this turned in to football hooliganism.

I don't remember what happened in that game but I can still see Duncan Edwards standing near me as they warmed up and I can remember his very muscular legs and thinking I wouldn't like to get a kick from one of those!!

There are still 2 survivors of that crash: Bobby Charlton, a real hero to football fans the world over and, I think, Harry Gregg. The Irish goalkeeper, apparently, was a hero at the crash. I saw him play in the 1970s in a little charity game in Shropshire – still fit.

Over the weekend, the crowd stopped and gave silence to remember the event and the players with lots of people there who had helped line the streets of Manchester when the coffins were returned to the city late one rainy February night.

A little lonely man of about 85 stood in the crowd and that was Bobby Charlton who came out of the crash unscathed – physically. You could see on the TV the torture in his face – the shave cuts prominent. 

He is reported to have said that he heard the news of Duncan Edwards death from Duncan's mother: 'Big Duncan is gone' she said.