All Balls and Glitter (17 page)

Of course, the best cure for heartbreak is to achieve dazzling success. I threw myself headlong into the process of establishing my UK career. Visiting London all those years before had been so inspiring that I had my sights firmly set on the West End. I knew I wanted to work in the theatre and that I wanted to be someone. This was another piece of the puzzle that I had to decipher.

In the meantime, I was realistic enough to know that I had to get a job. I’d never waited on tables before, but I went to work in a restaurant called China Joe’s in the Trocadero Centre, Piccadilly Circus. It had just opened so they were offering two weeks’ training as a tray-and-trestle waiter. It was useful experience, although I had to work for nothing while I learned the trade.

At night, I worked the tables. During the day, I wandered around the West End, looking at all these amazing shows. It was truly a land of opportunity for an unknown actor, singer and dancer.

As the new boy in town, I didn’t have an agent, so I tried to organize my own auditions. I heard on the grapevine that there were try-outs at the Prince Edward Theatre for
Anything Goes
, the musical based on Cole Porter’s wonderful songs. I marched down to the theatre and handed in a CV and photo at the stage door. The doorman kindly passed them on … and I was invited inside to audition.

When I’d finished, they asked me to learn the songs and come back. Unbelievably, I got down to the finals for one of the leading roles. I remember thinking, ‘I’m
so
staying in this country!’ I’d just waltzed in and managed to get a shot at stardom.

Unfortunately, the part went to a good-looking young actor called John Barrowman. I wonder where he is now?

Although I was disappointed at missing out on the role, the audition secured me an agent, which was a real breakthrough. I was asked to go to an agency called Talent Artists, where I met Jane Wynn Owen. While I sat in her office, being interviewed, a phone call came through from Hubbard Casting to say they were looking for a young Australian to play the lead role in a soap, so she said, ‘I have just the chap.’ She sent me off to Hubbard Casting and I ended up having five sessions with them.

Strangely, the character was a performer in
Cats
. It was perfect for me because I had to dance for the audition as well as act.

The soap was to be filmed in Germany, and though I got the job at this end, when Hubbard sent the tape of my screen test to the Germans, they said they wanted someone who looked ‘more Australian’. They were looking for a blond, Aussie surfer type, not a bloke with my dark-haired, Latino appearance.

After the excitement of supposedly bagging the role, it was a horrible disappointment, though as it turned out, the soap was never made. Luckily, Jane was impressed enough to take me on and she became my first agent.

Actually, that was the second time I almost became a soap star. Back in Australia, I had landed a role in
Home and Away
that I
never got to play. I’d just finished
Starkers
, in which I’d performed my first real acting role, with no singing, and had enjoyed it so much that I’d decided acting was the way to go. So, I started auditioning for things like
Neighbours
and
Home and Away.

Finally, after loads of try-outs, I was offered an eight-week walk-on part in Summer Bay, just as I was going overseas. I had every intention of coming home from Paris to film it, but in the end I stayed and completed the contract at the Lido.

Appearing in a soap could have altered my life irrevocably – and not for the better in my opinion. My career path has been a slow, steady rise, with each job preparing me for the next one and becoming progressively more interesting.

Mind you, if I’d been an Aussie soap star, I might have been a contestant on
Strictly Come Dancing
or
Dancing with the Stars
, rather than one of the judges!

I waited on tables for only a month before I secured a part in the UK tour of
The
Danny La Rue Show
. I was familiar with the production, of course, having completed that six-month stint with Danny in Australia and New Zealand several years before. Since then, I’d put on lots of muscle weight because I’d worked out for the Lido show; my self-consciousness about performing in a G-string every night had meant I’d gone to the gym religiously. I’d also grown up a lot – I hadn’t really been much more than a boy on the previous tour. As soon as Danny saw me, he said, ‘Oh Craig, I remember you from Australia and New Zealand. You’ve put on a bit of muscle.’ Then he said, ‘You don’t need to audition, love. You’ve got the job.’

Clutching my first UK contract in my sweaty little hand, I made my way to the offices of Equity, the actors’ union, to register Craig Horwood as a fully-fledged member of the show-business community. This was a moment I’d been waiting for my whole career.

Imagine my horror when I was told that I couldn’t use my own name. There was another Craig Horwood already on their
books and the rules of Equity are like
Highlander
: there can be only one. After the faff of becoming Trent Horwood the hairdresser and Craig Stevens the fitness instructor, it transpired that I couldn’t be Craig Horwood the performer after all. Having protected my name for so long and so assiduously, I was mightily pissed off, but there was nothing I could do about it.

I had to decide, quickly, how I would be known in the trade. I considered using Revel Lancaster instead, employing my mother’s maiden name as it sounded starry (or so I thought). But in the end, ‘Craig Revel Horwood’ got the slot. I was a bit worried that it might be too long, but in fact it turned out to be better and much more interesting than any made-up name.

The UK tour of
The Danny La Rue Show
was a shock to me. When you go on the road in Australia, the hotels are supplied, the transport is sorted and you are totally looked after (notwithstanding those occasions when you find yourself washing off your make-up in a horse trough). In the UK, they take you to the centre of each city in a bus, and then you have to go and find your own accommodation in some lowly guest house. I spent many an afternoon walking around looking for a bed for the night.

To this day, that still happens here, which is awful. Chorus dancers are not paid much to start with, so it’s hard on them to have to find cheap digs everywhere they go.

Touring always throws up some interesting experiences, though, wherever you are. One of the landladies I stayed with in Australia, for example, was a total drunk who kept trying to kiss me. She was about eighty, and she used to put on her make-up like Bette Davis in
What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?
She was permanently slaughtered and one night she attacked me, desperately trying to snog my face off. She ended up chasing me around the room, jumping over furniture like a woman half her age. I was staying with her for a fortnight, so it made for a rather hairy two weeks!

It was somewhat poetic that Danny was the first to offer me a job when I got to London. He and I always got on very well. As
I’ve mentioned, it was he who originally named me Lavish. He gave me that title because I often used to borrow his personal hairdryer, which he thought was funny. I was never nervous of him at all, possibly because of the stage-fright incident on the Australian tour and the way he handled it. It’s amazing that he ever hired me again, but he was very understanding and probably got me over it, to be honest, because he was able to help me out of the situation by making a joke. He was very quick and witty, and had enviable ad-libbing skills.

We had a riot on tour. That whole company loved their drink. We would have gin and tonics lined up in the wings and there was always champagne on the tour bus. Danny had the front of the bus and at eleven o’clock in the morning, the champagne cork used to pop. We were all sitting at the back and we’d hear the telltale sound and say, ‘Oh, he’s started!’ But he was nice with it. I’d suddenly hear him shout, ‘Lavish, come and look at the scenery with me.’ So I’d go up to join him and he’d explain the British countryside to me.

With all that booze, he did put on a bit of weight. One night, his Dolly Parton costume gave up the ghost and ripped from top to bottom. As one of the boys in the chorus, I stood behind him for most of the show while he took centre stage. The whole of the back of the outfit was open; they couldn’t zip it up. We carried on regardless, but it was quite a sight to behold, as we struggled to keep a straight face mid performance.

In theatre, it never rains but it pours. As soon as I started working on
The Danny La Rue Show
, I was offered a part in the UK tour of
Cats
, for which I’d auditioned before I’d landed Danny’s gig. It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for me and I simply had to do it. So, as it turned out, I toured with Danny for only one month.

He was not pleased about me cutting short my contract. It really upset the applecart. With barely any notice, it’s difficult to find a 6-foot-2 performer who can sing, dance, act and do all the things
that the show required, and keep the standard high. It also had to be someone who fitted the costume. You’re not easily replaceable in a production like that.

In the end, I found someone myself, taught them the routines in my living room, and then paid their first week’s wages, just so I could get out and take the next step in my career.

Despite his disappointment, Danny understood what a fantastic break it was. I was booked in the swing position, meaning that I was understudy for everyone. It was a huge challenge because I had to learn eleven different parts, but I was ready to take on the world at that point. As a bonus, of course, it was
Cats
, which was one of the first professional shows I’d ever seen. I’d thought since then that it was a phenomenal musical. I couldn’t wait to get going.

The tour opened at Blackpool’s Winter Gardens Theatre in May 1989 and, after six months there, transferred to Edinburgh and to Dublin. I was earning £220 a week, before tax and agent’s fees. The salary you receive when you’re starting out really is horrendous. By the time you’ve paid for rent, electricity, travel and other essentials, there’s not a lot left. For that, I was doing eight shows a week and working my arse off.

Blackpool was the first place where I’d had to put money in a meter for electricity, which I thought was the weirdest thing I’d ever seen. The digs were terrible, but that’s all we could afford on our low pay. Sometimes finding 50p for the meter was tough enough. But I was doing something I loved and I have always respected that, whatever financial recompense I’ve received.

During the tour, I very nearly succumbed to that old demon stage fright. I felt the familiar panic and went blank, but when I tried to speak, the words came out. I was playing Munkustrap one night, who starts the show by climbing out of a boot, moving in a feline way to centre stage and singing T. S. Eliot’s wonderful line: ‘Are you blind when you’re born?’ In this one particular performance, midway through the first act, I was climbing up to
the top of the boot and I knew I had to deliver the famous ‘twelve lines’ in ‘The Invitation to the Jellicle Ball’, so I took a deep breath in … and I had nothing in my head. The chords that introduced my part finished. I opened my mouth – and, luckily, the words materialized. They came from muscle memory. I couldn’t think of the lines at all. I was praying, ‘Please don’t let this happen to me again,’ and thank God, it didn’t.

A new job inevitably brought new romance. I fell madly in love with Mr Hull, an acrobatic dancer who was about half my size, and we enjoyed a luscious liaison. In Dublin, we were all staying at a place called Donnybrook Manor, which was a bizarre estate of rental homes in the middle of nowhere. They put us into two-bedroom apartments and I was sharing with Mr Hull and a girl, Nads, who coincidentally had been on the Learjet modelling gig with me when I was seventeen.

After the run ended, we all got on the plane back to London. I’d assumed that Mr Hull and I were going to set up home and live happily ever after. At the airport, we collected our bags and I said, ‘Are you coming with me?’

‘No,’ said Mr Hull. ‘I’m going with Michelle. I’ll call you tonight.’

That was the last I saw of him for six months.

I kept calling him without success, I tried to contact his parents and I rang everyone I could think of, but he had simply disappeared off the face of the earth. I was devastated and actually quite worried, because I thought something awful might have happened to him.

Six months later, I randomly bumped into him outside a theatre in London.

‘What happened?’ I asked.

‘Nothing happened,’ he shrugged.

I discovered, much later, that he’d been in America with another boyfriend, but I was totally ignorant of this when I was trying to track him down.

He clearly had no idea how much the relationship had meant to me, and didn’t seem to think he’d done anything to warrant an explanation. We went for a pint, but I never really got to the bottom of it.

Though romantically the
Cats
tour proved a bit of a damp squib, professionally it was a huge success, which put me in good stead with the iconic Cameron Mackintosh, the show’s producer. That was the beginning of my long, yet not always harmonious, relationship with the West End’s most powerful mogul.

While I was still in Dublin, an audition came up for
Les Misérables
in London, so I flew back to take a shot at it. My whole life I’d wanted to be in
Les Mis
. I hadn’t been able to land a part in Australia, despite a brave attempt. Mind you, they wouldn’t give me a job in
Cats
in Australia either. My old friend Gerard Symonds and I were both flown down from Sydney to Melbourne to audition, in direct competition with one another; he got the job and I didn’t.

The director of the London production of
Les Mis
, Ken Caswell, called me back so many times that I was supremely confident the plum part of Enjolras, leader of the revolutionary students, was mine. Unfortunately, when the
Cats
tour finished, I discovered that I hadn’t been successful.