Biggins (13 page)

But, oh, was it worth it! To see the warriors in situ, all different, all ancient, all seeming to come towards you, is mesmerising. At the end of our trip we checked into the Peace Hotel in Shanghai – the place where Noel Coward wrote
Private Lives
. The wall lights are Lalique glass and a 1920s jazz band plays in the basement cocktail bar, where I swear we saw bats fly around. It was like being on a black-and-white movie set. It was the last word in bygone glamour, sophistication and class. And what did I do? I’d lost a couple of stone, so I ordered the one thing I had been craving for the past ten days. A hamburger. Shame on me.

When the holiday was over, theatre saved my sanity, if not my finances. Theatre on tour across the country, theatre outdoors in London and theatre under the hot sun of the Caribbean. I did more plays in the years after
Surprise Surprise
than I care to remember. I performed in front of the Queen and alongside some of the country’s very
biggest stars. I started directing. And while I earned far less than I spent I loved every last moment of it.

The good times began in
Lady Windermere’s Fan
with the first fabulous Liza in my life, Liza Goddard. We were a great company. Also in the cast was the grand old lady of comedy, Fenella Fielding. Fenella is the most divinely eccentric woman you could ever meet, all the more so because she simply couldn’t see it herself. Everyone knew she wore a wig, but woe betide anyone who acknowledged it. If she was in a period drama where she had to actually wear a wig she would insist on having it on top of her own wig, as she did in
Lady Windermere
. And you didn’t even think of trying to get into her dressing room when she wasn’t ready to be seen. I found this out to my cost when I went to speak to her one day. ‘Who is it?’ that deliciously husky
Carry On
voice crept out from under the door.

‘It’s Biggins.’

‘Wait a moment. Come.’

She had a huge napkin thing over her head. She was doing her make-up underneath it. I spent 20 bizarre minutes gossiping with a woman who was covered in a cloth. Later, I found out that Fenella wasn’t only putting make-up on her face. She had shaded in her costumes with make-up so she would look slimmer from the back of the stalls. Bill Kenwright, who had spent a fortune on the costumes, had a far larger than expected dry-cleaning bill that season.

Later that year, our producers had other big cleaning bills to pay after even more eccentric behaviour by an equally marvellous old dear. I was in panto at the Theatre Royal in Brighton, playing alongside Irene Handl. Irene
was deliciously off the wall. She had a little dog with her and would often bring it on stage during a performance without explanation and with no warning at all. Worse, as she got going with her scene, she would often tire of the dog and hand it to someone else. That someone always seemed to be me. And as if holding a dog wasn’t enough to put you off your stride, this was surely the most incontinent dog in the world. I normally left the stage with big wet patches spreading down my costume.

But dear Irene neither noticed nor cared.

‘Sit down, Christopher darling,’ she would say when I popped into her dressing room for a gossip. But I couldn’t. I knew from bitter experience that the only chair in her room would always be soaked with dog pee.

Pantos have always kept me working every winter. But what of the summers? In the first few post-
Surprise Surprise
years, I was having too much fun to worry about work. Cilla’s then agent, John Ashby, had introduced me to a marvellous couple at a party. There was the fashion queen Jeanne Mandry, with whom I fell in love that first moment. We exchanged numbers and I think we spoke on the phone two or three times the next day. We spoke on the phone two or three times the following day as well. And I think we’ve done so every day since. Not bad as our friendship enters its third decade.

At Jeanne’s side that first night was her marvellous partner, Arnold Crook, who runs the Theatre Royal Haymarket and, gloriously enough, gets to sign his cheques ‘A. Crook’. They rented a house in the hills in the South of France and I spent a very happy summer with
them there. One year, while Jeanne whizzed us round the narrow lanes in her Bentley, I was feeling like a matchmaker again. ‘You make the best couple I know,’ I shouted out. ‘Why don’t you just get married and have done with it?’

‘Married? Married?’ Jeanne exclaimed. ‘Arnold’s not nearly rich enough.’

And you know what? Some 20 years later they’re still not married, but they’re still as much in love as ever.

If I wasn’t in the South of France in the summer I did fortunately have a career option at home. Years earlier the very talented David Conville had offered me the chance to start acting and directing at the glorious outdoor theatre in London’s Regent’s Park.

David had taken charge of the seasons there back in the 1960s. And when I was first in London he had seen my lunchtime production of Jean Anouilh’s
The Orchestra
– a production which I think is worthy of a mention in its own right, not least because I’m hoping to film it one day if anyone will put up the cash. This was the first show I had ever directed and it had been a challenge from the start. The first issue was the venue. We staged it in the Maximus disco in Leicester Square. The London Palladium it was not.

Next there was the financing. We had almost no cash, so I asked around and raised the production money from a huge circle of friends. Many of the old faces from Salisbury and Bristol helped fund the show, including Jeremy Irons, Anthony and Georgina Andrews, Cameron Mackintosh, Veronica Flint-Shipman, Queen’s manager Jim Beach, John Caird and Ruth Tester Brown. Even my
dear mum and dad chipped in – they were probably glad to give money upfront rather than simply see half their furniture end up on stage like the old days. The whole production was a team effort. Old pals Michael and Felicity Scholes drew up our poster and Jonathan Cecil, Annabel Leventon, Gillian Morgan and Marcia Warren were all among my cast.

My good fortune was that directing came naturally to me. I like to think it’s because I started in theatre at the ground floor. I know what happens at every level of the organisation. I know what can and can’t be done. And I love bringing out the best in people.

My dear friend Thelma Barlow had been in the first production of
The Orchestra
I’d seen, back in Bristol. It is an absolutely lovely play. The ladies – and one man playing the piano – are in a palm court orchestra and between the music they talk, gossip and bitch. John Asquith, who at that time lived above me in the Phoenix Theatre, taught the cast how to mime on their instruments and everyone loved it. David Conville saw one of the sell-out performances, and in the late 1970s, when I was very much at a loose end, he said to me, ‘Come and direct for me. You’ll have a fantastic company and a much better stage than that bizarre old disco.’

But while he was right about the company he wasn’t telling the whole truth about the stage. The Open Air Theatre in Regent’s Park is one of the great joys of an English summer, but from the company’s point of view it can take some getting used to. I maintain that if you can play Regent’s Park you can play anything, anywhere in the world.

It has the most wonderful gem of a location, tucked away within the inner circle of that beautiful royal park. But it also offers every hazard known to an actor. Flocks of birds fly overhead, or land in front of you. Ducks waddle across the stage. At matinees tourists sometimes seem to miss the fact that the ordinary rules of theatre still apply. So they will send children on to the stage for photos in the middle of the action.

As an actor there you have to learn plenty of other survival techniques. My top tip is, whatever your director says, never agree to sit or lie down if you can possibly help it. The British weather means you’ll spend most of your season moist, at best. And if your costume is heavy when it’s dry it will weigh an extra ton or so once it’s soaked up a lot of ground water.

Fast moves are also a problem – when you are as heavy as me a slip can send you skating across the stage and right down in the mud. However hot the summer, there always seems to be mud in Regent’s Park. A bit like being in the jungle, as it would turn out. And how I loved the challenge of working there.

In my first season I was asked to direct
The Dark Lady of the Sonnets
by George Bernard Shaw. It’s a playlet about Shakespeare meeting Elizabeth I that worked beautifully outdoors. The following year David directed me in
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
– a fixture on each year’s production list. I was cast as Puck, which was a pretty brave decision, because I’m not exactly a small man. But I was bloody good at it, though I say so myself.

Fortunately I was helped by some great colleagues. The
marvellous Kate O’Mara was my Titania, wearing a costume that enhanced her already magnificent tits with Madonna-style metal cones. I faced some other hazards. That year we had gone for imaginary fairies rather than the real thing. So instead of talking to fellow actors I spoke to some very cleverly done little lights. They appeared on the top of car radio aerials that popped up from the ground when required. Trust me, it actually looked a lot better than it sounds.

In my first scene I arrived on stage with a bang. Literally a bang. I appeared in front of one of the false trees in the middle of the stage amid a flash of pyrotechnics and a deep whiff of cordite. It was a fun moment. But one night I find I’m getting laughs where I never got them before. So I surreptitiously check my wig. It feels in place. But after a few more words there are more laughs. I check my codpiece. All seems in place there too. But more laughs. Then the call comes out from the fifth row, I think.

‘Look behind you, Puck!’

‘This is Shakespeare, not bloody panto,’ I want to reply. But I turn around all the same. And it seems that the flash has set the grass alight. Having suffered in the damp all season, I’m about to suffer even more now the grass has got tinder-dry. Anyway, the show has to go on. So I tell three very modern jokes while the stage hands put out the fire. I carried on because the one thing you never do at Regent’s Park is leave the stage before you get the call. The call – a disembodied voice saying, ‘Will the actors kindly leave the stage’ – comes when the rain gets too heavy to continue. But the definition of ‘too heavy’ has always varied widely. Audiences will sit through typhoons. But on
stage rain can play havoc with a performance in more ways than just sending you sliding into the mud.

In a scene in that year’s
Midsummer
, I was prostrate at Kate O’Mara’s feet when the rain started to fall. It began slowly. A single drop hit one of her surgically enhanced bosoms.
Ping
. I tried to ignore it. Then a drip hit her right tit.
Pong
. Then two drops.
Ping, ping.
And then the drops began to land on each tit in turn.
Ping … pong, ping … pong
. The audience couldn’t have heard it. But I couldn’t hear anything else. So my shoulders started to shake as I started to laugh. Fortunately for me, Kate was having to do all the talking. She made her big speech.
Ping … pong … ping … pong
went the rain on her chest. But soon I knew my lines would come. Could I spit them out through the laughs?

‘Will the actors kindly leave the stage.’

Never have I been so pleased to hear that voice.

That summer Kenny Everett had some fun with the rain as well. We were doing a one-off charity concert night when the heavens opened. So he did what he thought was natural. He took his clothes off, there on stage, right down to his underpants.

A year later Bernard Bresslaw was due in our hardy little company to play the lead in a stage version of Mark Twain’s
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
. But, so sadly, he died just before rehearsals got under way. I took over and it was one of the hardest jobs I have had. Bernard was so loved and so missed. But it was lovely old Regent’s Park. The show had to go on.

None of us did those shows for the money – you earn next to nothing out there in the night air. I did them for
the magic. And because I have met so many wonderful friends in those casts. Artistic director Ian Talbot became one, actress Janie Dee another. And a great one is the desperately glamorous Anna Nicholas. What I love about her is her underlying air of naughtiness – she reminds me of dear Judi that way. From the first castings and rehearsals I remember Anna wearing so many bracelets, necklaces and rings. She literally dazzled us. She was hoofing away in one rehearsal, about to go into her song alongside a troupe of dancing boys, when she fell over.

‘If you will wear so much jewellery you’re bound to have trouble staying upright,’ I called out to her. We’ve been best friends ever since.

‘
O
h, Biggins, we're in deep trouble here.'

Peggy Mount's incomparable voice didn't really lend itself to a subtle whisper. But she was trying her best the season we turned up for first rehearsals with a new director who didn't know that theatre in the park is a skill all its own. ‘You'll have to sort it out, Biggins,' Peggy commanded.

She's not someone you argue with. Besides, I was itching to take charge.

Our fledgling director had been putting us in corners of the stage, corners that were going to be too muddy for fast moves and from where, we felt, parts of the audience could neither see nor hear us. He even had us talking with our backs to the audience at one point – not a great idea when the planes lining up for Heathrow can drown out even Peggy's booming voice. Anyway, on the great lady's bidding, I spoke to Ian Talbot and ended up co-directing that year's performance of
Bartholomew Fair
.

When I was in
Midsummer
again later that year we had our royal visit. The Queen was due to help celebrate the 50th anniversary of the New Shakespeare Company, which had run the theatre since 1932. But would she enjoy it? It is well known in the business that the Queen loathes theatre.
The Royal Variety Performance
is the cruellest form of torture for the poor lady. So I was guessing that she had absolutely no wish to sit through an entire three or four acts of Shakespeare, let alone in a park.

As we talked about the visit, David suggested, ‘Why don't we do
The Dark Lady?
'

This one-acter runs for little more than 90 minutes, and the plot was timely. The performance came a matter of weeks after a character named Michael Fagan had broken into the Palace and sat talking at the foot of the Queen's bed while she waited for help to arrive. The play was about Shakespeare suddenly coming across the Queen, so I felt it had some extra, light-hearted resonance. When we put it on I think Her Majesty may well have enjoyed it more than she had feared. Whether she enjoyed the next part of the evening is open to question.

The night was a big gala event and after the show the Queen was due to do a mini-tour backstage. Her people had arranged for her to see the likes of the scene dock, the costume department and the lighting rig. Whoever had been in charge also thought she should see one of the actors in their dressing room. That actor was me.

‘Take down some of your dirty cards,' David told me as he looked around my postage-stamp-sized dressing room just before the visit. All around my mirror I had pinned various first-night cards, some of which had some (surely
enhanced) pictures of naked men, while others had written instructions to ‘Break a fucking leg' and suchlike.

‘I won't take anything down,' I retorted. Even the Queen must have seen naked men before. And I didn't expect that Philip would be put off by a bit of blue language. So the cards were still there when the royal party arrived.

‘And this is Christopher Biggins, Ma'am, who plays Philostrate and Puck,' came David's introduction.

‘How lovely,' said the Queen, totally true to form.

‘Yes, it's marvellous to have two roles,' I began, uncertain whether to pause or carry on talking. I carried on talking. ‘I have two sets of costumes as well. This is Puck's costume and this is Philostrate's.'

‘I've just seen Titiana's costume,' said the Queen, sounding as excited as a schoolgirl. And yes, it was ‘Titi-ana' she said, not ‘Titania'. But I knew, I just knew, that I couldn't laugh. So I tried to distract myself as well as Her Majesty. I launched into an endless description of the way we put on our make-up, the way we did our hair, the way we looked after our costumes. I'm talking 19 to the dozen so I can forget the tits when suddenly the poor Queen interrupts.

‘What are those?' she asks, pointing up at the shoes I wear as Puck.

‘These are Puck's shoes, Ma'am.' I have no idea why this was so fascinating to her, but it was.

‘Look, Philip,' she exclaimed, turning to where her husband was jammed in the doorway. ‘Puck's shoe'.

And then I really did lose it.

How do you top meeting the Queen? I did it by meeting Liza Minnelli. And, contrary to expectations, we didn't
meet at a glitzy party or a wild celebrity gathering (all that would come later). No, Liza and I met in church.

It was All Hallows near the Tower of London. She was there to support a new production by Peter Delaney. So, of course, was I. We had a riot, from the moment we got out of the church and into the sunshine. I loved her spirit, her courage, her passion and her talent. Over the years I would see her on stage in Las Vegas, New York, London, you name it. I have to say that she is the greatest stage performer I have ever seen. At her peak no one else can hold a candle to her. The problem, of course, was that with every peak could come a trough. I found that out pretty early as well.

One of the first times I saw Liza perform was in New York. I arrived in style. I had been invited on Virgin Atlantic's inaugural flight to the city. It was one of my most amazing trips ever. As far as I can recall, no one sat down for any of the flight. I drank so much champagne my hangover began mid-Atlantic. I was so drunk I tried to leave the plane at that point so I could go home.

Once I got to New York the madness continued. It always does with Liza. She was appearing in Kander and Ebb's
The Rink
with the equally legendary Chita Rivera. Liza was on a low, I soon realised. But she put on an incredible performance and certainly wasn't in any mood to stop partying. I was backstage afterwards, trying to rush her along so we could all go out for dinner.

‘Biggins, I've a present for you.' It was a Cabbage Patch doll, which was all the rage back then.

‘Oh, how lovely,' I said.

Oh, how weird, I was thinking.

When we lurched off to the restaurant, me on one side, Peter on the other and Liza in the middle, we walked by Chita. ‘What's that?' she asked, pointing to my floppy little doll.

‘Liza gave it to me,' I said proudly.

‘Well, my brother just gave it to Liza,' she informed me.

It was a long night. Just before 9am the following morning, not having been to bed, we went with Liza while she got the owner of a junk shop to open early so she could look for bargains.

In Las Vegas a little later, she was as ready for new experiences as ever. That, I think, is why we got on so well. We're both the most social people you could find. Together we were insatiable. In Vegas we were chatting in her hotel suite and I was reading out extracts from a
Vanity Fair
article by Dominick Dunne, the man who chronicles the lives of the rich, famous and infamous. The feature that had caught my attention was about the McGuire Sisters. One of them, Phyllis, had been in love with the mobster Sam Giancana and was now living in Vegas.

‘Let's see if we can visit her,' said Liza as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

I rang the magazine and managed to get a number for Dominick Dunne. Amazing what you can do with Liza behind you. Dominick then said he would try to pass the message on. ‘No promises. But I'll tell Phyllis to call you back if she wants to meet,' he said.

Phyllis did indeed. ‘Come round for a little lunch, after church on Sunday,' she said.

Well, on the big day I eventually got Liza up and ready. Is anyone ever as late as Liza for appointments? A chauffeur
had been sent to pick us up. A handsome chauffeur who had a very visible gun in his pocket – a real one, not a Mae West ‘pleased to see me' one, more's the pity.

And so, long after lunch had probably been served, we were whisked down the strip and out across a bit of desert to the McGuire estate. The vast security gates swung open, we swept up the drive and were greeted at the door by a butler, a maid and what looked like another security guard.

Phyllis ignored how late we were and greeted us with grace. She was wearing the most fantastic Chanel suit and the diamond ring on her finger was big enough for Torvill and Dean to have skated
Bolero
across. Less certainly wasn't more with dear Phyllis. Nor, it has to be said, with her interior decorator. Apparently, after she and Giancana visited Paris, she wanted a replica Eiffel Tower built in their home. And it's Vegas, baby, so build it they did. The span was so high you could walk underneath it on stilts. So high, in fact, that they had to take out the dining room's old ceiling and rebuild it.

‘Thank God, I wore trousers,' Liza said as we walked over the vast mirrored floor to greet the other guests. And from then on the surprises kept on coming. From the urinal in the men's loo – what a clever idea – to the beauty room with a sink, hairdryer and massage table for each of the three sisters. And the closets? ‘This one is for day wear, this one is for evening wear, this one is for Chanel, this one is for shoes, this one for handbags,' our hostess trilled as we had our tour. And when I say ‘closet' I mean a room the size of the entire ground floor of my London house. There was a tenpin bowling alley and not so much a ‘panic
room' as a ‘panic apartment' in the basement where the sisters could hide out in a crisis.

Best of all, Phyllis wasn't bragging. She was so matter-of-fact as she walked us around her world. This was simply the way she lived. I absolutely adored it. Our tour continued, and as we headed outside she said, ‘This is the lake for the black swans.' Which indeed it was.

‘This is the lake for the white swans.' Indeed it was.

‘This is the lake for the black and white swans.' And indeed they all were.

It was fabulous. And there was no need to ask why a white swan didn't stray into a black area or vice versa. It wasn't even the small army of staff Phyllis had. It was the sheer force of her personality. She wanted the lakes the way she wanted them. No swan would have dared disrupt her. At the end of the vast garden was a sort of restaurant with a grill and a bar with optics and that's how that Rat Pack lived in Las Vegas. Frank, Dean, Sammy, all of them. Perform all night, sleep all day. This lavish compound suited their climate and suited their lives. I was thrilled to have seen it first-hand, before it fades away for good.

Racing ahead a bit, it's clear that Liza has had her problems and made her fair share of mistakes. The worst of which was David Gest. When she met him she dropped out of all our lives. Me, Peter, her PA, her musical director, everyone who cared for her and loved her and helped her. We lost her almost overnight. Her numbers changed. Messages weren't answered. It was so sad, and knowing her as I did I knew it was so dangerous.

Just as worrying was Liza's decision to forget the old and rush headlong towards the new as her wedding approached.

Two old pals of mine, Lee Dean and Toni ‘Petal' Nelson, were at the Ivy one night and found themselves sitting right next to Liza. ‘Thrilled' is not the word. ‘I think, Miss Minnelli, that we have a mutual friend,' Petal said.

‘Who's that?'

‘Biggins!'

Apparently, Liza turned to David with a huge smile on her face. ‘Biggins! That's the man I was trying to tell you about! What's his first name again?'

After just a few more words, Liza gave Petal two invites to her upcoming wedding. Now Lee and Petal are wonderful company and scrub up very well. But neither Liza nor David had met them more than half an hour before inviting them to what should have been the most important, personal day of their lives. If that's not a warning sign, I'm not a panto dame.

No invitation ever came to me. Nor did one come to Peter, the man who had buried Liza's mother and had been a family friend across the generations. When I read the tacky lists of who had been at the ceremony – had Liza known any of them for more than half an hour? – I nearly cried at the tragedy and the waste.

She has seen past David now, thank God. But I don't think she's the girl I used to know. Seeing the performance she gave at Bruce Forsyth's 80th-birthday party almost made me cry. I'll carry on trying to see her because, of so very many dear friends in my life, she is one of the very few who have slipped through the net. I relish and cherish all my friendships. I never discard people and I'm lucky to
have very rarely been discarded myself. In time I hope Liza and I regain our old momentum.

In the late 1980s the best job I did was the UK tour of Frank Loesser's fabulous
Guys and Dolls
. I was cast alongside the mighty Barbara Windsor, who, unusually, was at a low ebb. Although the great comedies and the
Carry
On
films loomed large in her recent past, new film and television work had dried up. She was touring in theatre and doing great work, but still this business seemed to dismiss her. ‘Oh, it's only Barbara Windsor' was the general attitude of producers and directors alike. Just as the phrase ‘Oh, it's only Christopher Biggins' was haunting me. So in 1988 it was little wonder that we became such close friends so quickly. We both recognised who and where we were.

We also knew how lucky we were to be cast in a tour of the wonderful
Guys and Dolls
. I was Nathan Detroit, Babs was Miss Adelaide, and we got marvellous reviews. Barbara proved to be such a generous performer, just like Liza Goddard. And, like Liza, she was happy to let me do all the organising and the nest-building when we were on tour together. I found our hotels, did our deals and tried to smooth our path.

But in Scotland it all went just a little bit awry. A dear pal of mine, William Mowat Thompson, had a marvellous house in Edinburgh where we could escape the bad hotels and dodgy lodgings for a while. But there was only one spare room. ‘Don't worry, Barbara, because we've found a flat for you just around the corner,' I told her.

‘No, I don't need it, darling. A friend of my hairdresser
has a place, so I'm staying there.' But as we left the King's Theatre in Glasgow for our Edinburgh engagement Babs wasn't quite at ease. I was with Vincent McGrath, another dear friend who was lighting up my life at the time. ‘When we meet the guy, will you follow me to where we're going? Just in case,' Babs asked us.