Biggins (2 page)

Food aside, I wasn’t just in love with being treated like a king at the hotel. I loved having free run of the place. I could walk through all the doors that were off limits to the guests. I saw the way the hotel worked, saw how different things were in the staff corridors, the kitchen, the laundry rooms. Our guests were shown a calm, clean and elegant world. But I knew how different it was behind the scenes. This was my first taste of going backstage. I adored it.

When Mum was working day shifts and Pam wasn’t around I would be left in the Chelsea Tea Rooms at the Red Lion Hotel opposite. It was almost as much fun as ordering free room service. Mum says I sat and charmed all the ladies in their fine hats – they would feed me tiny little sandwiches and elegant little cakes off their serving towers. I would listen to the chink of the china tea cups and the soft chatter of conversation. It was an awful long way from a farmyard caravan. It was bliss.

Sitting in the tea rooms, I also got to watch my mother a little closer. In the evenings I watched her even more from the back of the hotel bar. It was like watching a command performance. All good waiters and waitresses put on a show. My mother was up with the best. She practically danced as she flitted between tables. Watching her serve drinks was like watching a ballerina. Watching her charm the customers was like watching an award-winning actress. And the set wasn’t too shabby either.

I’ve always said that, if I could, I would happily live in a hotel. Coco Chanel lived at the Paris Ritz for 30 years and Elaine Stritch put down roots at the Carlyle in New York – the same hotel where I would one day meet a certain Ms Joan Collins. Back in the late 1950s and early 1960s, I would have happily moved into the Cathedral Hotel. I loved the place and I loved the cast of characters that were constantly flitting through its doors. That was just as well.

One of mother’s best friends at the Cathedral Hotel was a pretty waitress called Christine who was dating a fellow worker there called Jock. He lost his room at the hotel when he quit his bar job to go and work in a local wine shop.

‘Can he lodge with you? Just for a few months till he finds a new place?’ Christine asked.

Mum and Dad said yes, and Jock stayed for the next 11 years.

He was a good man. It was like having a new live-in uncle. And once more I was happy to be with another adult. It was when someone my own age moved in that things went wrong.

To their huge credit, my parents decided to foster another child as I grew up. We might not have had much money, or much room, but we could still offer someone a chance. Trouble was, the boy in question didn’t want to take it. Some bad things happened between us, things I was determined to keep from my parents. But while I could keep that secret, I couldn’t hide how often I was physically thrown into the rubbish bin in our backyard. So, after one incident too many, this troubled lad was moved on.

Life had changed completely by the time I approached secondary school age – because Dad’s business had started to boom. He had moved on from selling motorbikes to selling cars. He bought and built up the first of his own garages. And he began to take on staff.

Dad had always been doing deals. He always had the gift of the gab and was always joking as he wheeled and dealed. I got all of that from him. He’s a born storyteller. He can talk to anyone about anything. And he’s always looking for the next big chance. He started work cutting up and selling planks of wood at just 13 years old – though he says the Manpower Board put a stop to his little enterprise,
just as Health and Safety might do today. He then tried to get rich with a horse and cart – but he reckons he ended up with the laziest horse in town. He never gave up, though. All the time he was in the Air Force he was trying to come up with new schemes and business ideas.

That’s why when he wasn’t at the garage he always had some other deal on the go. Fifty years before eBay, he was busy trading coins, antiques and junk with American collectors. And if anyone closer to home was ready to pay for anything, as far as Dad was concerned they could have it.

My mother and I knew that to our cost. One wet afternoon we were sitting having a pot of tea and watching a black-and-white film on television when Dad rushed in.

‘I need the television,’ he said, switching it off and unplugging it.

‘What’s the matter? We were watching that,’ I wailed.

‘I’ve sold it. I’ll get you a bigger, better one tomorrow.’

And he did. The Artful Dodger in Dad always managed to replace what he had sold with something bigger and better – and still left himself quids in on the deal. Amazing. Though I’ve still never seen the end of that film.

N
ext in the cast of characters of our family was Great-Aunt Vi – the biggest snob I ever met. She lived in Faversham in Kent, where she and her husband, Arthur, owned a seed shop in one of the most beautiful buildings in the town. Auntie Vi taught me how to lay a table properly, how to place napkins and how to make a wonderful Victoria sponge. When I went to stay, or she came over to ours, I got bedtime stories in the bath with a glass of ginger wine. I thought it was the height of sophistication.

As far as Mum, Dad and I were concerned, Great-Aunt Vi was a woman with a mission. She hated my Wiltshire burr – Mum had it too – and Dad’s voice annoyed her even more. It had a touch of the north, a touch of cockney and even that joking, Jewish lilt in it for good measure. So good old Great-Aunt Vi paid for the elocution lessons
that would turn the Oldham-born, Wiltshire-bred boy into the Christopher Biggins whose voice can boom so loudly today.

Mrs Christian was my elocution teacher. She was a fantastic, wonderful woman and I saw her once or twice a week for private classes at my new school and at her home. These were my
My Fair Lady
moments. The rain in Spain falls mainly on Salisbury Plain and all that. As the weeks passed, my Wiltshire burr began to fade. But my lessons went on. I think Mrs Christian saw something other than just a strong voice in me. She also taught drama and English at school and was the first to really get me interested in theatre. And she had help. If she had lit the theatrical flames, Mr Lewis, soon to be my music teacher at school, would be the one to fan them.

He was one of the biggest gossips I had ever met. All we did was gossip. To this day all I can play on the piano is ‘Daffodil Dell’ (and I’m not very good at that). But what I missed out on in terms of scales or harmonies I gained in terms of confidence and simple
joie de vivre
. Mr Lewis was probably a bit effeminate, but I didn’t spot that then and it wouldn’t have made any difference even if I had. There was certainly no element of impropriety in our long, funny theatrical chats. I think Mr Lewis simply saw me as a kindred spirit – albeit a much younger one. Those were lonely times for confirmed bachelors of a certain age. I think I just brightened some of my teacher’s darker days. I let him forget how isolated he might be.

I had started at the private St Probus School for boys at 11. And it had all been a bit of a mess. Much to my dad’s disappointment, I had failed my 11 Plus and so didn’t
qualify for the local grammar. Or did I? My father had been talking to some other parents and found out that, because I’d only been ten when I’d taken the exam, a loophole meant I could do a retake. If I passed I would be educated for free and, like I say, Dad loves a bargain. But the timing was all wrong. The day that Dad rushed home to tell us the news, Mum and I were busy buying my brand-new St Probus uniform and paying my fee for the first term.

‘Too late now,’ Dad said when he saw me in all my new finery.

So St Probus it was. And it served me well. I enjoyed school. We were neither a hugely academic nor a hugely sporting place. Just a very relaxed place. And we had a theatre. That would change everything for me.

My first proper stage performance at school was as the Pirate King in
The Pirates of Penzance
. I was in heaven. I took on as many other roles as possible after
Pirates
. And at 14 I enjoyed my first, campest, triumph. I played the Ethel Merman part in
Call Me Madam
. Yes, I think the clues were all there had anyone bothered to look for them. And if my choice of roles didn’t raise eyebrows, my clothes certainly did. For quite some time I insisted on wearing a full-length blue kaftan when my poor mother took me shopping. To this day I can’t remember where on earth I got it from. Sleepy old Salisbury, in the early 1960s, had hardly ever seen the like before. No wonder my mum always wanted to walk a few paces ahead or several paces behind me. No wonder she was mortified when I decided I wanted to stop in a shoe shop one day to see if I could get footwear
to match. The girls there barely batted an eyelid. But Mum? She was mortified. Looking back, I can see her point.

My good fortune as a boy was to avoid the total isolation felt by anyone who grows up feeling a little different. I did that because I had a pal called John Brown at my side. We met in my first year at St Probus and were friends from the very start. We’re still friends today, though we see each other far less frequently than we should.

As kids, John and I always had a hoot at theatre rehearsals – and every other moment of the day as well. Neither of us was especially sporty and in particular we both hated cross-country runs. We decided to turn them into cross-country walks. The two of us would amble around picking up flora and fauna and get back to the smelly locker rooms laden with wild flowers and berries.

‘Biggins, come on!’

‘Brown, get running!’

‘Where have you two been?’

Everyone would be yelling for us to hurry up, because the games master said no one could leave until we were all finished. But there was no question of bullying at school, and no taunts about anything other than our lack of athletic skills. This sense of decency and respect came from the top, as it always does.

Our head teacher, Mr French, was very firm but very fair. Yes, he used the threat of the belt to keep us all in line, but I truly don’t see the harm in that. We all learned the boundaries between good and bad behaviour from Mr French. Today we’ve probably gone too far the other way, giving kids too much freedom and not making it clear how
they should behave. Mr French never made that mistake. Though I do remember a few oddities. Once he gave us a lecture on gingivitis and dental hygiene. The next day, for reasons I can’t recall, we all rebelled over our school lunches. We threw all the food into the bins. And then in walked Mr French. He made every one of us get a spoon and eat at least a spoonful from the bins. Not exactly hygienic, or great for the gums. But it taught us to keep our rebellions on a smaller scale from then on.

Thinking laterally helped on the cross-country runs as well. John and I realised that we couldn’t keep our classmates waiting every week. And I suddenly found a new way to avoid the run but still get to the finish line on time. Maisie’s house was just outside the school playground, where the races began and ended. So John and I would pop in for a cup of tea and a gossip and emerge when the front-runners headed back past the front door. It was payback time for all those embarrassing bath times.

At the weekend John and I used to spend all our time together as well. We would sit for hours at the Red Lion Hotel having a cheese scone and a thick, milky coffee. We thought of it as utter sophistication. By now I knew a lot about the way you were supposed to behave in hotels. I had my mum’s example, of course. But I had also lapped up all the glamorous stories from my grandmother. She had been a silver service waitress in the Red Lion back at a time when you had to pay the head waiter to get a shift.

‘Always leave a tip,’ she would tell me, remembering how tough it had been when others hadn’t.

‘Always leave a tip,’ my mum would repeat when she
knew I was off out with John. But I didn’t always take it seriously. One afternoon, when we really couldn’t make our scones and coffee last any longer, I got a piece of paper and a pen out of my pocket.

‘Tip: Back the first horse at Aintree,’ I wrote, thinking I was hilarious and the first person to come up with a line like that. And if I was wrong on those points I was certainly wrong to think I would get away with it. The waitressing scene in Salisbury was as tight as the acting profession. Mum found out what I had done straight away and I got the biggest bollocking and the hardest slap of my life.

I left school at 16 without, I’m a little embarrassed to say, a single O Level. I’ve no regrets at all in my life. But if I was pushed I’d say I do almost regret not going on to some kind of college. I’d perhaps like to have seen how much more there was to know. I’d like to have learned more, though I don’t know about what. Today I swear that if I won the Lottery and never needed to work again I would fill at least part of my time with study. I’d soak it up in my sixties. All the opportunities I let slip in my teens.

So what would I do for a living?

‘I think I might want to be a vicar.’

That was a bit of a conversation-stopper back at home. My parents took it well and would have helped make it happen if I’d been serious. But I think I was just casting around for something that involved dressing up in costumes and reading things out in front of people.

Before I hit upon the other, blindingly obvious way to make a career out of those activities, I carried on doing
odd jobs for my father. I’d always loved watching him work just as much as I loved watching my mother. He was at the top of his game in the mid-1960s – making money right and left, buying, selling, driving and even racing flash cars. He inspired me because it was so clear that he didn’t just do the selling because of the money. It was also for the challenge and the thrill of the game. He always liked to see just how much he could get away with.

He taught me that you don’t get much if you don’t gamble and you don’t get anything if you don’t ask. Throughout my school days my father and I were a great combination at work. No, I wasn’t exactly cut out to be a mechanic in his garage. But I happily tried to drum up extra business elsewhere.

‘Don’t drink and drive. But take a drink home from us.’ That was the snappy advertising slogan I came up with for the local paper when we offered a free bottle of champagne on every car we sold for more than £150. And because our lodger Jock was still working in his wine shop I got a deal on the bubbly as well.

The wheeler-dealer in me was out. I’ve loved a bargain ever since. And I’ve never lost my taste for champagne. The tragedy for my poor father was that, like so many small businesses, his was killed off when VAT was introduced in the 1970s. Funny how life goes. My career was just about taking off at that point. My father was on the edge of bankruptcy. After so many years of being lent and given cars by him, I had just bought one of my own. I remember driving down to Salisbury to show it off. ‘Dad, it’s yours,’ I said, handing over the keys and taking the train back to town.

It was Mrs Christian who pointed me in the right direction when I left school. Over the years we had read so many play texts in our elocution, drama and English lessons. We had talked so much about all the great actors and the wonders of the stage. She gave me the confidence to believe that I too could become a professional actor.

So after one final chat with her I went to the only place I could think of to look for work: the Salisbury Playhouse.

It wasn’t an easy visit.

I had been to see plays there many times with the school and my family. And every time the lady in the box office had terrified me. Her name was Pauline Aston and she was a big, imposing lady, with heavily dyed hair piled up high on top of her head. To me she was a dragon, though like most people who have scared me throughout my life she ended up a close friend and a wonderful person. Her husband, Stan, the cantankerous but wonderful electrician, handyman and stage manager, scared me too – but we ended up getting on like a house on fire.

‘Please don’t let the dragon be there. Please don’t let the dragon be there,’ I mumbled to myself as I walked up to the theatre. The dragon was there.

‘Can I see Mr Salzberk,’ I said, mispronouncing the theatre manager Mr Salsberg’s name because I was so nervous.

‘Wait over there,’ the dragon said, clearly unimpressed, and pointed to a bench on the other side of the theatre foyer.

But for some reason I hadn’t understood exactly where she meant. And I was too scared to risk her wrath by asking again. So I waited, for more than an hour, on the other side of a wall in completely the wrong place. When
I ventured out, who should I find but Mr Salsberg, who, bless him, was still looking for me.

‘I want to be an actor,’ I blurted out. Six incoherent words. Not even a ‘hello’ or a ‘how do you do?’ I was the nervous little boy from nowhere. The boy who knew no one and nothing. Mr Salsberg should have laughed me out of town. Instead he looked me up and down and gave me my in.

‘Well, I’m doing
She Stoops To Conquer
. You can come to that.’ Two sentences in the man’s lovely, low nasal voice. It was enough. It proved that if you don’t ask you don’t get. As usual, I thank my wheeler-dealer father for giving me the confidence to learn that lesson.

As I left the theatre I wasn’t quite sure what the manager had meant. Was this a part in a play? Was I just being asked along to watch? Or was it a job? When I turned up at the theatre the next day I found it was the latter. I was in. There is a small comedy role as a servant in
She Stoops To Conquer
. It was mine. In truth, it was just a glorified walk-on part. But it did have a few lines. And that was enough. I was on my way. Within a few weeks I had signed a proper contract with the Playhouse. I started out on £2 a week as a student assistant stage manager. I would stay there for two years. It was just the most wonderful period of my life.

The theatre was on Fisherton Street near the river and the railway station. In truth, it wasn’t a real theatre at all. The building used to be a Methodist hall, then something else, until finally it was turned into a theatre with a proper stage and seating. I’d been in the audience a few times with
my parents and on school trips. I’d always adored the glamour of the lights, the thick velvet curtains, the plush carpets and all the trappings of theatre. I had also always dreamed that to go backstage would be like going to some kind of Narnia. And so it was – only in reverse.

‘Mind that!’

‘Careful!’

‘Coming through!’

It was chaos. Backstage certainly wasn’t quite the magical world of glamour and beauty that I had imagined. Salisbury Rep was falling apart. There was a tiny set of different stairs and rooms and corridors but there was nowhere to pick up a cat, let alone swing one. And yes, there was the high, intoxicatingly rich scent of make-up and hair spray. But there was also the smell of mould, mildew and damp. The roof leaked all over and most of the buckets were used to protect the seats in the auditorium. Backstage water just drained away wherever it could. Water soaked into almost everything and, however much heat our big old radiators banged out, it was never enough to dry it all out. Backstage the light bulbs died and weren’t always replaced. Old sets, old costumes, long-forgotten props piled up in corridors and corners. Who knows what crawled among them. But who cared?