Biggins (6 page)

It was 1975 and Sinead Cusack took over from Judi in
London Assurance
. And love was still in the air. The Albery is practically attached to the Wyndham’s Theatre, so it’s wonderfully easy to flit between the two. I loved the set-up, mainly because it gave me two sets of theatre people to gossip and joke with rather than just one. Better still, Jeremy Irons was in
Godspell
at the Wyndham’s, so we were able to catch up before and after almost every performance. It was like Bristol all over again. But with bigger audiences and better wages.

After one performance I introduced Sinead to Jeremy and knew, in an instant, that they would hit it off. They married a couple of years later, though this time I felt it was best not to join the happy couple on their honeymoon.

I didn’t fall in love in those Covent Garden days. But I did meet one quite incredible man. My dear friend, the soon-to-be leading lady Gay Soper made the introductions at a party. ‘Christopher, you must meet my friend Peter Delaney. He knows everything about theatre.’

I liked the man’s smile from that first moment. We talked about theatre for the rest of that night. We have never stopped.

Peter had a theatrical background but had moved on to become the resident vicar of the University of London. He
was – and is – an extraordinarily inspirational man. He believed that drama could help get people into church and be a power of good in even the worst of lives. I joined up when he did productions in his church in Old Hallows, putting a makeshift stage in the centre of the nave, leaving his local parishioners gobsmacked – but impressed. Our first productions included
Pudding Lane, The Woodland Gospels According to Captain Beaky and His Band
and
Narnia
. It was great, eclectic stuff.

In the years ahead Peter and I would take mystery plays on tour on the back of a lorry through the City of London, and we linked up with a church on Park Avenue in New York to put on similar performances there. Peter was such an influential man. And he had a thrillingly starry past – featuring none other than Judy Garland. No wonder we got along.

My favourite story was of how Judy had called him one afternoon in Los Angeles. ‘Pick me up at 6.30. We’re going to have dinner with a friend,’ she had said. The friend was Marilyn Monroe. They went to her apartment and she had made them a hotpot.

Peter’s links with Judy ran deep and wide. He had officiated at Judy’s final marriage and did the same for daughters Liza and Lorna as well. And with tears in his eyes he conducted the service at Judy’s funeral. Then, after all those highs and lows, all that glitz and glamour, he became a vicar for a bunch of students over in London. Today he is Archdeacon of London. Peter is the ultimate proof that we can all live many lives – and that you can never guess what, or who, life may throw at you next.

M
y agent, Gillian, took the call. Apparently, my show-stopping entrances and exits as Jenks had been noticed. ‘Can we see him?’ she was asked. The ‘we’ in question was Roman Polanski. And he wanted to see me in Rome in two days’ time.

‘Do you think you could get out of the play and get to Italy for the night?’ I was asked.

The actor in me said, ‘Yes, yes, yes.’ But the well-brought-up boy in me said, ‘No.’ I knew I wouldn’t get permission. You just didn’t in the theatre and at my level. And I agonised over the thought of calling in sick and letting my friends in the company down.

But, really: Roman Polanski.

I took the sickie. I might be well brought up. But I’m not stupid.

Plane tickets arrived. Gillian and I were beside ourselves
with excitement and I jetted out to Rome on the Friday. A car was waiting for me at the airport and I was whisked to a hotel in the centre of the city. It was the most glamorous time of my life. I was Cary Grant, Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy, all in one. With a little Katharine Hepburn and Grace Kelly thrown in for good measure.

At 7pm, I was sitting nervously on the edge of my bed when the phone rang in my room. ‘Roman would like you to come to join him for dinner,’ I was told.

So another chauffeur-driven car zipped me out to the director’s villa. It was a hot, still night and scent from the trees hung heavy on the air. Light bounced off the marble terraces and candles lit up the most glamorous of scenes. There must have been two dozen people squeezed around the dinner table. To be precise, there were around two dozen very beautiful people squeezed around the table – this was Italy, after all. But Roman leaped up the moment I walked towards them all.

He introduced me to every one of his other guests, all of whose names I promptly forgot, I was so dazzled by the glamour. Then he sat me down, with him on one side and none other than Marcello Mastroianni on the other. Conversation was frank, to say the least. ‘I cannot find any actress who will play the lead who will fuck me,’ was Roman’s wonderful opening gambit.

Sex – or the quest for it – dominated a lot of the early conversations. But things did get darker as the night wore on.

‘Why did you use so much blood when you filmed
Macbeth
?’ someone shouted across at Roman at one point.

‘When you have seen your own wife’s blood on the ceiling and dripping down the walls you can never see
worse gore ever again,’ said the man who had lost Sharon Tate – and their unborn child – less than two years before filming began. Sidestepping that sort of downer took all the social skills Great-Aunt Vi had tried to teach me all those years ago. But I pride myself on my ability to keep a party light. I came up with some line or other and somehow we all started to laugh again.

As the conversation turned to Roman’s big new project, I realised that the decision to cast me had already been made. It didn’t seem as if they wanted an audition, a screen test or anything. The whole thing was surreal. ‘When you are filming you must come and stay on my boat,’ the hugely animated Marcello told me. I was the 23-year-old boy from Oldham. I nearly fell off my chair. This was a fairytale.

‘Can I ring my mother?’ I asked Roman towards the end of the evening when we had popped into his villa for some reason. How embarrassing my request seems today.

‘What’s the number?’ he asked.

‘Salisbury 2589,’ I told him, a little Englander personified.

But somehow Roman managed to track down the correct dialling code and get through. Though my dear mother was not as impressed as she could have been.

‘I’ve just had dinner with Roman Polanski,’ I told her.

‘Raymond Huntley? Oh, I love Raymond Huntley.’

‘No, Mother. Just go back to bed,’ I told her.

I got back to my hotel in the early hours and was called for a meeting by the pool later that morning. How Hollywood was that? This was when the talk about my part in the film got more serious. ‘You’d be perfect,’ Roman told me.

But it wasn’t to be. Apparently Roman had needed extra funding from the Italian government and part of the deal
he struck was to use more Italian actors. Elocution lessons meant I had long since hidden my Oldham roots, but even I couldn’t become Italian overnight. My great European film career went on temporary hold. Where it remains to this day, funnily enough.

From dinner at Roman Polanski’s villa in Rome to lunch at the BBC canteen in East Acton. Life soon taught me to take the rough with the smooth. And anyway, the transition wasn’t as bad as it sounds. However much the Two Ronnies and all us luvvies might have joked about it, the BBC canteen was a fine place to be. I thought I was in the old star system in a Hollywood studio when I first ate there. In those days almost all the BBC’s big shows were filmed in-house at Television Centre. So on every table there seemed to be someone yet more famous than on the one before. It was the ultimate place for table-hopping, and I’m pretty certain that’s where the phrase was first coined.

When
London Assurance
closed, I had been in and out of work like every other jobbing actor. I had done a few short tours in the provinces. And I was doing my fair share of television, even though I could be in awe of my surroundings and sometimes unaccountably nervous in front of the cameras. In
Man of Straw
, directed by Herbert Wise, who would also direct
I Claudius
, I was alongside Derek Jacobi – who, incestuously enough, would also be in
I Claudius
. We were all playing students and the costume department gave me a pair of small, wire-framed glasses to wear. They didn’t have any lenses in and as I’m short-sighted I tended to keep them in my pocket and wear my own glasses right up until the last moment.

Except that on one important take I forgot to do the switch.

‘Brilliant. On to the next scene,’ called Herbie.

As we all got ready to move I realised that I had been wearing the wrong specs. Should I tell someone? Could I? I felt like a little boy again. There were so many people involved in every scene. The unions were all-powerful and everyone lived in fear of wasting precious minutes and forcing the producers to pay the crews overtime rates if you did too many retakes. So I kept my mouth shut. So far I’ve never seen the show included on any of these ‘continuity disaster’ compilations. But I expect it will soon pop up now. At least I wasn’t wearing a wristwatch. Or at least I hope I wasn’t.

After passing my first anniversary of living in Fulham I felt I’d really put down roots in London. I had even made up some fancy printed cards with my name and address on to make me seem professional, successful and older. It turned out they were nearly the downfall of me. Ifield Road was an inconveniently long one-way street. Driving out to the Fulham Road, which you needed to do to get almost anywhere, was a real pain. So I always did an illegal turn and headed down the wrong way, trying to feign ignorance at any angry motorists who tooted at me. This normally worked. Until one day the angry motorist in question was a policeman in a panda car.

‘Did you realise that this is a one-way street, sir?’ he asked.

‘A one-way street? Really? I’m not from around here and I had absolutely no idea, officer,’ I replied shamelessly. It was worthy of an Olivier Award.

‘Do you have any identification on you?’ He could hardly have been more stern-faced. I was in serious trouble.

‘Here’s my card,’ I said, spotting in the instant that I passed it over that it had my address, 142 Ifield Road, London SW10, on the front. Not so easy to pretend I was a stranger in town now.

‘Put both your hands together and out in front of you, sir.’ Oh, God, he’s going to arrest me. I’m going to be handcuffed in the street. What will the neighbours say? What will my mother say? But there were no handcuffs. Instead, the policeman looked me in the eye, tilted his head and slapped me on both wrists. It was pretty much the campest thing I had ever seen – and, trust me, I’ve seen a lot. Two minutes later I was back on my way again. Don’t you love the British bobby?

I’ve never lived a racy enough life to have a tabloid-style ‘drugs hell’. For all the laughs, I was brought up to be a grafter. I would never have had time for six months in rehab. Apart from anything else, I’ve always had too many parties to go to, too many restaurants to visit. But that’s not to say I haven’t had a few extraordinary moments.

The first came way back when I was living above my means in Ifield Road. Two old pals from drama school, Gillian Morgan, who had been on a celebrated world tour with the RSC, and Hazel Clyne, were taking
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
around the world and I could barely be more jealous. They performed in some of the world’s greatest theatres. And wherever they went the Royal Shakespeare Company’s reputation swept all before them. No bean counter should ever underestimate the
value of that name. I said before that the RSC’s vast subsidy was often misspent. Even so, it was worth every penny. It makes me proud to be British.

Gillian called me from Chicago. She had met a man called Randy Eaton. Later I would see first-hand that he was spectacularly handsome. He was also one of the richest and most charming men I had ever met. Yes, you really can have it all – or at least Gillian could. She was so in love that she quit the RSC and didn’t work under Trevor Nunn again. But for a long time it seemed as if all’s well would end well. She married Randy and they raised two fine boys. Back in the 1970s, though, we were all thick as thieves. It was on one of the pair’s transatlantic visits, before their children arrived, that Randy made the proposal.

‘Christopher, I’d like you to join me on a trip,’ he said.

‘Lovely, where to? Brighton?’ I asked, though I was secretly hoping for Florence, Venice or somewhere equally glamorous.

‘No, I want you to do LSD with me,’ he laughed.

And I said ‘OK’ without a moment’s hesitation. There was always something in Randy’s manner. He was what counts in America as old money. His family owned a string of newspapers in Chicago and the Midwest. That gave him confidence. And he made it infectious. You always felt that whatever he suggested would come out right. When you were with Randy it always felt as if nothing could go wrong. So off I went on my little trip.

I met Randy at my house in Fulham. Both of us had a little flake put on our fingers. It looked so tiny, so silly. I was convinced that it wouldn’t do a thing to me. So after
putting it on my tongue and sitting around for a while I got bored. I started doing some tidying up.

Later, I sat on the back doorstep and looked around the garden. How absolutely incredible, I thought. ‘In all the years I’ve lived here I’ve never noticed that island before. I’ve never seen how the ocean laps up at the walls of the house. Why have I never sat here before? It’s so beautiful, so peaceful, sitting in the sun listening to the lapping of the waves.’ I loved that house in those moments. I was so pleased I had chosen to live there, right up beside the sea in Fulham. Oh dear, oh dear.

We left the house and I dozed off on a tombstone in Brompton Cemetery. I was desperately hungry and thirsty, so I tore off to the corner shop I used every day. I knew, with complete clarity, that I had to choose food by colour. So I picked the most colourful things I could see. Scouring pads. Dish cloths. Even a big red bottle of floor cleaner. I piled it all on to the counter in front of the dear Indian owner, who got his wife to very carefully put it all back.

Now, if I’m being serious, I’ll say I know all too well the horrors of drug addiction. I’ve seen the destruction that drugs have done to some theatre pals’ looks, their lives and everything from their family to their finances. But that day in Fulham was innocent and wonderful. It was one of the most extraordinary experiences of my life. And there would be one more to come.

The next one took place in Fort Lauderdale in Florida. Again I was with Randy. His fortune was still intact at this point and he had paid huge sums to buy and renovate a vast boat. ‘Come with me. We’ll go to the Caribbean,’ he said. I could hardly get to the marina fast enough. This
was the kind of life I was desperate to enjoy. These were the kinds of people I wanted to be with.

On board there was a mad character, who I’ll call Freddie, who sailed the boat while his equally off-beat girlfriend was there to cook and make us drinks. Well, that was the idea. Everyone except Freddie and I got horrifically seasick. Possibly he escaped it because he was stoned. All I know is that most of the time I seemed to be the only fully conscious person on deck. And hour after hour we never seemed to get that far from the Florida coast. ‘Do you think everything is all right with the boat, Freddie?’ I asked towards sunset.

‘I’ll go check, dude,’ he told me. And everything turned out to be very wrong. The engine room was full of water. Freddie turned on some pump or other but it made matters worse.

‘Isn’t that supposed to be taking the water out?’ I asked, an expert all of a sudden.

‘Sure is, dude.’

‘Doesn’t it look to you as if it’s sucking the water in instead?’

‘Looks like it.’

There seemed to be an unnecessarily long pause.

‘What does that mean?’ I asked finally.

In Freddie’s considered opinion, it meant we were going down.

‘Should we get help?’ I asked, not entirely clear how I, of all people, had become the captain of the ship.

But getting help was a problem too. The radio hadn’t been fitted properly. We could hear people, but they couldn’t hear us. Presumably the same people who had
done the pump had done the radio. In the end the Miami Coastguard spotted us and headed over to find out why we weren’t moving. My last memory of that boat is of us all treading dirt and oil and seaweed through the sodden, brand-new cream carpets as we abandoned ship. It may well have sunk, I don’t remember.

‘Biggins, we feel terrible. But I’ll make it up to you. Let’s go down to the Keys.’ Randy’s good old American hospitality knew no bounds. I felt it would be impolite to decline the offer. And when we got there I had my second and last tab of LSD. This time we were by the sea, but I didn’t see it. Instead I mainly saw food, fish and animals.