David Jason: My Life (47 page)

And somewhere in between this mucking about, a television show got made – and a massively successful, long-running and deeply popular television show. The hunch had well and truly paid off. A lot of people seemed to be quite startled by the first episode. We made it purposefully dark, opening with the death of Frost’s wife. I wanted to hit it head on, coming off the back of
Only Fools
and
Darling Buds
, because I wanted to mark the division and convince people that, despite what they might be expecting from me, I could do this too. In subsequent episodes, with the character established, it was possible to lighten him
slightly. Early on, for a scene where I walked into the station, I asked if the staff sergeant could have a cup of tea beside him on the desk. Then, during some dialogue about something completely unrelated, and completely unremarked, Frost could drink the guy’s tea. It was just a little bit of nonsense, but drinking other people’s teas and coffees became something of a habit for Frost – a little humanising moment which chased through the series to make him more than just an efficient cop.

And how life came round full circle. David and I used to go away to a hotel periodically and have seminars to go through scripts and think about future plot developments and story ideas. It was at one of these that a suggestion came up for a character called PC Ernie Trigg, a retired beat copper who has become a police archivist. I said, ‘I know someone who would be exactly right for that part.’ David said, ‘Who?’ I said, ‘My brother, Arthur.’ Arthur was asked to come in and he got the role, and the role developed into a running character – twenty-seven episodes from 1994 onwards. It was great to have him around, though, oddly enough, he declined my offer of the spare room in my spartan farm cottage in favour of the comforts of the cast hotel. From mucking about in the sitting room with a mock ventriloquist act to standing together on the set of one of the country’s favourite drama serials: we had come on a bit of a journey. Without Arthur’s help at the beginning, my journey wouldn’t even have begun. It was nice to reach this point on the road and find him alongside me.

In September 2008, a press release went out to announce Jack Frost’s retirement. It was nothing to do with running out of storylines, and certainly nothing to do with falling out of love with the character. On the contrary, I would have happily played him forever. The problem was simply age: I was now sixty-eight, which meant Frost was already the oldest copper on the force. Strictly speaking, in police terms, he probably would have been obliged to retire ten years earlier, or even
before that. And, yes, you can fight age hard, but unfortunately age hasn’t lost a battle yet.

David and I had other irons in the fire at this point. In particular we had a programme we really wanted to do called
The Usher
– set in the world of the courtroom, where the usher is the only person able to move fluidly between everyone, on all sides, including the judge, and who might therefore imaginably assume a position of power within the politics of the court. We really wanted to do it. We had wondered whether this might be a job for Frost, post-retirement, or maybe it would have required us to develop a new character. Either way, we were keen. However, within the two or three months in which we were trying to prepare for
The Usher
, the old guard at Yorkshire Television left and the new guard came in and the wheels were set in motion for the closure of the place in a big amalgamation plan at ITV.
The Usher
didn’t get commissioned.

No retirement job for Frost, then. Still, he bowed out pretty spectacularly. In the final episode, Jack married RSPCA inspector Christine Moorhead, played by Phyllis Logan, though not before poor old George Toolan had copped it in a car crash on the way to the church, the innocent victim of a jealous ram raid by the bride’s alcoholic ex-fiancé. Again: what would Pop Larkin have thought?

* * *

O
NE DAY
I received a very strange letter. It said:

Dear Mr Jason
,

I noticed your performance as Toad in
Wind in the Willows,
and I noticed that there was a house on the market at present which reminded me of Toad Hall, and I think you ought to consider it, you being such an expert as Toad.

Most odd. Nobody has ever written to offer me a flat in Peckham, on the grounds of my expertise as Del Boy, nor indeed a corner shop in Doncaster, on the grounds of my expertise as Granville. But here I was, being fitted up for Toad Hall. The address the letter writer gave was about three miles away from where Myfanwy and I were living. I knew the road and the area well, and my first thought was that this place didn’t actually exist. I had no knowledge of the lane that was mentioned. Nevertheless, it made me curious. One day, Myfanwy and I were driving by and we thought we would try and find this so-called Toad Hall. We failed, though. So clearly the letter was the work of a nutter.

Yet for some reason, it stayed in my mind. I couldn’t shake the idea that somewhere plausibly masquerading as Toad Hall was three miles away from my house. So I tried again. This time I took the letter with me, and followed its instructions very carefully – and lo and behold, there was the lane that the letter mentioned, and there in the lane was this house. The gates were open, so I was able to see the property, down the drive. I have to confess, my first thought was, ‘It doesn’t look much like Toad Hall to me.’ Nevertheless, I decided to look more closely and I parked and got out of the car and went in through the open gates.

Off to one side, with his back to me, there was a person on the lawn, wearing some kind of red coat, which reminded me of the menacing mad midget in the movie
Don’t Look Now
. I was spooked and quickened my steps up the drive. I knocked at the front door, but there was no answer. So I walked back down the drive and plucked up the courage to address the back of the red-coated figure, who now turned round and promptly revealed himself to be not a mad midget but the gardener. He said Mr Payne, who was selling the house, wasn’t in but he offered to show me round the garden. It was wonderful and seemed to go on forever, and even had a lake, fed by its own
spring. I thought to myself, ‘Well, it may not be Toad Hall, but I could imagine myself living here.’

I went back the next day. A friendly and very gentlemanly figure opened the door, introducing himself as Mac Payne. I told him about the strange letter, which he too found curious. He showed me the house, but, as he did so, he explained it was under offer to someone in London who had three more months to conclude the deal before their offer expired. Mac said, ‘If they can’t complete, it goes back on the market.’ I said I wanted to put my name down as first refusal and I asked if Myfanwy could come and see the house. Mac said, ‘Absolutely.’ So Myfanwy came round and she too fell in love with the place.

It was on that second visit that Mac said to me, ‘Do you mind if I ask what you do for a living?’

I said, ‘I’m an actor.’

Mac roared with laughter. ‘You’re an actor and you want to buy this house? Actors don’t have a pot to piss in!’

I said, ‘Well, some of us do.’

So, we now faced a three-month period of hope and anxiety, waiting for the other offer to expire. Except that anxiety about the house came to be completely outweighed by other anxieties. Because in that period came the most terrible blow. Myfanwy was diagnosed with breast cancer.

She felt a lump. I said, ‘We’d best go to the doctor’s about that.’ The doctor sent her to the local clinic for a scan and the diagnosis came back that it was cancer. You can imagine: tears. It was terrible. Then she met a specialist who said she should have an operation to remove her breast because radiotherapy wasn’t going to shrink the cancer on its own. That was so hard for her to take. Neither of us had known anything like this in our lives before. It was a whole new reality to get used to. It was a very stressful time, a terrible, difficult emotional time.

It was while Myfanwy was recovering from the operation that Mac sent me a note. ‘Dear David, the chap in London has fallen
out of the running. If you’re still interested and can raise the finances, the house is back on the market.’ I went straight there. Just driving up to the house again made me realise how much I wanted it. But now there was the dimension of Myfanwy being ill. I didn’t mention that to Mac. I simply told him that I thought I still wanted to buy the house, but I asked him if I could have a week to think it through.

That weekend, Myfanwy and I went down to the cottage in Wales, with Peg the dog. On the journey, and all across the weekend, we discussed the house. Should we? Everything seemed to be up in the air again. I was thinking to myself, ‘What would make her happy? Would getting this big house actually be stressful for her?’

On Sunday morning, I took her breakfast in bed, and told her I was going to take the dog for a walk. Behind the cottage flowed the River Taff, and behind the river was a grassy mountain. I walked down the lane to the end of the village and down another lane, across the River Taff, and followed the path up the mountain, really striding out until I got right to the top of the mountain, with its wonderful view. I sat up there, thinking, ‘What should I do? What should I do for the best?’ I went backwards and forwards and sideways with everything until eventually I had it settled in my mind. If I bought the house, she would get better and all would be well.

Peg and I came down the mountain and walked into the house. Myfanwy was still in bed, because she was very debilitated, even at this stage. I made coffee and sat on the bed and said, ‘I think we should go for it.’ She looked so happy.

I went back to Mac. His place was pretty much twice the value of the house I already owned in Wendover. So – because they don’t call me Derek Trotter for nothing – I made him an offer, slightly lower than the asking price. Mac suggested we toss for the difference. I said, ‘All right then. You’re on.’ He called heads. And heads it was. He laughed like a drain. I said,
‘All right, I’ll pay you the full price.’ So much for my standing as a wheeler-dealer.

Soon after this, Mac rang me and asked if I would mind dropping in again. He showed me a letter he had received. It was from the previous bidder for the house, the person whose offer had fallen through. It said that he understood Mac was selling the house to me and then went on to warn him that he doubted I would be able to buy the house as my partner had cancer. He then went on to make an increased offer.

It was like being hit with a cricket bat. First of all, how did this person know about Myfanwy being ill? Secondly, how, knowing that, could anyone use the information in that way?

I said, ‘It’s true, Mac. She has cancer.’

He said, ‘Can you tell me whether you can pay for the house?’

I told him that I could.

‘Then it’s done and dusted,’ he said, and tore up the letter.

Mac moved into the cottage at the foot of the garden which he refurbished and, over the ensuing years until his death, he and I became firm friends, often spending an evening sitting outside on his terrace with a drink.

Meanwhile, Myfanwy and I moved in – and everybody who’s moved house knows how stressful that is. I tried to keep the burden of it from Myfanwy as much as possible. She was going backwards and forwards to the hospital for chemotherapy all through this period, but there was no sign of remission. It was slowly getting worse and worse.

During this time, leading up to 1995, I was filming episodes of
Frost
and away on location a lot, but Myfanwy was able to come with me sometimes. When she did, I would ask if a nice hotel could be found for us, so that she could be somewhere comfortable. And that way we were able to be together.

We were helped a lot at this time by John Junkin and his wife Jenny. But breast cancer is such a blight. Myfanwy just
started to fade away. She grew steadily more ill. Macmillan nurses came to our aid and they were amazing, caring for Myfanwy, even staying with her overnight. Eventually, though, it became too difficult for her to be at home. They suggested she go to the Florence Nightingale Hospice near Stoke Mandeville, where she could be looked after properly.

The day we moved her into the hospice, it really came home to me how much the illness had diminished Myfanwy physically. She was now taking very strong painkillers, and she had lost so much weight and was terribly frail, and she was out of it a lot of the time, with the drugs. I went to visit her at the hospice every day for the next couple of weeks and sometimes we were able to talk a little but much of the time she was barely aware I was there.

One morning, in March 1995, the hospice rang and said they thought I should prepare myself and come and see her because it wasn’t going to be long. I phoned her family. Her brother Gwyl, whom she dearly loved and who dearly loved her, came up and we went to the hospice together. The day before, I had been to see her and she had been sound asleep the whole time I was there – a shadow of herself, really. I warned Gwyl, on the way, that she may not wake up and talk to us. I wanted him to be ready for that. But now, when I went with Gwyl, she was awake and quite bright.

‘Gwyl! What are you doing here?’

‘I just came to see you.’

‘Lovely!’

The three of us talked a while. Then the nurse came in and said, ‘It might be time to let her rest now, because she’s getting tired.’ So Gwyl and I kissed her and we left.

They phoned very early the next morning and said that she had passed away. They asked, ‘Would you like to come and see her?’ So Gwyl and I went down to the hospice and we were shown into the room and it’s not a thing I would want anyone to go through, nor a thing I find easy to go back over.

We said our goodbyes.

But here is the most amazing thing, which they told me is not uncommon. In the middle of that night, Myfanwy had pressed the call button and the nurse had gone to her, and, almost as if there were nothing wrong with her, Myfanwy had asked the nurse if she could have a pen and some paper. Which, of course, she brought to her. And Myfanwy wrote down a number of things that she would like to happen – gifts she would like to give, a certain amount of money for Gwyl, some ornaments and possessions for her nephew and niece. She wrote down these instructions, and then she passed away. They gave me the piece of paper and the handwriting was pretty good – firmly written, lucid. She had woken up to do that. It was as if she knew it was on its way. I drew some comfort from that – perhaps not then, not immediately. But since.