The Two of Us (12 page)

7 October

Oh God, here we go. We are bombing Afghanistan. Grow
up, you stupid bastards. This is a new kind of war. You
don’t beat terrorism by killing people and making more
people hate you.

When the opportunity arose, Alan suggested John for a role in one of his plays. At their first meeting, Alan had found him
a bit intimidating, but there was something about John that made Alan want to earn his respect. It seemed important to do
so. Granada had already heard of John’s work at Liverpool rep and were delighted to employ him. When Alan watched him work
in the studio, he realised that there was a quality that, if you just pointed a camera at it, was very exciting. Over a drink
one day, John asked him how to play one of his roles. Alan had no idea how to direct actors so he said, ‘Climb inside and
say the words.’ Probably the best note he ever had.

John had found his métier. From the start, he was completely at home in front of the camera. Authors wanted him for their
plays and the plays were ground-breaking and thrilling. He worked for all the top writers emerging in TV. This was where it
was at. In spite of the upsurge of production of good British films, by the likes of Schlesinger, Richardson, Lindsay Anderson
and Karel Reisz, cinemas were closing. The country was enraptured by the telly and ordinary people were becoming the stuff
of drama.
Coronation Street
had a huge following. The old order changeth, and up there with the changes, loving every minute of it, was the twenty-year-old
John Thaw.

Alan received a summons from the great John Hopkins to write for
Z-Cars
. It was a Papal blessing for a writer. Based on an idea of Troy Kennedy-Martin, with writers like Troy, Hopkins, Alan Prior
and John McGrath, and directors of the calibre of Ken Loach, James McTaggart, Shaun Sutton and Herbert Wise,
Z-Cars
had changed the face of police series. Gone was dear old Jack Warner plodding the beat and in his place were cars and witty,
quick-talking coppers. Alan had the idea of introducing a bent cop, a shocking idea for TV in those days, and what’s more,
he wanted it to be one of the regulars. This was deemed impossible, but he was told to write in a new character for a few
episodes and then bend him. Thus, in 1962, John played his first TV copper. Not only that, but he met John McGrath and Troy
Kennedy-Martin and his brother Ian who were to influence his career in the future, as well as becoming good friends.

In the same year, Granada chose John for a new series called
The Younger Generation
. A small team of young actors did a series of plays, at first on stage in the Stable Theatre in Manchester, then on screen.
It was a great opportunity which John grabbed with both hands. An article in the press summed it up thus:

They are the lucky ones. They have grown up in a young actor’s paradise, a time when the men seemed to be old at forty and
screenplays were full of teenage villains and twenty-year-old heroes. A time too when distinctive accents – which ten years
ago might have banned an actor from success – came to be accepted, exploited and finally worshipped. These seven men must
bless the day ten years ago when ITV came on the air. Then they were in their teens, most of them still at school, tomorrow
they could be idols. They are the young lions of TV.

Despite his growing success as a ‘young lion’ of TV, John did not completely desert the theatre. He fitted in a couple more
plays at the Royal Court in Sloane Square and
Women Beware
Women
at the avant-garde Arts Theatre. He also continued to study other actors’ performances closely, particularly those of his
hero, Olivier. He visited Chichester where the embryo National Theatre was performing
Uncle Vanya
. John wandered backstage to find a crisis unfolding. The Russian musicians had lost their way and the curtain was due to
rise. He cowered in a corner and saw his idol, Sir Laurence Olivier, Knight of the Realm, burst into the dressing room of
Sybil Thorndike, eighty-seven, venerable Dame of the British Empire, and proclaim: ‘Shit, baby, we’ve lost the band.’

Shortly after, in 1962, John got his dream job. Not only did he get a very good part in a West End play,
Semi-detached
, by David Turner, but the star was Laurence Olivier. Unbelievably, he was also called upon to understudy him. It was strange
that a twenty-year-old New Wave, ultra-naturalistic actor should worship such a member of the establishment, but John relished
Olivier’s flamboyance. He recognised a great actor who could mesmerise an audience and felt privileged to be working with
him. He greedily vacuumed up any advice. When Oliver said, ‘Do as I do, baby, amaze yourself at your own daring,’ he did his
best to comply. For the rest of his life.

21 October

John in Luckington. Me to London on my own for a
meeting. First time on my own for some time. Even when
he is in hospital I stay with him in a camp bed in his room.
Alone, I let go and sobbed with fear and frustration. I
would do anything to make him better. If there only was
a devil I could sell my soul to I would gladly let him have
the poor tattered thing. Anything, anything to have him fit
and well.

Olivier had a curious relationship with his audience. They adored him, but John would watch him spying on them through the
curtain before the show, revving himself up by muttering, ‘Fuck pigs.’ Maybe it was because the role was not one of his triumphs.
He was off ill for several nights and a terrified John had to go on for him. The groan when it was announced over the tannoy
that Olivier was going to be replaced by a little-known whipper-snapper changed to cheers at the end. Truth was, that even
though too young for the part, John was more suitable for the role of a working-class man, and it was generally acknowledged
that he was better in the role. Heady stuff for a relative beginner. Olivier was endlessly generous to him, as he was many
years later when John beat him to a Best Film Actor award. On that occasion John was so embarrassed that he almost refused
to go on to the platform and collect his statuette.

After the fiery dedication of his television work, it was fun, in
Semi-detached
, to be directed by the louche Tony Richardson. Egged on by James Bolam to wear make-up, John appeared on stage at dress rehearsal
smeared inexpertly with theatrical Five and Nine panstick, ‘slap’, as it is somewhat sadistically known. He was greeted by
one of Richardson’s shoulder-heaving laughs. The director’s nasal, lock-jawed voice drawled: ‘I mean – I mean – John Thaw,
what have you got on your face? You look like Ivor Novello playing a Red Indian.’

Assistant stage manager on the production was a young woman called Sally Alexander. She had been at RADA a year below John
and, like so many of the girls, had worshipped him from a distance. When she walked into the rehearsal room on the first day
and saw the leather-jacketed, bejeaned vision she had so fancied, she was overjoyed. A middle-class girl, attractive, long-legged,
intelligent but shy, she was just John’s cup of tea, and very soon she was putting in appearances at Highbury Crescent. He
was still raw from his loss of Jennifer, but over time he began to trust Sally and eventually to love her. His career was
on the up and up. He felt secure enough to contemplate marriage more sensibly. Whereas a couple of years earlier he had said,
‘If ever it becomes clear that I’m not going to make it, I’ll give it up,’ now he was confident of the future. A bewitched
woman journalist reported: ‘“What I want,” he said, fixing me with eyes like twin aquamarines set between sideburns, “is to
be respected. People are going to think of John Thaw as an actor who played good parts often and well.”’

The nineteen-year-old Sally respected his talent, was in awe of it, and wanted to help him. Again he was welcomed into a wealthy
family with great warmth. When they got engaged John took her to Manchester to meet his family. Although she loved his relations
she had never seen such poverty as the flat in Daneholme Road that he had grown up in. There was almost nothing in the room
– rudimentary furniture, no flowers, no ornaments, just an HP Sauce bottle on the table. It opened her eyes to a way of life
she had never encountered before.

They had a lavish wedding with the reception in Sally’s father’s house in the Home Counties. There was a marquee in the garden
and champagne round the pool. Tom was best man and John’s motley group of friends were bowled over by the glamour of it all.
Vic Symonds, Michael Blackham and Ken Parry were impressed but worried about the John they knew embracing the hated bourgeoisie.
Auntie Beattie, Charlie and the family travelled down to Berkshire in the van. Beattie forgot her hat and they had to stop
off at C&A in Oxford to buy another. They splashed out on lunch at a posh restaurant where the waiters frightened Beattie
to death by flambéing her steak. They had never known anything like it. Beattie proclaimed it ‘the day we lived’. Uncle Charlie
had to take Ray out of the church because he predictably sobbed his heart out. He was even more heartbroken when, shortly
afterwards, he bade John and his father goodbye and emigrated to Australia.

John’s friend from RADA, Nicol Williamson, behaved, as was his wont, disgracefully at the wedding reception. Auntie Beat and
the family watched aghast as he leaped into the pool in his underpants, took them off and squeezed them dry into the champagne
glasses waiting to be served. Since his student days, he had become even more of a melodramatic madman after a few – no, a
lot – of bevvies. In the year of John’s marriage, 1964, he proved himself a superlative actor in John Osborne’s
Inadmissible Evidence
, and was considered likely to follow in Olivier’s footsteps. John admired him profoundly and they were devoted friends. Drink
could make Nicol cruel and dangerous but entertainingly outrageous. He took to walking off the stage if he didn’t feel like
performing, and during a dress rehearsal of
Macbeth
in Stratford, the revered director Trevor Nunn, who can go on a bit, was dithering about the most effective way to kill one
of the Macduff children, when from the stalls Nicol drawled, ‘Why don’t they take him into the wings and you can bore him
to death?’

7 November

Beautiful autumn weather. Old fart mode again. A picnic
with Thermos and papers in the car at Badminton Park.

One of those conversations you can only have if you have
been together for aeons.

Along the lines of:

There’s a bit here about . . .

Yes, I saw it.

Was he married to your friend . . . ?

No, that was . . . er you know . . .

Oh yes . . . er . . . er mudger.

We met him when you were at the RS –

No I was at the National with –

No you weren’t, that was before.

I tell you – what was his name?

Began with a P.

No it didn’t.

An odd name.

It’ll come to me in a minute.

Had a funny voice.

Er . . .

Oh bugger, I’ll get it in a minute.

M – N – P –

Oh, I give up. He was a rotten actor anyway.

John and Nicol were part of a group of idealists, left-wing and passionate, who worked together on a wonderful film called
The Bofors Gun
, directed by Jack Gold, who had come from documentary and news and didn’t know how to direct actors, but knew how real people
behaved. His only note ever was: ‘I don’t believe it,’ which they all understood. (In his later career, after a superlative
take John would often mutter, ‘That was almost believable’.) Jack went on to an illustrious career in movies after his beautiful
telly feature about Quentin Crisp,
The Naked Civil Servant
, but being a man of huge integrity, he chose committed work over making a fortune in Hollywood. The film was produced by
Tony Garnett, and written by his
Z-Cars
pal, John McGrath. In the cast were Ian Holm, David Warner, Nicol and John, all of whom later had battles with demons of various
sorts, but at the time they were young, hopeful and brilliant.

Every now and then over the years, Nicol rampaged back into our lives for a while, but – whatever happened to Nicol Williamson?
The last time John came across him was in Harley Street, when Nicol walked straight past him. John was convinced Nicol had
seen him. Ken Parry waited for Nicol to come out of a stage door in New York, only to be pushed aside like Falstaff by Prince
Hal with a curt ‘My public is waiting.’ Nicol was in London when John died and it was in all the papers. He had lunch with
one of their mutual friends, but never mentioned John’s death. A brilliant, self-destructive nutter, much loved by John.

It was not only Nicol that John drifted apart from. He lost touch with most of the other people who had been so important
to him in those early years. Some, like Ian Kennedy-Martin, were hurt by his neglect. Others – Ken Parry, Barry J. Gordon,
Jennifer, Vic, Geoffrey and Tom – accepted that it was part of the business. Propinquity. Close and affectionate and then
move on. Over the years they heard about one another on the grapevine. All except Michael Blackham.

But in 2003 Geoffrey was walking by Camden Lock when he saw a familiar figure coming towards him. Recognisable even beneath
a long black beard and shoulder-length hair, dressed in flowing robes obviously worn by a religious cult of some sort, was
their friend of old. He was still enraged, ranting as they had when rubbishing their fellow students’ performances: ‘They’re
all wankers, kid, they’ve got it coming. The end of the world, fire and bloody brimstone. It’s all coming to an end, kid.
That’ll show the fuckers.’
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose
.
*

11 November

Very low and frightened. The world is a mess. Wonderful
disillusioned quote from Albert Camus on the Spanish Civil
War seems to fit: ‘Men learnt that we can be right and still
be beaten, that force can vanquish spirit, that there are
times when courage is not its own reward.’