The Varnished Untruth (21 page)

And of course, for you it would summon a great deal of extra adrenaline . . .

Point taken. I was certainly eager for more stimulation. I had actually become a bit bored doing TV and was looking towards the American movie world. When we had breaks from
NTNON
, cast members did other work. After the second series, I trotted off to Hollywood to meet Mel Brooks, who was casting for his new movie
History of the World Part One
. He greeted me in his trailer on the Universal back lot. I remember being amazed that, because of the noise, they had to stop shooting whenever the tourist trams came by. It was my first inkling that Hollywood is more than just a movie town; that associated businesses sometimes command equal dollars and, therefore, equal power.

I immediately loved Mel Brooks. He seemed childlike, with an enormous twinkle in his eye. I had admired his work ever since I first saw
Vertigo and Blazing Saddles
. He was warm and encouraging and was very nice about my work on
Not The Nine O’Clock News
. I was surprised he’d seen it. He said, ‘I loved the Gorilla sketch. Who are those guys?’ I told him. Then he said, ‘You’re funny. Are you OK about being half nude?’ With rash bravado, I replied: ‘I’ll do anything for a laugh.’ Maybe that wasn’t such a good idea, but it seemed to impress Mel. ‘Is that mostly you?’ he asked, looking at my chest. It was a bit difficult to answer that, considering my history, but I nodded. I was hoping he wasn’t going to ask for a look.

I loved working on that movie. Many of my heroes were in it; in fact, it was cast with gods and goddesses from the
Who’s Who
of comedy. I worked directly with Harvey Korman, Cloris Leachman, Gregory Hines and Spike Milligan – all thorough idols of mine. But I was particularly fascinated to see how Mel Brooks worked. Directing AND acting in a movie is extremely challenging – what a responsibility! He would arrive on the set very early and greet his actors. ‘Hello Pamela!’ he’d say to me in front of everyone, faking a
mea culpa
shame. ‘I’m sorry about last night – I behaved like an animal . . .’ He said it time and time again but I still found it hilarious. Mel would block the first scene and set up the shot, then disappear to change and be made up. As soon as he returned, the cameras would roll, and he would ping-pong between acting and observing the scene straight after on playback, then direct changes. Believing that the funniest takes occur when the actors are right on the edge of cracking up, Mel occasionally encouraged the actors to create skits that were nothing to do with the film. Then, when we were boiling over with laughter, we’d return to the scripted scene and do it with heightened comic energy.

Spike Milligan played my father. He was an extraordinary man, with a truly original sense of humour. I didn’t always understand it (the Goons were incomprehensible to me), but he did come up with one fantastically memorable line. We were at Blenheim Palace, filming a scene that occurred right near the end of the movie. It was an enormously complicated crowd scene in which Mel, Spike and I were saved from the guillotine by African-American actor Gregory Hines, who rode up on a white horse and cart. There were around a hundred people in the crowd and the set-up for Gregory’s ride to save us required very careful choreography. Finally, everything was rehearsed and the cameras rolled. ‘Action!’ As Mel, Spike and I were being pushed towards the guillotine by henchmen, the crowd parted and Gregory galloped towards us on his white horse. It should have been a one-take relief for all, but Spike just couldn’t resist improvising. ‘No, no!’ he cried. ‘Stop! We ordered a BLACK horse and a WHITE driver!’

While we were shooting at Blenheim Palace, Mel, Spike and I were invited round to drinks with the people who lived there – the Duke and Duchess of Kent. We turned up in our period costumes – me in a pink crinoline and Mel in a satin footman’s outfit – with powdered wigs. It must have been amusing for the staff. Our hosts asked Mel to tell the story of the movie, which was a bit racy to say the least. More particularly, the character Mel was playing that day was Jacques the Piss Boy from the time of the French Revolution. Mel didn’t feel it would be appropriate to mention urine, but well, avoiding that subject was – nigh on impossible! As I witnessed him trying to water down the story for their Royal selves I started giggling nervously, and eventually became completely hysterical. I pulled him aside. ‘Mel,’ I tried to soothe him, ‘you don’t have to worry about the British upper classes; they wrote the book!’

After the final series of
Not The Nine O’Clock News
, John Lloyd created a solo TV show for me. My diary of some filming days reveals that I was struggling with the public attention I was receiving, and with another, very familiar issue: my eating disorder. Since I left drama school I’d been struggling with a form of bulimia (without the vomiting bit). I would purge by severely restricting my food until a filming day, then binge heavily afterwards. At the time, I told myself that it was a professional necessity to keep my weight very low – and that was true up to a point because television cameras tended to add around ten pounds. But it would have been far healthier to have maintained a constant weight via a steady, nutritious, low-calorie programme, coupled with moderate exercise, rather than the binge–purge cycle I followed for many years. And what’s more, my body image problem was growing.

Although that series didn’t take off, I started to be even more in demand for movies. Richard Lester invited me to be in
Superman III
, which involved shooting at Pinewood Studios and in Calgary, Canada. I had not enjoyed making most of the movies I’d done before
Not The Nine O’Clock News
, probably because they were stinkers. But this was different. Richard Lester was a delightful, enormously bright man, and I also got to work with a hilarious comic who had set himself on fire and lived to tell the tale – Richard Pryor. Richard was my kind of man: funny, childlike and dangerous.

You used that word again – ‘dangerous’. Such men really appeal to you, do they not?

Frankly, yes. We had lunch together every day and I adored him. He reminded me of Billy – vulnerable and insecure, yet also strong and primitive. He had nearly died after igniting himself while free-basing cocaine and drinking 151-proof rum at the same time. Now that takes multi-tasking to a whole new level. Apparently he actually ran down the street on fire – until he was caught by the police. He later joked that the explosion was caused by dunking cookies into a glass containing a volatile mixture of low fat and pasteurized milk. But the accident was a terrible assault on his body – he had sustained burns over more than half of it, and had to wear special, soft clothing against his skin because it was still painfully sensitive.

Chris Reeve was charming, too, and it was fun playing a crazy, bad girl who seduces Superman. Yes, I ‘did it’ with Superman – and it’s still a badge of honour! But there was something so surreal about the whole experience – if that word can actually be applied to six months of turning up every morning to play an archetypal siren in an American blockbuster based on the most famous cartoon character of all time! The whole thing was wonderfully over-the-top. They created the Grand Canyon AND the Statue of Liberty inside the studio for God’s sake!

Next, I did another movie called
Scandalous
with John Gielgud and Robert Hays. I was under a lot of stress at the time, because I was also playing Mabel in Joe Papp’s production of the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta
Pirates of Penzance
at Drury Lane Theatre. That role was very difficult for me. I had never sung professionally before, if you discount parodies and a truly dreadful pop record I once made (what is WRONG with me?).

I have to agree with you about that . . .

Hah! Anyway, my voice was largely untrained, so although I was a natural soprano I had spent a gruelling rehearsal period with the brilliant Marge Rivington, who coached Bette Midler and Linda Ronstadt. Marge actually helped me to add nearly an octave to the top of my vocal range, and vastly improved the quality. Critics were lukewarm about my London singing debut, but once I settled in and controlled my nerves I was pretty good. And I really enjoyed it – the cast, the music, singing with a huge orchestra. I spent a whole year performing in that very popular show, and loved having such consistency. Not everyone takes to long runs, though. At the beginning of the second act, George Cole, who played my father the Major, had to carry a sopping wet handkerchief onstage with him, which I would later take from him when he cried, and squeeze it onto the trumpeter’s head. As the run wore on, I gather this became a bit tedious for George, who finally said to me when we were waiting in the dark to go on, ‘You know Pamela, whenever I think of you, I think of a handful of wet.’

There were breaks in filming from time to time and, on one occasion, I asked Chris Reeve if he could recommend a nice, quiet beach haven where I could have a rest. See, I was becoming aware of the effect doing two movies and a stage show at the same time, plus my new life in the public eye – and my relationship with Billy – was having. I wrote in my diary:

See? Although I was joking around, I was totally into psychology way before I entered the field. Anyway, thankfully, I recognized my need to rest. Chris Reeve told me about this place in the Bahamas, a tiny Cay where the local people were unimpressed by celebrities and the snorkelling was ace. I managed to meet Billy there for a short spell – in fact, he only had one day there in between his own touring commitments. I taught him to snorkel, which he absolutely loved. But it was then I realized just how uncomfortable he was in the sea. He didn’t seem to understand basic safety considerations. Well, it was hardly his customary environment. At one point I noticed he was swimming awfully close to stinging fire coral, while a large barracuda had taken an interest in him and was following close behind. Not wanting to alarm Billy, but needing to move out of danger, I waved gaily at him, signalling him towards me. He completely misinterpreted my semaphore and waved back a happy greeting – which immediately turned to fear and panic as his right hand hit the fire coral and his head turned just enough to clock the big, toothy fish. ‘He’s just inquisitive,’ I explained. ‘He likes you!’ But Billy wouldn’t buy a word of it.

Another new experience I provided for Billy was a fortieth birthday party . . .

Sounds like you partly see your role as being responsible for his entertainment . . . ?

Yeah, well, at times that’s pretty close to the truth! But apparently no one had really bothered to give him a birthday party in the past, so I decided he should have an exciting fortieth bash. For some reason I dressed as a schoolgirl. A lot of wonderful friends came, and Elvis Patel, a Pakistani Elvis impersonator, performed. So did a man who had an act where he saved the world from Armageddon using Wonderloaf bread. As the finale, I got a pope lookalike, a Welsh man called Mr Meredith, to jump out of a cake. Even the fact that I could not sleep that night because some very famous rock stars had secretly been snorting cocaine on our bed did not detract from the fun of the evening. And finally having a birthday cake – even though a man resembling his nemesis emerged from it and blessed the crowd – meant a great deal to my howling, ex-Catholic hubby.