Bob Monkhouse was up there with a different company. He was a great film fan and always carried a projector and reels of old movies around with him. There wasn’t much to do by way of entertainment in Scarborough, so every Saturday after work we used to join forces with his company and Bob would put on a film for us. It was such a nice thing for him to do – he was a very considerate man.
Alan was extremely considerate as well, although one of his grand gestures I could have done without. Hull has a maximum security prison and he offered the company’s services as a treat for the inmates. Obviously this had to be on a Sunday, which was the only day we weren’t already working, but it meant Brian could come and watch. This wasn’t one of my finest moments. I’d decided my character should have a little dog, a bit like the fashion today, so I spent a lot of the play with my arm up this fake pooch’s posterior, making it nod like Rod Hull working Emu. But worse than that, I was dressed in a ‘mein hostess’ style low-cut dress! We were told only the best behaved prisoners were allowed to see us, but even so, I didn’t like the look of some of them as they filed into the hall. Brian being Brian, he just pulled up a chair in the middle of them. I could see him chatting to one guy and afterwards I asked him what he’d been talking about.
‘I asked him what he was in for.’
‘What did he say?’
‘He’d murdered his wife.’
‘Oh.’
It wasn’t our first time in prison. When Brian and I were doing The Promise at Manchester – with our tins of Fray Bentos – someone had the brilliant idea to take it into Strangeways. Somehow that was even worse. It’s such a depressing play, all those starving Russians, and even as we were ploughing through it I was thinking, These poor buggers are miserable enough without watching this! Can’t we give them a bit of can-can instead?
After Scarborough, I wasn’t short of work offers in the North and in hindsight this was another opportunity to capitalise on my name up there. But once Brian had opened at the Lyric in London, it made sense to move down to be with him, especially since the reviews had come in and it was obvious he was in a hit that could run and run. Our old Manchester and St Helens friend Jimmy Hazeldine had already given Brian use of the sofa in his Hammersmith flat, and when I arrived to join him no one raised an eyebrow. (I think most actors with a sofa or a spare bit of floor will always offer it to a fellow thesp – you never know when you’ll be the one asking.) Once we’d got our bearings, we took a flat in Ealing after visiting our friend, Chris Raphael and his wife Pam, who lived there. We’ve stayed in the area ever since – even Sarah Jane lives there now!
There was a tremendous fanfare around the opening of How the Other Half Loves and Robert Morley milked it all. Poor Alan, I think, was quite shocked by it. He’d been very fortunate on Relatively Speaking with actors like Celia Johnson and Michael Hordern. Famous as they were, they promoted the characters. Morley promoted himself. On paper he must have seemed like an ogre.
But, my God, I loved him to bits.
The joy of the man was immense. I’ve never met anyone like him. Robert was truly one of those larger-than-life people, but he really was so big-hearted with it. He could have the most important person speaking to him and a child might come over and he would switch all his attention to them. Everything about the man was expansive and open-hearted and fun. He was always throwing open his country house on Sundays. Anyone could go to eat, swim, drink, you name it, and take whomever they liked. If the weather was nice, he was the one saying, ‘Let’s have a picnic today. I’m taking you all to lunch!’
Of course he was exactly the same onstage and that’s why audiences flocked to see him. The show was Alan Ayckbourn’s biggest London success because of Morley, but boy, was he a handful! Brian once returned home and said, ‘Robert came on stage at the matinee in the middle of a scene he wasn’t in again.’ Apparently there was this big fuss coming from the wings while Brian was onstage, then Morley burst on, mid-conversation with someone, and said, ‘Ooh, you’re busy, dear. I’ll come back later!’ And off he went again.
It’s always nice to be associated with success, so Brian stayed with How the Other Half Loves for two years. Like so many of our decisions, we probably got that one wrong as well. In hindsight, he perhaps should have left to capitalise on his hard-earned cachet. But we don’t do that, do we? It was work, well-paid work, and we thought, Why leave something so successful?
While Brian was busy I had plenty of time to kill. There was no way I fancied taking the Saab around London so I dived into the Tube or walked for miles every day. I spent days wandering around Covent Garden, popping in to see the ballet whenever I could. I even got a walk-on part in Romeo and Juliet with Fonteyn and Nureyev. I was only part of the background but it is still fresh in my mind today. Really, though, I needed work, but I hadn’t been there long before I got a call from Barry Hines, who wrote the Ken Loach film, Kes, and was a big player at the time.
‘We’ve got some parts that were made for you, Lis. Get the next train back to Manchester! You’ll regret it if you don’t.’
You’re probably right, I thought, but I had to say no. I wanted to be with Brian and if I just had the first idea how to find proper work in London I’d be happy. Suddenly I remembered the agent who had come to see me in Manchester. I dug out the number and booked an appointment with Todd Joseph of Joseph and Wagg. A day later I was on their books, although in twenty years I never once saw Wagg – I don’t even know if he existed.
Todd was very good to me and I had a position by the end of the week.
‘It’s not much,’ he said, ‘but if you’d come to me after Coronation Street …’
Really I should have turned it down – there’s that hindsight again. I know I wasn’t a name in London, but the role of understudy was a bit beneath me. The play was The Philanthropist, at the Mayfair Theatre, and I was to play Liz – this weird character who just sits at a party and says nothing. Not a single line so not exactly what I’d been building up to my whole career. My main job, though, was to understudy the lead: Annabel Leventon, who was replacing Jane Asher.
You meet all sorts of characters in theatre. Some you know you’ll be friends with forever. Others you instinctively keep your distance from. Edward de Souza was delightful and we stayed in touch. George Cole, on the other hand, proved an odd fish. He was already a successful film and television actor, a very solid performer, but you knew right from the off that he saw the world a bit differently. He was very insular, as if he had a wall around him. His wife had a second child during the run and I congratulated him. No smile, no thanks. He just said, ‘Well, it’s not nice watching your wife in pain.’ I thought, OK, George, I get the message. Backing off now.
I only planned to be in the show for a few weeks until something better came along but it ended up being six months. Six nights a week, and two afternoons, I’d just sit there, bored and depressed, as the rest of the cast performed. People said I did it very well but still I felt such a fraud. You couldn’t even call it acting. I mean, I may as well have sat in the front row.
Then one Saturday, about eleven in the morning, I got the call I’d been waiting for.
‘Annabel’s sick – you’re taking the lead today.’
God, the look of fear in George Cole’s eyes when I arrived! That put me right off, I can tell you. But we got through it, matinee and evening.