He told me that when he first arrived in America he hated the place. ‘I suffered from the delusion, which is universal among the English, that Americans are Englishmen gone wrong.’
He said this belief was summed up by a book, a satire on English condescension towards America, which contained the line: ‘It has to be admitted that practically every old Etonian knows more Latin than the average West Virginia miner.’
He said he believed the fatal moment in recent American history was paradoxically the moment of highest euphoria, Kennedy’s inauguration speech, in which he said: ‘We will support any friend, oppose any foe, make any sacrifice, suffer any hardship for the protection and preservation of liberty.’
Cooke said, ‘This was the peak moment of America’s delusion that it really could be the policeman and that it had a duty to be. Since they couldn’t use the bomb, it meant they would have to have conventional forces of about eight hundred million to cope with their ambition. That was the beginning of the end to me.’
He told me this in 1972 and his words are even more prescient today.
Discussing American idealism, he quoted his favourite journalist, H.L. Mencken, who defined an idealist as: ‘A man who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, assumes it will also make better soup.’
Cooke defined American humour as ‘the humour of the soured immigrant’ and recalled the great humorist, S.J. Perelman, who wrote the early Marx Brothers movies. Getting out of a cab in New York, the cab driver said to him, ‘Have a nice day, Mr Perelman.’ Perelman said, ‘Listen, don’t poke your nose into my affairs. I’ll have any kind of day I want to.’
Cooke said the wittiest man he knew was Herman Mankiewicz, the screenwriter who wrote
Citizen Kane
and provided the story for
It’s a Wonderful World
. He said Mankiewicz had a running feud with a Hollywood producer who was a terrible wine snob, given to saying such things as,‘I think this wine is a little virginal.’ Mankiewicz, on the other hand, judged booze by quantity rather than quality.
Cooke said, ‘He went to a dinner party at the producer’s house and by the time he got to the table was already drunk. But he got through the meal until it came to the sweet, which was a great baked Alaska, and the sight of this flaming thing was too much. Mankiewicz threw up over the table and everyone tried to ignore it. They turned to their neighbour and said, “You were saying?” and things like that. As he slid under the table, Mankiewicz looked up at his host and said, “Well you have to admit at least the white wine came up with the fish.”’
Sir John Gielgud appeared on the show, along with W. H. Auden. Try proposing that combination to the people who run television today and see what happens.
Gielgud told a story about his dislike of cats. He was appearing in
The Vortex
with Lilian Braithwaite when, in the middle of a very melodramatic scene, a cat came on stage. Sir John said, ‘Of course, the audience screamed with laughter and Lilian Braithwaite, keeping in the play, said, “Oh, for God’s sake, put that cat out of the room.” So I took it up very gingerly and, because I hated it, threw it out of the window. It immediately came in again by the door, whereupon I was so distracted and despairing I threw it into the audience. I don’t know what the front row thought, but I never saw it again,’ he said.
Auden had just published a new collection of poems called
Epistle to a Godson
. I asked him what was the purpose of a poet and he said, ‘As a poet one has a political duty, which is to try, by one’s example, to protect the purity of the language. Because when words lose their meaning then I’m quite sure physical violence takes over.’
Gielgud’s face was plump and healthy as a ripe apple. Auden’s was ridged and wrinkled like a beach at low tide. I found myself inspecting his face as I was talking to him and I swear there was dust in some of the crevices.
Ralph Richardson was another fascinating ancient. Like Dame Edith, he set his own agenda during a conversation. There was no stratagem ever devised by any interviewer to persuade him to follow your line of questioning. When he was interviewed by my dear friend Russell Harty, he took control of the studio, asking Harty the origin of his name, wandering round the place talking to the crew, and finally arriving at a window painted on the back set. It showed London at night and Sir Ralph commented on the magnificence of the view. It was a memorable, wonderful per formance.
We had him on the show a couple of times, once with Enoch Powell and the second time, celebrating his love of motorbikes with Barrie Sheene, then the world motorcycle champion. We had Barrie’s bike in the studio and I shall forever remember the sight of the old actor knight assuming the racing position and making engine noises, like Toad in
The Wind in the Willows
, while I tried to ask him questions.
Sir Ralph’s fascination with motorbikes was only matched by his love of comedians. He told me he thought Charlie Chaplin the greatest actor of all time and, if he wasn’t, then Little Tich was.
His knowledge and enthusiasm for music-hall comedians was shared by Enoch Powell, and we were well into what I thought was a fascinating conversation between two very different men, when Sir Ralph looked at his watch and said, ‘Well, I have to be off.’ When I asked why he was in a hurry, he said, ‘We have talked enough. The audience is fed up with us. And we must never overstay our welcome. In any case, I need a drink.’
On one occasion we went for lunch to Scott’s restaurant in Mount Street. This was before its latest transformation, when it was the old established seafood restaurant, lately moved from Piccadilly to Mayfair. Sir Ralph turned up in mac, scarf, hat and umbrella in spite of the fact it was a pleasant day in early summer. He removed his hat but not his coat or scarf as we were shown to our seats. I had the impression he was auditioning the restaurant.
He called the manager over. ‘Terribly dark in here. Can’t see the menu,’ he said.
The manager immediately increased the wattage, causing shuffling noises and no little complaint from shadowy booths where middle-aged men sat with much younger companions.
‘Warm in here,’ said Sir Ralph. Instead of pointing out he was fully dressed for the arctic on what was a passable summer’s day, the manager said he would turn the heating down.
Having now set the scene to his specifications, Sir Ralph removed his coat and scarf and got down to business.
The menu arrived.
‘Take that back,’ he said. ‘Don’t need a menu in Scott’s. I will have a grilled Dover sole and so will Mr Parkinson, boiled potatoes and a few green beans I fancy.’
Then he turned to me and said, ‘Maybe you want chips? Never eat them myself but I will order them on your behalf.’
I hadn’t said a word. I was still marvelling at this seemingly batty old man bossing the universe.
He ordered a very agreeable Montrachet and, when the food arrived, ate every chip he had ordered for me. Then he called the wine waiter over and had a scholarly discussion about the comparative merits of marc and grappa before ordering two large marcs.
We lurched into Mount Street in mid-afternoon, whereupon Sir Ralph discovered, next door to the restaurant, a shop selling expensive baths. The shop was looked after by a Sloaney young woman wearing a Hermès scarf. Sir Ralph said he was particularly intrigued by a round bath on display in the window and could he sit in it to see if it was big enough. The girl nodded uncertainly, whereupon Sir Ralph sat in the bath and said to the girl, ‘I wonder if it takes two people. Would you join me?’ And she did. By this time there were a few people standing outside the shop witnessing this demonstration of saving water by bath sharing.
After producing this second moment of theatre, we moved off down Mount Street towards an art gallery which, Sir Ralph told me, had a couple of paintings by Georges Seurat he wanted to look at. When we arrived the owner, recognising Sir Ralph, approached and started the sales pitch.
He was interrupted by the actor who launched into the most fascinating account of Seurat’s place in the history of Impressionist art, particularly in his development of pointillism, again gathering a sizable audience. Having completed the third act of his entertainment, in the art gallery, he swept out and asked me back to his place for a drink.
On the way we passed a brand new BMW limousine, complete with chauffeur, parked outside a restaurant. Sir Ralph tapped the window and said to the bemused driver, ‘I’ve got one of these but it only has two wheels.’
He lived in a beautiful Nash terrace opposite Regent’s Park, complete with lift. Upstairs in the kitchen, the wall was plastered with the lines of his latest play. This, he said, was one of his aids to learning his part. We finished a bottle of gin, whereupon he went to a lift with folding doors, put the gin bottle on the floor, shouted something down the shaft and despatched the lift to the basement. Five minutes later the lift arrived back on the first floor containing a replacement bottle.
When I eventually and unsteadily departed his company and had time to consider the day, I realised that at no time had we discussed what he might talk about on the show, which had been the purpose of our meeting. What I also realised was that the lunch and all that followed had been designed by an impresario with the express purpose of thwarting my ambition. The entire performance, starting in the restaurant and concluding at his home, had been calculated to divert my attention from finding out anything about my guest other than that he was a master of illusion.
After the interview at the BBC, and as he departed the Green Room, this remarkable man stopped at the door, turned and said, ‘Do you know what’s wrong with a lot of actors today?’
We said we had no idea.
‘They don’t know how to die,’ he said. ‘If they are shot they die like this,’ and he lurched across the room before slithering in melodramatic fashion down the wall. ‘In fact, they should die like this,’ he said, crumpling in concertina fashion until he lay on the floor looking like an empty suit.
He rose to his feet, doffed his trilby and wished us all a good night. When he left the room it was like a light going out.
29
THE TOUGHEST JOB IN THE WORLD
In 1975, having written a biography of George Best, I was returning from a book signing in Glasgow when the taxi driver said, ‘Do you know the Big Yin?’ I said I didn’t. We were passing a theatre at the time. ‘That’s yer man,’ he said, pointing at the billboards, which said ‘Billy Connolly in the Great Northern Welly Boot’. ‘Drive on,’ I said.
One of the occupational hazards of doing a talk show is that you are always meeting people who have an uncle who is a better singer than Pavarotti, and know a milkman funnier than Les Dawson.
We stopped outside a row of shops. ‘Won’t be a minute,’ said the driver. He returned with a long-playing record entitled ‘Billy Connolly Live’ with a picture on the front of a man with a haystack of hair and what looked like bananas on his feet. ‘Play that and you’ll want him on your show,’ he said.
I left it on a table in my house and thought no more about it until one day Andrew, my eldest boy, asked me if I had listened to the recording. I said I hadn’t. He said I must. ‘He’s hilarious,’ said Andrew.
As I listened to Billy turning the story of the Resurrection into a parable of drinking and football in Glasgow, I knew I had stumbled across a comedian of great gift. This is not hindsight. I was convinced that once he appeared on the show he would become a major new star. I was as certain as I was when I saw George Best’s first game and knew I had witnessed the debut of a great performer.
Billy’s first appearance caused a sensation. He told a joke about a man murdering his wife and leaving her bum sticking out of the ground so he would have somewhere to park his bike, which nowadays would have the Political Correctness Riot Squad battering down the doors at the TV Centre. In those less sensitive times the joke was accepted for what it was, a satire of the battle of the sexes in the tougher parts of working-class Glasgow. It would be silly to say that Connolly’s subsequent career was built on that one joke, but it certainly provided what later came to be called ‘a water cooler moment’ and set Billy on his way to stardom.
He appeared eight times on the show and on every occasion the viewing figures soared. He was a cast-iron box office magnet. When I was hosting my talk show in Australia, I persuaded Billy to join me and so began a lasting relationship with a country we both came to love.
Australia in the late seventies was a lot more conservative than it is today and Billy’s appearance alone was enough to invite extreme reactions. They ranged from the appearance of Connolly look-alikes to the rage of a policeman who rushed on stage at one of Billy’s concerts and detuned his guitar. To have such a feeble conclusion to such a dramatic invasion was a bit like being nuzzled after being charged by an angry bull.
We went out for dinner in Sydney, with Billy in striped coat, pointy boots and shoulder-length hair, and when we entered the restaurant, we realised we had to negotiate a long bar before reaching the dining room. This would have been all right except the bar had been requisitioned by about twenty very large and drunken rugby players.
‘G’dayparkoyerpommiebastard,’ was OK. This meant they were being friendly. They didn’t know what to make of Billy but, while they were thinking about it, we slipped past. As I was trying to find the group of people we were joining for dinner, I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned to discover that a large blond Australian rugby player, not quite as big as the Sydney Opera House, had managed to get between me and Billy. ‘Can I help you?’ I feebly asked, at which point I heard Billy say, ‘Hey big man.’ As the rugby player turned, Billy said in a loud clear voice, ‘Why don’t you fuck off?’
The Aussie took a while to digest this suggestion and as he was pondering whether to hit Billy or tuck him under his arm and throw him across the restaurant, the maitre d’ ushered us quickly to our seats. The rugby player then positioned himself in the entrance to the restaurant, making dramatic gestures at our table indicating Billy Connolly’s end was nigh. Eventually he was taken away by his friends. At about two in the morning, as we were being driven home through Kings Cross, a garish and louche part of Sydney but jammed with traffic and sightseers even at that time, Billy jumped out of the car. He walked across to a five-way junction and started directing traffic with flamboyant arm gestures and hair flying as if conducting a symphony orchestra. He quickly transformed a normal traffic jam into a showbiz event, attracting the attention of two patrolling policemen, whom I saw approaching over the brow of a hill.