Small Man in a Book (17 page)

On stepping off the coach in London, I made straight for the National Theatre and bought myself a ticket for what I discovered would be Barry talking about Sir John Betjeman. Let’s say it was due to begin at two o’clock; by ten past the hour the stage was empty, save for a small table, a chaise longue and an oriental-type screen, the sort that saucy ladies disrobe behind, draping their silky undergarments over the top as they go. The audience began to get a little restless, when suddenly a doddery old figure shuffled on from the wings and took centre stage. The immediate reaction to his appearance was laughter, as we were sure that this was Barry Humphries in disguise. The laughter came to an abrupt halt once this old chap started to speak and it became apparent that it wasn’t Mr Humphries trying to pull the wool over our eyes, but simply someone connected to the organization of these events who had come out to brief the audience on future happenings. We squirmed in our seats in embarrassment, as he must surely have heard the laughter while crossing the stage. I felt more than a little guilty at the poor chap’s predicament.

He pressed on, undeterred. He was not a natural performer, rather flat and dull in his delivery, and after a while began to stumble a little with his words. Finally, introducing Barry Humphries, he announced him as ‘Brian Humphrey’. It was then that the wool was pulled away from our eyes. The laughter began as this doddery old fellow stepped behind the screen and, like Clark Kent emerging from a phone box as Superman, walked out the other side to reveal himself as Barry Humphries. How can I communicate to you just what a shock it was? He had taken us in completely. I was bowled over by his ability to come onto the stage and completely fool the audience, making us feel guilty for ever doubting him. He went on to give a marvellously entertaining talk on Betjeman, telling us how the poet had been an influence on his own writing and then performing a Sandy Stone monologue, involving the recital of a shopping list, by way of illustration.

I would finally meet Barry Humphries many years later at a party held at the home of a friend. Given the acerbic nature of Dame Edna, I was surprised to find a rather sensitive man. Vulnerable, even. We got into a conversation with Ronnie Corbett about the delights or otherwise of performing at corporate events, and it was reassuring to hear these two legends of comedy relating tales of dying in front of pissed-up businessmen and women.

Towards the end of the night, Barry and I were part of a group of guests standing round a baby grand piano singing tunes from the Burt Bacharach songbook. Whenever Barry hit a line or a note that pleased him, he would let out a high-pitched squeal of delight, and it was as though a little door to Dame Edna had been opened. We made our way through the book, eventually arriving at ‘Alfie’. A rumble of excitement spread through our ramshackle choir, partly because it’s a popular song but mostly because there, just ten feet away, sitting at a table and chatting, was none other than Michael Caine.

I had hovered near him at various points during the evening in the hope that he might strike up a conversation – being, as I was, far too nervous to initiate one myself. It didn’t happen. He spent most of the evening talking to friends, and as I passed his table I would strain to hear the conversation, hoping for a brief glimpse into his exciting international world of glamour. Stories beginning, ‘So, I said to Roger Moore …’ or, ‘Anyway, as I stood there with the Academy Award …’ This wasn’t to be; he seemed to be involved in a heated discussion about his local council’s unreliability when it came to collecting the rubbish. Hearing this sort of mundane conversation not just in Michael Caine’s voice but actually spoken by Michael Caine himself is an uncommon delight. If he were to release a recording, I’d buy it.

Meanwhile, back at the piano, Barry and I looked at each other, uncertain of the protocol in a situation of this kind.

Barry had a mischievous glint in his eye. ‘Dare we?’ he whispered, ‘
Dare we?
’

We didn’t dare. I wish we had.

What’s the worst thing that could have happened? Sir Michael rising angrily to his feet, pointing in our direction and shouting, ‘You’re only supposed to sing the bloody songs that have got nothing to do with me! And, by the way, what about these bins?’

Although the college was considerably smaller than its neighbouring Cardiff University, there were nonetheless many clubs and societies up and running and in the first few weeks new students were encouraged to join up and get involved. Larry Franks was entertainment secretary of the Students’ Union and one day, at a lunchtime meeting, stood up to address the crowd. He talked about the various events he hoped to see us at and his easy, relaxed style elicited a few laughs along the way. On the hazy stage of my unreliable memory he looks like a young Julian Sands. He was another student who seemed older than his years, and something he said has stayed with me. He was talking about the third-year performances in the main theatre space at the college and how we ‘first years’ should make an effort to come and see them. The performance began at seven thirty, he informed us, but why not get there early at seven and ‘soak up the atmosphere’. That was the line, ‘soak up the atmosphere’. I just loved it. It struck me as very grown-up, very dry, very understated and made me think that I was now in a different environment altogether from the one I’d known at school.

I’ve never been a great joiner of clubs or societies. As a small boy I briefly joined the Cubs. This involved going with Mum to the outfitters and getting kitted out in the uniform, complete with woggle, and then setting off for my first (and, as it would turn out, last) Cubs meeting. It was a cold, black, Ivor the Engine night as I entered the warm and buzzing scout hut, full of excitement at the prospect of undiscovered knots and a world of bob-a-jobbing opportunities. All I can remember of the evening now is one game inflicted on us by the Scoutmaster that involved the boys all standing in a line in our short trousers and having to jump over a thick, grizzly knotted rope being swung a foot or so off the ground. This wasn’t what I signed up for; it was terrifying. Once collected and safely home, I managed to convince my parents that Cubbing was a barbaric activity and one that posed a clear and present danger to their beloved son. They accepted this with good grace, and the brand-new Cubs uniform was folded away, never to be seen again.

Perhaps this episode has had a bearing on my continuing reluctance to join any clubs. It was while at college that I made a notable exception to my rule when I joined the Swansea Camp Society. In 1984 it could be argued that Perry and Croft’s popular holiday-camp sitcom
Hi-de-Hi!
was at its hi-de-height. Especially popular was Ruth Madoc’s character, Gladys Pugh, who would address the campers every morning over the tannoy in her thick Welsh accent. It became a popular pastime amongst Britons of a certain inclination to mimic her lilting tones, and it was this that prompted a handful of students to form the Swansea Camp Society, an organization whose only purpose was to encourage speaking in a camp Swansea accent. This was, and still is, something at which I excel and so I didn’t hesitate to arrange an audition. That’s right – you had to audition to join this club.

Potential members were required to perform a piece of Shakespeare, a modern text and a song, all to be delivered in a camp Swansea accent. I rose to the challenge with ease, basically using my drama school audition pieces but with the subtle twist of the Swansea accent. So we had Pinter’s
The Homecoming
and Cassius from Julius Caesar (‘Oh, Caesar! The mighty Tiber was raging!’) both delivered thus. For the song I chose Lionel Richie’s popular ballad of the day, ‘Hello’. While I could never hope to evoke the emotion of the video – in which Lionel helps a pretty blind girl to listen to and enjoy his singing, even though she lacks the power of sight – I was confident that I’d raise a laugh. I sang the first verse tentatively, ending on, ‘I sometimes see you pass outside my door …’ I then paused for a short eternity before smiling and loudly proclaiming, ‘Hello!’ in the slightly questioning manner of a person greeting a friend they’ve not seen for a while. It worked and I was ushered into the society.

Twenty-five years later I performed the same routine on my tour of the UK, often to some acclaim, and in so doing remembered a quote from the great Steve Martin. Early in his success he had been a guest on
The Tonight Show
, the hugely popular and influential talk show, hosted by the hugely popular and influential Johnny Carson. In the course of his interview and much to his surprise, he’d found himself juggling as he sat on the guests’ sofa, to the delight of the audience. This wasn’t something he’d planned to do.

During the ensuing ad break he leaned across to Carson and said how shocked he was to have juggled on television.

Carson replied, ‘Kid, before you’re done, you’ll do everything you ever knew.’

When my ridiculous Small Man in a Box voice took off and became one of the things people would associate with my name, I was quick to recall the words of Johnny Carson.

9

I settled easily into my new life at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, at no point mounting a challenge for my relinquished title of Loneliest Boy in the World. It was everything I had hoped it would be; we basically spent the whole day doing what I’d enjoyed doing at school, acting. There were other classes too – movement and dance, for example, a discipline with which I struggled. These were the days of
Fame
, the hugely popular television show spun off from Alan Parker’s film and while we never ran singing and dancing from the college, leaping and pirouetting around the traffic, we did master the art of wearing the leg warmer. Our dance teacher, Tim Hext, who had appeared on television in
The Black and White Minstrel Show
and onstage with Topol in
Fiddler on the Roof
, must have despaired of some of us and our complete lack of anything approaching a desire to dance. If you’re reading this, and you were there, and you felt you were standing on the threshold of a career in dance, only to be held back by lumbering oafs like me, then please accept my apologies: I cannot remember anyone with anything other than a comical lack of aptitude when it came to dance. In my eyes at least, the dance and movement classes were tolerated as little more than an anthropological experiment, albeit an enjoyable one. Imagine scientists trying to teach a room full of monkeys to walk upright and you’ll have a fair idea of the standards we achieved.

Speech was another subject altogether, and perhaps my favourite. The classes were taken by a wonderfully dry and erudite man named John Wills. Imagine a blend of Kenneth Williams, Gore Vidal and Stephen Fry, who could captivate a group of students with just his voice and who possessed that most important of qualities for a teacher, the ability to inspire confidence in his students. John had the added cachet of having once taught a young Robert Lindsay, who at that time was enjoying enormous success as Bill Snibson in the revival of
Me and My Girl
. One of my finest moments under John’s tuition was being told that I had a stillness that reminded him of Robert. Moments like this, when a teacher goes out of his way to praise and encourage, are so important in building self-belief. I remember quietly thinking to myself that this was more like it. It seemed to me that these classes had a very practical usefulness to them, in as much as we would be asked to memorize pieces and then perform them for the rest of the group (as opposed to struggling to commit to memory the moves of a dance routine). I had no intention at that stage of my life of embarking on a career in the cut and thrust of the professional dance world, and so the dance lessons could never really be entered into with any sort of gusto.

As I sit here now, reflecting on those long mornings spent flexing and pointing in front of a floor-to-ceiling mirror, I feel vindicated. ‘See? I
told
you I wasn’t a dancer!’ The speech classes were different, though, and here was an area where I felt I could compete, maybe even win. We were taught the now rather quaint concept of ‘RP’ – received pronunciation – what you might think of as Queen’s English (i.e. speaking without a regional accent). It was the sort of voice that you might hear on a television commercial in the 1970s or 1980s extolling the virtues of just about anything. Whereas now, of course, the regional accent rules. Having always had an easy knack for voices and accents, I found this task a doddle; for others it was an ordeal and one that, frankly, they needn’t have been too worried about. We were, in 1984, at the very tail end of the notion of received pronunciation being of some practical use to an actor; I can’t imagine any hopeful young acting student today being told to disguise his or her accent.

On my first proper day at the college, I noticed one of the other new students across the crowded common room. He was loud, extrovert, slightly camp and very posh. A cross between Gyles Brandreth – who, oddly enough, he would later go on to work for – and an upper-class Timmy Mallett. I took an instant dislike to him and made a mental note that I would not be spending much time in his company. His name was James Lovell, and he became my best friend.

James came from Hampshire – as he put it, ‘the land of milk and honey’. He was confident, outgoing and had the energy and enthusiasm of a puppy. He loved Noël Coward, Cole Porter and soon, thanks to my intervention, Bruce Springsteen. He also loved showing off, parading around the college in sweatpants, leg warmers and an authentic Second World War flying jacket that his father had worn while piloting Spitfires. He seemed to already know many of the other students, and to be living college life to the full.

His first impression of me was of a boy in a big jumper with quite a lot of acne, who was rather shy. He remembers noticing the range of voices I could summon up in John Wills’s speech classes, lessons in which he also shone. John would listen to James reciting a piece in his loud plummy tones and then delight his student by predicting that in no time at all James would be starring in the West End, making his entrance through French windows, upstage centre, in a production dreamed up by John entitled
Tons of Jelly
. We would all chuckle in agreement; John’s approval was a most desirable commodity.