Swallowing hard, I slowly turned the knob, hoping that that would be the only knob my hand came into contact with during my stay there. The owner was away. He had discovered God and had decided to go off to train as a vicar. Call me naive, but imagine my surprise when I switched on the light in this future man-of-the-cloth's cellar and found the floor covered in mattresses and the walls painted with silouettes of men in various states of arousal.
1985 was a quiet year work-wise. The Lion roared his last on January 11th and I flew straight off to see Mandy in Portugal. I was there a week and spent three days of it in bed with violent stomach cramps brought on by stress. As soon as I had my strength back, I went down to the local 'As Botas' ( look it up!) and asked for something to help me relax. I was immediately given a box of Librium, a drug so strong, you can only get it under prescription in the UK and even then probably not, as it only takes a fortnight to become a gibbering wreck of an addict! I'd wake at dawn, feeling my stomach contracting involuntarily, pop one of these little yellow pills and regain consciousness four hours later feeling as though the mattress had fused into my back. I had three days of this narcotic madness before I began to feel rested enough to face life on my own terms. Portugal was not supposed to be a drug-fuelled frenzy, popping fiercely addictive pills in some hotel room like a rock star on a bender, it was supposed to be a chance for Mandy and I to do some catching up. We walked around the place - well Mandy walked, I shuffled around like Ozzy Osbourne - and, one night, following the advice of Mandy's pot-bellied, be-sequined boss and choreographer, found ourselves in an anonymous street looking for the restaurant he'd recommended. Whether the fact that, up until that point, I'd spent three days swallowing nothing but Chlordiazepoxide and then a couple more eating the real Portuguese deal: boiled rice and pork served up in massive rural food kitchens with just the one tv plonked on a corner shelf near the ceiling, made our taste buds keener than usual, I don't know, but, when we'd found the entrance to this restaurant and climbed the stairs, it was as though we had stumbled upon the Holy Grail, a gastroasis in a desert of rice.
We walked to our table unable to fully take in the splendour and luxury on offer. There followed one of the two best meals I have ever eaten in my life (the other one was in Kinsale ten years later, but more of that anon). Every mouthful was orgasmic in its intensity. My soft as butter fillet was served on a wooden board. The vegetables beautifully fresh and cooked just enough to bring out their flavour. The wine was vintage, deep red and very strong and the bill was...twelve pounds! The waiter looked flabberghasted after I'd left him the bill again as a tip, but, as the meal would have been excellent value at twice the price, I felt I would pay just that.
Back home, my posh demeanour secured me my first role in repertory theatre. I was to appear in 'Another Country' by Julian Mitchell. After years swanning around the cricket boundary line at school trying to avoid the ball, here was my chance to put all that foppery to good use. Three years before, I had seen the West End production with Naomi. The curtain rose and Rupert Everett was revealed reclining on a window seat at the back of the set. From that moment, it was almost impossible to take your eyes away from him and watch anybody else. He was magnetic! Kenneth Branagh was on stage with him for most of the time but you wouldn't have guessed it. Rupert ruled!
During my second year at drama school, my agent - for yes indeed I had one, even though I was technically otherwise employed being a student - got me an audition at the Queen's Theatre - nice touch, I thought, to put the play on there - for the cast change of this masterpiece of theatrical social timing. I took a couple of hours off college and got myself to Shaftsbury Avenue, all orange hair and tracky bottoms, and did my stuff.
A couple of days later, I got a call from the old agent telling me that I had to go back there to meet Stuart Burge, the director. This was plainly my moment! I was about to fulfil my destiny and begin what would undoubtedly be an illustrious career with an early exit from college and West End success. I day-dreamed the rest of the day away, idly concocting fantasies involving tearful yet intensely exciting good-byes at the college, tutors nodding sagely and informing me that they'd sensed this would happen all along and that I had been plainly over qualified to join them all in the first place, promises of complimentary tickets handed out generously, being the object of corridor conversation for months, knowing my still-student contempories would be able to follow my success from the common room and in the Evening Standard. Oh, yes, it was all kicking off.
The morning came, I met the director and I read for the part of 'Barclay'. I must admit I was slightly disappointed to learn I was being considered for that particular part and informed Stuart as only a second-year drama student can, that I felt I was much more suited to the lead role. I went back to college and waited for the call. It was a Tuesday and that week-end was to be one of the longest bank holiday week-ends I've ever had. By the next Tuesday, I could wait no longer and rang my agent torn between wanting to know desperately and not wanting to know at all...
They eventually gave the part of 'Bennett' to Colin Firth and 'Barclay' to James Wilby. I resolved to never want a job that badly ever again.
In April 1985, however, Northampton Theatre Royal was putting on its own production of the now classic and, through the kind help of an actor who had left college the year before and had already worked at the theatre and secured a little influence, here was my chance! I was asked to come up to Northampton and meet with the director, a certain Richard Olivier. The actor who suggested me was to become instrumental in not only starting my theatrical career but also my stella career in squash, but again, more of that later.
I met with Richard and read for the part I felt I could have nailed two years before and went back to London quietly confident.
He cast me as Fowler, the sadistic cadet and cast as Bennett an actor who was not only a real-life lord, but also whose father had actually been in Guy Burgess' form at Eton, the man who had inspired the part. Foiled again! After reading the part, I came to two conclusions: firstly, Fowler was a cadet, therefore, I would play him with a stiff, upright posture; and, secondly, he was cold and generally disliked, therefore, I would play him with a stiff, upright posture. After the first-night, I was asked by the theatre's artistic director's daughter, an actress herself, whether I'd used a form of animal study to inform my playing of him. She suggested some wading bird or other. I was obviously over-doing the stiff, upright bit. As you can see from the production photograph, even when sitting, I refused to drop the stiffness and the uprightness. Still, I think I did alright considering. In an awful 'art imitating life' sort of way, I had wanted to play the hero and had ended up having to be the class butt!
Being my first theatre job away from home, I experienced the particular delights of the theatrical dig. Unless you have friends who've worked at the theatre before and can recommend anywhere, it can be a bit of a lottery. For my audition a few weeks' before, I had stayed in what turned out to be the only show in town, a beautiful seven or eight bedroom house owned by a local actor and antiques' dealer. It was huge with a beautiful garden and everyone stayed there. Unfortunately, by the time I'd been cast, the place was full. A quick call to a box-office lady secured me an address. It was nice she assured me, and the musical director and a member of the cast of Blood Brothers, the show that was currently on at the theatre, were themselves staying there and seemed very happy with it. I arrived on the Sunday night and found the place. It was a pokey little number and seemed very ordinary. I couldn't understand what the guys felt particularly happy about. It was during the first morning's rehearsal, I discovered why. It was known locally as "Poofs' Palace" and my fellow lodgers and the owner of the place were the reason. I was told to go down into the cellar and check it out. After rehearsals finished that first day, I loitered around the bar as long as I could trying to delay my return to this terraced version of The Last Days of Sodom. Back at the gay ranch, I gingerly opened the front door. No-one home! Good. The door to the cellar stared at me like Linda Blair's in 'The Exorcist'. Swallowing hard, I slowly turned the knob, hoping that that would be the only knob my hand came into contact with during my stay there. The owner was away. He had discovered God and had decided to go off to train as a vicar. Call me naive, but imagine my surprise when I switched on the light in this future man-of-the-cloth's cellar and found the floor covered in mattresses and the walls painted with silouettes of men in various states of arousal. Now, these shadow-men could have been fully clothed green-grocers, holding their cucumbers at waist-height, but I suspected not. I ran out of this Bacchanalian nightmare like the clappers and resolved to spend the rest of my stay studying my lines in my room with headphones on and garlic round the door.
That summer, I spent six glorious weeks pretending to be Barry Sheen around the streets of London on my little Honda 90 working as a despatch rider. It was difficult to combine the artistic with the grubby, and the day I attended an audition for a play in a Rukka jacket with the walkie-talkie still slung over my shoulder and my reading of "Hamlet" was interrupted by a very loud "48, 48! Where are you? Over!", I realised that something had to give and, that, combined with an enormously lucrative commercial for Bella magazine, kept me off the bike for the rest of the year. I had begun recording programmes for the BBC World Service in its English By Radio department and, in October, I was offered a contract to join their company on a much more permanent basis.