The unemployment office in Stratford upon Avon had nicer carpet on the floor than we had at home, and you waited for your appointment in comfy chairs. They didn't need to know anything about you other than your name and address and the fact you weren't particularly interested in working - you simply felt you needed to explore other avenues - and wanted to sign on. In those days, signing on was made as easy and as pleasant as possible. Sure, today, you are called 'clients' and there are all sorts of charters and commitments to ensure everything goes as smoothly as possible, but you tell them you feel like exploring other avenues and they'll laugh in your face! Nowadays, you get the third degree and need to provide three years of bank statements and prove you'd sell your granny to get a job to get your fifty quid a week off them. I last signed on a couple of years back - it wasn't the money, you understand, but the...ahem, principle! - and was quite incredulous when the very nice Asian lady behind the desk in the dole office produced a list of casting producers and production companies for me to contact! One of the addresses was that of the BBC! It was all I could do to keep myself from donning my Fedora, swishing my long cashmere scarf around my neck and announcing at the top of my fully resonant voice, "DON'T YOU KNOW WHO I AM?" At the 'labour exchange', one has to smile, fill in all the boxes even if they don't apply to you and get out as soon as possible. In the old days, miss your signing on day and no-one batted an eyelid; today, if you're too LATE for your appointment, they'll cancel your claim and tell you to go away and come back in a week or two with all the bank statements you had to provide before and more. I suppose they have a point. After all, you're unemployed! Why on earth would you be late? Life's not like that, though, and the signing-on queue always has guys animatedly arranging their days on the mobile and checking their tasty cars on the double yellows outside. More power to them, I say. Better that than giving in and allowing the oppressive atmosphere in these places make you pathetic, listless and without hope...
Being unemployed in Stratford in 1980 was, as I said, more of a life-style decision than anything else. However, drinking tea and reading the Melody Maker quickly became a little dull and my Dad got me a job in the Theatre Workshops. Looking back, this has turned out to be the only 'proper' job I've ever had! And it was great. The Theatre Workshops were where all the sets were built for the shows in the theatre itself on the other side of town. The day started at eight and finished at four. It was, is, a hanger-type building with the work-floor over-looked by a long window that stretched the entire width of the place. We never really went up there. Only important people did. The people who made the decisions. My Dad was one of them, so it must be said I was on shakey ground down-stairs. The work-floor consisted of ten or twelve large wooden work-benches, each manned by a two-man team. Some of these guys had been at their benches for years and had created completely individual and hilarious double-acts. There was a fantastically eccentric little guy called Len who, for some reason, wore size fifteen boots. His mate was a very tall, friendly biker with long fair hair, who'd surprisingly done some time and was twenty or twenty-five years his junior. A more unlikely pairing you be hard pressed to think of and yet they worked together brilliantly and the affection between them was plain to see. Terry was the union representative. He had tattooed fingers and dressed up as a cowboy for fun. He mistrusted me from the first. After all, I was, after a fashion, the boss' son. My dad would go up to the offices upstairs in his capacity as head of the stage staff and whoever went up there was, if not the enemy, at least on the other side. I have to say, despite his total - and justified - lack of belief in my commitment to the job, we had great fun. My job was mate to John Earle, who was general labourer and driver of transit. We would carry the long planks from the wood store round the back onto the work-floor. I was given a hack-saw and would spend afternoons making pin-hinges. I spent hours fashioning the wooden pegs used for fixing the flats together. Sometimes, we'd get to go out in the van over to the theatre stores and muck about in this Aladdin's Cave of Roman swords and light bulbs. All through this, Terry would be keeping an eye on me. The toilet of the work-shops was at the top of a long flight of stairs near the huge doors at the entrance, so the chances of getting in there without being noticed were slim indeed. There were unbelievably graphic mags in there and this, coupled with the chance of a bit of skiving, gave me the bravery to climb up often and stay as long as possible. Terry didnt miss a trick. I liked him a lot. I also felt unusually brave with him. I simply didn't believe he hated me at all. He once threatened to throw me into this huge machine that vacuumed up all the wood-shavings from the floor and I thought this hilarious. John would warn me not to fuck around with him but I couldn't take any of it seriously. One afternoon, Terry actually did get me outside the door of the thing and try to get me in it but failed miserably. The best was when Terry put my neck in a noose (!) and threatened to hang me during the morning tea-break. He began to pull it thinking I'd be scared but I was one step ahead and pretended to lose consciousness. He let go and I fell to the floor. He ran to me and as he pulled the rope from around my neck, I let my head bounce on the concrete floor - nice touch, I thought. At the last moment, I jumped up and laughed in his face. He was completely flushed with panic. He thought he'd killed the boss' son! Absolutely hilarious. He tried to save face by telling everyone he'd suspected I was doing my 'dying swan act', but I'd seen the look on his face and I knew he'd shat himself. I left that job after four months or so, as he always said I would. We bumped into each other at a local petrol station a year or so later, and it was great to see him. I wish him well.
It was during this time I bought my first car. I had £175 in the building society and, ignoring the advice of the rest of the family, approached my Uncle Gerald and told him to find me a suitable motor. A couple of days later I got a call from him. He'd found just the car for me and, surprise, surprise, it was mine for £175. It was a 1965 Mini 850. Black with two black stripes along its white roof. I fell in love immediately and money changed hands.
The car was quickly named "The Torino" and I put an old GPO telephone down by the hand-brake so David - from the band - and I could really muck about on the Queen's Highway. We'd open the windows and pretend to dunk a flashing light onto the roof, Starsky and Hutch style. We'd scream around the Stratford gyratory system, regularly stopping to refill the dodgy radiator. The passenger door would swing open when you were least expecting it which would add to the excitement especially on sharp right-hand bends. The gyratory system swung to the right and I almost lost David to the verge on many occasions. We still laugh at the memory of me driving up the approach of Clopton Bridge with my eyes shut and arms girder-straight on the wheel trusting to fate whether we'd make it past the on-coming traffic or not! About this time, it had been decided for me that I would leave the family nest. I must admit I had an enormous capacity for moping about and being generally sullen - I was at the end of my seventeenth year, after all - so this didn't come as a huge shock. I was now working for the Electrics Dept. in the theatre itself - nepotism rules! Thankfully, this didn't mean I was put in charge of forty thousand volts, but that I operated the follow spots at the very back of the roof of the auditorium. They were hulking great things that came on, on cue, independently of what you were doing, so you had to make damn sure it was pointing in the right direction when the cue came. Again, it was great fun. I got quite adept at aiming the thing in the darkness. At the end of the light three feet away there was a sort of gun-sight attached. My moment of luminescent glory was at the beginning of the 1980 production of Richard III where Alan Howard made his way in the dark behind a huge silk to the middle of an empty stage. The music began and the lights faded off the silk which lifted in the darkness. Your eyes had to adjust very quickly and pick him out in the pitch black. The audience had no idea he was there at all of course but I had the advantage of fore-knowledge and aimed my light saber towards the spot I hoped he would be. To make things even more difficult, the aperture had to be so small as to light only his face when the computer switched the thing on for the "Now is the winter" bit. The only time I missed it was after I'd had a drama-school audition in London and Mr. Howard uttered his line in spooky blackness as I was busy kacking myself ten miles away, going as fast as I could with 850cc's and a convoy of tractors in front of me.
So I had a fun job and my first car. Even though the band was pretty much over with, we still met up regularly at lunch-time in the '3 C's' cafe in Ely Street - I can't for the life of me remember what the 'C's' stood for - and it was during one of these tea-drinking sessions I got my first proper girlfriend, Polly - or rather she got me. I didn't seem to have much say in the matter. She grabbed my hand and pulled me out of the place, and five hours later, I was having dinner at her parents'. Polly and I lasted until the following April. An 'Acting ASM' - an assistant stage manager who gets to play small parts - up in Liverpool decided to fall off the stage during rehearsals for a show my step-father was in and I was brought up there to replace him. (He was gutted at the time, but I'm sure his later appearing in Brookside for fifteen years made him feel a little better about things.) I left Stratford and Polly behind me and wandered off, minstrel-style, up North to begin my acting career...