It was a 'double bed-sit' in Brixton with shared kitchen and bathroom for the princely sum of forty-six pounds a week, quite a lot in those days. Me and my black and white portable moved in... I suspect the really low point was when I was alone one afternoon in my room listening to Simply Red's "Gonna do the Right Thing" and began singing it, or more accurately miming to it while admiring myself in the mirror over the fireplace. I was really warming to my theme, putting my face close up to the glass and imagining myself on Top of the Pops when I happened to glance over to my left and saw out of my window two boys opposite leaning on their window sill watching me with amused pity.
A month after leaving the cosy set-up at the BBC, I got an audition at the National Theatre! I had to prepare two speeches to perform for the casting director, Janie Fothergill, who then weeded out the no-hopers and sent the chosen ones on to meet the director. So there I was, "Oh, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth" ing and covering ladies toilets with "bright orange paint".
My first year out of drama school, I'd had some awfully sobering experiences at theatre auditions. The very first one I was sent to, my name was called, and I walked in to the cavernous audition room and did the old dropping of bag while attempting to shake hands routine. How can you engender any sense of confidence in a director after that? The chat after I'd finished my speeches was brief.
My next audition was no better. The director of this particular theatre in Colchester, at that time, had a reputation for being, how shall I say, the lorry-driver's friend - and I don't mean a Yorkie bar, although that may have played a part at some point.
God knows how these rumours get about. Maybe a loose-tongued, long-distance merchant waddled into a pub one night full of actors with a smile on his face, I don't know, but a character snap-shot was formed and somehow I had heard about it. One of the modern speeches I had been using at the time was from a Kevin Elyot play, "Coming Clean" where a gay guy complains that the bloke he'd come home with the night before looked much better at the club.. The therapy sessions are booked, don't worry. For some God-unknown reason, I unthinkingly decided to use this particular speech for my audition with the Essex action-man. I walked in and immediately felt silly in front of this alarmingly large man. His hair was bleached blonde and the gym was obviously no stranger to his charms. I announced the speech I was going to do for him and his left eyebrow arched ever so slightly above a steely blue eye. In for a penny...I quickly decided to use the small table behind me and sat on it with mock-confidence swinging a leg. The room was not a spacious one and I was, at best, five feet away. I swallowed hard and began, trying to avoid eye-contact if at all possible:
"The lights in that disco'd put cosmetic surgeons out of business! I thought I 'd tricked with Steve McQueen, but I ended up with a leather-clad Richard Baker!...Loose? It was like slopping about in a bowl of custard!"
I felt such an arse - if you get my meaning. He smiled indulgently, we had the cursory five minute conversation during which I confirmed I was, in fact, heterosexual and he showed me the door.
Again, that year, I had an audition for what was fast becoming the job for young actors to get, a place in the new small company at the Birmingham rep. They'd already completed their first year and had built a reputation for using the creme de la creme of Britain's young acting talent. I stood in front of them all and began to actually blush half way through my Shakespeare speech knowing just how hopeless it was. It was down-hill from there and I couldn't get out of the room fast enough.
Suffice it to say, my experience of the theatrical audition had not been a good one and here I was, two years on, not having managed to get one job from my own efforts - "Another Country" was, as I said, thanks to strong recommendation, so no speeching required - having to lay myself on the acting line again in front of a casting director merely to get the chance to, meet the director!
That night in the pub, I felt so demoralised, I announced to my friends that, if I didn't get this job, I'd give up...
I got through the preliminaries and met the director. He offered me a banana, asked if I was Australian and gave me the job - a sixty week contract as part of his company putting on three plays in repertoire. It turned out that the job was mine because I could play the piano - those child-hood years passive chain-smoking were not in vain. The first production was to be "Six Characters in Search of an Author" and I was to understudy the part of the stage manager who supplied a piano accompaniment during the scene changes while actually playing the part of a stage hand with no lines. The following play was to be a fantastic adaptation of "Fathers and Sons" by Brian Friel and in that I was to understudy the part of Piotr, a Welsh jack-the-lad (Wales was to be where the play was set) and actually play nothing at all. The last production was the 'Oo Argh' ridden "Ting Tang Mine", set in the old Cornish tin mining industry, where I understudied no-one and actually had three lines, one of which was the immortal "We heard you had a copper lode wide as the Ganges!" This show was great fun to be in. The set was basically a huge climbing frame and you'd find yourself one minute 'mining' your socks off underneath it, using it as a 'valley' between the warring factions in the play - the "We heard..." line was shouted across this imaginary divide - or perching high on top of it pretending to be on a ship navigating through a storm.
During this particular scene, we had obscure naval lingo to deliver. We shouted stuff like "Bunt lines parted! Foretacks parted!" During a break in rehearsal, a few of us formed a sniggery huddle and rewrote some of these lines for a laugh. Of course, it was only me who had the courage - or stupidity - to actually use one of them during a technical rehearsal of the play in the Cottesloe. Charlie, who played the captain, screamed out dramatically, "Bunt lines parted!" as our imaginary ship faced perilous danger on the rocks and I, in a boomarang/kangaroo moment, replied with, "Foreskins parted!" Thankfully, everyone without exception, entered into the spirit and thought it very funny... Towards the end of the run, I managed to fuck up one of these lines, attempt it again, fuck up again, 'tut' loudly and get it right third time around. I don't think anyone noticed.
But back in that November, I was chuffed to bits. The whole of the following year was taken care of and to work at the National was a definite step up.
Rehearsals began on January 12th. I arrived at the stage door and was allowed in. The place was enormous and I seemed to spend my first morning wandering around corridors bumping into ridiculously well-known people at every turn. I began to dread the journey from rehearsal room to canteen. I mean, what do you say to Peter Hall or Anthony Hopkins or Trevor Nunn when you come face to face with them unexpectedly two or three times a day? You want to be extraordinarily witty with every pass-by. I mean, they would smile at you and say "Morning" or something equally as devastating and you'd be left desperately searching for something significant to respond with while they disappeared around the next bend.
Half way through my contract, a call went out over the tannoy from the assistant director of Anthony and Cleopatra - the show Anthony Hopkins was starring in. They needed any actor or actress in the building who would be available during the performances of this show at two specific times: twenty past nine and ten to eleven (it was a long show). At these two times, an 'army' was needed to pad out the scenes, everyone else in their company being busy elsewhere. At the National you were paid a basic wage plus 'performance fees'. As your season progressed, and each new production you were in was added to the repertoire, you found yourself performing maybe seven or eight times a week. There was therefore a vested interest in being in as many shows as possible. I looked at my schedule and found that I was indeed available for action, their show only clashing with Fathers and Sons, where I was required as 'walking understudy' a strange term to describe an actor who isn't actually in the show but always needs to be in the building half and hour beforehand just in case the actor he is shadowing fails to turn up. Under the terms of this arrangement, you have to stick around until the character you are understudying makes his or her last entrance and then you're free to go, making the assumption that, if the actor contracts beriberi, or breaks an ankle, its too late to do anything about it anyway. So I volunteered for this mini-army and stood there on first night for my two minutes and marched off. We must have looked a strange troop. There were fifteen or so of us and a few of them were so keen to notch up another performance fee, they'd run over from the other auditoria, throw on the uniform over their costumes, grab a spear and march on. We therefore were made up of girls, old ladies, old blokes, young blokes, all different shapes and sizes and, more significantly, different heights. Standing in a row, we went from five foot nothing to six foot three. We were mixed about a bit to try and hide this discrepancy, but it was impossible to hide the lippy and false eyelashes some of the centurions seemed to be wearing. When in Rome...
Anyway, it was during the interval of the first night of this show I found myself walking from my dressing room in the Roman gear back to the canteen for more coffee. As I turned into the empty corridor to make my way to the lift, Anthony Hopkins was walking towards me, sweatingly magnificent, having just performed his first half. As he approached, I visibly shrank, wishing for a hole to hide in till he'd passed. The power of his performance that night had been blasting through the dressing room tannoy. His mastery was palpable. The energy was still buzzing around him as he got nearer. There was nowhere to run. After all, I was a little tosser of an understudy, not even meant to be in his show, more interested in the extra performance fee than anything else. As he passed me, he confided, "Its going quite well, isn't it?"
"Yes, Anthony, not bad at all. Although, I felt you lost them a bit in Act Two, Scene One."
No, that didn't happen, of course. I just simpered something completely unintelligible.
So the corridors were a social minefield. I eventually found our rehearsal room that first morning and went in.
After all the hoops I'd had to jump through to get there, I was immediately struck by the ordinariness of it all. It was just like being back at drama school. There was nothing particularly special about the actors in there. This was The National Theatre of Great Britain! I assumed that the actors who worked there must be super-actors, uber-actors. They weren't! They were just ordinary, like me! Having said that, there were many times in that rehearsal room when I'd have to leave to cry in the toilets, such was the quality of Robin Bailey's or Lesley Sharpe's acting. She was amazing. She could do whatever was asked of her without hesitation, clear as a bell. Robin Bailey was simply shockingly good, a man at the height of his powers.
It never ceases to amaze me the intense desire some understudies have to want to go on. As far as I'm concerned, I'd rather stick needles in my eyes. No matter how much rehearsal you get - and usually you don't get much - its impossible to be prepared if the unthinkable should happen and you have to step into the breach. For a start, you never get to rehearse with the actual performers from the show. You rehearse with your fellow understudies. The understudy rehearsals are taken by the assistant director and you simply have to walk through the 'blocking' (the various places on the stage the main events stand and move to) and try to remember the lines, lines that have never been yours, lines you've never had the chance to bring to life with fellow actors, lines you've had to learn alone in your bedroom while trying not to say "Fuck it" and watch 'Changing Rooms' instead. It's an absolute nightmare and yet, as I said, some actors would kill to get on there, deluding themselves that somehow they'd, what? I don't know really. Blow everyone off the stage? Whatever.
My intense desire not to go on meant that, despite getting more rehearsal than normal from our assistant director, I'd always gone for the Changing Rooms option so I didn't really know the lines. So, when the afternooncame the actor playing Piotr didn't show up at the half (35 mins before curtain-up), I was screwed.
A month or so before, we'd all had to witness one of our understudies go on. Grafton Radcliffe had to take the place of Leslie Sands, who wasn't available for one of the performances in the run. Grafton was a born-again Tory Welsh ex-miner and about seventy who lived with his mum back in Wales! He'd played a judge in Crown Court once, but hadn't really been doing much, acting-wise, for quite a while. He would sit around smoking his pipe announcing that he couldn't 'abide fruit' and pile pints of custard on his jam sponge. He was a heart attack waiting to happen. Yet, there we were, on the Olivier stage, with Grafton wandering around unsure of where to wander next. I've neglected to mention that its not just the understudy who has to suffer, the regular cast, of course, are completely thrown, having to ditch their automatic pilots and act afresh with someone totally unqualified and erratic, liable to do or say anything at any given moment. We stood, transfixed, as Grafton, was suddenly pushed out into the limelight. It was fascinatingly compelling in a "there but for the grace' sort of way. An understudy can't even hope to fool the audience into thinking they're one of the regular cast, as they've all been told an understudy is being used even before the lights dim. If you're very unlucky and you're understudy to one of the main characters, you'll even get a groan of disappointment when they find out you're on. The announcer may as well say, "Ladies and Gentlemen. Owing to the indisposition of the person you've all paid at least sixty quid to see, this evening's performance, the pivotal role, and the one on whom this show's reputation has been built, will be played by a nobody whom no-one in their right minds would ever have considered for the part and who has also been ridiculously under-rehearsed and, indeed, has never even run through the play from beginning to end. Thank-you." Grafton amazed us all by getting through the evening pretty successfully and, more importantly for him, without suffering a coronary.
All this raced through my mind as the sound of the audience began to filter in through the tannoy. Jay, the actor I was understudying, was still nowhere to be found. Mobile phones were still confined to building sites and people with the strength to carry the battery pack around without a trolley. I was led into his dressing room like a condemned man. I stared at his wig, and it really hit home what was about to happen. I was going to have to go onto the Lyttelton Stage and wing it! Bloody hell, I was shitting it. I didn't know where to begin. Make-up? Wig? Sick-bucket? It was fast approaching the moment of no return. Even if Jay arrived ten minutes before the start of the show, the rules of the theatre meant I'd have to go on. We had twenty minutes left. It was the 'quarter'. I was literally paralysed with fear. All the blood had left my face and shoulders and pooled around my bowels. It was at that moment Jay waltzed in, with a big grin on his face, saying that, although he knew he was going to be late, he also knew he'd make it in time and had been sat in his car pissing himself thinking about the state he knew I'd be in. Ho di ho di ho di ho di ho...
Understudying aside, my time at the National was an enjoyable one. Sure, my personal life was up the swanny - I'd been seeing a disturbed German girl who would hide from me if I went round to her flat - but I was making loads of new friends and had all the nice bits about being in a company without any of the responsibility. It was like another year out but this time I got to at least step onto a stage.
Rehearsals went well for Six Characters. I would spend most of the day reading the newspapers pretending to pay attention to what was going on in front of me. We rehearsed for six weeks - twice as long as most provincial theatres get - and then began two weeks of previews, and then went back into the rehearsal room to rehearse for a week more! Unbelievable. We finally had our press night on March 18th. Considering I had no lines and spent most of the play skulking round the back of the stage, I was a bit nervous! The first night party was at a local Italian restaurant and, as you can see, a good time was had...
During the rehearsal period, I would finish off each day with everyone in the green-room bar. I'd get through four pints most night and would weave my way home on my motorcycle - "Good cuntstanoon, Afterble". Madness. Something would have to change or else I'd finish the season either an alcoholic or in hospital. (I did, in fact, end the season in hospital, but that's for later)
I'd decided that it was about time I moved out of my Mum's house and got a place of my own. I had been based there ever since Mandy had left a note on my snooker cue that suggested it would be good for me if I buggered off, and despite spending as much time as possible staying out of the way back at the family pile, it was still felt that I should spread my wings a bit. I had a regular income now, almost quadrupling the wages I received from the BBC, and, more importantly, the chance to get laid. It just doesn't look good if you're twenty-five and still living with your parents, even if you do your own washing or not! (and I didn't...) We'd been performing the play for a month or so and had a week off coming so I bought a copy of the Standard and took the plunge.
It was a 'double bed-sit' in Brixton with shared kitchen and bathroom for the princely sum of forty-six pounds a week, quite a lot in those days. Me and my black and white portable moved in.
'Grim' is the word that comes to mind. It was a bit of a shock to say the least. Still, I had my job to go to and felt proud of myself for breaking the girl-friend's house/Mum's house/girl-friend's house pattern I'd been living the previous three years or so. I introduced myself to the joy of the baked bean. I'd never eaten baked beans before and even turned down the chance to join the cubs when little because I thought a major part of the life involved sitting around a camp fire and eating saucepanfuls of the stuff. Needs must, though, and I felt I should really go for this bed-sit land thing and get down to some serious baked bean eating. They were lovely!
No amount of baked beans and portable-watching could hide the shockingly new sense of loneliness that crept into my existence. I just wasn't ready to come back to absolutely nothing at all. It felt catastrophically odd. After all, I'd spent the last few years living what I began to realise was quite a charmed life in beautiful homes with beautiful girl-friends. This was something else. And, to make matters worse, a week after I moved in, the company's week-long break happened.
Faced with such relentless solitude, I would end up back at the National most nights looking for company and drinking red wine. On one of these nights, I actually drank so much, I fell off the stool onto the floor. At the time, I felt this was seen as hilarious, but thinking back on it, it was pretty desperate behaviour. As I said, something had to be done, and I decided to stop drinking alcohol completely...for a while.
I suspect the really low point was when I was alone one afternoon in my room listening to Simply Red's "Gonna do the Right Thing" and began singing it, or more accurately miming to it while admiring myself in the mirror over the fireplace. I was really warming to my theme, putting my face close up to the glass and imagining myself on Top of the Pops when I happened to glance over to my left and saw out of my window two boys opposite leaning on their window sill watching me with amused pity. Oh, yes. Something definitely had to be done.