Back in London, Mandy and I for some reason decided to work in a pizza restaurant in the Fulham Road called "Pizza the Action!" . We worked there for two months till the October but it took me till November to work out what the name meant...
Why Mandy needed to work there I have no idea. She was, and I'm sure still is, part of a family who have uncles and aunties with titles and own vast tracts of Scotland. She lived with her twin sister - steady! - in a beautiful flat in Wandsworth that was owned by her mum and it would be pretty fair to say that there was more than enough of the green stuff to go round. Come to think of it, my working there wasn't particularly borne of financial necessity, but work there we did and the mainly Turkish management loved having us serve their South London clientele. Well, to be accurate, they loved having Mandy. She leant a bit of class to the establishment. They viewed me as an unfortunately necessary part of the package; the Andrew Ridgley to George's Michael. They all spoke with heavy accents and my constant need for them to repeat whatever they said convinced them I was retarded. They thought they'd employed two of Fulham's bright, young over-priviledged. Instead, they realised that 50% of their signing was the idiot off-spring of the game-keeper...
During this period I felt an intense pressure to conform. I was surrounded by the titled and the wealthy. I spent most of my time at Mandy's flat with her, her sister and her sister's impenetratively socially over-developed boyfriend. It's hard to describe him without descending into prejudice. Suffice it to say, he was a twenty-something who had the manners, appearance and confidence of, how shall I say, the hospital consultant you only get to meet once before he deigns to remove your spleen, or a member of a Tory cabinet, or a high court judge. It worked a treat, though, and he fitted right in. I had the manners and appearance of a jellyfish in jeans so I would sit on the sofa in awe at his 'ring of confidence' as he watched Coronation Street with an amused detachment and laughed at black people whenever he saw them on the TV. Yes, I'm afraid it was true. Wealth and a sense of superiority completely removes one from any sense of sharing the world with others and the mid-nineteen eighties was a licence to indulge. Thatcher was at the height of her influence and the upper-middle classes were out and proud. I'm sure they're still here and laughing but nowadays have to be careful not to laugh too loud. The very fact that Mandy had gone to drama school and wanted to be an actress was seen as an amusing warp that she would soon grow out of so, when I came along, laughter was unconfined.
One Sunday lunch in the parental home in fashionable Chelsea, the patriarch decided to play a game where everyone in turn was to be asked who they would vote for at the next General Election. My heart began to beat louder and louder as he worked his way around the large table past Tory voter after Tory voter. Now I wouldn't describe myself as particularly political even now, but then, my politics were totally instinctive and unexamined. The fatherly finger pointed to me and I took a deep breath and suggested that I would vote Labour. Without any exaggeration at all, I tell you the entire room erupted with guffaws and I was left floundering in a wordless vacuum wishing I had the articulacy to defend myself.
That said, I nursed an intense desire to be accepted and so began to adopt the external appearance of an eighties estate agent, all stripes and signet rings, mimicking my then peers and desperate to be seen as one of them. It was during this time I began to understand the impotence felt by people prejudiced against for simply being born outside of an elite. No amount of dressing up or talking 'posh' will ever satisfy and I became a nervous wreck, convinced of my intrinsic lack of worth and inappropriately annoyed.
Privilege is seductive, however, and I wanted in on it big time. I began to adopt the short clipped speech of the emotionally repressed and wore brogues. I knew I was a fraud and felt intense unease with my adopted persona. I'd be taken along to swish restaurants and beautiful houses, attend family parties and be at the top table. But I felt constantly like a gate-crasher, a con-man at a disadvantage, wearing a cheap suit, trying to convince people of a pretence who knew you were pretending! And, yes, I know that's exactly what an actor does all the time, but his audience not only wants to be duped but also pays for the privilege. There were, of course, a few nuggets within this pan of sophisticated and very clean silt and I gravitated naturally towards this welcome. It seemed that only the most socially secure had the capacity to allow anything outside in, so I would find a Duchess to be kind, attentive and considerate, whereas the grandchildren seemed desperate to maintain a hauteur, petrified that the divide so expensively bought for them by their parents would dissipate and leave them a level or two down the scale. If you feel you have a lot to lose, you hold on to it for dear life. It's easy to give someone your last fiver. I mean, if you've only five quid left in the world, what difference would it make? But a million quid in the bank and it has to be protected and invested carefully. You can't just start giving it away! I was the pov among the comfy, but, although I technically had nothing to lose, I felt impelled to please and, with no particular working-class axe to grind, became an impressionist, or rather an impressionist's monkey without a script. I floundered and flustered my way through many a meal.
Here was one very clear difference between this life and the one I'd led before: the meals lasted forever! I don't know about you, but we used to 'ave our tea with Blockbusters on ("Can I have a pee please, Bob?") ensuring the minimum amount of communication. This lot revelled in conversation, especially the stimulating kind, face to face, over a meal. Forced to formulate articulate lines of thought, I would quickly panic and begin simply substituting words for grunts and silly noises. I couldn't wait to get back home and my comforting vacancy. There was nowhere to hide and no way to avoid eye-contact. It was hell! By the time the dishes were cleared and the coffee drunk, I'd be exhausted! If I complained, Mandy would suggest the problem was one of 'breeding' and I should try harder, but I found it all very difficult and felt inhibited by the 'us and them' mentality. I stress that this attitude showed itself in the mainly young element. I met some truly lovely people during my time with the toffs. The younger ones, though, could be sods. It's understandable, I suppose. I mean, at eighteen, I myself felt I was the bee's knees when I joined Central. This catastrophic mis-judgement however was not encouraged and so a healthy balance was found. With some of these these guys, their unshakable self belief is nurtured, celebrated and funded, so they haven't a chance. More to the point, at the time, neither did I. I was too young to stand up for myself and impose anything at all on the proceedings. I would wither under Mandy's father's stare. He'd been dipped in the cauldron of self-assurance as a baby and I was a relatively uneducated, unsophisticated young man from Stratford-upon-Avon. No contest. Looking back, I can now see how he managed to indulge me and gently mock me at the same time. Like most fathers, I was nowhere near good enough for his daughter. I can't see why. After all, I rode a Honda 90, worked in a pizza parlour and had no concrete prospects at all!
Despite her family's dismissive attitude, Mandy was determined to succeed as an actress and step one was to get her Equity card. Unlike myself, she still had to find a way of getting herself one because without it she couldn't work. Equity was a protective closed shop at the time, before Thatcher turned her beam of attention onto the unions, and young actors had to earn the right to have one by securing forty weeks' work by hook or by crook. Mandy decided to use her dance training to get hers and disappeared off to Portugal for two months.
Meanwhile I was left in social limbo in her absence. Without Mandy around, there was no particular reason for her family or friends to suffer my meal-time grunting and so I effectively disappeared from view. I wasn't without things to do however. My own personal brand of nepotism secured me my second acting job at the Westminster Theatre in Victoria playing a leopard in the first production of Glynn Robbins' adaptation of "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe".
It was during this time that my need to express myself in the sporting arena could be denied no more and I bought myself a cue and began a love affair that was to destroy my sight, rob me of vitamin D, and put even more of a strain on Mandy's and my relationship...snooker!