There was one thing at school I excelled at. The one competition where I always came first. The Edgar Flower Reading Prize. This was an award for bookish pursuits, not for knowing facts about the town in Berkshire. In fact, it used to be said at the time that I was the Bjorn Borg of the competition such was the grip I had over the rest of the field. Even today, my bookcase has half a shelf put aside to house the many books presented to me for coming first year after year. After winning, you would be given a token to go out and buy the book you wanted to be presented with at Speech Day that winter. Tempting though it was to rush to W H Smiths that first Saturday afternoon to get "The Joy Of Sex", my final choices were rather less daring, including Roget's Thesaurus and The Collected Works of Shakespeare - although I managed to convince the powers that be that Desmond Morris' "Manwatching" was also suitable, neglecting to mention the superb sections on the boy and girl stuff complete with full colour photographs and imaginative illustrations...The competition itself consisted of two sections: the first was a prepared piece of text to be read at the lecturn in front of the rest of the form, and the second was for sight-reading where you were simply handed something to be read there and then. Sight-reading was - and still is actually - extremely easy for me. Sounds obvious, but you don't read words, you read half-sentences and trick the listener into thinking you know exactly what your saying. In fact, you're not even thinking about what your saying as you're reading the sentence out loud, because while speaking, your brain has already moved on and is deciphering the next one and organising its relevence to the paragraph as a whole. Suffice it to say, I was invincible and head and shoulders above my nearest rival. ( Looking back, it's quite fortuitous I chose acting with which to earn a living and not sport, as I'd probably have got my lunch today from a dustbin under Waterloo Station)
The first time I remember standing up in front of an audience and having to read from the page was at my Primary School where our class teacher cast me in her production of Peter the Rabbit as one of the narrators. Not much was asked of me, my passage was quite short, but within it was the moment where Peter gets found out in the apple orchard or something by sneezing loudly as the farmer passed by. Things were going swimmingly. My performance was controlled and assured. Then came the sneeze. I "Atchoo" 'd loudly and confidently and then fell apart! My legs began to violently tremble. There is nothing worse than trying to look composed and your body betraying you by showing everyone how shit-scared you are. It was a shocking moment and one I've studiously tried to avoid my entire adult career with huge success. Isn't it amazing how early on such life-lessons can be learned? I am always aware of this when I go to see my own children perform in what seems to us parents as fairly insignificant and harmless assembly projects and am very careful to encourage and cherish what they're going through, even if they're simply standing up with a cardboard cat mask and reading a sentence about a school trip they've been on. All these moments form us in the years ahead... I went back to my primary school years later and went into the assembly hall where we had performed this play. This hall was also where we had been herded in to watch the first moon-landing on the huge, black and white TV that masqueraded as a wardrobe most of the day - it had doors and stood twenty feet high - and where we had begun every school day for six years. I walked in there and could not believe how small it was. It almost made a mockery of the importance of the events that had taken place in there for me, in my little life. Hamlet at the National Theatre, or Peter Rabbit in Broad Street County Infant and Junior School Assembly Hall? They're both as important (or as unimportant) as each other...
The judging of the Reading Prize was shared between the members of the English Department and what an eclectic bunch they were! Mr. Bullock ( "Greasy" - he had a penchant for Brylcream), Mr. Graham ( laid back - wore Hush-Puppies) and Mrs. Brace ( Lovely, supportive, mother-figure, and, as far as I can remember, the only female member of staff. Sure, Mrs. Morgan took RI, but she was, frankly, bizarre!)
This triptych also ran the Dramatic Society so it was therefore no accident that I became one of its leading lights. I'm sure my Bottom is still talked about today in the old school corridors and, after I'd turned sixteen, my Dickie Winslow was loudly appreciated...I can't really pretend to have had much of a sense of character, but at the time, it seemed that my idea of a successful performance was one where you avoided putting your hands in your pockets the entire evening. My chief critic and greatest fan, Simon Banks, would always rave about this quality, believing it guaranteed me total success in the world of the theatre. Imagine my devastation when I overhead some members of the RSC company, who had been along to see "The Winslow Boy" say that they enjoyed the show but felt that the boy playing Dickie "didn't know what to do with his arms..." ! Also, my professionalism at this stage must be questioned as I remember almost missing my first entrance on first night because I had unilaterally decided to go for a crap after curtain-up and not only that, but take my time over it too. I wandered on, arms resolutely hanging by my side, without a care in the world, brimming with over-confidence, my flies wide open.
Although refusing to play Oberon in an extract of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" for an evening arranged by Mrs. Brace - he was 'King of the Fairies' after all, and there was no way on earth I was prepared to lay myself open to the ridicule that was sure to follow from my mates if I cooperated - I did agree to recite the "I know a bank..." speech from the play. It was a revelatory moment. I stood there, on the stage in Big School (old school...lots of history...silly names...) faced out into the darkness and was taken over. My concentration was complete, my voice aware of the beauty it was creating, and my arms - indeed my whole body - became weightless. Big School was actually the class-room where William Shakespeare had sat in just over four hundred years before (and was probably taught Physics by the same teacher we had), and whether you believe he wrote the stuff or not, I experienced transendance, something extraordinary. It was a magical, humbling moment. Giles "Gunner" Adams, our old form master, came up to me afterwards and quietly told me that my performance of that speech was the best thing he'd ever heard. So aware had I been of the quality, and also my lack of participation in its delivery, I felt no pride in any achievement, merely humility at being allowed to have been the one through which this beauty had shown itself to us all in that room that night in 1977.
