Part 4 (1/2)

'It was fine,' I said, 'but the best bit was the man who came on as the lawyer at the end I mean, even the way he took off his hat was extraordinary Who as he?' he?'

'But that was Olivier!' said my mother 'Didn't you realize?'

I can still picture exactly the way he stood on stage, the angle of his head, the extraordinary ability he had to ers one after the other as he tugged off his gloves with aching deliberation He played a dry-as-dust solicitor in a small co Shautsy endeavours of a thousand hard-working actors ical and emotional truths of their characters in theatres and studios up and down the land, but damn, it was fun I was pleased at least that I found it a who the actor was

So, at Ca, I had no theories about theatre as an agent of social or political change, and no ambition for it as a future career If I had faith in my potential I certainly had no particular sense that it would be on comic roles that I should concentrate Quite the reverse Theatre to me meant, first and foremost, Shakespeare, and the comic roles in the canon fools, jesters, clowns and mechanicals didn't really suit me at all I was more a Theseus or Oberon than a Bottom or Quince, more a Duke or Jaques than a Touchstone But first there was the question of whether I would even dare put e had dozens and dozens of drae had its own, and there were others that were university-wide The hts and the A histories: the Marloas started by Justin Brooke and Dadie Rylands a hundred years ago; the ADC and Footlights were older still Other were more recent the Murave in the early 1930s and clung to a arde identity

Many at Cae will tell you that the drama world there is filled with ambitious, pretentious, bitchy wannabes and that the atreasy-pole rivalry is suffocating and unbearable The people who tell you this are cut frorow up these days to beco barbarous, mean, abusive, look-at-me, listen-to-es and other websites and blogs foolish enough to allow space for their poison Such swine specialize in second-guessing the h to co fools of theht on the face of the earth 'Oh, but a thick skin is surely necessary in the acting profession Actors and theatre people should get used to it' Well if you want to be in a profession which accesses emotion and attempts to penetrate the ht that what is more necessary is a thin thin skin Sensitivity But I a off the point skin Sensitivity But I aht, as I settled into o to see some plays and decide whether or not I would be co to auditions if I didn't have a hope of doing anything more than carry a spear

I should point out for those unfamiliar with the world of British university drarown-ups with dons, lecturers, officials or the university departments and faculties This was all as extra-curricular as drink, sex or sport I know that in Aive you points towards your degree, 'credits' I believe they are called Not in Britain Universities that offer drama courses do exist here Manchester and Bristol, for exae Dra to do with your academic work, you find your own time to do them As a result, such pursuits flower, fruit and flourish as nowhere else If I had had to subme hoas done I should have withered on the vine The beauty of our as that everyone was learning as they went along The actors and directors were all students, as were the lighting, sound, set construction, costuement, production crew, front of house and ad, 'Oh, this looks like fun'

How did they learn? Well, that's the beauty of university life You learn on the job and you learn from the second-years and third-years above you, who in turn learned on the job and fro as I should find official dra All you need is enthusiaser and the need to do it But within that range there is plenty of rooer player who thinks it will be larky to be in the chorus of a musical, or the nervous scholarly type ouldn't edy just for the sensation of experiencing a play from the inside You don't have to be a professional in theat all

Where did the money come from to build sets and make costumes? From previous productions Every drama club had a committee, mostly second- and third-years, and soets and theabout draence, accounting and all the perils and pitfalls of business and ement Sometimes a don would be asked to sit on the board of a club to help oversee financial matters, but they had no more power over the cohts, it was ru and profitable enough to have to pay corporation tax I don't know if that was true, but the fact that such a ru of the scale of soe part of it These clubs had been running for so long that it was relatively si

The first production I went to see was of Tom Stoppard's Travesties Travesties The play is set in Zurich and somehow combines in a farcical whirl Lenin, who had been exiled there for a while, Tristan Tzara, the Dadaist, the novelist Jalish consul called Henry Carr who is in the process ofa production of Wilde's The play is set in Zurich and somehow combines in a farcical whirl Lenin, who had been exiled there for a while, Tristan Tzara, the Dadaist, the novelist Jalish consul called Henry Carr who is in the process ofEarnest The I Earnest

The production was co-directed by Brigid Larmour, now artistic director of the Watford Palace Theatre, and Annabelle Arden, who directs opera around the world At the tiround running The others in the cast will forgive me, I hope, if I fail to recount their own adh it was a truly excellent production in and of itself, what stood out for me above all else was the perforirl who played Gwendolen stood out like a good deed in a naughty world

She seemed, like Athene, to have arrived in the world fully armed Her voice, her movement, her clarity, ease, poise, witwell, you had to be there One of the best things any perforer, ballet dancer, character actor or tragedian, is to relax an audience To let theht and that they can lean back in their seats happy in the knowledge that the evening won't be a disaster Of course, another of the best things a perforer, unpredictability and instability To let the audience know that the evening ht fail at any moment and that they need to lean forward in their seats and watch intently If you can irl was really solish coravely beautiful, extraordinarily funny and coramme told me, was Emma Thompson In the interval I heard sohter of Eric Thoic Roundabout

Emma

Fast forward to March 1992 For her perforel in Howards End Howards End Emma has won the Acade round all her old friends to find out what they think of this Now, it is a kind of unwritten rule that when the press ask you to speak about someone else you never say a word unless that person has cleared it with you beforehand If one wants to talk about oneself to a journalist that is fine, but it really isn't on to blather about a third party without their per been ets hold of Kim Harris's number Emma has won the Acade round all her old friends to find out what they think of this Now, it is a kind of unwritten rule that when the press ask you to speak about someone else you never say a word unless that person has cleared it with you beforehand If one wants to talk about oneself to a journalist that is fine, but it really isn't on to blather about a third party without their per been ets hold of Kim Harris's number

'hello?'

'Hi, I'm from the Post Post I understand you're an old university friend of Emma Thompson's?'

'Ye-e-es '

'I wonder if you've anything to say about her Oscar? Are you surprised? Do you think she deserves it?'

'I have to coht out and tell you,' says Kim, 'that I feel betrayed, let down and most disappointed by Emma Thompson'

The journalist al sucked and then, he later swears, of drool hitting the carpet

'Betrayed? Really? Yes? Go on'

'Anyone who ever saw Emma Thompson at university,' says Ki an Oscar before she was thirty She is now just over thirty It's a crushi+ng disappoint a disappointht he had a story Kim, as he so often does, put it perfectly That really was all there was to say Plenty of other students were talented, souess that with a fair folloind, the right opportunities and a rowth, they would have decent, or even brilliant, careers With Emma you just saw her once and you knew Stardom Oscar Dauarantee it will be offered

Men like their actresses, if they are superb, to be air-headed, ditzy and charly foolish Ely different approaches to logical thoughtbut air-headed, ditzy or foolish she is not: she is one of the ent people I have met The fact that her second Oscar, two years after the first, arded for a screenplay, tells you all you need to know about her ability to concentrate, think and work If it is teifts lavished on them at birth, she has an abundance of kindness, openness and sweetness of nature that makes envy or resentment difficult I a she's lovely and gorgeous' here, but that is the risk a book like this was always going to run I did warn you For those of you ould rather take away some other view of the woman, I can tell you definitively that she is a talentless mad bitch soanders the streets of north London in nothing but a pair of ill-ets parts in films because she sleeps with the producers' animals Plus she smells She never wrote a screenplay in her life She chains up a writer she drugged at a party twenty years ago, and he is responsible for everything published under her name Her so-called liberal humanitarian principles are as false as her breasts: she is aof Apartheid That's E of fools and the fool of darlings

Despite or because of this we got to know each other She was at the all-wolish She was funny Very funny Also extreme with her fashi+on sense The day came when she decided to shave her head: I blame the influence of Annie Lennox Elish faculty and onediscussion of A Winter's Tale A Winter's Tale, alked together down Sidgwick Avenue towards the centre of town She pulled off her woolly hat so that I could feel the texture of her bare pate In those days it was unlikely that anyone would have seen a wo past on a bicycle turned to stare and, his panic-stricken eyes never leaving Eht into a tree I never thought such things took place outside silent movies, but it happened and it row back

The first ter once to attend an audition I had seen that there could be actors, or one at least, as astonishi+ng as E parts that I felt I could have played better, or at least no worse Nonetheless I held back

For the e and in the wider university followed a blandly traditional course I joined the Ca to do with students' unions, but a debating society with its own chamber, a kind of lass, coh which you file to vote after the 'Speaker' has put the motion to the 'House' All a little poaret Thatcher's cabinet had been Cae Union hacks in the early sixties: Norman Fowler, Cecil Parkinson, John Selwyn Gummer, Ken Clarke, Norman Lamont, Geoffrey Howethat bunch I was not politically inclined enough to want to speak or attempt to work my way into the inner circle of the Union, nor was I interested in asking questions fro to debates in any other way I watched a few Bernard Levin, Lord Lever, Enoch Powell and a handful of others careat issues of the day, whatever they were back then War, terrorism, poverty, injustice, as I recallproblems that have now all been solved but which at the ti There was also a 'comedy' debate once a term, usually with a fanciful motion like 'This House Believes in Trousers' or 'This House Would Rather Be a Sparrow Than a Snail' I went to one where the handlebar-mustachioed comedian Jimmy Edwards, drunk as a skunk, played the tuba, told excellent jokes and afterwards so I was told fondled the thighs of all the co men at the dinner I have since been invited e, Oxford and other universities and shi+ningly coof the getting drunk and fondling the thigh business though Whether that entleman, a cowardly wuss or an unadventurous prude I cannot quite hs appear to be safe around e as I enter the autued

Kim had i for theainst other universities nobody doubted he would get his Blue, or rather Half Blue You are perhaps aware that in Oxford and Ca 'Blues' You can represent Caht blue, on the hockey field, for exaame of the season and be far and away the best player on the pitch for all of theainst the dark blues, Oxford, you will not be awarded your Blue A Blue, for either side, ainst The Eneby and cricket are the most celebrated encounters, but there are Blues contests between Oxford and Caame and coe to boxing, fro Theawarded a 'Half Blue', and that is what Kiainst Oxford in the Varsity chess match, at the RAC in Pall Mall, sponsored by Lloyds Bank He played in thatthe prize for best game in 1981

Kim in Half Blue scarf

Kim and I were the closest of friends but ere not yet lovers He pined for a second-year called Robin, and I pined for no one in particular Love had e years, perhaps I had fallen in love at school so coly that I had made some sort of unconscious pact with myself, I think, that I would neither betray the purity of that rapturous perfection (I know, I know, but that is how I felt) nor would I ever again open myself up for such pain and torment (exquisite as they were) There were plenty of attractive young es and about the town, and a ave the iaily be I res in , fondling and farcically floppy failure as well asfanfare and triumphant fleshly fulfilment, but love stayed away, and, sensualist as I aards, I seemed to miss neither the rewards nor the punishments of carnality

A week or so towards the end of the first term I was approached and asked if I would sit on the May Ball Committee Most universities hold a su vacation Oxford has what they call Coet one fresher on the committee every year,' the President of the committee said to me, 'so that by the time the May Ball comes around in your last year, you'll knohat it's all about'

I never dared ask why they had selected me out of all the freshers to be the one to sit on the coreat coht I exhibited style, savoir faire savoir faire, diablerie diablerie, dash and a graceful party manner Or perhaps they believed that I was the kind of biddable sucker ould be prepared to put in the hours

'In any case,' I was told, 'it means you will be President of the May Ball coood on the CV Excellent for getting a job in the City'

Already erea job in the City, rather than being looked at as an eery and dull worthiness, was beginning to be thought of as a glamorous, sexy and desirable destiny for the elite of the world

The ht expect, public-school men Many of thee's exclusive dining and drinking club I know I ought to have looked down on institutions like May balls and dining clubs with amused scorn, lofty disdain and impatient wrath, but the moment I heard of the Cherubs' existence I resolved that I would be elected I once heard Alan Bennett say of snobbery that it was 'a very a 'That is to say,' he went on, 'the kind of snobbery that looks up with admiration is amiable Daft, but amiable The kind that looks doith contempt is not amiable Not ae of the amiable kind I believe I have never looked down on anyone because they are 'low born' (whatever that laht mean) It is a preposterous weakness and I could easily pretend that I am immune to it, but the fact is that I am not, so I may as well fess up I suppose it is, oncean outsider, always needing the proof of belonging that those who truly belong never need Or soht mean) It is a preposterous weakness and I could easily pretend that I am immune to it, but the fact is that I am not, so I may as well fess up I suppose it is, oncean outsider, always needing the proof of belonging that those who truly belong never need Or soht weeks long They call it Full Term, and you are expected to be in residence for all of it in theory the permission of a Dean or Senior Tutor is needed for an 'exeat' if you want to biff off; you canthe teeks that bracket either end of Full Terht up to Cundall and teach there for the three weeks they had left of their, er, school term After Christmas with my family in Norfolk it was back to Cundall for a week and then to Cain ot the parts I wanted for all of them I played Jeremiah Sant, an insane Ian Paisley-style Ulsterman, in Peter Luke's dramatization of the Corvo novel Hadrian the Seventh Hadrian the Seventh, the distraught Jewish tailor who sees a ghost in Wolf Mankowitz's The Bespoke Overcoat The Bespoke Overcoat and someone or other in the Trinity Hall lunchtime production of a play about Scottish nationalis from rehearsals to auditions to theatres and back to auditions and rehearsals and theatres again Lunchtiht were the three usual slots for perfor production I would have put myself up for that too I think I was in twelve plays in that eight-week tered one essay on Edmund Spenser and went to no lectures or see word for tutorials, were the only more or less compulsory acadeo alone, or occasionally with one other, to a don's rooms, read out the essay you had written, talk about it and then discuss some other writer, literaryan essay on that subject for the next week I became adept at excuses: and someone or other in the Trinity Hall lunchtime production of a play about Scottish nationalis from rehearsals to auditions to theatres and back to auditions and rehearsals and theatres again Lunchtiht were the three usual slots for perfor production I would have put myself up for that too I think I was in twelve plays in that eight-week tered one essay on Edmund Spenser and went to no lectures or see word for tutorials, were the only more or less compulsory acadeo alone, or occasionally with one other, to a don's rooms, read out the essay you had written, talk about it and then discuss some other writer, literaryan essay on that subject for the next week I became adept at excuses: 'I'e with the eschatology of Paradise Lost Paradise Lost I think I'll take another week to co to confess hoould mine dictionaries of literary and philosophical termatic

'Fine, fine Take your ti used to undergraduates, he would be fa-word displays (you will already have winced at plenty of them in this book I dare say: the felid re his nevi) and he had probably been in the audience of at least two of the plays I had acted in that week and would know perfectly well that I was spending every hour on drae was very relaxed about that kind of thing As long as they didn't think you were going to fail your degree there was no danger of theree were fabulously reance that it believed anyone it selected for entrance was necessarily incapable of failure For the rest the faculty and college very sensibly left it up to the individual If you wanted to work hard for a first-class degree any aiven; if you preferred to spend your tihts roaring pentameters, why then that was fine too A relaxed atmosphere of trust pervaded the university

That Lent ter By the end of it I was an insider in the se drama The little microcosm reflected the esoteric coteries, cliques and factions (I only put the word 'esoteric' in front of 'coteries' because it is an anagram of it and that pleases me) of the wider world without The bar of the ADC theatre was a-hum with talk of Artaud and Anouilh, Stanislavsky and Stein, Brecht and Blin Many a strong-sto sportsman, scientist or politico would have been unable to overhear our talk without vo' for each other I certainly did If not honeybotto I know, but there you are The derogatory epithet 'lovie' had yet to be ascribed to the theatrical profession, but that's what avant la lettre avant la lettre ere, lovies all History and precedent ed us: Peter Hall, John Barton, Richard Eyre, Trevor Nunn, Nick Hytner, Jarave, Derek Jacobi, Ian McKellenthe list of theatrical giants who had leaned up against the sareat ere, lovies all History and precedent ed us: Peter Hall, John Barton, Richard Eyre, Trevor Nunn, Nick Hytner, Jarave, Derek Jacobi, Ian McKellenthe list of theatrical giants who had leaned up against the sareat

So how did I get to that position so fast? Was I really so talented? Or was everyone else really so talentless? I wish I knew I can rees, occasions and solid experiences, but the emotional memory behind them is blurred and unresolved Was I ambitious? Yes, I think in some secret way I was ary for Cae's silly microcosmic equivalent of stardoer teaet his first opportunity to ht away that this person can, or cannot, play rugby For all s as an actor (physical aardness, reliance on speech, tendency to choose ironic ruefulness over raw emotion) I suppose at auditions I showed that I at least had that thing in h the occlusions of the past I can nified, rumbly toned student who could look either seventeen or thirty-seven He kno to stand still and look another actor in the eye He kno to deliver a line at least in such a way as to convey itsand, if necessary, its majesty He can, as they say, 'pull focus' on to and off his own self I am not so sure about his ability to inhabit a different personality, to live through the arc of his character's journey on stage and all thatee for the first time I felt so absolutely and entirely at home that it was hard for me to remember that I had had al about acting I loved the mockable sides of it, the instant camaraderie and deep affection one felt for everyone else involved, I loved the long conversations about hs and rehearsals and tech runs, I loved trying on costule of nerves as I waited in the wings, I loved the almost mystical hyperaesthetic way in which one are of each e, of how one could detect precisely where an audience's focus was at any onehundreds of people withon the ebb and flow of e really isn't about relishi+ng love, attention and ad the power you (think you) have over an audience It is simply a question of fulfilnificently perfected by the knowledge that you are doing what you were put on earth to do

Not so very long ago I accompanied some northern white rhinos on a journey to Kenya They were being translocated from the zoo in the Czech Republic that was all they had ever known It was i to watch these anie open skies of the savannah and the senes had taken runts, the waving of their horns froreat hides told you that somewhere inside they knew that they here they were supposed to be I will not clai of the surge of relief and joy at finally having come home that the rhinos seemed to express as they nosed the air of Africa for the first tirown-up theatre won't allow you the same levels of fun and fulfilment After three performances, or five at the most, student productions are over, and you ain

The Easter ters to life and becomes one of the e alumnus William Wordsworth put it: 'Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven!' He riting less about May Week and ht holds better for the first, and I bet that in truth he was thinking uillotines

The Head of the River coe's boat jostling to bump the one ahead and h to allow a side-by-side regatta which is why these peculiar Lent and May Week bue is probably theI did in my three years