Part 8 (1/2)

'You were in that film they made here, weren't you?' he said to me and Kiot some sort of premiere at the end of March and a party at the Dorchester Hotel and they want the Footlights to be the entertainment What do you think?'

'It would make sense if we could actually see the film first So we could do a sketch about it, or at least h consulted the letter 'They're suggesting we go to London on thefor fil place in the afternoon, rehearse in the hotel ballroom and then we'll be put on after the dinner'

The day before taking the train to London I called my mother to tell her ere up to

'Oh, the Dorchester,' she said 'I haven't been to the Dorchester for years In fact, I remember the last time clearly Your father and I went to a ball and it broke up early because the news of John F Kennedy's assassination ca on'

On the appointed day the core Footlights tea of the filet British embarrassment As we came out, I brushed a tear from my cheek and said, 'Either I'm in a really odd mood or that was rather fantastic'

Everybody else seeether an opening sketch in which we ran on to the stage in slow h's, had absorbed Vangelis's distinctive ing about for hours in a s area set aside for toast masters in red mess jackets and what used to be called the upper servants, ere at last on

'My lords, ladies and gentlemen,' said the MC into his microphone, 'they twinkled in the twenties and now they're entertaining in the eighties It's the Ca on stage to Steve's lusty rendition of the fil explosions of laughter and applause we settled confidently into our e however it beca the audience There was rustling,Dinner-jacketedtowards the back of the ballroo

Surely eren't that that bad? We had not only perfors at the Riverside Studios in Haht not be to everyone's taste, but such a h's eye, which held the wild, rolling look of a gazelle being pulled to earth by a leopard I dare say my expression was e but we had done evenings at the Riverside Studios in Haht not be to everyone's taste, but such a h's eye, which held the wild, rolling look of a gazelle being pulled to earth by a leopard I dare say my expression was e, with Paul going forward for histhe guillotine, Ean!'

'What?'

'All the Twentieth Century Fox executives have left and gone to the phones '

I rang ,' she said 'No oes to an event at the Dorchester again It's not fair on Aid Lar the Marlowe Society production that term, Love's Labour's Lost Love's Labour's Lost This was the straight draet (by any standards) production mounted in the Arts Theatre, a splendid professional theatre with an alar audience capacity of exactly 666 A coid's natural charh for his first Shakespearean role, that of the King of Navarre I played the character with perhaps the best description in all of Shakespeare's This was the straight draet (by any standards) production mounted in the Arts Theatre, a splendid professional theatre with an alar audience capacity of exactly 666 A coid's natural charh for his first Shakespearean role, that of the King of Navarre I played the character with perhaps the best description in all of Shakespeare's dramatis personae dramatis personae: 'Don Adriano de Armado, a fantastical Spaniard' Only I wasn't a fantastical Spaniard For some reason, whenever I attempt Spanish it comes out as Russian or Italian, or a bastard hybrid of the two I can e a Mexican accent acceptably, so my Armado was an inexplicably fantastical Mexican The major role of Beroas played by a fine second-year actor called Paul Schlesinger, nephew of the great fil speech fro members of his court shall forswear the co theh and Paul had one of those uncontrollable laughing problee and they would be unable to breathe or speak For the first few rehearsals this was fine, but after a while I could see Brigid beginning to worry By the tih would si address unless either Paul was off stage, which inative solution to the problem could be found Threats and imprecations had proved useless

'I'h, it's a cheid hit upon the happy notion of , Berowne, Dueneral court attendants, speak the opening lines together as a kind of chorus Soe in that scene, the King, Berowne, Dueneral court attendants, speak the opening lines together as a kind of chorus So stopped

At the first-night party I heard a senior acadeid on her idea of presenting the introductory speech as a kind of communal oath 'A superb concept It made the whole scene come alive Really quite brilliant'

'Thank you, Professor,' said Brigid without a blush, 'it seeht my eye and beamed

Cellar Tapes and Celebration The last terlish tripos The May Week Revue itself Graduation Farewell, Cahts San work on the show itself I recruited reatest ease He tore up the audience with guitar songs and extraordinaryto the fatalistic janitor figure who looked after the pre,' he said as he shook a canister of Vim over the damp cushi+on, 'as too too funny' funny'

I atteh singing and drama to fill his diary I think he felt that comedy shows somehoeren't quite him With the addition of Penny Dwyer, ho, dance, be funny and do just about anything, we had a cast to joinone, the May Week Revue that would go on to Oxford and then Edinburgh

I wrote a ue for myself based on Bram Stoker's Dracula Dracula and a two-handed parody of and a two-handed parody of The Barretts of Wimpole Street The Barretts of Wimpole Street, in which Emma played Elizabeth, a bed-bound invalid, and I played Robert, her ardent suitor Hugh and I had both seen and found hilarious John Barton's Shakespeare Masterclasses on television, in which he had painfully slowly taken Ian McKellen and David Suchet through the text of a single speech We put together a sketch in which I did the sah So detailed was the textual analysis that we never got further than the opening word, 'Tih asked the previous year's President, Jan Ravens, to direct us, and we began rehearsals in the clubroohastly kind of Alan Ayckbourn fa after-dinner charades breaks down in ani the 'Shakespeare Masterclass' sketch with Hugh

At some point we must have sat Finals and at another point I must have completed two dissertations, one on Byron's Don Juan Don Juan, another on aspects of E M Forster I can re knocked thes: 15,000 words of drivel typed out at high speed

When the news calish results were published I walked to the Senate House, against the walls of which huge notice-boards in wooden frah the crowd of hysterical studentry and found my name in the Upper Second list I had scored a dull, worthy and unexciting 2:1

Peter Holland, a don from Trinity Hall who had supervised me for practical criticism and seventeenth-century literature, offered consolation

'They reread you for a First twice,' he said 'You caood Firsts in all your papers, top in Shakespeare again But a 2:2 in the Forster dissertation and a Third in the Byron That's why they just couldn't do it Hard luck'

The hurt was e was right, I had shown I could fly through written exaainst the clock, but the serious work of a dissertation, which required the kind of originality, scholarshi+p and diligence that I either didn't possess or simply couldn't be arsed to produce, exposed ue that I was

With Ki our Tripos results I was insanely in love with that Cerruti tie

Hugh read Archaeology and Anthropology and got a far ree He had been to one lecture, which gave hiue about a Bantu hut, but otherwise had not disturbed his professors, written an essay or entered the faculty library I think he would be the first to ady than he does

The first night of our May Week Revue came The shoas called The Cellar Tapes The Cellar Tapes, as hts clubroom in which it was born as to Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes Basement Tapes or any pun on Sellotape or any pun on Sellotape

Hugh caentle of entertainot a Third by the way sketch comedy, music and '

We were under way The Arts Theatre has one of the best auditoriuht with a leather book on e with Hugh for the Shakespeare Masterclass, kneeling at the stricken E tea for Paul Shearer in the MI5 recruitment sketch all thesein this theatre, on this occasion, before such an enthusiastic audience, than anything I had ever done before

Hugh and I looked at each other after the curtain fell We knew that, cohts

The Cellar Tapes closing song I fear weand sanctimonious 'satire' at this point Hence the joyless expressions closing song I fear weand sanctimonious 'satire' at this point Hence the joyless expressions

One night of the teek run the ent round backstage that Rowan Atkinson had been spotted in the audience I broke the habit of h at the house There he was, there could be no mistake Not the least distinctive set of features on the planet We all performed with an extra intensity that iven it rather a hysterical edge I for one was too excited to be able to tell The great Rowan Atkinson watching us perforhter at his show in Edinburgh Since then Not the Nine O'Clock News had propelled him to major television stardom had propelled hie to shake our hands, a graceful and kindly act for a man so shy and private My state of electrified enthralh Hugh and the others told ly cohts later Ee, came