To me, Sir Nigel Hawthorne always came across as an unassuming, even self-deprecating, thoroughly decent man, without a trace of pretension. He was also one of my favourite actors of the last twenty years or so. And I’m happy to say that this memoir, written while he was fighting the cancer which killed him, does nothing to counteract that picture of an extremely likeable person.
Born in England in 1929, he and the family emigrated to South Africa when he was small. Having got the acting bug during his schooldays, he realised that the only way he could further his ambitions of making it his career was to make the journey home again. After years of struggling with minor roles, occasionally on TV but mainly on the stage, he landed the role of Sir Humphrey Appleby in ‘Yes Minister’ and ‘Yes Prime Minister’, and the title role in ‘The madness of King George’, and from then on he never looked back.
After a bittersweet account of his adolescent years, and the sunshine of Cape Town, London was a grey hostile place at first. He tells a touching story of job-hunting one damp February (1952 – he dates it by mentioning the death of King George VI on the same page), crossing to the Leicester Square underground station, and losing the only two coins he had in the world through a grating in the centre of the world. The supervisor he consulted to try and get them back told him that the only person who had access to that area had gone home. After returning to his digs that night he had to wash the mouse droppings out of a packet of raisons for an evening meal, and go back at crack of dawn to retrieve his money – and find that it had gone.
Luckily, things could only get better, and they did. His humble beginnings on the stage, and relationships with various other household names – among them the unpredictable Sir Laurence Olivier, the formidable Joan Littlewood and the more accommodating Joan Collins – float across these pages. As is only to be expected, he goes behind the scenes of 'Yes Minister' in some depth. Paul Eddington, his co-star, was ‘very friendly’, though Nigel had the feeling that he never thought his supporting players (Nigel himself and Derek Fowlds) ‘were quite up to it’.
Most startling of all, I found, was his account of working on the script for a musical ‘Revolussia’, with Cat Stevens, who was writing the songs. They never completed it, though several songs were salvaged (notably ‘Father And Son’, a major hit for Boyzone years later).
He is rarely less than generous to others, so I had the impression that anyone or anything which comes in for a hammering deserves it. His last major role was as King Lear in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s performance, and the RSC is taken to task for their arrogance, lack of support, and as ‘they don’t know how to behave towards the people they employ’.
Likewise, his relationship with Bruce Palmer (who died of AIDS in 1992) and Trevor Bentham (who was with him when he died on Boxing Day 2001, and who contributes a touching four-page Epilogue) resulted in some bruising encounters with a homophobic media. He makes the point that he never set himself up as one of those tiresomely aggressive gay icons, and wais rightly angered by the general ‘outing’ when it became public knowledge. But at the same time, he managed to defuse a live TV interview by confiding on air that he wanted to mention something which had previously been kept private. His nervous interviewer tried to stop him and eventually gave in. Leaning forward, he whispered to her that he had a hole in his right sock.
There is passion, occasionally anger in this book. But overall, I was left with the impression of a man who was slightly bemused by his success, as if sometimes reluctant to believe that it had all happened to him, and who rightly deserved all the plaudits and awards that came his way. It is not only a thoroughly engaging memoir, but also a vivid account of one actor’s odyssey through the world of stage, screen and TV, and of a man in the public eye who coped admirably with disclosures about his private life which in a less tolerant age might have been his downfall. On all these counts, I found it a fascinating read. Anyone who has ever been a fan of the man’s appearances will find it difficult to put down.
Hodder & Stoughton, 2002 0340769424 339p, 16 plates (b & w) £18.99 (high street, surf around for lower price or wait for the paperback)
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