If somebody won a raffle and the prize was to take a penalty kick at half time during a match at Old Trafford, it would be deemed a touch excessive if that raffle winner then went on to describe themselves as a professional footballer for Manchester United.
The Internet Movie Database (IMDB) is incredibly kind in describing me as a writer and an actor. I’m comfortable with the former description and in some ways I’m quite proud of at least part of the work I’ve written over a period of (Lawks!) thirty three years. Yet describing me as an actor, even though I’ve popped up in a few films and TV titles here and there, is rather too much like our Old Trafford raffle winner for comfort.
Allow me to describe my place in the Pantheon of thespians with the background to a typical appearance from one of the entries in the IMDB.
It helps to know someone.
In 1989, I was talking with one of the most marvellous people I ever met in the entertainment industry; to this day it astonishes me that his name remains largely unknown beyond those who worked with him.
Edgar Davis left his home in Liverpool in the late 1940s, changed his first name to Noel (after Noel Coward) and began to find work in London as a character actor, usually playing small parts and specialising in rather effeminate characters. He said that he gave up acting after arriving at a moment of clarity on the stage at St Martin’s Theatre, in the mid 1960s. He claimed that he couldn’t shake off the notion that acting was a ridiculous and absurd profession “pretending to be real people”.
So Noel Davis bounded into a second career as a casting director after falling into a working relationship with Gyles Brandreth at the Oxford Playhouse. It was my luck to come to find myself in Noel’s company several times in the 1980s – I have never known anyone able to tell more fascinating, scandalous, showbusiness stories – recounted with an airy wave of the hands, and a flamboyant genius for mimicry. He made me laugh until it hurt.
Noel Davis was the casting director for ‘The Krays’, Peter Medak’s beautifully shot film about the rise of the East End twins, Ronnie and Reggie.
“My dear, you’ll be perfect for a small role. A thug of course!”
Of course.
So this is what it’s like being an actor.
First Positions: I was called and asked to arrive at a scout hut in Whitley, Berkshire, on a Friday afternoon, put on a hat and walk up and down. Various people behind a table said things like “Mmmm yes....” and “Mmmm no....”
Then what seemed like an army of men and women were measuring every limb, my collar, my hat size, my height, my weight. They took photos and wrote lots of information on sheets of paper attached to clipboards.
One week later I was in ‘Angels’, the theatrical costumiers on the edge of Covent Garden. All the information gathered in the scout hut had been sent to ‘Angels’ and now they were to clothe me accordingly in the manner of a 1950s thug from the East End of London. Finding a hat to fit my rather large head proved a challenge, and in the movie stills you can see that the biggest hat available still sat atop my head rather in the manner of a benign vicar instead of a vicious and devil-may-care mobster.
Ext. Establishing Shot: A cold, damp, extremely early morning in a rather grim and muddy park in Reading.
I was playing the (non-speaking) part of an unnamed family friend accompanying the Kray Twins (played by Gary and Martin Kemp) and Jimmy Jewel as we walked across a fairground to a boxing booth. Billie Whitelaw was walking towards us, and whilst we’re name dropping, Michael Elphick was one of my fellow uncredited thugs.
We were all in this park, in Reading for at least twelve hours, until the light began to fade. Of that twelve hours, I estimate I spent about two hours eating (you rarely find better food than on a film location; bacon sandwiches are usually heavily in demand), nine and a half hours either chatting in the trailers or reading the PG Wodehouse paperback I had intelligently brought with me, and a maximum of thirty minutes ‘on set’.
This was nothing unusual and is the general rule for TV or movie filming. 95% doing nothing, 4% standing by, and 1% filming.
Ext. Long Shot: Two weeks later. A forlorn street in London.
Still with the hat wedged down to my ears I was asked to blend into the background as a variety of very short ‘pick up shots’ were gathered. Unsurprisingly, this took a couple of days, during which I ate several bacon sandwiches, sat in trailers, and read another book.
I cannot give you a clear reason why Charlie Kray, the older brother of Reggie and Ronnie, was employed on the set of the movie, as a consultant. You may, however, draw your own conclusions.
When not interrupting a shot and driving the first, second and third assistant directors to distraction with his ‘advice’, he spent much of his time seated next to me and I think, mistaking me for a real villain, he regaled me with stories and rather implausible anecdotes about what it was ‘really’ like when he and his brothers were, errr.... protecting people and businesses.
So well did we engage that Charlie told me that if ever I was ‘in trouble’ I would only have to call him and it would be ‘sorted’. He wrote a touching note, which I really should frame, in which he gave me some advice for my career, and also his phone number in case anyone needed, you know, ‘sorting out’.
The Denouement: Nearly a year later. The premiere of The Krays; Leicester Square.
From the time a movie is shot, to the time it is first shown, those involved in the making of it have probably worked on ten other projects. There is an inordinate amount of fussing about, re-shooting, editing and re-editing, before the movie joins the queue for a suitable general release.
Thus it was the summer of 1990 before my girlfriend and I strode along the red carpet with the air of two people born to be recognised as true stars of the screen. Except that nobody did recognise us so we queued up for the Kia-Ora instead.
Now Mary-Ann was (and probably still is) a lively girl with an equally lively and loud personality. She knew how to laugh.
When my big moment arrived in the fairground scene, and I wandered across the forty foot screen in my stupid hat, she laughed so uproariously and with such gusto, that heads turned, and leading members of the cast, and honoured guests, twisted round in their seats to ‘tut’ and frown at this outburst.
This reaction rather deflated the occasion of my thirty-fifth birthday (for it coincided with the premiere) and instead of a triumphant dinner in the rather swish restaurant in Covent Garden, I was treated to a volley of guffaws as Mary-Ann relived and reprised my fedora festooned characterisation of a rather too amiable-looking hoodlum.
The Review: Mary-Ann and I lasted about another month. Charlie Kray was never in a position to sort anyone out for me, as he was convicted of drug offences and died serving his sentence. Noel Davis survived casting me and the hat in ‘The Krays’ and continued work as a successful casting director until he died in 2002.
The Internet Movie Database counts my appearance as ‘acting’.
Terence Dackombe, December 2010
This week I have:
Listened to Phil Spector’s Christmas Album; I suspect we may have a merrier time than Phil this year.
Watched Stuart Baggs get his come-uppance on The Apprentice; I doubt we have seen the last of ‘The Brand’.
Recklessly bought a 4x4 gas guzzler without ever seeing it or test driving it; I may live to regret this.
Lunched in an Italian restaurant in Soho, swapping disgraceful stories about working at the BBC in the 1980s.
