DIARY
JOHN WELLS Lord Home's gentle recollections of the Thatchers not laughing immoderately at themselves in Anyone for Denis? (`The last nice Prime Minister', 6 October) brought back memories. At the time of the Thatch- er visit to the Whitehall Theatre there were fairly heavy bets backstage amongst us as to whether Mr Thatcher would come at all. The show was on a Sunday night, and earlier in the week the news was that the Prime Minister was coming on her own. At the end of the week, Toxteth erupted, and it seemed unlikely we would get either of them. We had underestimated Mrs Thatch- er's unswerving resolve to do what had to be done, and in Mr Thatcher's case her unswerving resolve that others should do the same. Half an hour or so before curtain up my dressing-room door burst open and an enormous dog came in, dragging a small security man. He said `Sniffin' for bombs', and was dragged out again. Then chants of `Thatcher out!' came drifting over the rooftops from Whitehall, and I knew that I had lost my bet. I was going to have to go on and be cheeky about the Prime Minister to her face. I think the worst thing from my point of view was seeing the rims of Denis's spectacles glinting in the middle of the stalls. I did feel very sorry for him. There had been fears that their presence would inhibit the audience from laughing, and Robert Fox, our producer, had packed them round on all sides with what Shakespeare called Rude Fellows of the Baser Sort, bankers and City figures, most of whom had money in the show and who understandably roared all the way through. As if that wasn't bad enough, Denis also had to put up with two rows of hacks sitting at the front of the stalls, whose heads swung round in unison at every laugh to see how they were taking it. The same degenerates, I was told afterwards, swayed up to Mr Thatcher during the interval, tapping their noses, winking and indicating his glass, saying 'G and T, eh Den?'
Idon't think it's true to say that satirical comment has been stifled in the last ten years under Mrs Thatcher. Politicians have never been too keen on that kind of thing, and when Lord Longford asked Harold Wilson if he'd mind him going to see the stage version of Mrs Wilson's Diary the then Prime Minister said of course he wouldn't mind himself, but he thought it might upset Mary. On television Spitting Image has boldly gone a good deal further than most of us had gone before, whether with the puppet Mrs Thatcher unzipping in the gents or in its jocular picture of everyday life at Buckingham Palace. But my latest experience with the BBC makes me think that, balance or no balance, the old girl may have got them rattled. Or at least indecisive. When an independent producer encouraged me some years ago to collaborate on a script about the Thatchers in retirement, ante-dating William Douglas-Home's more charitable stage comedy on the same theme, I was not too optimistic. I then attended one of the funniest meetings I have ever been to, at which the very young and serious lawyer representing the BBC read out things like `Overbearing wife: pages three, five, seven'. 'Intemperate husband: pages one, two, three etc.' I think I may have annoyed him, and he finally became very cross indeed and hit the table with the flat of his hand, spilling everybody's polystyrene cups of coffee. This the Head of Comedy sagely allowed to soak into the papers on the table. Scripts, to my surprise, were then commissioned, and we wrote them. Weeks went by, then the BBC said they didn't feel they could make a decision on mere scripts, and commissioned a pilot programme. This was made, and more weeks went by. Then the BBC said they didn't feel they could make a decision on that either, but suggested that if the characters of Mark and Carol could be made more palatable they were keen to go ahead and at considerable further expense commissioned a second pilot programme. A cynical agent tried to dissuade us, saying it was all to do with knighthoods: they might possibly be wasting the Corpora- 'I must go, I told the wife I was at the Tory conference debate on family policy.' tion's money but we were definitely wast- ing our time. Rejecting this kind of talk as absurd, we set to work turning Mark and Carol into two wonderful human beings. The programme was recorded, and the series turned down. I am toying with a post-Armageddon scenario with Ronnie Corbett as John Major and Charlie Drake as the Queen Mum, but I think the time may have come to leave it to the puppets.
Ihope the unseemly spectacle of my old friend Jonathan Miller having the Axmins- ter tweaked from under him by 'honest Ed' Mirvisch at the Old Vic will not distract attention from what is happening at the Lyric Hammersmith, the first theatre in London at which I ever appeared. It was, rather unflatteringly, demolished shortly afterwards. The whole auditorium was miraculously restored some years back, inside an office block but with all its Edwardian charm intact. Now it is once again in severe danger of being bank- rupted, this time by the foreign exchange- dabbling councillors of Fulham and Ham- mersmith. Peter James has turned it into an oasis in the middle of high-rise west London and work like David Freeman's Faust and his more recent Morte D'Arthur have combined a faithfulness to the origin- al with every kind of daring showbiz crackle. For taking such admirable risks James now seems likely to be re-employed, in his own phrase, 'in a shiny peaked-cap with a bunch of keys and an alsatian'. When the Labour shadow arts minister, Old Etonian Mark Fisher, tried to inter- vene, local left-wingers told him he didn't know how to run a whelk stall and sug- gested Mr Kinnock keep his colleagues under control.
Ialways enjoy the ritual standing ovation at the Tory Conference. My earliest ex- perience of it was at Blackpool when it was performed for Ted Heath in his first year as leader of the party. Desperate-eyed activ- ists stood at the back of the hall, slapping the wall when their hands got worn out with clapping, one eye grimly on the second hand of their wrist-watches, but Ted seemed really to believe it, and lifted his arms again and again, beaming from ear to ear as only he can. William Rushton and I were standing by the swing doors when he came reeling out of the hall twenty minutes later, eyes still unfocussed, looking like an orgasmic pink baby. I am afraid Rushton and I were simultaneously moved to shout with laughter, and at very close range. So bemused was he with the adulation that he immediately split the same ecstatic grin and raised his arms again in triumph.
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