Low life
Miscast royals
Jeffrey Bernard
Just before last week's Test Match against South Africa, my bookmaker was offering 11 to 10 on a draw, 15 to 8 South Africa, and 3 to 1 against England. I helped myself to some of the 3 to 1 against Eng- land, more in hope than in any sort of confidence. I never back horses with my heart, only with what is left of my head, and I must stick to doing just that with horses nowadays. But it is a well known fact that the winning gamblers are never satisfied, and usually end up kicking them- selves for not having put more money on their fancy. In the present financial climate what I won on England will keep me in cornflakes for just about two weeks. There was a time when my winnings would have had me doing handsprings and somersaults through the ceiling.
In 1989 I was spoilt by Peter O'Toole and it probably spoilt me forever, now that three figures excite me less than a ten- shilling note did when I was on the bum in the 1950s. I suppose that my devotion to cricket is a hangover from my schooldays, when it was the only thing I was any good at, apart from remembering useless history dates, and even they can come in useful for remembering daft things like telephone numbers.
I have a friend, for example, whose tele- phone number is two years after the Fran- co-Prussian war. There is not a single job in the world for which I could qualify with my knowledge only of swing bowling and obscure history dates: Which reminds me, there was a bizarre history lesson on television last Sunday in the shape of 'The Private Lives of Eliza- beth and Essex', starring Bette Davis and Errol Flynn. Bette Davis's attempts didn't quite match the ghastliness of a description I once read of her from a letter sent home by the Spanish Ambassador of the day. It seems that what was left of her teeth, loose ones at that, were yellow and falling out, as were her awful dugs. Even as a younger man, partial to elder women, I would never have had the false pride to put my head on the block for Bette Davis's Elizabeth I. It would be like dying for Edith Sitwell, or maybe Virginia Woolf.
All those war years spent sitting in the Coronet cinema in Notting Hill Gate — my mother seemed to think that a bomb would never land on a cinema — distorted some- what my ideas of history. Henry VIII will always be that buffoon played by Charles Laughton and never the monster he really was. The English Civil War being of very great interest to me, I was appalled by the casting of Richard Harris as Oliver Cromwell. Some miscasting here. Trevor Howard actually looked a bit like Cromwell, whereas Harris looked as though he had stepped straight out of Camelot after a quick costume change.
Poetic licences should be endorsed and in the worst cases the holders of them should be banned from making films for five years. At the same time it is a pity that Norman Balon will never get to play Mr Murdstone. There are quite a few people in, and now sadly out, of the catering busi- ness who would have been bread and but- ter to Charles Dickens. Apart from Norman, Peter Langan and Ian Board almost spring to life. And who could today play our beloved Queen? It would have to be someone in Coronation Street.
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