The real Sir Humphrey

Jonathan Cecil

STRAIGHT FACE by Nigel Hawthorne Hodder, £18.99, pp. 339, ISBN 0340769424 In 1968 I appeared in my first radio play. It was a fustian historical piece peppered with expletives like "sblood!', a gift for ham actors of whom then, as now, there was no shortage on BBC radio. In welcome contrast, playing a doddering don, was a slim, dark, youngish man with a sly and subtle sense of comedy. His name was Nigel Hawthorne. then a little known supporting player.

Meeting his mischievous eyes during the laborious rehearsals — made more so by a permanently tipsy director — I suspected that Nigel's comic sense was not confined to performing. The acme of absurdity came with the crowd scenes. There we were, a

dozen grown men including several prewar wireless veterans in dark suits and polished shoes — sitting on the studio floor intoning, 'Up the Bishops?' Again I caught Nigel's eye and it was the start of over 30 years of shared humour: a great basis for friendship.

Nigel had a delight in human foibles. sharp but never spiteful. He was a splendid raconteur, no actorish purveyor of stale green room anecdotes but a passer-on of personal experiences — not necessarily theatrical, frequently involving himself as hapless victim.

I wondered, before reading his posthumously published autobiography, how amusing his stories would appear on the printed page. Of course one misses Nigel's warm, humorous voice, his panache and timing; unlike his conversation, his writing is workmanlike rather than stylish. But much of his refreshingly un-showbiz personality comes through.

I remember his agonising description of working, during a lean period, as a house cleaner for a snobbish firm called Your Servant: it is only slightly less amusing in cold print. He gives a hilarious account of that crazy old mountebank Bernard Miles browbeating him into playing Cutler Walpole in The Doctor's Dilemma.

However, my overall reaction to the book is sadness: sadness because one knows of the painful cancer which spurred him, despite initial reluctance, into writing the memoirs, sadness at his many unfulfilled years both artistic and sexual, above all sadness at the loss of such a kind and amusing friend, unchanged by success.

His childhood was comfortable yet lonely and guilt-ridden. Born in Coventry in 1929, he moved to South Africa with his family at the age of four. His father was a prosperous doctor. Nigel grew up in an idyllic climate surrounded by beautiful scenery and lived out the war years without deprivation. But his schooling — especially by the Christian Brothers — was harsh and his philistine father appears never to have understood him. Though not at all effeminate, Nigel was aware of his own homosexuality quite early on and, though his parents never knew about this, his father seems to have sensed something, to him, unpleasingly different about the boy.

The crowning disappointment for Dr Hawthorne was Nigel's departure for England in 1951 to become an actor, having dabbled in South African theatre. It was a courageous decision and the greyness of war-scarred London with its ration books came as a great shock; particularly well described. Years of weekly repertory, stage management, understudying and menial work followed: there was always a quiet obstinacy about the man which carried him through.

Returning to act in South Africa, he observed the evils of apartheid. Then back in London he worked for Joan Littlewood, whom he found greatly liberating. Littlewood bullied him; he stood up to her. Most of this monstrous perfectionist's protégés fell by the wayside deprived of her tutelage: Nigel only gained in confidence.

He found her anarchic spirit, initially alien to a repertory-trained actor, more congenial than that of the priggish Royal Court about which he is pleasingly critical, as later on about the Royal Shakespeare Company. Although no pompous traditionalist he did not care for improvisation, except for Littlewood's. He is amusing about a pretentious voice coach — 'Of course Lear is a Marxist play'— and also about an abortive project with Peter Brook, at once genius and charlatan.

By the time I knew Nigel he was respected in the profession but unknown to the general public. Then in 1977 he won his first award for his absurd muscular Christian Major Flack in Privates on Parade. Afterwards came Yes, Minister, Shadowlands and the play and film The Madness of King George. His off-stage charm permeated all his roles, even the manipulative Sir Humphrey.

Alas, I did not see his controversial Lear, whom he refused to play as a ranting tyrant. Derided by many critics, the performance was for others heartbreakingly believable.

He was an adventurous actor. He found, through a chance typing error, a quaint jerky speech pattern for Major Flack. His Mr Posket in The Magistrate was not as funny as Alastair Sim's — the finest farce performance I ever saw — but it had a wounded pathos all its own. His King George was a likeable bumbler, but unquestionably a monarch to be obeyed.

Running parallel with his professional success came at long last a truly happy personal relationship. For 27 years he had lived a loyal but apparently sexless life with a designer, a man both promiscuous and jealous. When Nigel found the wonderfully sympathetic Trevor Bentham — writer and stage manager — they had 20 happy years together.

As Bentham says in a delightful epilogue, Nigel was an odd mixture: a free spirit who was never promiscuous, liberal-minded but respecting his parents for his strict upbringing.

All aspiring actors should read this book: a story of unaggressive determination. Nigel Hawthorne could feel anger — especially with incompetent directors and arrogant actors — but he was fundamentally gentle. And even when suffering depression he contrived to bring to his numerous friends so much sympathy, so much laughter.