I don't believe it!
Lloyd Evans meets the actor Richard Wilson, and is surprised by the twinkle in his eye Cot the right place? Yup, this looks like it. I'm about to meet TV's grumpiest man, and his fixers have booked us a room in a fashionable media institute in Covent Garden. I peer through the frosted glass at what appears to be a hotel, a bistro, a therapy centre and a health farm all wrapped into one. It's the kind of place where brunching executives can enjoy an organic chocolate bun and a milky stroppuccino while upstairs, in the anxiety suites, commissioning editors are being massaged, hypnotised and rebirthed from the comfort of their rowing machines.
I glance down the street. A dark figure is ambling towards me. His collar is turned up, his head is low over his chest and his face is obscured by a cap and thick glasses. Is that him? I think it is. I don't believe it! Richard Wilson. He slips through the glass doors and greets a pair of beaming PR girls. I'd read somewhere that he was prickly but he seems perfectly genial and relaxed with them. A moment later, when I'm introduced, his face breaks into the smile that Victor Meldrew never gave. We're escorted to the lift by tight-skirted usherettes and he keeps up a patter of jokey comments. In a trendy corridor we pass a log with spikes in it. 'That's the comfy sofa.'
And when we're abandoned in a stylish and utterly cheerless conference room, he peers around grimly. 'I'm here all afternoon. Talking about the play.' So this is a junket?' I ask. He pauses, then tosses my words back at me with their meek English edges transformed into gnarled Scottish flints. 'Yesss,' he says, 'this is a chunkit!' But he makes it sound funny rather than aggressive. So we talk about the play. Whipping It Up is a satire set in the government whips' office shortly after a general election which the Tories have won. It ran for five weeks on the fringe last year and is now transferring to the smallish New Ambassadors Theatre. 'It's not a big coachload play — it's too rich and complicated,' says Wilson. 'We're actually changing the script a little, trying to be a bit more accessible because it is a very deeply layered work.'
It's also an exceptionally well-researched one. Though billed as a political satire it feels more like a documentary about the secret life of the whips' office. The intention is not to lambast so much as to record and reveal. I ask where the writer, Steve Thompson, got the material. 'From Gyles Brandreth and Michael Portillo,' says Wilson, 'and from an unnamed Labour source. Either someone in the whips' office or an ex-whip. But this Labour source said to Steve, "I will talk to you but you mustn't tell anyone who I am. And when I come and see the play you mustn't be there." That was careful, wasn't it?' Yes, or paranoid. A lifelong leftie, Wilson isn't a natural choice to play the chief whip of the Conservative party but he loves the part. 'He's an honourable codger who's also rather witty. As soon as I read it I knew I wanted to do it. I haven't had a part like that come along for a while.' Is he bothered about making powerful speeches, like this one, plugging the Tory cause?
Chief: We're a nation of achievers. The left wing want us all sitting hugging each other — dragging our sick and wounded alongside. But you can't chain nature down — we're not pack animals, and the strongest should be left to roam free . . .
Wilson doesn't feel the play takes sides. 'Steve has a left-wing bias, as I have, but you've got to give the opposition good stuff. And you just play the character. You don't worry about the politics.'
But real politics is something he does worry about and I'm rather hoping he might cry 'betrayal' like so many other Labour diehards who secretly adore feeling disenchanted with the party. Instead, he registers mere 'disappointment' over Iraq. He's more scathing about the backbenchers. 'I was amazed there wasn't bigger dissent amongst MPs. That really shocked me.' And Blair? 'I think he should go now. But a lot of my Labour chums who are more in the know than I am say, "Well, you'll miss him" But I think Gordon Brown has the gravitas to make him a very good leader.' He's right about the gravitas. A bit of levitas wouldn't hurt. On cash-forhonours he's reluctant to comment, but after a moment's reflection he admits, 'It wouldn't surprise me if Labour had overstepped the mark. It's been going on in all parties for ages.'
We move from politics to his other career as a theatre director. He tells me about his directorial debut and he leans forward uneasily, elbows on table, speaking in tones of anguished deliberation as if describing some calamity from which he barely escaped with his life. 'When I was asked to do this play there was a sort of elation. And that lasted ten seconds. And then the fear set in. The worry. . . of doing it.' He leans further forward, his voice lowers. 'And on the first night people came up and were saying, "Very good, very good." But I kept thinking, "I don't care if it's very good. It started. And it finished. And that's all I could ask for." But after that, I got the bug. I was bitten!' I ask what the play was and he lightens visibly. 'Oh, a new play. Disabled, by Peter Ramsay. It was about an ageing ventriloquist with, well, a huge sex urge who kept assaulting his day carers.' The words 'huge — sex — urge' are enunciated with a ponderous relish which makes me laugh. He doesn't have to try to be funny. He just is.
I turn to his best-known role as Victor Meldrew, but when I use the phrase 'massive TV star' he hums uncomfortably, shakes his head and shifts our focus on to the writer David Renwick. 'Wonderful scripts. And it changed my life. I had enough money to choose what I wanted to do. Which is great.' Is it ever a nuisance on the street? Not so bad nowadays,' he says tentatively. 'Except for drunks! They're the worst. They think they own you.'
Because I'd completely failed to recognise him only half an hour earlier I ask if he consciously disguises himself. Without quite saying yes he tells me with some satisfaction how he can pull down his cap, put on his thick glasses, bury his nose in a script and travel unnoticed on the Tube. 'But in restaurants and places like that you get much better service. Off comes the hat. Toot sweet!' he says with a twinkle in his eye.
Far from being a Meldrewish ogre, Wilson turns out to be one of the friendliest, most open-hearted and most modest showbiz people I've ever met. What a disappointment!
Whipping It Up is at the New Ambassadors theatre until 16 June.
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