Low life
Gravy train derailed
Jeffrey Bernard
Ihave that sinking feeling that I used to get at the thought of going back to school at the end of the holidays. This week sees the last performance of the play at the Shaftesbury Theatre and it has kept my head above water for nigh on two years. It is that long ago that Keith Waterhouse first told me that he was thinking of writing it, one afternoon in the Groucho Club as we sipped our drinks. I thought he was mad then and that it would all come to nothing. Champagne talk. But it has done me noth- ing but good and thanks to all concerned. Peter O'Toole has made it his play. A difficult act to follow. I once told Ned Sherrin that I would like to play the part myself on a Sunday at the Apollo as a char- ity performance in aid of the Injured Jock- ey's Fund. He screamed, then fainted and had to be revived with a dry Martini. Well, very nearly. But I do know the part. I will have been playing it for 59 years this com- ing Monday and that beats The Mousetrap.
Apart from sustaining me the play has had a remarkable effect on Norman, who now smiles, buys me the odd drink and brings me cottage pies from Marks and Spencer. He thinks he is now immortal although, thankfully, he didn't appear in Keith's script what with Walter Matthau not being available. And speaking of Matthau some unlikely people have seen the play. I just missed Jane Russell one night in the stalls bar and there were a cou- ple of things I would have liked to ask her about. And one night I had a drink with Jack Lemmon there. For the last perfor- mance I am taking an old drinking partner, Gordon, the stage-door keeper of the Prince Edward Theatre, to see it. Ever since the vodka and cigarettes finally got to my eyesight he has been calling himself my secretary. I call him Sancho Panza.
`Could I take a cutting from your hat?' So now, when the bill posters are taken down in a few shops and restaurants in Soho, I suppose my credit will no longer be any good. It will be like having a limb amputated and if my noble and good book- maker Victor Chandler closes my account I might peg out altogether.
But even at the final curtain there is a light at the end of the tunnel. I think I may have got, touch wood, the flat I have been looking for for the past ten years. Recent moves have been diabolically depressing. Various Housing Act laws too are very biased in favour of landlords who are reluc- tant to return a tenant's deposit. Ever since the beginning of 1987, the year in which I lived out of carrier bags, I have been cheat- ed and ripped off by these people. I won- der if this happens in other countries. Probably.
But if all else fails and this flat doesn't transpire I received a strange suggestion last week from an ex-wife, my daughter's mother. She came over here from Spain, told me she was thinking of buying a house in Tuscany and asked me whether I would like to share it with her. On a strictly pla- tonic basis, of course. My mind boggles. I have an awful picture of recriminations over the spaghetti in the evenings. She also said that in 1966 when I first met her I made her cash in her £100-worth of premi- um bonds and then didn't let her have a penny of it. I am afraid that it rings a bell. A faint bell but it rings. If it is true then perhaps Messrs Waterhouse and O'Toole can tell me where it went.
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