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Recently Nanette and I recorded a commentary to a new DVD of The League of Gentlemen. I hadn’t seen it in ages but there we all were — Jack Hawkins, Nigel Patrick, Dickie Attenborough, et al. boosting Imperial Tobacco’s profits. Whenever I directed a film my prop man was delegated to hand me a packet of 20 the moment I stepped on to the set and to keep me supplied all day. Bette Davis, our neighbour in Connecticut while we were shooting The Stepford Wives, smoked for America. One evening after she had cooked us Boston baked beans, her speciality, the conversation moved to her legendary feud with Miriam Hopkins while they were making Old Acquaintance. Nanette, innocent of the history involved, inquired: ‘Whatever happened to Miriam Hopkins?’ Bette, took a deep drag on her Camel. ‘Well, Nanette, God was very good to the world. He took her from us.’ This said 30 years after the event. I admire somebody like Bette who can smoulder for decades.
I am, of course, a grumpy old man on a variety of other subjects. Just don’t get me started on the Iraq war, publishing, blubbery Charlie Falconer, the 2012 Olympics, the closure of 2,500 rural post offices, ID cards, MPs’ pensions, Ken Livingstone or Heathrow airport. As one gets older and body maintenance becomes a constant necessity, I find that one of the few compensations is to be able to indulge in a good old whinge with friends. My ideal companions for such pleasurable occasions are Tom Conti and the artist Bryan Organ who have both fine-tuned their own brands of vitriol. I once contemplated a third volume of autobiography to be entitled In Jugular Vein.
My garden is in danger of becoming a wildlife zoo. This week I spotted two fox cubs, a mature fallow deer, muntjacs, rabbits and, unless I am much mistaken, an otter, plus ample evidence that badgers have been at work on the lawns. All that is lacking is a tribe of pandas who might rid me of the great swaths of bamboo that were stupidly introduced by a previous gardener and are now lethally prolific. Together with Pascal and Johan, the two young men who now help me one day a week, I have been attempting to do a John Wayne and hack my way through the swaying canes. I have always had grandiose plans for my garden, but sadly have never won the lottery to pay for them.
It was a strange feeling to be honoured with a Lifetime Achievement Award by Bafta last week, rather like a remake of A Matter of Life and Death in which I was permitted to return to Earth and witness my visual obituary. One of the film clips they unearthed showed me in a British B feature, the aptly named Wheel of Fate. It was while shooting the very last sequence on a wintry night in Marylebone shunting yards that I first glimpsed the young and delectable Miss Nanette Newman; and the rest is history, as they say. I doubt whether many people have tangible evidence pinpointing the exact moment when they fell in love, but there it was for me, up on the screen, going through the camera gate at 60 frames a second. My grandchildren stared at the images unaware that they owed their existence to a casting director’s arbitrary choice.
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