Lloyd Evans
Already a subscriber? Log in
Rob Crouch, a charismatic performer, shows us Ollie as a schoolboy, a movie idol and a grizzled, elderly drunk. He reveals his warmth, his volatility, and something else as well: the sheer village-idiot strangeness of the man. Reed had a marvellous knack as a phrase-maker and the script honours this talent to the full. Towards the end, he described himself as a dustbin. ‘People like to kick me over to see if rubbish comes out. And it does. But I hope there are some bells and ribbons among the debris.’
His last film, Gladiator, was intended to be a glorious comeback. He promised the director, Ridley Scott, that he’d quit alcohol during the shoot as long as he could ‘go mad’ every Sunday. Uh-oh. His purged and sober system couldn’t take the impact of a sudden deluge of drink, and he collapsed after one of his Sunday binges. It wasn’t booze that killed him in the end. It was abstinence.
Paul Wilson (Lie. Cheat. Steal. Confessions of a Real Hustler, 140, The Pleasance), the chubby one from television’s The Real Hustle, is a reformed con man who teaches others to avoid the sort of scams he used to perpetrate. Here’s one. You bet a stranger that he can’t ‘count from ten to one backwards’. The stranger accepts, and counts ‘ten, nine, eight, etc.’. But he loses. To count from ‘ten to one backwards’ means counting ‘one, two, three’, etc. The performance showcases Wilson’s formidable card skills. He can deal from the bottom, the top and the middle of the pack. And he can cut to all four aces. If that means nothing to you, you’ll get nothing from this show. But card aficionados in the audience were sighing with admiration at his sleight of hand. In truth, I was expecting more tricks and street scams, as the title promised. So I left feeling like a mug.
Steve Richards is fed up with Newsnight. He gives the programme a monstering in his excellent one-man show, Rock N Roll Politics (Assembly, George Square). ‘All the researchers are called Rupert, even the women,’ he says. They phone him at noon, grill him for three hours on the issues of the day, and then summon him to appear on air where he gets barely two minutes to speak. He needs more time.
His treasure-house of political tales reaches back to the mid-Seventies and he seasons the gossip with impersonations. He does Harold Wilson well. And his George Osborne — a shrill, precious, effeminate monotone — is brilliantly accurate.
Like any political columnist, he has lots of aphorisms up his sleeve. ‘Referendums are like femmes fatales. They lure leaders to their doom.’ He believes that Alex Salmond has snookered himself by promising a poll on independence in 2014 that he can neither win nor cancel.
Richards has lots of information on Ed Miliband, who was once considered so left-wing by Gordon Brown that he called him ‘my little Tony Benn’. After his first speech as Labour leader, Miliband received a text hailing ‘the best defence of social democracy I’ve heard in 30 years’. It came from Vince Cable. These subterranean lines of communication, says Richards, have continued ever since. In a future Lib-Lab government, Cable could be chancellor.
Also in Arts Reviews
Also by Lloyd Evans
Latest
Comments
Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just $5 for 3 monthsAlready a subscriber? Log in