More Fool Me

  ‘Ah. What did she say?’

  ‘She smiled very sweetly and said, “That’s very kind, Mr Cleese, but he is actually my brother.” I don’t know when I last felt such a complete tit.’

  ‘Well, you weren’t to know …’

  I was, of course, very pleased to hear such praise. It was entirely typical that Jo herself never mentioned this story to me. I finally raised it a week or so later.

  ‘You do know John told me about trying to poach you?’

  ‘Oh that! That was funny …’

  ‘You could have told me, and I’d’ve had to double your pay …’

  Which I think, I hope, I did.

  It is no exaggeration to say that I would not be alive now were it not for Jo’s gentle but firm control of my life. I tease her by calling her Martina Bormann, my diary Nazi, but it would have been impossible to have done a tenth of the things I have done without her understanding of how diaries, film schedules, call sheets, production companies, television executives, airports, drivers and above all her capricious, weird and impossible boss/brother operate. Or fail to.

  I was called one week the following year, which was probably 1990 but don’t quote me, to visit a certain Roger Peters, who was installed in splendour in Suite 512 of the Savoy Hotel. The man turned out to be an American of middle years. He gave me to understand that he was the heir and last lover of the American composer Samuel Barber. I had always believed that Barber had died of a broken heart after his long-time partner and fellow musician Gian Carlo Menotti traded him in for a younger model, but it seems he found Roger Peters at the end.

  Roger, it seemed, had the film rights to Noël Coward’s Hayfever and wondered if I was interested in writing the adaptation. I politely demurred, knowing that: a) Hayfever was Coward’s favourite play and he had specifically given orders that ‘no cunt ever be allowed to fuck about with it’; and b) it was all set in one place and just about one time, adhering as closely as possible to the Aristotelian unities, making it a bugger to adapt for the screen. Not that Reginald Rose and Sidney Lumet didn’t do a bang-up job with 12 Angry Men …

  He didn’t seem too offended, and we drank and chatted and gossiped. I guessed that he had asked just about everyone who had ever held a pen or tapped at a keyboard to take on this job, starting, as one did, with Stoppard, Bennett and Pinter and then reaching after exhausting weeks of refusals the bottom of the barrel. Not false modesty, just realism.

  The suite was magnificent, with spectacular views that gave out on to the Thames. The idea of living permanently in such splendour filled me with a perfectly unforgivable mixture of envy and ambition. One day, I thought to myself, one day …

  The calendar pages peeled and blew away, as Vivian Stanshall phrased it, and it is now early 1992, and I find myself window-shopping along Piccadilly.

  ‘Hello, Stephen!’

  I have a mild case of prosopagnosia, absolutely maddening. Nothing like the severe face-blindness that afflicts some. I have a friend who cannot distinguish his own family members until they say their name. My level of this disorder may not be severe, but it does mean I frequently appear rude. So if you know me and I cut you in the street, it doesn’t mean that I don’t like you and wish to blank you out of my life, it just means I haven’t the faintest idea who you are. Tell me your name, and I’ll be absolutely fine. Most people are the other way about and remember faces but not names.

  This fellow, fortunately, was happy to supply the name without prompting.

  ‘Roger Peters!’

  ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘How’s tricks?’

  ‘Well, you know,’ he said, falling into step. ‘You’re just the fellow. Do you know of anyone, anyone …’

  Oh God, he’s going to harp on about the bloody Hayfever script again, I moaned inwardly.

  ‘… anyone who’d be willing to live in my Savoy suite for four or five weeks. I have to go to America for family business and I don’t want to move all my stuff out. I have a deal with the hotel whereby I pay by the year anyway, so it’s just a question of someone suite-sitting. Anybody come to mind?’

  ‘We-e-ll …’ I said doubtfully, ‘there is one person it might suit. He’s about this high …’ I raised my hand to the level of my head. ‘About this wide …’ I parted my hands to the width of my body. ‘He has a bent nose and he’s talking to you right this minute.’

  ‘Oh, that’s fantastic! I’m leaving Wednesday. Why don’t you come round tomorrow afternoon, and I’ll introduce you to the floor butler and show you where everything is.’

  And so it came to pass that the Savoy Hotel became my home for just over a month. For eleven days of that time we filmed Peter’s Friends. The script that I couriered over to London the year before had been polished and burnished and buffed to a light sheen, but Hugh and I were still, to our eternal discredit, deeply embarrassed about the whole thing. Occasionally in the hallways, corridors and drawing rooms of Wrotham Park (the grand house outside Barnet where we had already shot some scenes in Jeeves and Wooster and where I was many years later to shoot scenes in Robert Altman’s Gosford Park), occasionally, Ken would see Hugh and me looking hang-dog and licked to a splinter between set-ups.

  ‘Everything all right, darlings?’

  ‘They’re going to hate us,’ I moaned.

  ‘Who? What do you mean?’

  ‘“This incestuous, up-itself tale of Oxbridge wankers who reveal their feeble, wimpy and effete so-called ‘problems’ over a weekend of excess in a country house …” Can you imagine how Time Out are going to react?’ (I’ve no idea why Time Out was still the symbol and focus of all our insecurities.)

  ‘Time Out? Who gives a fuck? It’s read by about twelve people. Seriously, loves, why would you worry about what they think?’

  We admired Ken Branagh, and still do, for many reasons, but his magnificent ability not to be downcast or diverted by concerning himself with how some reviewer was going to react to his work was near the top of the list of his accomplishments. Daring and courage are half the battle with acting, directing and film-making. If you have a newspaper reviewer or even the ghost of a generalized and antagonistic public over your shoulder tutting and hissing in through their teeth as you try to concentrate then you are doomed to failure.

  Ken, of course, does not associate his place in the world with guilt. He grew up in Northern Ireland in no position of prosperity. His love of theatre was inborn and absolute; any money he managed to earn he would spend on the ferry to the mainland and the bus to Stratford-upon-Avon, where he would watch every season from his early teenage years onwards. It is no accident that he arrived for the first full day of shooting for Peter’s Friends already filled with knowledge, courage and self-belief. It is also, I would argue, no accident that Hugh and I arrived almost sick with apprehension, shame and foreboding. The very good fortune that took us from our public schools (by way of other schools and prison in my case) via Cambridge, the Footlights and into Blackadder, Jeeves and Wooster and our own sketch show, far from filling us with confidence, made us feel utterly unworthy. Please do not think we are asking for sympathy and certainly not for admiration. I speak as it was in our befuddled minds, and you may take it as you will. Perhaps if you have imagination you can see yourself feeling the same way under the same circumstances. Perhaps we were just peculiarly weird.

  That a whole feature film could be shot in eleven days was testament to the work ethic of Ken and his crew, the tight unity of time and place within Martin and Rita’s script and, of course, the sparsity of the budget.

  Meanwhile, the pleasure of having a car coming to pick me up from the Savoy and dropping me there in the evening was almost more thrilling than anything I had ever experienced. The top-hatted ‘linkmen’, often incorrectly referred to as doormen, were unfailingly polite to me, and I soon got to know the rest of the staff. If you want to know anything about the depths of degradation of the human being, make the acquaintance of the executive housekeeper of any large hotel. You wil
l never be the same again. Discretion prohibits me from going any further, this is a journey you must undertake yourself. It is a bit like telling someone to look up the word ‘munting’ in urbandictionary.com. I take no further responsibility.

  Otherwise the joys of suite-sitting were altogether delicious. No bathrobes were ever softer and fluffier, no shower-rose wider and more generous in its precipitation. One small and entirely preposterous annoyance however, a something that got under my skin, was the daily sameness of it all. That ashtray on that table in the drawing room was always placed exactly there. That chair always angled exactly that way. One day I mentioned this to the floor butler.

  ‘Whenever I come back from filming or from a walk,’ I said, ‘the suite has been wonderfully cleaned and tidied, but – and I really don’t mean this as a criticism – everything is always in exactly the same place. The ornaments on the mantelpiece, the …’

  ‘Sir, say no more. From tomorrow we will surprise you in small ways each day.’

  Which they did. It made me, and I like to think the chambermaid and other staff members, giggle, each time they made a small alteration. Playing Hunt the Ashtray kept me on my toes and freshened the experience of hotel living.

  One spare evening I had gone to see a production of Tartuffe in which my good friend Johnny Sessions played a role. Also in the production was Dulcie Gray, whose husband, Michael Denison, had played Algernon in Anthony Asquith’s The Importance of Being Earnest, delivering the line: ‘I hope, Cecily, I shall not offend you if I state quite frankly and openly that you seem to me to be in every way the visible personification of absolute perfection?’, that very joyous progression of words that had so made me wriggle and writhe and squirm with delight when a young boy.

  Michael and Dulcie, a grand and much-loved theatrical couple, made a tradition of having a summer party at Shardeloes, a marvellous eighteenth-century house in Old Amersham with noble Robert Adam interiors and a 1796 landscaped garden by Humphry Repton. The house had been saved, restored and divided up in the 1970s after falling into the customary nursing-home use and further slow decline. Dulcie and Michael had the best ground-floor rooms, giving out over the great lawn; their party, when I arrived, was already crammed with figures from the British film and theatre world. I found myself falling into conversation with Doreen, widow of the great Jack Hawkins, one of my favourite British film stars. Then who should I see across the room? Did my eyes believe it? My favourite of them all, John Mills. A certain amount of excited hopping on one leg, a little light coughing and I found myself sitting on a sofa next to him. He twinkled, just as I expected him to, this nimble, unutterably charming and deeply gifted man. His wife, Mary Hayley Bell, author of Whistle Down the Wind, barked and laughed just as I expected her to.

  John Mills was the man Noël Coward wrote ‘Mad Dogs and Englishmen’ for. In the mid-1930s he had been a singer, hoofer and all-round entertainer for a company with the unfortunate name of ‘The Quaints’. Coward, on a journey back from Australia, stopped off in Singapore and saw a poster offering the unlikely double bill (surely not in one night?) of Hamlet and Mr Cinders. It was in the latter that the lithe, lissom and perky Mills impressed. Coward went round afterwards and told him to visit him in London, where he would find a part for him.

  Johnny Mills had a genius for friendship. Coward (whom Mills was the first to dub ‘the Master’), Laurence Olivier, Rex Harrison, Richard Attenborough, Bryan Forbes and many others benefited from his selfless and sweetly unegotistical charm.

  As we sat on the sofa at Shardeloes I must have bombarded him with dozens of questions about his films and career. The October Man, In Which We Serve, Ryan’s Daughter, Hobson’s Choice, Tiger Bay, Swiss Family Robinson and above all Ice Cold in Alex, Great Expectations and Tunes of Glory had affected me profoundly.

  When I paused to draw breath, Johnny asked me what I was up to. I explained that I was in the middle of making a picture with Kenneth Branagh.

  ‘Oh, no, really?’ said Johnny. ‘I wonder, would you do me a favour?’

  ‘Anything.’

  ‘Could you tell Kenneth that, as a friend of Larry Olivier’s, I just know how much Larry would have loved Kenneth’s Henry V and how much he would have loathed the vile comparisons the critics have made. Can you tell him that?’ Johnny was referring to the fact that, while Ken’s Henry V had been an undoubted success, many snarky responses along the lines of ‘Who does he think he is? He’s no Laurence Olivier’ had greeted its release.

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t pass that message on,’ I told Johnny.

  ‘Oh.’ He looked rather nonplussed.

  ‘I’d much prefer you to pass it on yourself. If I gave a dinner party, would you and Lady Mills come along?’

  He beamed assent, telephone numbers were swapped, and the thing was fixed.

  There is nothing quite like hosting a dinner party in a five-star hotel suite. Yes, of course, I’m aware of how utterly appalling that sounds, but I might as well get the story out.

  Here’s how it goes. You tell Alfonso and Ernesto on your floor that you plan to have six guests for dinner next Friday, and they bow with pleasure.

  When the day dawns, Ernesto comes in with a menu card and the suggestions from the executive chef and his team toiling in the hypocausts six floors below. You select what you hope is an agreeable dinner* and then, at round about six o’clock, Alfonso, who doesn’t want you under his feet while he sees to the flowers and place settings, comes in and commands that you go on a walk. When you arrive back at the suite everything is simply perfect. The armchairs have been moved back to the window, in a semi-circle looking out over the Thames at dusk. In the centre of the room the main table has had an extra leaf inserted to accommodate seven people: I have invited Hugh and Jo Laurie, Emma Thompson and Ken and of course Sir John and Lady Mills.

  Starched white napery, crystal glassware and silver cutlery gleam in the candlelight. Two low bowls of perfect peonies on the table, vases of roses and exquisite flowers I cannot identify distributed about the room. On occasional tables occasional nuts, olives and cornichons. Fortunately this is the age before the uneatable Bombay Mix or palate-destroying pretzel assortment. A bottle of champagne in a silver bucket shifts slightly in the ice. I pour a solacing vodka and tonic, light a cigarette and pretend to myself that I am not a little nervous. When out on my walk I withdrew enough cash to tip Ernesto, Alfonso, Gilberto, Alonso and Pierre as lavishly as might be appropriate.

  I have arranged with Alonso that as soon as the first guest has arrived he will come in to serve cocktails and the fizz. If he has not been alerted by reception I will press the bell by the fireplace.

  A thought strikes me: perhaps the front desk won’t know who John Mills is! It would be dreadful if so august a figure should slip anonymously in without being treated with the respect he deserves. I call down.

  ‘Good evening, Mr Fry.’

  This was a time when I still got a little disconcerted by the hotel staff being able instantly to identify me as soon as I called.

  ‘Hello, yes it’s me. Stephen here in 512. I just wanted to say that I’m having a dinner party, and the thing is, the guests of honour are Sir John and Lady Mills, and I hope you will –’

  ‘… Oh, sir, we know Sir John very well indeed. Rest assured we shall welcome him most enthusiastically. Most enthusiastically!’

  Hugh, Jo, Ken and Emma arrived together. We were still young enough to be excited by such a preposterously grown-up business as holding a dinner party in a place like the Savoy.

  Alonso made cocktails and stood discreetly by the drinks trolley as we giggled and shrieked.

  The buzzer sounded, and we all straightened up and put on serious but welcoming faces.

  I opened the door, and there stood Sir John and Mary. He stepped in and looked blinking about him.

  ‘Oh … oh! It’s …’

  I noticed with alarm that he had started to weep.

  ‘Sir John, is everything all right?’
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  He took my arm and squeezed it tight. ‘This is Noël’s suite!’

  He let go and walked about. ‘Every first night, this was the suite Noël took. Oh gracious!’

  It was a perfect evening. Johnny and Ken quickly made friends. Anecdotes rained down, and many beans were spilled. The front desk had already made a great fuss of Johnny and Mary, lining up to greet him at the famous porte-cochère as soon as his splendid old Rolls-Royce had arrived with his faithful driver, factotum and friend John Novelli at the wheel.

  It was the beginning of a long friendship between John, the Mills family and me. Not long enough as far as Johnny was concerned of course; he died in 2005 at the age of ninety-three, and Lady Mary, who had lost herself to dementia many years earlier, joined him in death later that year.

  Their sixty-four-year marriage was an extraordinary achievement. I bumped into Johnny in 1996 in an artist’s green room at the Sitges Film Festival. He peered up at me.*

  ‘Oh, Stephen. Do you know something? This is the first time Mary and I have spent a night apart since we were married.’

  Astonishing. I once asked him what the secret of so strong a marriage might be.

  ‘Oh, it’s very simple,’ he said. ‘We behave like naughty teenagers who’ve only just met. I’ll give you an example. We were at a very grand dinner a couple of years ago, and I scribbled a note saying, “Cor, I don’t half fancy you. Are you doing anything afterwards? We could go to my place for some naughty fun …”, something like that. I summoned a waiter. “You see that ravishing blonde at the table over there?” I said, pointing towards Mary. “I wonder if you’d be good enough to hand her this note?” I was then rather horrified to realize – my sight was just going at this stage, you have to understand – that he was handing the note to Princess Diana. She opened it, read it and with her eyes followed the waiter’s pointing hand back to me, squirming in my seat. She smiled, waved and blew a kiss. Oh dear, I did feel a fool.’

  Two events gave me especial delight during my years of friendship with Johnny. One was the good fortune I had in spotting that Christie’s were selling an old dressing gown of Noël Coward’s. I won the auction and gave it to Johnny on his eightieth birthday. He remembered Coward wearing it, and owning it gave him a remarkable amount of pleasure, which in turn, of course, gave me a remarkable amount of pleasure.