This Much Is True

Vanessa Redgrave and Ba got on like a house on fire. That surprised me because they came from very different backgrounds. They were also miles apart politically. Nobody else in The Threepenny Opera company was the slightest bit interested in Vanessa’s politics, nor the ideals of the Workers Revolutionary Party — most certainly not Ba, who was an ardent Edward Heath fan. By then, I was a convinced socialist; it was around this time that I joined the WRP and leafleted people and signed petitions and actually went to the Blackwater Estuary summer camp (but that’s a story for another chapter). In fact, the whole cast was England in microcosm: Joe Melia, whom I deeply disliked but at the same time admired for his acting, was the son of Italian immigrants. He went to Downing College, Cambridge, but never spoke about that to me. All he wanted to talk about was football. At that time, and foolishly, I scorned football (now I am a strong Arsenal supporter). One night we were all on stage, waiting to begin the show in our places behind the ‘Iron’ (the front stage curtain). Joe was bemoaning an Arsenal defeat the previous night. I laughed scornfully; Joe snarled at me, ‘You silly cunt!’ and I slapped his face. Curtain up! I cannot substantiate the widely held belief among the cast that he slept with both Vanessa and Annie (I never dared ask either of them), but Ba definitely wasn’t an admirer.

Victor Maddern was another cheeky chappie; a terrific character actor in British films and a sweet guy. He had a mushroom farm and every week brought punnets of mushrooms for the cast and left them at the stage door for us to take home. Arthur Mullard, another definitely working-class actor, I got to know better later, when we did voice-overs. Every night after the show he went back to his council flat in Islington, although he died a millionaire. Famously cockney, he was once asked by a commercials director if he could change his accent to be more upper-class. Silly request. He was always begging me to suck him off. The excuse I gave was because he had never changed his jumper, not once in the entire run and I just didn’t fancy being that close to old wool. I read later that he’d abused his daughter and his wife had committed suicide. We knew nothing of that then but the news made me shiver.

Henry Woolf was the other Jew in the cast. Short like me, and massively intelligent, it turned out he was Harold Pinter’s best friend.One day he said, ‘You would do anything to live life on your own terms’. I was shocked by his perspicacity. He was a good actor, a brilliant critic, but left the business and became an academic in Saskatchewan.

I became particularly fond of Hermione Baddeley; she would hold court in her dressing room, before and after the show, sharing memories of her life in theatre, always pouring out gin for me, wine for the others. Hermione had been nominated for an Oscar for Room at the Top; her older sister, Angela, played Mrs Bridges in Upstairs, Downstairs. I liked her; perhaps because she was a (closet) lesbian; her girlfriend Lady Joan Ashton-Smith hosted our first night party, in her stylish all-white flat, designed by Sibyl Colefax. At that party I met David Bailey, the photographer. He was short, cockney, with a sharp grin and the air of someone who deliberately refused to show respect for anyone. He said to me, ‘You’re an interesting bird. Come to my studio, I’ll photograph you.’

I wish I had.

I used to walk home after the show, past all the prostitutes who gathered outside the stage door in Denman Street. I became friendly with one of them, a pretty Irishwoman, and used to talk to her every night. I asked her, ‘Why are you doing this work?’ She explained, ‘Ah, well, I’ve got a little boy and I want to look after him. This way, I can send him to a good school and he’ll have a proper upbringing and a good education. I do it for him. It doesn’t matter to me one way or the other.’ I said, ‘Do you do whatever they ask?’ She said, ‘Well, I just don’t like them kissing me. I won’t let them kiss me. That’s one thing I don’t allow. But they can do whatever else they like.’ I enjoyed talking to this lady, hearing news about her son — but I never connected my encounters with this real-life prostitute with my role in the show. She was light years away from my Nelly!