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Authors: Sheila Hancock
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lot waiting in the van? A cocky
young man came out who’d obviously done well. ‘All you need is confidence. Look like you’re great and they’ll believe you.
Act it,’ he told the assembled auditionees.
All right. It was now or never. He had to have this. He could act. He knew he could. So come on – act being confident.
In the audition room was a row of half a dozen people slouching on wooden chairs. John marched in, acting confidence for all
he was worth. They all sat bolt upright. They looked impressed. Flabbergasted in fact. Good. He had chosen a speech from Richard III and he launched into his version, complete with humped back and a dramatic limp that owed as much to Grandfather Ablott as
Olivier, as did the malevolence. He could hear his careful elocution slip into Mancunian now and then but he saw them nudge
one another at his Olivier bits. Encouraged, he gave it all he’d got. They looked dumbfounded. When he finished they were
silent. Then one of them just said, ‘Thank you’ and he said, ‘You’re welcome’, and left. He told his family he thought he’d
got away with it. He had. Mercifully, the panel had been shrewd enough to see the potential of the strange lad.
7 June
Grimaldi told us baldly – the best way really – it’s cancer of the oesophagus with secondaries to the lung. He had already made an appointment with the best oncologist he knew – Dr Slevin. We were reeling. John probably doesn’t realise it’s the cancer Alec died of. We were incredibly calm and polite – even laughed a bit. Outside Grimaldi’s door we clung to each other, then someone passed us and we were all polite again. Slevin, matter-of-fact, said he would have to have a line put into John’s chest to take chemo plus a big dose by injection in a clinic once a month. Did he want to start today? John said he needed a weekend to steady himself. Dear God.
5
The Student
MY PROFESSIONAL LIFE HAS been a litany of mistiming. I have always been ahead of or behind my time. Only in old age have I
caught up with myself. When I went to RADA in 1949 it was a finishing school for the rich, ruled over by a benign old buffer
called Sir Kenneth Barnes. Nine years before the invasion of Finney, Courtenay and Thaw. I was too early.
8 June
Went to Tarlton. Such happy memories. The stubby trees we planted are an orchard now. The new building has mellowed. It’s a lovely home. The visit seems to have made John very positive. The world Alec and I, then John and I, created has flourished. But I remember my poor skeletal Alec there and was full of fear but I did an amazing performance of utter confidence in the treatment. Labour won the election. Tony’s done it again. Clever bugger.
In my time the Academy moulded its students into the elegant actors required for the theatre and film of the period, for which
I was not promising clay. TV, still in its embryo form, was not even considered. More important were the Radio Technique classes.
My childhood encounters with drama were the Saturday Night Theatre plays and Children’s Hour , for which my family sat silently round our big brown wireless set. Radio was central to our lives. BBC English was the order
of the day. Wilfred Pickles was allowed to use his northern accent for his variety show Have a Go but went posh when he read the news. Women weren’t allowed to read the news at all. A BBC spokesman pontificated, ‘People
do not like momentous events such as war and disasters to be read by female voices.’
For most of the students of 1949, Received Pronunciation was no problem. All the Honourables and Lady Mucks spoke beautifully.
Most looked beautiful too. I did not even try to compete, slopping around in baggy cords, ex-Navy polo neck sweater and duffle
coat. The exquisite Eve Shand Kidd, huge blue eyes set in a piquant pixie face, caught me washing my face with soap. So horrified
was she that she bought me a complete set of Cyclax cleansing
young man came out who’d obviously done well. ‘All you need is confidence. Look like you’re great and they’ll believe you.
Act it,’ he told the assembled auditionees.
All right. It was now or never. He had to have this. He could act. He knew he could. So come on – act being confident.
In the audition room was a row of half a dozen people slouching on wooden chairs. John marched in, acting confidence for all
he was worth. They all sat bolt upright. They looked impressed. Flabbergasted in fact. Good. He had chosen a speech from Richard III and he launched into his version, complete with humped back and a dramatic limp that owed as much to Grandfather Ablott as
Olivier, as did the malevolence. He could hear his careful elocution slip into Mancunian now and then but he saw them nudge
one another at his Olivier bits. Encouraged, he gave it all he’d got. They looked dumbfounded. When he finished they were
silent. Then one of them just said, ‘Thank you’ and he said, ‘You’re welcome’, and left. He told his family he thought he’d
got away with it. He had. Mercifully, the panel had been shrewd enough to see the potential of the strange lad.
7 June
Grimaldi told us baldly – the best way really – it’s cancer of the oesophagus with secondaries to the lung. He had already made an appointment with the best oncologist he knew – Dr Slevin. We were reeling. John probably doesn’t realise it’s the cancer Alec died of. We were incredibly calm and polite – even laughed a bit. Outside Grimaldi’s door we clung to each other, then someone passed us and we were all polite again. Slevin, matter-of-fact, said he would have to have a line put into John’s chest to take chemo plus a big dose by injection in a clinic once a month. Did he want to start today? John said he needed a weekend to steady himself. Dear God.
5
The Student
MY PROFESSIONAL LIFE HAS been a litany of mistiming. I have always been ahead of or behind my time. Only in old age have I
caught up with myself. When I went to RADA in 1949 it was a finishing school for the rich, ruled over by a benign old buffer
called Sir Kenneth Barnes. Nine years before the invasion of Finney, Courtenay and Thaw. I was too early.
8 June
Went to Tarlton. Such happy memories. The stubby trees we planted are an orchard now. The new building has mellowed. It’s a lovely home. The visit seems to have made John very positive. The world Alec and I, then John and I, created has flourished. But I remember my poor skeletal Alec there and was full of fear but I did an amazing performance of utter confidence in the treatment. Labour won the election. Tony’s done it again. Clever bugger.
In my time the Academy moulded its students into the elegant actors required for the theatre and film of the period, for which
I was not promising clay. TV, still in its embryo form, was not even considered. More important were the Radio Technique classes.
My childhood encounters with drama were the Saturday Night Theatre plays and Children’s Hour , for which my family sat silently round our big brown wireless set. Radio was central to our lives. BBC English was the order
of the day. Wilfred Pickles was allowed to use his northern accent for his variety show Have a Go but went posh when he read the news. Women weren’t allowed to read the news at all. A BBC spokesman pontificated, ‘People
do not like momentous events such as war and disasters to be read by female voices.’
For most of the students of 1949, Received Pronunciation was no problem. All the Honourables and Lady Mucks spoke beautifully.
Most looked beautiful too. I did not even try to compete, slopping around in baggy cords, ex-Navy polo neck sweater and duffle
coat. The exquisite Eve Shand Kidd, huge blue eyes set in a piquant pixie face, caught me washing my face with soap. So horrified
was she that she bought me a complete set of Cyclax cleansing
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