Under Cover

by Jeremy Robson

  Bernard and I weren’t exactly friends, but we’d exchanged those cordial letters about Dostoevsky and were both devoted regulars at Brendel’s concerts, usually exchanging a few words in the interval. So, knowing Joan had drawn a blank with Bernard, when we next met at a concert I tried to press her cause, but he was evasive, suggesting we ask Ron Moody, who had been at LSE with him. That was an idea that excited me, as it did Joan, who wrote to Ron, then spoke to him several times on the phone. Moody seemed willing enough to do it, but he was often away, appearing in various plays and films, and he could never be pinned down. A rather more gentle soul than me, Joan decided to call it a day but was persuaded to have one more go… and Ron came up with the goods, a superbly written, colourful piece in which Bernard Levin featured quite a bit, especially when they appeared in revues there together (Ron was ‘discovered’ at LSE), and worked together on the college magazine, the multi-talented Ron being its cartoonist. Ron wrote:

  I was quite mad. With nine months to go before Finals I plunged impetuously into all the time-consuming, life-involving, wildly fascinating activities that go into putting on a show … Bernard Levin was to impersonate Harold Laski and compère. I first met Levin one evening as he was walking towards Holborn Station. I caught up with him and said, for no reason whatsoever, ‘Did you know that Finsbury Park, spelt backwards, is Y-RUB-SNIF-CRAP?’ He pointed out that KRAP-Y-RUB-SNIF might be more accurate, and I had found a fellow lunatic!

  Fortunately, Ron was in town when we launched the book at the Arts Club in Dover Street, and turned up at the party. Talking to him, it became clear he was keen to write more, so we had the occasional lunch and he’d come to our house, talking, talking. Then, a year or so later, he surprised us by producing the manuscript of a kind of science fiction thriller, The Devil You Don’t. Everything with Ron was ‘kind of’, for he had a quirky and original mind and his approach to everything – on stage, on the page – was unconventional. He could be his own worst enemy, difficult and provocative (as Liz Rose, who edited The Devil, can testify), but he had an exceptional talent and wanted everything to be perfect, and once you got to know him you came to realise that his unpredictable behaviour was often a cover for his insecurity. At the time we met him he’d become involved with a blonde lady in Hollywood (fatal!), and when the relationship ended he was bitter and lost and would come to us to let off steam. Out of his Hollywood experiences came a second novel, Very, Very Slightly Imperfect (VVSI being a grade of diamond). It was his often very funny take on Hollywood. In one scene the main character takes his fiancée to buy a ring. The nearer they get to the shop, the stiffer his arm becomes, so that by the time he has to write a cheque for the expensive diamond ring his fiancée has chosen, he can’t move his hand. Did this happen to Ron? I’d put money on it!

  Ron never wanted to play Fagin again, though after his success in the stage and film versions of Oliver! he’d had a number of offers. But in 1984 (an ominous year), he was approached to star in a Broadway revival. He kept saying no, but every time he did so they upped the offer, until he eventually relented. We were in New York when the show opened, and Ron’s performance was mesmerising. He had the audience cheering from the first number. I thought he’d be there for years, but I was wrong, as these lines from a letter he wrote us in his wry style and signed ‘Ronaldo’ make all too clear:

  On Monday May 7th I was told I had been nominated for a Tony Award! On Tuesday May 8th, the producer of Oliver rang up to congratulate me with the news that the Notice was going up the next day! On Sunday 13 May, Oliver closed! And you thought VVSI went too far? It was a giant managerial disaster – a real Broadway cock-up.

  There was a PS to his letter: ‘I won the Theatre World award for the most outstanding debut on Broadway. Wheeeeee!’

  Then, back in England, a wonderful thing happened: Ron met a delightful redhead called Therese. A former ballerina and a great deal younger than him, Therese was caring, gentle, saintly – and they married. And had six children. We’d go out with them both for dinner, and as he sipped his vodka Ron would announce with a wicked glint in his eye, ‘We have news! Therese has written a novel, and I’m pregnant!’

  Carole and I are godparents to their first-born, Catherine, the only girl, conceived while we were all on holiday together in France (so that’s why they were late down to the beach!). When, one Christmas, the whole Moody family came to us for tea, it seemed as if the entire cast of Oliver! had descended, the youngest boy – a double for the Artful Dodger – setting off the burglar alarm and bringing the police to our door. We bought Ron and Therese a wooden Indian box, and Ron conjured up a fantasy/adventure story around it called The Amazon Box, somewhat in the vein of Harry Potter (though written earlier than the Potter books and sadly without their sales). Fully aware that his sales hadn’t exactly hit the jackpot, Ron belatedly wrote to thank us for the advance: ‘I can’t call it an “advance” because it was so far behind, but I very much appreciated it.’ He’d just made three films, so he was happy enough, and always appreciative of our support of his writing.

  However, as I wrote earlier, Ron could be difficult, very difficult, and touchy, as I discovered when, shortly after his second book was published, I called for him early one morning to drive him to a Yorkshire Post literary lunch in Leeds. He got into the car slowly and sat with his Sherlock Holmes hat pulled down over his eyes for most of the journey, ignoring my feeble attempts to start a conversation. What was wrong, I wondered, and only found out when he eventually passed me a flyer for the lunch which listed previous distinguished speakers – but not him, though he had been there the year before. He was deeply offended, and when the editor of the paper called on him to speak to the packed hall, introducing him with the words, ‘And now Ron Moody, who needs no introduction,’ Ron handed him back the microphone and told him to introduce him properly, as he had the other speakers, and only when he had done so did Ron leap to his feet, stealing the show with a bravura performance that brought the house down… and sold a great many books.

  Our Jekyll and Hyde friend could be generous, though. When our daughter Deborah was getting married, I asked Ron if he would give one of the toasts at the dinner afterwards, and he readily agreed, adding, ‘I could sing.’ ‘Sing?’ I replied hopefully. ‘What would you sing?’ ‘Well,’ said Ron, ‘“Reviewing the Situation” would seem appropriate for a wedding.’ And so we got the music for that famous Oliver! number, primed the musicians, and didn’t say a word to Deborah. Cometh the hour, up sprang Ron and, as I’d hoped, launching into an hilarious speech, deliberately confusing Deborah with her twin sister Manuela and suddenly (realising that they had French- and German-speaking Swiss friends there) speaking in what sounded exactly like French but wasn’t, then switching to what sounded like German, but wasn’t, working himself up into such a crescendo you felt a Nazi salute was coming any minute. He stopped himself in the nick of time, saying, ‘Control yourself, Moody’ and breaking into the song. Deborah, who’d been brought up on Oliver!, who knew every note, was both amazed and deeply moved. ‘He’s doing this for me…?’ was all she could stammer.

  Fast forward to July 2010: Oliver! was running at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, with Russ Abbot as Fagin, and it was fifty years to the day since Lionel Bart’s great musical had first taken London by storm. The producer Cameron Mackintosh wanted to do something special to mark the occasion and he invited Ron, now aged eighty-six, and his family to watch the show from the royal box. Ron asked us to join them. But he was not to be just a spectator, and at the end of the show he was called on stage. He strode on from the back, a glamorous girl on each arm, passing through the assembled cast who’d just taken their final bows. Russ Abbot then came forward and announced simply, ‘The legendary Ron Moody!’, stepping aside to leave Ron to command the stage. Surprised, the packed audience rose to their feet, applauding as he began to speak.

  Now, Ron was not only no ordinary, conventional performer, he was also no ordinary, conventional speaker, a
nd famed as such. He joked with the audience in his tongue-in-cheek way, and when the young actor playing the Artful Dodger came forward and diffidently asked, ‘Please, Mr Moody, sing “Pick a pocket”,’ Ron bellowed back at him teasingly, ‘Sing! I’m doing this for nothing, and you want me to sing?’ But the young boy (as pre-arranged, of course) persisted and, in the end, pretending to clip his ear, Ron gave in, the orchestra started up, the cast stood back and Ron launched into that famous number, his signature number perhaps, as magnificently as he’d ever performed it, his glorious voice rising to the gods. The applause went on and on. When, at a reception afterwards, I found myself talking to Russ Abbot and commented on how generous his introduction to Ron had been, he modestly told me what a privilege it had been to be on stage with such a great performer, and what a thrill it had been to hear that famous voice close to. Watching Ron bring the audience to its feet, seeing his wide-eyed children applauding their father, was a rare experience. That night a star was reborn.

  However, that wasn’t the end of Oliver! as far as Ron was concerned. Finally, after years of pondering, he began to plan an autobiography (well, a kind of autobiography!), in his usual methodical way, mapping it all out in meticulous detail. What an optimist he was: it was to be in seven volumes, the first one ending with the London production of Oliver! in which Nancy was played by the powerful, husky-voiced singer-actress Georgia Brown. Ron and method-actress Georgia had been at loggerheads from the word go, and as the show progressed the two of them became like Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali on stage, stepping on each other’s lines, flaring up at each other, competing. Ron had kept detailed diaries all his life, and there, written at white heat at the time, was his impassioned night-by-night account of it all, just waiting to be transposed onto the printed page.

  In his opinion, the tension between them made their performances all the more powerful, but it took its toll on them both. As Ron started to write, and as the book grew, it became obvious that the material had to be cut and toned down, and the only editor he trusted was Liz Rose. So once again Liz bravely took up the challenge, and somehow she kept him on the rails. It’s a strange book, with a strange title scribbled on a paper napkin in a restaurant and intended to be just a working title: A Still Untitled (Not Quite) Autobiography. But it is a powerful and compelling book, and all Ron. He went on the television programme Loose Women to promote it, and captivated that lively group with his witty ripostes and humour. He spoke at various literary festivals and what he really gave them was a one-man show, recalling the great stars of the past and performing snatches from their acts (never had Bing Crosby sounded so uncannily like Bing, nor Max Miller like the Cheeky Chappie himself). We both opened the Daily Mail one Friday morning with trepidation, knowing there was to be a review… and there it was, a full-page rave from Roger Lewis, himself a maverick and, with his extensive knowledge of showbiz history as well as of literature, just the man to appreciate Ron’s unconventional approach. His review was headed ‘Consider Yourself a Legend, Mr Moody’.

  That was our Ron.

  * * *

  But publishing life was not all musicals and royal boxes, and back in the real world of the late 1970s, where the Moody saga began, we were facing a crisis. Naturally, moving in so many directions, building a quickly growing list, our financial demands had grown. The strain was considerable, both on Jeremy Morris as financial director and on me, as we fought to keep things going and to retain the bank’s support. Michael Rivkin had backed us so far, but with a crash in the property market, in which he was a major player, he was himself under pressure to pull in his horns, sell the country house and reduce his commitments. We had a long, friendly talk, but the bottom line was that he couldn’t go on financing our growing business. It was a bleak moment as we contemplated our commitments – the staff, authors, office costs, printers’ bills and so on. The situation was compounded by the fact that the long friendship Jeremy and I had enjoyed since our schooldays became fraught as we struggled to cope. Eventually, and perhaps inevitably, we parted company, Jeremy eventually joining an international firm of coffee brokers as financial director. The separation saved our friendship, which thankfully resumed and continues strongly to this day.

  That Robson Books was able to continue was due to Carole’s father. Alerted to the situation, and after several long meetings with Michael, he heroically stepped in, arranging the necessary facilities with his own bank. Not that it was quite that easy or straightforward, since as a condition of giving that facility the bank insisted that, as well as his guarantee, we pledged our house as a security; and the monthly debenture figures they now demanded were a recurring nightmare. Even now I shudder when I think about them. Nevertheless, we were still there and very much in business.

  Considering that he’d once lost everything he had in Egypt, it was both remarkable that Ben was in a position to do this and an unbelievably generous act which enabled us to continue. A modest man who never wanted anything for himself, Ben worked incredibly hard and was highly respected for his integrity and straight dealing. The fact that he spoke many languages had helped him build up a solid export business here, which gave him some leverage with the bank. Above all, he was a family man who helped various relatives around the world, and for him this was a family matter and he wasn’t going to let me down. For my part, I was determined not to let him down, and didn’t, though it was some twenty-five years before we were able to release him from his commitments and pay back everything we owed financially. No one was more pleased than him – not for the money, not for himself, but for the honour involved.

  Among other things, Ben’s company exported diesels and spare parts for trucks all over the world and had its own warehouse, and he believed we could save a substantial sum of money by doing our own distribution. Accordingly, we took a small modern warehouse in Tottenham and began to do just that. It wasn’t a simple matter, however, and it involved setting up a computer programme which linked the stock to sales and royalties, and it needed a special person to set it up, oversee it and run it, someone we could trust. And that is where Carole came in. She’d gained a degree in art history from London University, and had recently qualified as a British Tourist Board Blue Badge Guide, a demanding course. She’d also written a book called From London for the Day, which Allen & Unwin had published. But in the circumstances, she felt she had a duty to help, so she set all that aside and took over the running of the warehouse, a tough and unpleasant job, especially given the growing nightmare of returns – the bugbear of the publishing world. And when our sales manager left some months later, she took over that role too, coming into the office (now in Clipstone Street), dealing with the main accounts, overseeing the reps. It was a huge sacrifice, but it did wonders for the business.

  Outside the office, a rather different kind of drama was unfolding in the shape of an irrepressible Labrador puppy called Brandy. At the corner of our road was an off-licence, and the owners’ dog had just given birth. The puppies were adorable and for sale, and every day our daughters, who must have been about ten at the time, would call in on their way back from school, imploring us to take one. They would look after it, it would be no trouble, they’d take it for walks, please, please… In the end we gave way and Brandy entered our family. But, though we loved dogs, we’d never owned one, and it wasn’t a success. The trouble was that our smallish house was on the edge of the busy (and dangerous) Finchley Road, and our back garden was tiny. Still, we were only a ten-minute walk away from Hampstead Heath, and day after day we’d walk Brandy there, trying to get him to do his business. But he never would, not until he got back to the house, whereupon he’d land it on our doorstep, or at night on the kitchen floor.

  He’d bark and squeal all night long, and the girls would creep downstairs so they could calm him and clear up the mess, since they knew we were starting to find it too much to cope with. Brandy was obviously unhappy, and we were, too, and something needed to be done. But what? When I mentioned our predica
ment to our receptionist at Robson Books, she said she had friends in Reading who were looking for a dog. The husband was a chef at the university and they had a house in the grounds, so we felt he would be well looked after. And so, finally driven to desperation, like a thief in the night I put Brandy into the back of my car and drove him to his new home. Never in my life have I felt so treacherous.

  A few weeks later, our receptionist came to tell me that, reluctantly, her friends couldn’t keep Brandy since he was yapping at their new baby all the time and frightening it. That lunchtime I went for a walk, thinking about the problem, when I bumped into my friend Jeffrey Pike. He and his wife Val lived in the country not far from Reading and had two Labradors and a very large garden. I told him the story, and he said they’d love to have another Labrador, and offered to drive over that evening and collect him, which to our great relief he did. Two weeks later, the phone rang. It was the forthright Jeffrey. ‘I don’t know what you’ve taught him,’ he barked, ‘but your so-and-so dog will only crap on our doorstep!’

  Gallantly, he persisted, and all was well until Brandy broke into their neighbour’s duck pond, resulting in the neighbour storming into his garden and shooting at the dog. Miraculously, Brandy wasn’t badly wounded and recovered fully. After that, all went well for a while, and whenever we visited the Pikes, Brandy would rush up to us and tears would well up in our daughters’ eyes. But (this is a story of buts) several years later Jeffrey’s business was taking him to Canada and he was selling the house. After much thought, he had finally given Brandy to a tree-feller he knew who lived in a barn nearby. Brandy evidently relished his new home and accompanied his new master wherever his job took him. Then, one dramatic night, as his owner slept, the barn caught fire. The dog managed to escape through a window and somehow brought help, saving the man’s life. The incident made headlines in all the local papers, and Brandy – our Brandy! – was declared a hero. And, as far as we know, they both lived happily ever after.