by David Jason
So, off I went on the train to Birmingham, the home of ATV. Rehearsals were held in a couple of rooms in a backstreet, on the second floor of an unprepossessing building, up a flight of concrete steps with a metal handrail. The assistant stage manager met me at the double doors. These opened into the main rehearsal room, all laid out as a bare but full-scale mock-up of the set. Masking tape on the floor marked the edges of the rooms, posts indicated doors. The motel reception desk – which, as for so many characters, would be my point of entry into the series – was represented by a couple of planks on a pair of trestles. I was shown into a smaller side room, containing a jumble of chairs around the edge, including one rather comfortable-looking armchair which I proceeded to plonk myself down into. Other cast members slowly began to arrive. Sue Nicholls, who played Marilyn Gates the waitress, was very warm and welcoming. She came up and said hello straight away. Everyone else, though, seemed to go a bit on edge at the sight of me. I couldn’t for the life of me work out why, and assumed it was just me, as a nervous novice, judging the atmosphere wrongly. So I carried on sitting there, with my head buried in the script, and waited.
In due course, the star of the show, Noele Gordon, arrived. Noele was TV royalty, even then, and I was a bit starstruck. It wasn’t really my place to jump up and introduce myself and I thought if I kept my head down, she wouldn’t notice me and I wouldn’t have to have an embarrassing, nervous exchange with her. Out of the corner of my eye, I was aware of her slightly pausing in the doorway. Then I heard her say good morning to the other regulars and she went and sat on the other side of the room.
All a little unsettling – but the explanation soon came. Some of us, including me, were called for our scene and as we made our way out of the green room, one of the others (and I’m not at liberty to tell you who that was, because I can’t remember) hissed, with some urgency, ‘You sat in Noele’s seat.’
Great start. And thanks for telling me now, I thought, rather than when I walked in. Maybe it was some kind of test for the new boy. ‘Let’s see if he sits in Noele’s seat!’ Frankly, that was exactly the kind of thing I would have done if I had been in the regulars’ position. It might sound a bit pathetic, but little things like that can be a major source of entertainment to the cast of a production and brighten a routine day. Whatever, when we came back out from rehearsing (and on every other occasion from then on), I made sure to park myself somewhere else.
Noele – or Nolly, as I learned to call her, like everyone else did – actually turned out to be perfectly approachable. She was a big gun, powerful, hugely experienced and carrying this enormous show, and she was pretty aloof. She could certainly make people quake in their boots but I got off pretty lightly. She had an amazing capacity to be faultless with her lines – ‘DLP’, as we used to say: dead line perfect. This was no matter how much she had to say, which, in any given week, was an enormous amount. When someone like me came along, who had so much less to say than her, but still struggled to get it all learned, it was a little embarrassing. She had a reputation for being mightily fierce and difficult, and to have a touch of the Gorgons about her, but I was never on the end of any of that. In any case, you have to be careful with rumours about people’s reputations. It’s like the story that made the newspapers about Tom Cruise, and how people on the set of one of his movies had been instructed not to look at him. Well, of course they were. It’s the first thing extras are told: ‘When the star walks into this scene, don’t look at him.’ The scene is hardly going to look natural, is it, if everyone is craning their necks to get a look at Tom? But, of course, that story gets out and becomes evidence of starry preciousness and absurd grandeur on Cruise’s part. So you learn to be wary.
When rehearsals were through (and let’s say they were not extensive), we moved on to ATV Studios for the recording. The show had no film unit for location shooting. The budget didn’t run to that. Everything was filmed within one small studio. The motel reception area, Meg Richardson’s office, the sitting room, the kitchen, Kitty Jarvis’s shop – all the sets interlocked in a single cramped space. A cat, swung carefully, could have orbited the entire world of Crossroads in a single revolution. None of the sets was lavishly appointed, either – and least of all the shop. You’d have been pretty disappointed if you’d popped out to Kitty’s to pick up a few essentials. It basically ran to a couple of boxes of soap flakes, some packets of cereal and that was about it. It was like Russia before the fall of communism. In fact, I think the shops in Russia were better equipped.
Nor did the budget run to editing – except of the crudest kind. Tape (which is what the show was recorded on) was expensive, and therefore at a premium. Or so we were told. Scenes were shot in one extended take, ‘as live’, meaning that all sorts of slips, errors and fumbles made it to air. I was once in a scene set in the kitchen, with an Australian actor, an extremely nice chap, and all was going along well enough until, suddenly, he dried – completely forgot his lines. My stomach dropped to the floor in sympathy for him because this was the worst thing that could happen on the Crossroads set. It wasn’t live television, but we were instructed to behave as though it was.
However, in the corner sat the continuity girl, with the script in one hand and, in the other, a handset with a button on it, which, when she pressed it, would cut the microphones in the studio. With the actor looking over to her for help, she now pressed the button, gave the actor his cue and let the button up again. He took the cue, recovered his speech and we battered our way onwards to the end of the scene. I think both of us were expecting to hear the director call ‘Cut!’ at any moment and send us back to the beginning. But the call never came.
The next week, when this episode was broadcast, I made a point of tuning in at home. The whole escapade went out, exactly as it happened in the studio: you saw the actor lose his words and freeze, you heard the soundtrack go completely silent for a couple of moments, and then you heard the soundtrack come back up again and saw us carry on. Amazing stuff. I don’t think you’d get away with it today. Actually, they didn’t really get away with it then, either.
Everyone connected with the programme – crew, cast, writers – was in a rhythm, and tightly locked into it. They had to be, because of the time constraints. Anything that interrupted the schedule was potentially ruinous and therefore not to be countenanced. Normally they had a number of staff directors that they would call on in rotation. So, in fact, it was a bit of a closed shop. But on one of the episodes I was in, all the staff directors were unavailable for some reason, which handed an outsider his chance. So in came a new director who, unfortunately, made the cardinal error of trying to be a bit creative. He eased himself in by playing according to the rules for a couple of episodes, and then he decided to push the boundaries. He wrote out his camera plot – his plan for all the camera moves – handed it to the crew and retreated to the gantry to command the camera run-through from there.
Now, the director’s half of the conversation that ensued was inaudible to me because it was conducted through headphones to the cameramen and sound crew. However, I was on the set, waiting in another portion of it for my scene, so I could hear what the crew were saying back to the director through their microphones, and it went something like this:
‘I won’t be able to.’
Pause.
‘No, it’s in the way.’
Pause.
‘But I won’t be able to.’
Pause.
‘You really want me to go in that close?’
Pause.
‘But what about the carpet?’
Pause.
‘All right, all right, whatever you want.’
Time for the camera run-through. The camera – a big old lump of metal in those days, on a substantial set of wheels which had to be wrestled around by hand – does indeed, despite the cameraman’s declared reservations, go in ‘that close’. But, as it does so, it catches on the edge of the carpet and forces it up ahead of itself. As a result, th
e actors on the set are suddenly confronted by this giant wave of carpet coming towards them – a kind of Wilton tsunami.
Cue a humbled director: ‘Er, OK, let’s try that without moving in.’
Camera crew 1, Director 0.
You had to hand it to the bloke for wanting to try something different. At the same time, he picked the wrong show. You didn’t think outside the box on Crossroads. You thought entirely within the box. The box was king. After four episodes, that director was gone – I thought forever. But, blessedly, he survived. I saw his name come up on many shows in the years after this and he became quite a successful producer. Good manners forbid me to name him.
My character was called Bernie Killroy. Did the scriptwriters get the surname from the famous Second World War-era shipbuilder who always left his moniker on the ships he worked on – ‘Killroy was here’? Perhaps they did. What’s certain is that the gradual creep of madness into the storylines (madness which would eventually give the world the one where Meg’s new husband attempted to murder her; the one where Meg ran over someone in the car park; and in perhaps the signature moment of desperation, the one where the motel was blown up) was even now beginning to stir. In fact, I like to think I was at the cutting edge of that eventually famous tendency in the show’s plotting. Bernie began life as a crooked boxing manager. The boxer I was managing was played by John Hamill, a fit, handsome man whose fame and general desirability had brought him an excess of female attention. (John once boasted to me that he had enjoyed some careful ministrations from a female accomplice while doing 100mph on the M1. Talk about going too fast.) And what do you know? Bernie Killroy turned out to be a complete and utter rogue, a thief, a cheat, a liar and, apart from that, a bit of a cad, not to mention completely unreliable. I might have seemed to have John’s best interests as a boxer at heart, but all the while I was hatching an outrageous plot to steal a whole fistful of money from the motel.
And what do you also know? Meg discovered my dastardly plot just in the knickers of time, saved the day and sent Bernie on his way with an instruction never to darken her motel sheets again. On your bike, Bernie. And on your bike, me. Without further ado, I trousered a handsome fee and waved goodbye to Crossroads forever, because all new actors and actresses were brought in on three-month contracts and your storyline was likely to last exactly that long and no more.
Except it didn’t. A couple of months later, in the autumn of 1966, Bernie was back, bringing me with him. At the end of an episode, by way of a cliffhanger, an unsuspecting Nolly, in the middle of organising a dinner party, had to enter from the kitchen, catch sight of someone, or something, and drop a tray of crockery in shock. Cue theme and end credits.
Cut to the next night’s episode. We see Nolly do the thing where she drops the tray of crockery in shock again. Cue me, standing at the head of the table: ‘Hello, Meg.’
Unutterably shocking for Meg, of course, and for fans of the show across the nation – but good news for me, because it meant another well-paid week or two. Oddly, though, Bernie was no longer the feckless, light-fingered reprobate who had almost brought Nolly’s business to its knees on his last appearance. Suddenly, he was a sunny, life-enhancing chappy, in whose mouth butter would remain unspreadable. Alas, I can’t exactly recall the storyline by which this personal transformation was explained. Over the precise details, time has drawn its kindly net curtains. It’s perfectly possible, though, that Bernie’s change of heart wasn’t explained at all. Characters were undergoing personality transplants in Crossroads all the time, as new scriptwriters came and went.
However, I do recall that, at the end of that stint, the producer took me aside and told me they wanted to make Bernie a fixture – a regular character.
‘How would you feel about joining the show full-time?’
That pulled me up pretty sharp. It was quite an offer. My contract with Bromley Rep had come to an end by this time. Working on Crossroads was obviously going to mean good money (£76 per week, to be specific), and steady money, at a time when I couldn’t guarantee myself either of those things. It would also mean relocating to the Midlands – but when you considered the professional certainty on offer, that could have been an upheaval worth enduring. I asked for some time to think about it, back at home in London. And then, after much thought over the next few days – carefully mulling over such key aspects as the money, the security, the money, the fame, the money, the opportunities to open supermarkets, possibly for even more money – I decided to take the risk.
‘No thanks,’ I said.
Now that was quite bold of me, if I may be allowed to say so. Regular television work was nice, obviously, and it’s always good to be wanted. To be offered a part on one of the nation’s most popular television shows only one year after making the decision to turn professional as an actor was quite a result, too. The thought process was maybe naive, but it went something like this: I wanted to be an actor, meaning I wanted to play different characters in different things. I think if you’d asked me in that period where I saw myself headed – and if I’d given you an honest answer – I’d have said the National Theatre. In my mind, that was the pinnacle. If you could rise there, you were clearly an actor of weight and substance. Lofty ambitions aside, though, what I loved about acting was the chance it gave you to adapt. The idea of playing one character, and one character alone, for the foreseeable future, maybe forever … well, as lucrative and comfortable as that would have been, it had the slight look of a trap to me. I bit my lip and moved on.
* * *
WHAT I MOVED on to wasn’t the National Theatre, as it happened. It was to an audition for a new musical. Now, this really was going to be a big departure for me, for the very good reason that I can’t sing. Never have been able to, never will be able to. And not being able to sing is, for fairly obvious reasons, likely to limit your opportunities, when it comes to musicals.
My agent thought I shouldn’t be discouraged, though. She said she knew a good singing teacher and she reckoned that, with one decent session with him, I probably ought to be able to knock up a passable version of ‘If I Were a Rich Man’ from Fiddler on the Roof – enough to pass muster at the audition, at any rate. And then we could take it from there.
Well, it was my duty to be up for absolutely anything at this crucial formative stage in my professional life, so I duly went off and had a lesson with the prescribed music teacher. It was a fairly rough session, all things considered, one in which I perhaps surprised the teacher with the full extent of my incompetence. Certainly, when I opened my mouth for the first time, I don’t recall his eyes lighting up in a way that suggested he’d found a new Pavarotti. We pretty quickly discovered that I had problems with pitch and timing – especially timing. Nor did I have a natural tone. And my phrasing wasn’t much cop, either. But apart from that, I was fine.
So, less than confident, I attended the audition on the appointed afternoon. They called me and I came on from the wings. There were four or five people on the auditioning panel, sitting in the stalls. I believe one of them was Ned Sherrin. ‘Do you have a piece of music for us?’ one of them said. I did indeed: I was carrying in my sweaty mitts the sheet music for ‘If I Were a Rich Man’. There was a pianist in the stalls. When he stood up, I could just see his head. I handed him my music, and then he sat down and disappeared. The next thing I heard was the sound of the piano starting up, and then continuing for a little bit, and then stopping.
Up came the pianist’s head.
‘Everything all right?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Can you hear me OK?’
‘Oh yes,’ I said. ‘I can hear you fine.’
‘OK,’ said the pianist. ‘It’s just that I played the intro and you didn’t come in.’
‘Didn’t I?’ I said.
‘No,’ he said. ‘But let’s try again.’
His head went back down and the piano started up once more. I waited for what I thought might be my moment. (Problems wit
h timing: the teacher wasn’t wrong about those.) And then the piano stopped again.
Up came the pianist’s head.
‘What happened?’
I said, ‘Did I miss it again?’
He said, ‘I’m afraid so.’
The pianist thought for a moment. I could sense some restlessness coming from the panel in the stalls.
‘I tell you what,’ the pianist said, ‘I’ll nod.’
‘OK,’ I said.
So, the pianist’s head disappears again, the music begins and then, after a few bars (I believe that’s the technical word), he jumps up from his seat so that his head appears briefly in my line of vision above the edge of the stage, nods and then drops down again. And, on that more than faintly comical cue, I was away.
I have no idea how that rendition of ‘If I Were a Rich Man’ went. I only know that eventually the piano came to a dramatic finish and that, shortly after that, so did I.
‘Thank you,’ was, I think, as much as they had to say about it in the stalls.
After that they made me do a bit of acting, which I was a lot more comfortable with. And then there was one last test.
‘We just want to see what your range is,’ somebody said.
I wasn’t expecting this. This wasn’t in the script.
