by David Jason
The following morning, Johnny’s drinking companion made the mistake of laughingly telling me about this. I got hold of David Reynolds. David jokingly said, ‘We ought to do something. He’s bringing the reputation of the team down.’ I said, ‘I know: let’s create a letter from the manager of the hotel.’ So gophers were employed to find some headed notepaper and the pair of us constructed a letter, ostensibly from the hotel manager to David, stating that it had come to the manager’s attention that certain activities were going on in certain rooms that were bringing the hotel into disrepute and offending other guests and that, as a consequence, the manager felt he had no option but to take further action and involve the police. David then summoned Johnny to his office and, in a quiet meeting between the two of them, presented him with the letter and expressed, with much slow and solemn head-shaking, his disappointment in him. Johnny, as expected, went white with mortification.
His mortification lasted for several hours. In the hope of extending it a little longer, I went and banged on Johnny’s caravan door during the afternoon, while David hid to one side. When Johnny came to the door, I said, ‘What’s this I hear about David getting a letter from the hotel manager?’ Unfortunately, Johnny heard David suppressing his laughter, which led him to smell a rat. ‘You rotten sods,’ said Johnny. ‘Well, that’s it. You’ll never get me again.’
David and I laughed and said, ‘Oh, you reckon, do you? Want to put money on it?’
Johnny very misguidedly said, ‘Yeah, I will. Fifty quid.’
Game on.
David and I waited for shooting to start on the next episode and, in tandem with the director Roger Bamford, devised a new and still more fiendish trap. This one involved Roger issuing Johnny, mid-morning, with a whole new page of dialogue to learn, telling him it was a last-minute script alteration, and instructing him to get it off by heart for shooting at the end of the day. This dialogue, written by David, was actually just a lengthy and deliberately convoluted recap of the episode’s plot, at the end of which I, as Frost, had the one line: ‘Good thinking, George.’
Johnny’s face was again white – this time with terror at the task lying ahead of him. A naturally conscientious man, Johnny was always worried when he had a lot of dialogue because he liked to work at it and take his time to learn it. Accordingly, in every moment of downtime during the day’s shoot, Johnny was to be found staring at the page of rogue script and cramming like mad to get the lines learned. I generously took the time to do a couple of read-throughs with him by way of rehearsal, but he really wasn’t happy about it. All through lunch he was muttering to himself and telling anyone who would listen, ‘I’m never going to get this learned, you know.’
That day we were on a reservoir near Leeds, doing a story about the recovery of a body from the water. At the end of the day, Roger announced, ‘Right. We’re going to do that extra scene.’ The cameras were set; the lights were readied. Roger called ‘Action’ and John staggered through his massive paragraph of nonsense. Just before we reached my line, though, Roger called, ‘Cut! We’ll have to go again, John. You’re not really in command of it.’
So Johnny went for a second take. Again he staggered, and again Roger called ‘Cut!’ before the end. ‘No, we’ll have to go again, John,’ he said. Johnny went for a third take, and this time he made it through and this time we did reach my line. Whereupon I said, ‘Good thinking, George. And that’s fifty quid you owe me and David Reynolds.’
After much stamping about and many Anglo-Saxon words, Johnny had to admit that he’d been caught again. Yet, amazingly, came the same misguided response: ‘You’ll never get me again.’
Oh, but we did. And again and again, the ruses growing ever more elaborate and involving more and more members of the cast and crew, until the glorious day when Johnny found that, unbeknown to himself, he had been filming in front of a picture of his own face, blown up by the art department to fit like an advert on the back of a bus that had travelled the entire length of Leeds.
But you couldn’t be winding up Johnny Lyons all the time, so Frost was also the show on which I started doing rocket launches – to great acclaim, I must say. Well, sometimes.
The problem with film shoots, I started to realise, as the years advanced, was that there were bound to be some portions of empty time – time when all you could do was sit around and wait. And if left hanging about in my caravan too long, especially in the notorious period directly after lunch, I would sometimes have to fight the urge to nod off. I needed something to keep myself going in those downtimes.
So, along with my dresser, Ned Smailes, who shared my enthusiasm for these kinds of things, I began turning my caravan into a workshop, making models from plastic kits. Sometimes I might work on a model in the evening too, for relaxation purposes. Well, as a man who passed from his fifties deep into his sixties during the course of this show (and also as a member of Her Majesty’s constabulary), I wasn’t likely to be knocking my pipe out until four in the morning, was I? I figured it was better to put my head in a paint pot for a couple of hours and wind down that way.
First of all, Ned and I did ships and planes. Then the planes and ships developed into rockets. And the rockets developed into launchable rockets – nice big ones, anything between two and five feet tall, with an engine and an explosive component, which could fly between 500 and 900 feet into the air – because I realised that you could get a bit of a performance with those. I would assemble a rocket using the tools that I now took around with me for the purpose, packed in an old make-up case. Loz, the driver, who was a former engineer, was invaluable in acquiring various specialist parts from obscure sources across Yorkshire. Then, once the rocket was complete, I would announce a public launch for cast and crew on a specific day after lunch.
The best venue was the big field at the back of Leeds Hospital where, for two or three years, we were allowed to film in the mortuary. Everybody would turn out and we’d have a countdown, followed by lift-off. As the launches became more sophisticated, we built a launch pad from an old lighting stand, and added our own launcher, with a key, lights and its own two-tone alarm sound effect. You’ve never seen anything so camp in all your life.
Ned’s and my ultimate masterpiece was a Saturn V replica with one of the biggest engines you could get. Quite a complex build. When you launched it, it would, rather like the real thing, hover just as it lifted from the pad, and then set off into the sky – very pleasing. We used to launch that a lot. (These rockets come back, by the way. Well, they do if you’re lucky. When the rocket reaches its apogee, if I may be permitted a technical term – and if you don’t know it, look it up – there’s a small additional explosion which blows the nose cone off and produces a parachute to bring everything back to earth again. Happy days.) Eventually, with constant use, our Saturn V started to char. And then, on one unfortunate day, it failed to rise off the launch pad at all, but just sat there, burning, which charred its rear end fairly terminally. So we retired it – but only very reluctantly.
And somewhere in between this mucking about, a television show got made – and a massively successful, long-running and deeply popular television show. The hunch had well and truly paid off. A lot of people seemed to be quite startled by the first episode. We made it purposefully dark, opening with the death of Frost’s wife. I wanted to hit it head on, coming off the back of Only Fools and Darling Buds, because I wanted to mark the division and convince people that, despite what they might be expecting from me, I could do this too. In subsequent episodes, with the character established, it was possible to lighten him slightly. Early on, for a scene where I walked into the station, I asked if the staff sergeant could have a cup of tea beside him on the desk. Then, during some dialogue about something completely unrelated, and completely unremarked, Frost could drink the guy’s tea. It was just a little bit of nonsense, but drinking other people’s teas and coffees became something of a habit for Frost – a little humanising moment which chased through the serie
s to make him more than just an efficient cop.
And how life came round full circle. David and I used to go away to a hotel periodically and have seminars to go through scripts and think about future plot developments and story ideas. It was at one of these that a suggestion came up for a character called PC Ernie Trigg, a retired beat copper who has become a police archivist. I said, ‘I know someone who would be exactly right for that part.’ David said, ‘Who?’ I said, ‘My brother, Arthur.’ Arthur was asked to come in and he got the role, and the role developed into a running character – twenty-seven episodes from 1994 onwards. It was great to have him around, though, oddly enough, he declined my offer of the spare room in my spartan farm cottage in favour of the comforts of the cast hotel. From mucking about in the sitting room with a mock ventriloquist act to standing together on the set of one of the country’s favourite drama serials: we had come on a bit of a journey. Without Arthur’s help at the beginning, my journey wouldn’t even have begun. It was nice to reach this point on the road and find him alongside me.
In September 2008, a press release went out to announce Jack Frost’s retirement. It was nothing to do with running out of storylines, and certainly nothing to do with falling out of love with the character. On the contrary, I would have happily played him forever. The problem was simply age: I was now sixty-eight, which meant Frost was already the oldest copper on the force. Strictly speaking, in police terms, he probably would have been obliged to retire ten years earlier, or even before that. And, yes, you can fight age hard, but unfortunately age hasn’t lost a battle yet.
David and I had other irons in the fire at this point. In particular we had a programme we really wanted to do called The Usher – set in the world of the courtroom, where the usher is the only person able to move fluidly between everyone, on all sides, including the judge, and who might therefore imaginably assume a position of power within the politics of the court. We really wanted to do it. We had wondered whether this might be a job for Frost, post-retirement, or maybe it would have required us to develop a new character. Either way, we were keen. However, within the two or three months in which we were trying to prepare for The Usher, the old guard at Yorkshire Television left and the new guard came in and the wheels were set in motion for the closure of the place in a big amalgamation plan at ITV. The Usher didn’t get commissioned.
No retirement job for Frost, then. Still, he bowed out pretty spectacularly. In the final episode, Jack married RSPCA inspector Christine Moorhead, played by Phyllis Logan, though not before poor old George Toolan had copped it in a car crash on the way to the church, the innocent victim of a jealous ram raid by the bride’s alcoholic ex-fiancé. Again: what would Pop Larkin have thought?
* * *
ONE DAY I received a very strange letter. It said:
Dear Mr Jason,
I noticed your performance as Toad in Wind in the Willows, and I noticed that there was a house on the market at present which reminded me of Toad Hall, and I think you ought to consider it, you being such an expert as Toad.
Most odd. Nobody has ever written to offer me a flat in Peckham, on the grounds of my expertise as Del Boy, nor indeed a corner shop in Doncaster, on the grounds of my expertise as Granville. But here I was, being fitted up for Toad Hall. The address the letter writer gave was about three miles away from where Myfanwy and I were living. I knew the road and the area well, and my first thought was that this place didn’t actually exist. I had no knowledge of the lane that was mentioned. Nevertheless, it made me curious. One day, Myfanwy and I were driving by and we thought we would try and find this so-called Toad Hall. We failed, though. So clearly the letter was the work of a nutter.
Yet for some reason, it stayed in my mind. I couldn’t shake the idea that somewhere plausibly masquerading as Toad Hall was three miles away from my house. So I tried again. This time I took the letter with me, and followed its instructions very carefully – and lo and behold, there was the lane that the letter mentioned, and there in the lane was this house. The gates were open, so I was able to see the property, down the drive. I have to confess, my first thought was, ‘It doesn’t look much like Toad Hall to me.’ Nevertheless, I decided to look more closely and I parked and got out of the car and went in through the open gates.
Off to one side, with his back to me, there was a person on the lawn, wearing some kind of red coat, which reminded me of the menacing mad midget in the movie Don’t Look Now. I was spooked and quickened my steps up the drive. I knocked at the front door, but there was no answer. So I walked back down the drive and plucked up the courage to address the back of the red-coated figure, who now turned round and promptly revealed himself to be not a mad midget but the gardener. He said Mr Payne, who was selling the house, wasn’t in but he offered to show me round the garden. It was wonderful and seemed to go on forever, and even had a lake, fed by its own spring. I thought to myself, ‘Well, it may not be Toad Hall, but I could imagine myself living here.’
I went back the next day. A friendly and very gentlemanly figure opened the door, introducing himself as Mac Payne. I told him about the strange letter, which he too found curious. He showed me the house, but, as he did so, he explained it was under offer to someone in London who had three more months to conclude the deal before their offer expired. Mac said, ‘If they can’t complete, it goes back on the market.’ I said I wanted to put my name down as first refusal and I asked if Myfanwy could come and see the house. Mac said, ‘Absolutely.’ So Myfanwy came round and she too fell in love with the place.
It was on that second visit that Mac said to me, ‘Do you mind if I ask what you do for a living?’
I said, ‘I’m an actor.’
Mac roared with laughter. ‘You’re an actor and you want to buy this house? Actors don’t have a pot to piss in!’
I said, ‘Well, some of us do.’
So, we now faced a three-month period of hope and anxiety, waiting for the other offer to expire. Except that anxiety about the house came to be completely outweighed by other anxieties. Because in that period came the most terrible blow. Myfanwy was diagnosed with breast cancer.
She felt a lump. I said, ‘We’d best go to the doctor’s about that.’ The doctor sent her to the local clinic for a scan and the diagnosis came back that it was cancer. You can imagine: tears. It was terrible. Then she met a specialist who said she should have an operation to remove her breast because radiotherapy wasn’t going to shrink the cancer on its own. That was so hard for her to take. Neither of us had known anything like this in our lives before. It was a whole new reality to get used to. It was a very stressful time, a terrible, difficult emotional time.
It was while Myfanwy was recovering from the operation that Mac sent me a note. ‘Dear David, the chap in London has fallen out of the running. If you’re still interested and can raise the finances, the house is back on the market.’ I went straight there. Just driving up to the house again made me realise how much I wanted it. But now there was the dimension of Myfanwy being ill. I didn’t mention that to Mac. I simply told him that I thought I still wanted to buy the house, but I asked him if I could have a week to think it through.
That weekend, Myfanwy and I went down to the cottage in Wales, with Peg the dog. On the journey, and all across the weekend, we discussed the house. Should we? Everything seemed to be up in the air again. I was thinking to myself, ‘What would make her happy? Would getting this big house actually be stressful for her?’
On Sunday morning, I took her breakfast in bed, and told her I was going to take the dog for a walk. Behind the cottage flowed the River Taff, and behind the river was a grassy mountain. I walked down the lane to the end of the village and down another lane, across the River Taff, and followed the path up the mountain, really striding out until I got right to the top of the mountain, with its wonderful view. I sat up there, thinking, ‘What should I do? What should I do for the best?’ I went backwards and forwards and sideways with everything until eventually I ha
d it settled in my mind. If I bought the house, she would get better and all would be well.
Peg and I came down the mountain and walked into the house. Myfanwy was still in bed, because she was very debilitated, even at this stage. I made coffee and sat on the bed and said, ‘I think we should go for it.’ She looked so happy.
I went back to Mac. His place was pretty much twice the value of the house I already owned in Wendover. So – because they don’t call me Derek Trotter for nothing – I made him an offer, slightly lower than the asking price. Mac suggested we toss for the difference. I said, ‘All right then. You’re on.’ He called heads. And heads it was. He laughed like a drain. I said, ‘All right, I’ll pay you the full price.’ So much for my standing as a wheeler-dealer.
Soon after this, Mac rang me and asked if I would mind dropping in again. He showed me a letter he had received. It was from the previous bidder for the house, the person whose offer had fallen through. It said that he understood Mac was selling the house to me and then went on to warn him that he doubted I would be able to buy the house as my partner had cancer. He then went on to make an increased offer.
It was like being hit with a cricket bat. First of all, how did this person know about Myfanwy being ill? Secondly, how, knowing that, could anyone use the information in that way?
I said, ‘It’s true, Mac. She has cancer.’
He said, ‘Can you tell me whether you can pay for the house?’
I told him that I could.
‘Then it’s done and dusted,’ he said, and tore up the letter.
Mac moved into the cottage at the foot of the garden which he refurbished and, over the ensuing years until his death, he and I became firm friends, often spending an evening sitting outside on his terrace with a drink.
