by Roger Moore
These same swipe cards have to be inserted into a little slot on the wall just inside the room, which then activates the lights, heating and all other electrical devices in green-conscious establishments. Great idea, yes? Well, not when you want to leave your laptop or phone to charge while you go down to dinner, and not when you intend to leave on the extra electric heaters they’ve just brought up to the room because it was so freezing cold when you arrived. After dinner, you return only to find a) your device hasn’t charged up, and b) the heaters weren’t on. Why? Because you removed the card from the slot and took it downstairs with you, which means all power is cut! Why did you do that? Because you needed to be able to get back into the room, of course!
The other thing I’ve found with hotels is that they don’t offer wake-up calls whereby someone at reception will actually pick up a phone, call your room and stay on the line until you pick up and say, ‘OK, OK! I’m up!’ No, they suggest you go into the TV menu and flick through various pages of welcome notes and adverts until you reach the alarm-setting option. Of course, this relies on the TV having been set up with the correct time in the first place. Many’s the time I’ve been awoken with a jolt at 5 a.m. when the TV switches itself on two hours ahead of schedule.
Excuse me as I unclench my jaw …
I find crosswords and puzzles are a great way of keeping the mind sharp and giving one a little light relief from the strains and tensions of the day. I had a lovely line in a film I made back in 1980 called North Sea Hijack. James Mason played Admiral Brinsden and was rather aghast at ffolkes’ (that was me, with two small fs) rather unorthodox approach to things, and he also seemed to dislike my character being a bit of a know-it-all.
‘I suppose you’re one of those fellows who does The Times crossword puzzle in ten minutes?’ says Brinsden.
‘I have never taken TEN minutes,’ replies ffolkes.
I do have my favourite crosswords to tackle, though I never time myself – that would be simply too gauche.
Keeping the mind sharp is indeed all-important as you get older, and reading is another big love of my life. Having waded my way through many scripts in my career – the rejected pile being bigger than the accepted ones – I’ve always had something on the bedside table to study, and that’s why I always have to have a book on the go.
WHAT IF …?
Escape to Victory (1981)
In 1981 I was approached by director Brian Hutton (Where Eagles Dare) about starring in this film. The thing is, I can’t run, and to be on a field of professional football players and look convincing was something I had terrible apprehensions about. I told myself: ‘I’m an actor, I can do anything.’ But thinking for another minute or two, I then told myself, ‘Actually, no, Rog. Steady on!’
I very nearly believed myself for a moment. Perish that thought.
In the event, John Huston went on to direct Michael Caine and Sylvester Stallone in the lead cast. Just think, I could have gone on to be Rocky!
Being a gadget nut, I ordered a Kindle as soon as they came out. The idea of being able to store hundreds – even thousands – of books on one device that I could take with me all over the world was very appealing. But you know what? I never really got on with it. I much prefer to hold a book in my hand. There’s just something about turning the pages – also, we authors earn more from printed copies!
My preference is for thrillers, and I particularly like the Nordic writer Jo Nesbø and the Harry Hole thrillers. James Clavell was another great favourite. Incidentally, I worked with his daughter, the actress Michaela Clavell, when she played Miss Moneypenny’s assistant Penelope Smallbone in Octopussy – I like to toss these little nuggets to you now and then.
Breaking bread with Breaking Bad star Bryan Cranston.
I also enjoy autobiographies and biographies, probably because I’m nosey. Do I flick to the index to see if I’m mentioned? Never. Well, hardly ever. One of the best I read recently was Bryan Cranston’s memoir A Life in Parts; I met him backstage at a TV show in London, when we were in adjacent dressing rooms. A year or two before, Michael Caine had given me a box set of Breaking Bad for Christmas and I absolutely loved it, so I was delighted to be able to tell Bryan. He was genuinely surprised and pleased – and very chatty. I liked him, so I thought I’d buy his book – hilarious. Maybe he’ll return the favour?
With advancing age you’ll find it’s also useful to rest your brain during the day; that is to say take a little nap – sometime after lunch and before dinner seems optimal. Admittedly it’s not always voluntary and I find it often coincides with me putting on a DVD and sitting down with an ice cream. I remember the first thirty minutes of the film vividly, but the middle is just a blank.
Which simply means that DVDs last all the longer in our house.
I couldn’t play as well as my dad, but boy did I look cool!
THINGS THAT ANNOY ME
I’ve written about things that have impressed me over my lifetime, and the great advances we’ve made in science and technology, but I do honestly worry that overall standards have dropped in society. Good manners, I was always told, cost nothing, yet they seem to be slipping in modern life. If you asked a young man these days why he should walk on the outside when with a lady, would he know? If you told someone it is polite to hold a door open, would they agree? Do people actually say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ to others? Do men ever stand up when a lady enters the room?
There seems to be a more casual attitude nowadays, which in its place is fine, but why don’t prime ministers and senior politicians wear ties and suits like they used to? Why do people think it’s acceptable to turn up at the theatre with their backsides hanging out of their torn jeans? I remember dressing up to go to the local cinema, or at least making an effort to look smart. And take a look at the photograph here – a suit and tie to bang out a few chords on the guitar? You bet!
The 1960s certainly brought about more relaxed and laid-back attitudes, but directors on film sets would still wear suits and ties. People in authority and public office set an example. Now you’ll likely see more of them in T-shirts and shorts than you will in a shirt and tie. The one exception seems to be male TV newsreaders and weather presenters. They’re almost always immaculately turned out with suits and smart ties and I think it sets a very professional tone and standard.
In my younger days, men always wore hats too and if you were ever on a bus passing the Cenotaph in Whitehall, they all made a point of raising their hats, as they would when passing hearses. It was an expression of good manners and eternal thanks. I stirred things up in 2016 when the new series of TV’s Top Gear filmed fast cars doing stunts around the Cenotaph. I thought it was disgraceful and showed a total lack of respect, and said as much. Of course, the usual social media trolls called me all sorts of names and said I was an outdated old fart (or words to that effect), which only saddened me more.
But maybe I’m old-fashioned now?
Eating in theatres, cinemas, art galleries and on public transport is commonplace. I’m not just talking about a sandwich or an ice cream either, I’m talking about smelly, noisy meals and takeaway coffees and soups. Certain members of the audience sitting in the front row think nothing of putting their drinks and their feet on the edge of the stage as though it’s the table in their lounge.
People seem to treat the theatre as though they are at home watching the television. As so many people don’t eat at a dining table any more, in favour of eating and drinking in front of the box while simultaneously chatting, texting, tweeting, checking emails and shopping online, they think it’s OK to do similar when watching a play or film. I suppose it’s ‘the age of entitlement’?
WHAT IF …?
Dallas
In 1986, Dallas was at its popular height and the producers made overtones to my agent about me appearing in eight episodes as ‘a British tycoon who has a showdown with JR.’ It sounded intriguing and as it was one of the highest rated TV shows at the time, I was intere
sted to know more. I never saw a script though, and as I still hadn’t officially resigned from the role of 007, maybe they were worried another Bond film was in the offing? Anyhow, nothing came of it and JR went on to have other sparring partners throughout the rest of its run.
And why, please tell, do people in towns and cities walk around while devouring pies, pasties and sandwiches in one hand with takeaway drinks in the other, as they rush along? Are they too hungry to wait to get back to their desks, or too busy to stop, sit down and enjoy a few minutes on a bench?
Something else that never fails to raise my hackles is when you watch a great television show and the end credits are squeezed. When actors or technicians work on a TV show, they are always credited at the end. In fact a lot of them pick up their next job because they were spotted in a particularly good role or on a great show by a casting director or a producer. But a few years ago, the credits started being squeezed into a corner of the screen (making them totally unreadable) to allow a trailer for ‘what’s coming next’ or ‘coming next week’ to play out in the remainder of the screen, often with an annoying voiceover.
Research by the actors’ union Equity found that, of the 10,000 respondents, the vast majority detested credits being diminished in this way. They complained that the practice ruins their viewing experience and prompts them to switch channels. So it hardly does the desired trick of keeping viewers for the following programme.
The BBC promised to curb its credit-squeezing habits, but it will not be stopping it altogether and instead vowed to make sure the credits run in full for at least one episode of a drama or comedy. Besides which, they helpfully pointed out, viewers could always go online to look them up if they were that bothered.
Huh!
Language is another bugbear of mine and I don’t mean swearing – I admit, the odd cuss word such as ‘drat’ or ‘damn’ has passed my lips over the years. I mean this dreadful slang and text language that has crept in to everyday life, such as ‘Sup?’ as a form of greeting, ‘Laters’ as a form of goodbye, ‘YOLO’ (You Only Live Once), ‘AMA’ (ask me anything) and so on and on.
Yes, we still have cockney rhyming slang that originated in the East End of London – ‘apples and pears’, ‘trouble and strife’, ‘plates of meat’ – which some say came out of a sense of community, or perhaps market traders talking among themselves in such a way that customers would not know what they were talking about. Or was it developed by criminals to confuse the police? Whatever its origin, it was used by a relative minority. Nowadays, however, it’s commonplace to hear slang everywhere and it’s really quite bemusing. For example, not so long ago, when someone said they were ‘sick’, you would know they’d be in bed with a pimpled glass bottle of Lucozade in an orange crinkly cellophane wrapper. Now we’re supposed to know that ‘sick’ means ‘great’ as in, ‘That’s well sick, mate.’
I was a little taken aback when someone described me as ‘FAF’ last year. I’d always thought things that were a ‘faff’ were a bit of a pain. Oh no, this ‘FAF’, I discovered, was a supposed compliment, though I’ll leave you to look it up!
The English language seems to have become very informal and lazy, and I find it rather sad. To overhear youngsters talk nowadays is quite baffling, and I wonder, when they go for a job interview, if ‘All right there, mate?’ is going to be a suitable enough greeting, and if ‘Yeah, whatever, bruvva’, would be a means of agreeing to accept the job?
In their own shorthand, it is ‘so not amaze’, ‘so not incred’ … but it is ‘so ridic’.
WHAT IF …?
Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992)
I was invited to meet with child actor Macaulay Culkin in Chicago to discuss the sequel to his star-making vehicle. He had the final say over casting – aged twelve! – but I believe script and character changes followed, so it wasn’t to be.
Who knows? I could have had a new career as a screen baddie in a string of children’s films.
In wanting to blend in, and be up with the kids (or is it down?), I thought it appropriate to reveal the old folks’ text shorthand:
ATD – At the doctors
BTW – Bring the wheelchair
BYOT – Bring your own teeth
FWIW – Forgot where I was
IMHO – Is my hearing aid on?
GGPBL – Gotta go, pacemaker battery low
ROFLACGU – Rolling on floor laughing and can’t get up
TTYL – Talk to you louder
Anyhow, whatevs, LOL.
I communicate a lot by email and text and I also tweet away on Twitter – I really am up/down with the kids. However, Kristina sometimes gets a little frustrated when I’m in my study on my computer for long periods, as she thinks it’s a bit unsociable. I understand what she means, as there’s nothing worse than trying to have a conversation with someone who is preoccupied tapping away on a keyboard or tablet.
It could, on occasion, be termed ‘unsocial media’ and it’s something we need to be wary of. When children stop interacting with conversations and turn to their phones and tablets to text instead; when families don’t sit down for a meal together any longer and chat – even if it’s only about the latest games they bought; when people are unable to put their phones away for a couple of hours in a cinema ... I fear for future generations who don’t have the chance to develop conversational skills.
And apart from conversational skills, I read an interesting article the other day that proposed that handwriting skills were deteriorating as more people use digital media to communicate – texting and typing being increasingly used over penmanship. What will happen to the dear old handwritten letter? Again, sorry to sound like an old fart, but I love receiving letters from family and fans. That someone has sat down and thoughtfully composed a few lines just for me, well, it gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling. It’s important that we don’t lose ourselves in the technology we’ve created.
I know my grandchildren laugh when I talk about the days before mobile phones. To think most households had just one wired-in phone in their hallway, and how calls were much cheaper in the evenings and to local numbers. Others without a phone at home relied on the local phone box, where you’d often have to queue to use it. You had to book a transatlantic call and wait an hour or more for it to be connected – at huge expense, and with a fairly poor line. Back when the world was in black and white and standard definition, we survived OK.
There were even times on film sets when I remember we used to drop a white handkerchief to signal to the crew or artists in the distance that cameras were rolling – imagine that!
Of course now every phone has a camera and I remember Prince Charles bemoaning the fact that every arm seems to have a camera at the end of it nowadays; but do people actually print their photographs? I have albums and boxes full of snaps at home, but must admit since I started snapping on my phone (I’m just as guilty!) I hardly ever have prints made. What do you do when you change your phone though? I know the cloud is up there, but long gone are the days when you’d send a film off to be processed and await the return of the envelope – often with other people’s photos mixed in. In the days of Facebook and Instagram I suppose they’re there, floating around in the ether, but I still like the feel of holding prints in my hand.
Talking of old farts (me, you understand, not Prince Charles) some kind soul sent me this recently. Now, I’m pretty sure it has nothing to do with Harvard School of Psychiatry, and I have no idea who devised it, but see what you think.
Harvard University
Mental Age Assessment
The following was developed as a mental age assessment by the School of Psychiatry at Harvard University. Take your time and see if you can read each line aloud without a mistake.
The average person over sixty years of age cannot do it!
1. This is this cat.
2. This is is cat.
3. This is how cat.
4. This is to cat.
5. This is keep cat
6. This is an cat.
7. This is old cat.
8. This is fart cat.
9. This is busy cat.
10. This is for cat.
11. This is forty cat.
12. This is seconds cat.
Now go back and read the third word in each line from the top down.
It did make me laugh but, really, the world wide web, what is it coming to?
Having grown up in the war years, I was always wary of wasting or throwing anything away. Socks and pullovers were darned when they first went into holes, boots were mended and coats were patched up. It wasn’t only a money issue that made us so frugal; we were also abiding by the watchwords of ‘Make Do and Mend’, as in the pamphlet issued by the British Ministry of Information, which was intended to provide families with useful tips on how to be both frugal and stylish in times of harsh rationing.
Readers were advised to create pretty ‘decorative patches’ to cover holes in worn garments; unpick old jumpers to reknit alternatives; turn men’s clothes into women’s; as well as how to protect against the ‘moth menace’.
Make do and mend.
My father was a dab hand at DIY and could pretty much fix anything from a wonky shelf to a radio to a cup handle that had broken. My mother could sew and repair garments brilliantly. There was no disposable plastic packaging; milk came in bottles, which were washed and reused, and loose foods were parcelled up in paper bags and boxes. My mother had a string shopping bag that she always took out with her, as there were no carrier bags on offer.
But after the war things changed. People were understandably fed up with ‘making do’ and being penny-wise; they wanted to splash out on new clothes and luxury goods such as refrigerators, televisions and the like – albeit it on HP or rental. Only ten years later, in August 1955, Life magazine ran a story called ‘Throwaway Living’, which warned of the changing approach society was taking to everyday goods. In more recent times we’ve been accustomed to recycling and the importance of cutting down on plastic shopping bags, which are a total menace to landfill sites, but we have also, conversely, become a throwaway society. I’m not saying we should start darning socks again, but how many times have you heard the phrase, ‘Throw it away, it’s cheaper to buy a new one’?
