‘So maybe she knew something about what had gone on in that awful place. Or perhaps it was just because she’s mellowed. She has, you know. Did you hear that she’s been offered a Damehood in the next New Year’s Honours? Well, I happen to know she’s accepted. Perhaps she’s had a Road From moment too.’
‘Stranger things have happened,’ I said; rather wittily, I think.
Mmm-Delicious
HARRISON-HARGRAVE WAS NO DIFFERENT to any other advertising agency, except that it was bigger. I did not know that at the time, because it was my first job. I did not know that there was a snooker table in the main reception area, because there was a snooker table in the main reception area of all big advertising agencies, together with low tables topped with smoked glass loaded with glossy magazines, and deep, leather-bound sofas. I did not know that there would be long meetings, called ‘creative sessions’, in which nothing was decided except that ‘some interesting ideas’ had been ‘kicked around’. I did not know that it was, despite some appearances to the contrary, an intensely male environment, hence that intensely male phrase ‘kicked around’. I did not know that for the first year of my life there I would be known as ‘Lucy-make-the-tea’, since that, in the opinion of the men, was all I did.
This is not going to be a rant. Actually, I enjoyed it because I never allowed myself to be intimidated, and because I knew I was going to be good at this job. I was. I am. After all, I was the first person to spot Tony White. There are other claimants, I am sure, but no one else really understood, or knew, as much as I did about Tony. It is not all that much, I admit; nevertheless here, for the first and last time, as I’d rather not think about it, let alone discuss it ever again, is the inside story of Tony White. When I say ‘the inside story’ you must remember that I am in advertising, and am therefore proficient in a language which gives the illusion of accuracy, but is, in fact, wholly misleading.
In September ’85 we, at Harrison-Hargrave, held a casting session for a TV commercial. The product was a new ‘healthy’ breakfast cereal called Weetsheefs. The concept, as we say, was as follows. A man is sitting at a table in a kitchen. It is morning and he has a bowl of breakfast cereal before him. He puts a spoonful of Weetsheefs — little lumps of puffed wheat-shaped like tiny sheaves — in his mouth and is immediately transported, together with his table and bowl of cereal, to a sunlit English wheat field where birds sing. He looks around, smiles and says: ‘Mmm delicious!’ A voice-over says: ‘Eat Weetsheefs. They’re Mmm--delicious!’ That’s it. Yes, I know, it is strikingly unoriginal, though I can’t tell you how long the chaps took to hammer out that little scenario. It was not the kind of commercial that wins awards, but award-winning commercials are not always those which sell product.
Being the lowest of the low at Harrison-Hargrave, my job description varied from day to day. On this occasion I was appointed to be the P.A. (personal assistant) for the casting session. That is to say, I had a clipboard on which were the names of all the actors to be interviewed. As each one came in I would ask them to fill in a form (measurements, hair colour, that sort of thing), take a Polaroid of them, and give them a copy of the script to study. Then I would usher them in, one by one, to a little studio where sat, or slouched, a posse of important people: the director of the commercial, several Harrison-Hargrave executives and ‘creative consultants’, and a representative from Realfoods Ltd, the company that made Weetsheefs. The actor would sit down on a chair facing these people under a glare of lights. He would be videotaped answering questions about his name and agent; then he would be asked to perform the line from the script — ‘Mmm-delicious!’ — while he mimed the eating of the product.
My then boyfriend Doug, an actor, told me that the atmosphere at commercial casting sessions is quite different from any other type of audition. If you are waiting your turn to be seen for a stage show, or for a film or television part, there is always tension between actors under the bonhomie. Your talent is competing against theirs. When it’s a commercial everyone knows the whole affair is a lottery, and that you will be chosen not for your peculiar gifts as an actor but because your face happens to fit. You know that ninety-nine times out of a hundred you will miss; then comes that one time when, for some unknown reason, someone thinks you are just the type to recommend bath salts or insurance to the public. As a result, actors at commercial castings are always very genial with each other, greet casual acquaintances like old friends and, quite sincerely, wish them the very best of luck.
Such was the atmosphere at the Weetsheefs casting. There were a lot of jokes about how that one line ‘Mmm delicious!’ could be interpreted. ‘What’s my motivation?’ ‘About three or four grand, I should imagine!’ And so on. But there was one person at the casting session who did not take part in the fun. He sat alone, staring intently at the script and occasionally mouthing those two words: ‘Mmm-delicious!’ Either no one knew him, or he was being deliberately shunned. This was Tony White.
I asked if I could take a Polaroid of him, which I did. He stood up against a white patch of wall and stared directly into the camera, like a criminal posing for a mug shot. I have the Polaroid in front of me now, or I could not describe him to you. In spite of everything, I carry around no mental image of his face. Other things about him I do remember, but the face escapes me. I can see that his head is a very regular oval shape. He must be in his early to mid thirties. His gingery fair hair is cropped, and he is balding. The features are evenly spaced, rather small, the lips thin. There is an odd sort of smile on them. His blue eyes are looking straight at me, but I don’t know what he is seeing.
I think we saw about thirty or forty people at that casting. As a reward for my hard work that day I was allowed to sit in and form part of the ‘jury’ while we played back the videos of all those grown-up men pretending to eat breakfast cereal and saying: ‘Mmm-delicious!’
After watching the first dozen or so the futility of it all began to depress me. The inanity of their words and actions started to take on a cosmic dimension. I looked at the others, and they appeared equally gloomy. The actors were either trying too hard, or trying too hard not to appear to be trying too hard, or their faces didn’t fit, or there was something odd about their personality. Few if any seemed just natural. When it was over the director was all for holding another casting session, but that could take a week to set up and the representative from Realfoods Ltd did not want to waste any more time or money. The product was being launched in a month’s time.
We looked through them all again which made most of us even more gloomy. Eventually Selwyn one of our creative team at Harrison-Hargrave turned to me. I think he was hoping to relieve the tension by making fun of me. He was like that; he was the company character, a bit of a card, a gas, always one for a laugh: so they told me.
‘Well, Lucy babes, do you want to give us the benefit of your wisdom? Is there anyone there who tickles your fancy?’
That was when I mentioned Tony White.
‘Tony White. Can’t say I remember him at all, which is ominous,’ said Selwyn. ‘Nevertheless, spool back the tape and we’ll have a look at this lady’s favourite, shall we?’
We watched the video of Tony White.
‘Well, Lucy pussy,’ said Selwyn, ‘we have now seen your boyfriend, yet again, and I really don’t know what you see in him. It’s okay, I suppose, but he seems to be totally bland and forgettable. Perhaps you could explain to us mere males why your withers have been wrung by this amiable nonentity.’
As you can imagine, I was in a rage by this time, which is why I expressed myself with far more conviction than I felt. ‘But don’t you see,’ I said, ‘it is precisely because he is so bland that he is perfect for it. He is nobody and everybody. He’s a blank screen on which anyone can project themselves. Nobody is going to object to his personality, because he has none. Weetsheefs is the breakfast cereal for Everyman. You have just seen Everyman.’
People were impressed. I was impressed myself. ‘I’ll
buy it,’ said the Realfoods man, and that settled the issue.
From that moment on I was no longer ‘Lucy-make-the-tea’ but ‘Lucy-darling’ or ‘Lucy-babe’ which, I suppose, was an improvement. As a reward, or perhaps punishment, for my enterprise, Selwyn, gave me the task of hiring Tony White. This naturally involved ringing up and negotiating with Tony White’s agent, Dinah Shuckwell.
Dinah Shuckwell was the most hated agent in London — hated, that is, by our profession — but we all had to deal with her from time to time, because she had a high quality stable of clients. They were actors and actresses mostly, but there were some variety people and ‘personalities’, and they swore by her, as she, profanely, did by them. She had an uncanny knack of squeezing the maximum possible amount of money out of a production company. Some believed she had spies everywhere; certainly she knew almost to the last penny what her clients were worth to us. She did not mind being rude and aggressive; sometimes she seemed to go out of her way to cause offence. With loathing comes fear, and fear is a very useful negotiating tool.
Dinah operated from a huge, dark flat off the Brompton Road that smelt of gin, cats, and Gitanes cigarettes. I know because I had occasion to visit her there once, but I’ll come to that later. She was in her late fifties, and wore her dyed black hair in a bob over a face that might once have been described as ‘piquant’, but was now gaunt and mean. Her hands were ring-encrusted claws. She had retained her figure presumably because she drank and smoked but rarely ate, and always wore perfectly cut French designer clothes. The effect of this chic, however, was mitigated by the horror of her face, and the strange fact that she never wore stockings; nor any knickers, it was rumoured. (Who found that out, and how? I’d rather not think about it.)
During the day she had an assistant called Harriet, who answered the phone in a pale, high, frightened voice, but on this occasion when I rang up it was Dinah who answered. I took a deep breath and told myself that no harm could come to me: I was not even in the same room with her. Her answering voice was dark and smoky, like that of a superannuated cabaret singer. I told her that we wanted to engage Tony White for the new Weetsheefs commercial. I used none of the usual palaver; I did not say ‘We are interested in Tony White in possibly . . .’ or anything like that. I spoke firmly and courteously, and she responded well. Of course, she drove a hard bargain, but it was not as hard as I had feared, and it was briskly done. Only at the end did the inevitable note of unpleasantness creep into the conversation. Before ringing off, she said:
‘A word of warning, young miss. Don’t you or your lords and masters try to get your hooks into Tony. I manage Tony White. He’s mine. Comprenez?’
‘Je comprends.’
There was a throaty chuckle from the other end. ‘What a good little girl you are!’
When I put down the phone my hand was shaking with rage. Or fear? I can’t remember.
It was a relatively simple set up. There were two shoots separated by a week. The first was in a studio where we filmed the initial kitchen set shots. I had very little to do with this, as there was not much to organise, and I don’t think I even visited the studio. I only remember one comment made by the director when we watched the rushes.
A commercial will be seen on television any number of times by the same person, so that the slightest imperfection will eventually become evident. To make sure that the finished product contains nothing untoward the director will do at least twenty takes of the same shot. Every take will contain some tiny variation, and it is part of the director’s skill to select the one which is marginally the best. On this occasion the director was baffled. Apart from the odd technical hitch, like the proverbial ‘hair in the gate’ or some interference in the sound, there was absolutely nothing to choose between the takes.
‘Every take this Tony White did was a carbon copy of the previous one,’ said the Director. ‘Not better or worse. I tried to get him to vary his performance but he either wouldn’t or couldn’t.’
‘Perhaps we should get someone else after all,’ suggested Selwyn.
‘No. No,’ said the Director. ‘It’ll do. I think it’ll do very well. It’s just weird.’ I could see that his pride had somehow been hurt.
I had more to do with the following week’s shoot, the one in which the Weetsheefs eater is transported to a sunlit wheat field, because it involved an outdoor location and all its attendant complications. We were allowing two days because of the weather, so hotels had to be booked, catering and transport arranged. I was to go along as Harrison-Hargrave’s representative and general all-round fixer: ‘gofer’ was the commonly used word, but it is one I hate because it brings back bitter memories. Anyway, it was on this shoot that I first got to know Tony White. Again, let me stress, I use the term ‘know’ loosely.
Tony White, the crew, and miscellaneous others like myself had been picked up by car from our London flats at five in the morning and driven down to the location in Wiltshire. There would be a set up in the morning, and in the afternoon, when the sun was in the right place, assuming it put in an appearance, we would shoot.
I remember that when we arrived the weather was fairly promising. It was June and the sun was shining, but there was a wind and some high cloud. The catering van arrived slightly late, for which, of course, I was responsible. It parked in the gateway at the top of the field where we were shooting. There was a brief hiatus, and more grumbling at my incompetence, before, at about eleven or so, the van was ready to serve the first coffee and bacon sandwich of the morning. The freshness of the weather and the delay had given us all an appetite. I deliberately placed myself last in the queue for breakfast, so as not to be subjected to yet more criticism. It therefore came as a shock when I felt my bottom being touched.
There are very few circumstances under which I enjoy this kind of contact, and that morning’s was not one of them. I had been quite unaware of anyone being behind me. I started, turned, and found myself staring into the blandly smiling face of Tony White.
He said: ‘Mmm. Delicious.’ It was his idea of a joke, I suppose.
I had enough self-control not to be violent in either actions or words. Normally I would have been both, but I knew that my job depended on keeping everyone sweet, not least the ‘star’, Tony White. I asked him please not to do that, and he just continued to smile. I could not make out his expression. Was he amused by my annoyance? Did he take pleasure in it? Or was he merely indifferent? There was no way of knowing. For the rest of the day I avoided him.
In the afternoon there was sun and wind. Conditions were not ideal, but we managed a few shots of Tony sitting in his field which were not ruined by a cloud over the sun or the standing wheat moving too much in the breeze. When Tony was not being filmed he sat placidly in a ‘director’s’ deck chair with earphones on, listening to tapes on his Walkman. He was no trouble. I wondered idly what his taste in music was, so got near enough to catch a glimpse of the cassette boxes: Cliff Richard, all of them. Tony turned round and saw me staring at him. He smiled. I had begun to hate his meaningless smile.
At the hotel that evening I was with the crew in the bar before dinner. As usual Jake, the cameraman, dominated the conversation. Jake was huge and bearded, expert at his job, and was considered, not least by himself, to be a ‘character’. He had worked on a number of major films and liked to tell anecdotes featuring himself and ‘Sean’, ‘Michael’, ‘Bobby’, ‘Keanu’, and the like. We were expected to be knowledgeable enough to fill in the famous surnames, the Connerys and the Caines, for ourselves. He was in the middle of one of his stories when Tony White entered the bar, bought himself an orange juice, and walked out again, smiling at us very briefly in the process. These actions had stopped Jake’s flow completely. When Tony had left the bar Jake broke his silence with a string of four-letter words in a number of ugly combinations.
When he had finished, and was refreshing himself with his Guinness and whisky chaser, we asked what was the matter.
‘That b
astard gives me the creeps,’ he said
We asked why. One reason, apparently, was that Jake, who liked banter (especially with Sean, Keanu and the others), was unable to get anything out of him: not a laugh, not a rise, nothing. Another thing, though this was in Tony’s favour, was that he hadn’t put a foot wrong all day. Because of the wind and the clouds passing across the sun it had been a difficult afternoon, and the windows of opportunity during which a perfect shot of the sunlit field could be had were small. Nevertheless Tony was there on cue every time giving his bland, identical performance.
‘The man’s a fucking robot,’ Jake concluded. ‘No. He’s a zombie, that’s what he is. A fucking zombie.’
After dinner I was getting into the lift to go up to my room when I found that the only other occupant was Tony, smiling as usual. Having had my feelings about him confirmed by Jake in the bar, I was especially nervous in his presence. I had half a mind to leave the lift and use the stairs, but I loathed the idea of being intimidated.
‘Are you second floor as well?’ he said.
I nodded. He came close to me to press the button. The doors closed. As he took his hand from the button he allowed it to pass across my breasts. It was a light, insinuating touch.
‘I’d rather you didn’t,’ I said.
He merely nodded and moved closer. With his left hand he felt the contours of my body from the waist down to the thigh, at the base of which, just above the knee, his fingers closed round my flesh and began to squeeze tightly. Terror welled up inside me, temporarily paralysing all normal reaction, and before I could regain enough sense to push him away the lift stopped and the doors opened. Tony immediately loosened his grip, walked out of the lift, and went to his room without a backward glance.
MASQUES OF SATAN Page 14
