by Rupert Smith
‘When I was a kid, I always dreamed that you might be my daddy,’ Noel continued. ‘I used to think about you when I went to sleep at night and when I woke up in the morning. And you know what?’
I wanted to stop him, but I couldn’t. ‘What?’
He put a hand on mine, caressed my fingers. ‘I still do.’ I took a gulp of wine. Time to cool things down a little.
‘I was very fond of your poor mother, Noel.’ If there was one thing calculated to dampen his ardour, I thought, it would be a reminder of Janice. But it didn’t work.
‘I found her, you know. When she killed herself.’
I gulped again. He was still stroking my hand, interlacing our fingers.
‘Yes, I did hear that.’
‘I went to boarding school after that, of course. I always had your picture with me. I used to get bullied about it by the other boys, until I was big enough to take care of myself.’ A few muscles rippled underneath the T shirt. ‘I’ve always had a picture of you by my bed ever since then, Marc. I even stole copies of your magazines from the local newsagent. I’ve still got them all.’
I knew which magazines he was referring to; he must have been about sixteen when they appeared.
‘You look even better now than you did then.’
It was too much. I was only flesh and blood. Despite all the therapy I’d done, I couldn’t fight against this kind of temptation. When Noel suggested that we skip coffee and desserts and go back to his flat, I agreed.
For the next couple of weeks, I was walking with a spring in my step. The weather was beautiful, Britain had made a fresh start – and so had I. My first appearance on Secrets was such a success that they’d booked me for four more shows, and the fan letters started coming in all over again. I felt reborn – and I was in love. Yes, I had fallen head over heels in love with Noel Jones, a man many years younger than me (although seeing us together you’d have thought we were the same age – my lucky looks again!). With Noel, things were so easy and pleasant. We just wanted to be together, to have fun. We went out to restaurants, to night clubs, for walks on the Heath, for long, giggly shopping trips round the West End. After all my hardships, this was a holiday.
Of course, there was trouble at home. Anna and the rest of the household were immediately suspicious when I didn’t come back that first night and subjected me to a full-scale interrogation. I just said I’d been in rehearsal – how could they know any different? But something gave me away ‘I sense a disruption in the energy flow,’ said one of the more intense women in the group, ‘as if someone is holding back from complete openness.’
‘Come on Marc,’ added Anna, ‘you know how we all believe in complete openness.’ There was to be no privacy, that I could see! But I fought them off for as long as I could, pleaded exhaustion and retired to my cell.
Finally, though, they trapped me. It’s easy to see when someone’s in love, and my happiness must have been blinding to this community of embittered celibates. They were desperate to discover my ‘secret’ (it was just like the game show in my own home), and tried every possible method to worm it out of me – everything, that is, except a direct, friendly question. If one of them had taken me aside and said, ‘I’m so happy for you, Marc, you seem to be walking on air, you must be in love, why don’t you tell me about it?’ I would have launched into a twenty-minute rhapsody about my new friend.
At a house meeting after my second night out with Noel, a motion was introduced regarding domestic security – in response, they said, to a recent spate of sexual attacks in the area, rendering them ‘vulnerable to male violence at any time’. The ‘action point’ arising from this (after a general motion had been passed censuring men in general as potential rapists) was little short of a curfew: all house members would meet in the lounge at 11.00 p.m. before the doors and windows were locked for the night. ‘Does anyone have a problem with that?’ asked Anna. All eyes were suddenly glued to me.
‘Yes, I do.’ I decided it was time to speak up. ‘It’s an infringement of personal liberty, and it severely curtails my ability to earn a living which, as we all know, is particularly vital to the economic stability of this household. Especially,’ I continued, with a beneficent smile at a couple of defaulting householders, ‘as some of us are struggling to keep up with our existing financial commitments’.
The motion was dropped, but the campaign wasn’t over. Various other foolish attempts were made to curb my freedom: a series of voluntary ‘retreats’, of which I was to be the first lucky beneficiary; a motion to introduce heavy housework penalties on ‘offenders’ (but none of them had the guts to specify the crime). Finally Anna collared me in my room, walking in without knocking.
‘We have no secrets from each other, do we, Marc?’
‘No, of course not.’
‘So what’s going on, babe? Who is he?’
‘Is that really any of your business?’
‘Well yes, I think it is. After all, you’re living in my house. And yes, it is my house, whatever you may think to the contrary. And it just so happens that I don’t like living in an atmosphere of concealment. So if you’ve got something to tell me, tell me now. Or get out. Go and live with your new friend, whoever he is. Betray the community that took you in and healed you. That’s fine; it’s what we’d all expect from a man, after all. They were right, I should never have let a man come and live here, even a man like you. You’re all the same. Bastards.’
It was a formidable argument. Love is selfish sometimes; I didn’t realize that my caring sisters had felt so betrayed by my new relationship.
‘All right, Anna.’ I decided to brazen it out. ‘I had a few nights out, I slipped up, it’s true. But there’s nothing going on, as you put it. There’s no need to do anything drastic. Everything’s cool.’
I’d have to be more discreet in future, that was clear. At the next house meeting, Anna cheerfully introduced a motion whereby all house members would have to apply to the group if they intended to have sexual relationships outside the house; the meeting would then vote on the individual situation before granting permission. Failure to comply with this new rule would result in penalty points; anyone accruing more than three penalty points would be asked to leave the house. The motion was carried unanimously. The women celebrated with a story-telling session that lasted well into the night.
My relationship with Noel suffered accordingly. We could no longer spend the night together, despite my inventive attempts to convince Anna that I was ‘on location’. She, with her extraordinary intuition, saw straight through me and replied with a withering look of disappointment. Occasionally, I’d meet Noel for lunch or afternoon tea, and we’d spend a couple of hours at his flat, but it was never enough. Noel was looking for a total commitment, and wouldn’t understand that I had responsibilities that I couldn’t just turn my back on. Noel, like many gay men (as I’ve discovered over the years), was possessive to a pathological degree. After a few months, he became depressed and emotional, and we had a big bust-up. It cleared the air, we remained friends and continued to work together, but the magic had gone. Noel found another friend, and our brief happiness was over. If only he could have made a few more allowances, been a little more tolerant. But Noel was an all-or-nothing kind of person.
Free from emotional distractions, I threw myself wholeheartedly into work. My housemates disapproved, of course, but Anna couldn’t afford to argue with the money. After a triumphant first season of Secrets, the network decided to put it out at prime time on Saturday nights, and my career took on a whole new lease of life. I became a regular guest with a special spot of my own: each week, I’d reveal another of my ‘secrets’, and nothing, it seemed, was too much for my devoted audience. Sometimes it was just a bit of fun (‘This star once posed in the altogether!’), sometimes risque (‘Which star got the surprise of his life when his new girlfriend turned out to be a boyfriend?’) and sometimes deeply personal (‘This star managed to miss the funeral of both his father a
nd his mother’). The more I revealed on Secrets, the more audiences loved me and the higher the ratings climbed. It was a strange feeling: all the things that had made me ashamed in the past were now making me popular. I had a new reputation: a man that’s lived and loved, a man with a past who’s not afraid to own up to it. Suddenly I was an authority on all aspects of love and sex; I appeared on chat shows, on serious talk shows. I was everybody’s favourite agony uncle. Total strangers would stop me in the street and ask my advice.
With this kind of success, it was only a matter of time before other producers started moving in for a piece of the action. I was offered a contract – a lucrative one, thanks to Ginger – as a regular panellist on a new game show starting on ITV in the autumn, the highlight of their Tuesday night schedule. Get a Wife! was a brilliantly simple idea: a team of experts (me and a couple of celebrity guests) would interview a group of six contestants (three men and three women) about their personalities, tastes and ambitions, and at the end of the show we’d pair them up for a dream date. My role was a combination of matchmaker and marriage guidance counsellor – I often thought that I would have made an excellent psychotherapist if things had turned out differently. And, of course, my reputation added an exciting edge to the show: who better than an admitted bisexual to judge these attractive young boys and girls?
I love television. After that initial burst of stage fright I felt completely at home with the cameras; I knew that this was the medium I was always meant to work in. Hadn’t I been one of the pioneers of TV back in the sixties? And here I was having my third bite at the cherry. TV’s like that, as Ginger explained: it’s a forgiving medium. You can get away with murder – literally! (her joke) – provided that you can win over the audiences at home. I knew that they loved me, and any indiscretions I committed in the past only added to my appeal. They may have tut-tutted a little as they sat in their armchairs watching me, but every last one of them wished they’d had the guts to live life as fully as I’d lived mine.
Money wasn’t the only reward for my sudden re-entry to the mainstream. Once again I was in demand for a whole host of celebrity duties: chat shows (who could forget my appearance on Parkinson?), phone-ins (my frank advice on sex caused headlines!), even a return to commercials. An enterprising young producer signed me up to make an aerobics video, which was fun, even though we never got beyond shooting the pictures for the cover. I looked pretty good in a sweatband and leg warmers! How that brought back my days in modern dance.
One sunny spring afternoon Ginger took me out to lunch at her favourite restaurant in Hampstead, a bright, airy place with a fashionable nouvelle cuisine menu, a fantastic wine list and very attractive staff. It was a delightful afternoon; Ginger was generous with her praise, happily basking in my success. The waiters were attentive and flirtatious; one of them slipped me a card and said he was a resting actor hoping for some career guidance. I felt that I’d found my level at last: I was working, proud of what I was doing, and I was enjoying the money and recognition that went with it. But there was a new challenge on the horizon.
As we relaxed with our liqueurs, Ginger rummaged under the table and pulled something out of her bag: a thick bundle of paper which she thumped down on the table without a word. I looked at her uncertainly; her eyes were twinkling behind those huge, red glasses. With a wordless, mimetic gesture I questioned her: is this for me? She laughed her loud, American laugh. ‘Read it, Marc!’
A script. A comedy script. A TV comedy script, I deduced from the complicated camera directions. I read through the first few pages rapidly, laughing occasionally, enjoying the story. It was standard, high-quality sitcom material, the sort of thing audiences loved, with a central male character, a bumbling, straitlaced kind of man with a frumpy wife and a couple of trendy daughters. I turned the pages, waiting for the outrageous neighbour to appear; that, I assumed, would be my role. I read on, I skimmed, I scanned, I flicked the pages. There was nothing that I thought suitable for me. Was Ginger simply asking my opinion on a script that she meant to give to someone else?
‘Yes, it seems like an excellent piece of work, well crafted, solid, an excellent vehicle for an older actor. Perhaps lacking a little brilliance in the secondary characters . . . A comic neighbour, perhaps . . .?’
Ginger roared with laughter again and knocked back her brandy. ‘Think again, honey!’ she barked. ‘It’s all yours!’
‘Mine? You mean . . . Surely you don’t mean . . .?’
‘You bet I do! Read it through by tomorrow and call me. Hey! Sugar! Can we get the cheque?’
Ginger bundled me out of the restaurant and into a cab. My head was in a whirl. A series – for me? It was what I’d always dreamed of. But surely there was some mistake. This was a role for a much older actor, a father figure. I may have been over thirty, but I looked many years younger.
I went home and read all through the night. I began to see subtleties that had evaded me on first sight. Lester, the main character, was a middle-aged man trapped in a conventional marriage, with two teenage daughters who are preparing to fly the nest. His wife, Moira, is looking forward to a quiet retirement of seaside holidays and collecting china ornaments (there was a running joke about ‘my whimsies’). But Lester longs to break free from this sentence of death, as he sees it. He feels more at home with his daughter’s generation. He enjoys the lust for life of a man many years his junior. But to the younger generation he’s just an old man who’s trying to be hip – hence the title, Lester’s Square.
Reading it for the third time, it began to make sense. I could easily be made up to look older (the character would be in his mid-forties), but only I could convey the young soul beneath the thinning hair, the shapeless cardigan. And what a shock for audiences! How they would hoot with laughter when they saw Marc LeJeune – the scandalous, dangerous Marc LeJeune – playing a fuddy-duddy old dad who’s dying to live a wild life! It was a brilliant piece of casting against type. It would work. I wanted to call Ginger right then to tell her ‘Yes!’, but it was four o‘clock in the morning. If Anna heard me talking on the phone at that hour she’d assume that I was ‘up to no good again’ and threaten me with penalty points. I waited until midday, when I calculated Ginger would be enjoying the first ‘stinger’ of the day, before telephoning with my acceptance.
Rehearsals and shooting for Lester’s Square passed by in a happy six months. I was starring with a top-rate supporting cast, we were blessed with a genius producer who brought out every last drop of comedy, from belly laughs to poignant sighs. I loved the role of Lester: so unlike me, but I could empathize with his fears and dreams so strongly. Maybe, I reminded myself, that’s what I would have been like without my talent.
Everyone in the team knew we had a smash hit on our hands. It’s an instinct. I’d felt it before with There Were Three in the Bed and ‘Bi Bi Baby’ – everything was in the right place. I could hardly wait for the first transmission.
And, of course, Lester’s Square was a hit, the sort of hit that an actor dreams of. It ran for three years with ever-increasing audiences; our Royal Wedding special in 1981 got the best ratings of any comedy show that year. By the end of the last series, we even had the critics on our side, although they’d tried to crucify us at first. Oh, the reviews of the first show were so cruel! I was used to rough handling by the press, but my heart bled for the kids on the team who had never seen the critics in action.
There was one review that particularly caught my eye, a clipping from Gay News that was brought to me by the director. As soon as I saw the byline I knew what was coming: it was my old nemesis Pinky Stevens. But he was Pinky no longer; now he was signing himself ‘Paul Stevens’. The serious tone of his review told me why.
Marc Lejeune is a traitor to his lesbian and gay brothers and sisters. For years he’s exploited our struggle with his bisexual posturings, perpetuating worn-out stereotypes of gay men as effeminate, immoral freaks. But now in the appalling Lester’s Square he directly insults us. This
sickening charade of heterosexist family life, with Lejeune as the overpowering father figure, completely marginalizes the les/gay struggle. Where are the positive images of loving same-sex couples? Why is the wife’s ambiguous sexuality so rigidly repressed? It’s a horrible vision of a right-wing, sexist, racist future.
It ran on in this vein for a full page. Surprisingly, the picture editor had chosen to illustrate the piece with an old photograph of me looking tasty in my ‘Bi Bi Baby’ leather jacket.
What did I care for the carpings of the critics? If anything, they added the vital touch of acidity that made my life even more piquant. Yes, life was sweet for those few years. And it was trouble-free, thanks to the calming, controlling influences of Ginger and Anna. This time I was handling fame as an adult, enjoying its fruits but not letting it go to my head. I stayed in West Hampstead; Anna maintained a strict eye on my private life, keeping me out of the clutches of the gold-diggers. For nearly three years, I was celibate – by choice (it’s not as if I was ever short of offers!). And what a difference it made! I awoke each morning full of energy, looking forward to work, happy with my home life. How easy things would be if we could all live like that!
Of course, a few creepy-crawlies emerged from the woodwork to bask in the warm sunshine of my success. I wasn’t surprised to receive a letter from Nick Nicholls, congratulating me on Lester’s Square and requesting a meeting to discuss a business proposal ‘that would be very much to our mutual advantage’. Typical Nick, trying to blackmail me with those old photographs again! I took great pleasure in sending him a terse reply that told him (in the nicest possible language, of course) to go to hell.
Less expected, and less easy to dismiss, was the surprise that awaited me at the studio gates one morning. I was chatting to the commissionaire when I noticed someone getting out of a blue estate car and walking over towards us. Instinctively I edged through the gate to safety; we’d been warned about the dangers of crazed fans, and I had been particularly wary since the death of poor, dear John Lennon. I was about to sprint up the steps to reception when I heard a familiar voice. I turned around, scarcely believing my ears. It was Nutter.
