Once he’d yanked the tube out for the third day in a row, I decided enough was enough – and that I’d replace it myself. Putting aside the thought that this was supposed to be a medical procedure wasn’t easy, but I’d studied the doctors doing it so often and had received lots of practical advice from a specialist nurse, so I knew I could manage it.
Getting this right was all about speed and precision. I disinfected my hands and unpacked a fresh tube, took a very deep breath, and threaded it through his nose, felt it reach his esophagus; right on cue Harrison coughed and swallowed, I pushed it down and it was in.
I now had to use a syringe to draw out a little fluid via the tube – this was to check the tube was in his stomach and hadn’t gone down into his lungs. I dripped a little of the fluid onto litmus paper and it turned pink – it was acidic, so it could only have come from the stomach.
Although it was nerve-racking at first, I was soon able to perform the whole procedure before Harrison even knew what had hit him.
Feeding was difficult for Harrison. He’d simply refuse food if we tried to feed him without using the tube. One day Sam said in complete frustration, “Harrison, if you don’t start eating then I don’t know what I’m going to do!” Incredibly, just at that moment, Harrison decided to eat every last morsel.
Once things were a bit more settled at home, the hospital called and asked Sam and me whether we’d talk to some tall parents who had just been told their unborn baby had achondroplasia. They wanted us to explain to the parents about our lives and our kids and how we lead a “normal” existence – well, as normal as any family can!
We readily agreed and have done this a few times now. We’re always more than happy to talk to parents expecting a baby with dwarfism. Some are still put up for adoption, just because they’re born small. Many people still see it as a disaster and think that it will lead to a life of solitude and difficulty – which is quite depressing really. Of course, life isn’t like this at all, and I’ve made it one of my missions to overturn misconceptions concerning “littleness.”
Tall people who talk to parents expecting a little person tend to be too politically correct, and go on about how little people are “normal people who bear the burden of a physical difference.” They then spend the next hour describing exactly how little people aren’t like ordinary people.
Of course, physically speaking there is a significant difference. What you look like is an important element of who you are and how others look at you. So rather than pretend a little person is just like a short tall person, it’s much better to talk about the practicalities of everyday life, how certain difficulties are overcome, and how being small shouldn’t hold you back from doing anything you want to do. Okay, being a professional basketball player might be tricky,a but there are little people who are set designers, psychologists, priests, professional card players, casino managers, motorcycle mechanics, molecular biologists, production coordinators, chefs, PE teachers, gynecologists, veterinarians, and so on.
Sometimes parents find it difficult to accept the diagnosis and ask for second and third opinions, hoping to hear something different from a new doctor. Their disbelief might be followed by anger, guilt, denial, helplessness, or avoidance.
My advice for parents expecting a little child is to relax. I know it’s easy for me to say – but little people pretty much take care of the little side of life themselves. They deal with being small just fine. As long as there’s love, fun, and security then everything else will follow. Despite the occasional awkward moment, public attitudes to little people are generally pretty good.
Poor Harrison had to wait until he was three until he was well enough to have a proper birthday party. We got the final all-clear after a few visits to Great Ormond Street Hospital where the doctors ran some pretty scary tests, including a sleep study and a vacuum chamber that measured his lung pressure that eventually confirmed he was now perfectly healthy. We were able to get rid of the oxygen tanks and the milk-bottle factory and threw him a cracking birthday party. Ever since then Harrison has been just like your typical child: wild, obnoxious, eats anything, and so on and – like Annabelle – is living life to the full (as I can most sincerely attest).
I’d pretty much stopped working around the time we had Harrison but as he started to get stronger, I did a couple of commercials just to keep things ticking along. They’re usually hard work, but take up relatively little time and the pay’s not bad.
The first big commercial I ever did was for British Telecom when I played E.T., who, unsurprisingly, trotted out his famous “phone home” quote. Spielberg was very protective of E.T. and BT had to pay a fortune for the rights and that was only as long as they fulfilled several strict conditions. One of these was that E.T. was not allowed to speak unless it was with his trademark voice. So I was instructed not to say a word while wearing the suit. This made sure that the illusion was not spoiled for the young actors on set.
We filmed the scene at a children’s party. The costume was extremely heavy and E.T. has very long arms, so my fingers didn’t reach to the end, although I was able to operate E.T.’s hands with a kind of lever system from his elbow.
It was all going well – until the kids were released. I was standing in a pit of colored balls in one of those little adventure playgrounds. When the director shouted “Action!” a screaming horde of overexcited children who’d been pumped full of hyperactivity-inducing sweets by the production staff stampeded toward me, all of them determined to be the first to hug E.T.
My eyes widened in alarm and I waved E.T.’s long arms in panic, remembering not to shout anything like “Help!” or “Stop them!” as per the contract. They steamed into me and I flew back, disappearing under a screaming heap of laughing children and plastic balls.
An anxious production assistant pulled them off while I lay there in a daze.
“E.T. needs to take a break,” she told them. “He’s feeling a bit tired now.”
I don’t know about that, but I was definitely seeing stars (or was it balls?).
I also leapt back into costume for “Get Rid of Your Gremlins,” a long-running adult literacy campaign for the Central Office of Information where I tormented people who couldn’t read or add up. One of the commercials received lots of complaints – people said I’d scared them. It’s a performance I remain proud of to this day.
I even played a garden gnome for Top-Up TV. We were filming in a launderette in the East End. A day or two afterward, someone showed me a copy of the Star newspaper. Inside was an article that said we’d had to stop shooting because there was a brothel upstairs and the moaning and groaning meant we couldn’t film. I hadn’t noticed myself but it was in the Star so it must have been true . . .
As I folded the paper the phone rang. It was my agent.
“There’s no audition,” he said excitedly, “they want you! You’ll be shooting with Jamie Foxx and you leave for New Orleans next week!”
That’s my life for you. One week a garden gnome under a brothel in Canning Town, the next in New Orleans hanging out with Jamie Foxx in the world’s coolest jazz club.
What’s E.T. short for? Because he’s only got little legs! Annabelle didn’t get that joke, either.
a Having said that, Tony Cox at three-foot-six was a professional basketball player and once took on the Harlem Globetrotters. He could score from the halfway line with an underarm throw and was unstoppable when dribbling – he went through everyone’s legs and kept the ball so low his giant opponents didn’t have a hope.
Chapter Twenty
For the Love of Cheese
The premier event in the Warwick Davis calendar: The Stilton Cheese Rolling Championship.
Robbie Coltrane couldn’t wait to get involved in some Stilton rolling action.
Courtesy of Paul Biggins.
Taylor Hackford, the Oscar-winning director, had offered me the part of Oberon in the movie biopic Unchain My Heart. The film’s name was changed to Ray after Ray
Charles died, as it seemed to be more appropriate and an affectionate tribute.
Before I traveled to the U.S. for two weeks of filming Taylor invited me to his large East London home, which sat right on the edge of the Thames, to talk about the movie.
I was already sitting in the lounge when an attractive lady appeared in the doorway. Taylor introduced her as Helen.
She smiled and asked me in a regal voice if I’d like a cup of tea.
“No thank you.”
“Sure? It’s no trouble.”
“No, really, I’m fine,” I said, and she left.
Goodness, I thought to myself, these film directors do all right for themselves, employing housekeepers like that.
It was a good job I didn’t say as much because I’d just mistaken Taylor’s wife for the housekeeper. On top of that she was Dame Helen Mirren, so it wasn’t as if her face wasn’t well known.
I must confess that even after meeting Taylor I was still a little in the dark as to what he wanted Oberon to be like. Although this movie was based on the life of Ray Charles, Oberon, who was a master of ceremonies in a jazz club, was semifictional. He was supposed to be an amalgamation of several real-life characters of the day.
There was a brief craze in the 1950s to have little people as nightclub announcers. Taylor sent me a load of CDs where you could hear them introducing some of the biggest acts of the day and I listened to them all with great interest as I prepared for the role, but I did wonder how on earth I was supposed to waltz on to a set in New Orleans and become this superconfident American master of ceremonies who would introduce Ray Charles to millions of cinemagoers.
But then inspiration hit. Of course! I had extensive experience as a master of ceremonies.
The premier event in the Warwick Davis calendar is, of course, the Stilton Cheese Rolling Championships. You may recall that I am a huge cheese fan (although my favorite cheesy nibble is, of course, Cheddar) so when the organizers of the Stilton Cheese Rolling Championships, which took place in Stilton,a just up the road from where I lived, asked me if I’d like to emcee the event, I was only too delighted to accept. This was an unpaid role, although the organizers were prepared to make a generous donation to Peterborough’s Special Care Baby Unit in return.
There is something so delightfully English about a cheese-rolling festival that takes place in a village where they don’t actually make the cheese, even though the village is called Stilton.
In fact – I’m letting you into a secret here – neither do they roll real cheese. Well, you didn’t think they’d be so silly as to roll real Stilton down their high street, did you? The cheese is actually sawn-up sections of telegraph poles painted to look like cheese.
I’d love to be able to claim that the origins of cheese rolling are lost in the mists of time, but the enterprising landlord of the Bell Inn (where the finish line used to be)b created the sport in 1959 when his passing trade dried up, thanks to the completion of the highway bypass. He started rolling a cheese up and down the street outside the Bell and claimed he was “reviving an ancient tradition.” Of course, he was doing no such thing but it wasn’t long before other “cheese rollers” turned up from all over the UK to join him, and each May Day bank holiday the event now attracts thousands of visitors to the village of Stilton.
It’s a knockout competition in which two teams of four men or women, wearing fancy dress (of course!), attempt to roll the cheese, using their hands, in a race from the Bell Inn to the crossroads just fifty yards away. Each team member has to touch the cheese at least once during its roll and they must stay on their side of the road throughout – if their cheese crosses the center line then they have to stop and restart from wherever it crossed the line.
This seems straightforward enough, but, with the landlord’s enthusiastic encouragement, competitors are encouraged to drink copious amounts of booze throughout the day. By the time the two teams of finalists meet, they barely know where they are, let alone have the ability to keep their cheese under control.
I once watched as four burly young men dressed as French onion sellers lost control of their cheese and hurtled through the crash barriers and into the crowd. It’s surprisingly hard to stop yourself when you’re running in a crouch. One of them actually continued through the pub door and vanished, handing victory to a group of yellow-haired Vikings in tights.
At the end of the course is a large wooden board (yes, the Cheese Board) and you have to whack the cheese into that board to finish. There are several referees to make sure everything is done correctly, although they mainly shout insults at the contestants to try and put them off.
There is much cheese punnery and, as the host, I have to provide most of it. The teams tend to come up with weird and wonderful names in a blatant attempt to make me say something rude; one such team is the Four Skins of Edam.c
An important part of the cheese festival are the Pig Dyke Molly Dancers but why, I have no idea. These are extremely strange people who dress in black and white and dance around waving broomsticks (a bit like Morris dancing but without the bells).d It’s a very odd world around the fens.
Anyway, I realized my MC-ing at Stilton stood me in good stead for Ray. Indeed, with a little bit of Americanization (and a reduction in cheese), there was barely any difference between:
“I got a special treat for all you satin dolls and I’m not talking about Oberon’s big thunder. No, that’s for another show. We got some new blood for ya. Fresh off the bus from Florida I give you Ray ‘Don’t Call Me Sugar’ Robinson.”
And:
“Now I know you all want me to roll my Babybel along the course and, don’t worry ladies and gentlemen, that will come later. For now though, Beaufort things get out of hand, I’m here to introduce you all to our two finalists. First, all the way from Lincolnshire, give it up for . . . Cheese Whizz! And taking the right side of the street, all the way from Israel, please put your hands together for Cheeses of Nazareth!e”
Needless to say, playing Oberon was a doddle after that.
I had a few scenes with Jamie Foxx, who would go on to win the Best Actor Oscar for his performance as the legendary singer. Neither of us really knew how much of a smash this movie was going to be, but we certainly had a great time together.
He told me Ray Charles himself had given him a great confidence boost when he was preparing for the role. Taylor arranged for Jamie to meet the legendary performer and they sat at two pianos (Jamie is a classically trained pianist) where they played together for two hours. Eventually, Ray Charles stood up, hugged Foxx, and said, “He’s the one . . . he can do it.”
Jamie Foxx was quite the Method actor. Instead of simply shutting his eyes to pretend to be blind, he had them covered with prosthetic eyelids that were glued on so he really couldn’t see all day long and wasn’t suddenly able to get his sight back when things got a bit difficult.
Jamie would tinker away on a portable keyboard between takes, making up his own songs. You could give him any subject and he’d sing a song about it, straight away, right off the top of his head.
As usual, although I was in New Orleans, a city famous for its extraordinary and exciting food (crocodile gumbo, anyone?), all I wanted was a nice bit of Cheddar. They had a multitude of cheeses there but no Cheddar. Just bright-orange overprocessed stuff packed full of colors and chemicals.
I couldn’t believe it when I spotted one that was called Cheez Whiz.
“Well, I’ll be edamed!”
a Who’d’ve thought, eh?
b It’s known as the Bell End.
c 2009 was an extraspecial year as it was the fiftieth anniversary and my fifth year as MC. The Golden Balls took home the Bell Trophy while the Fromage Fairies won the Women’s Institute Cup. The winners are rewarded with a whole Stilton cheese for their efforts (and some booze).
d A Morris dance is an English folk dance dating back to the fifteenth century. Its origins are shrouded in mystery, and all I know is that it involves a group of men
dressed in white pajamas, jangling bells, hitting each other with sticks, and shouting “Arrr!” quite a bit. It isn’t exactly my cup of tea, but to each their own—and a lot of people seem to like it.
e Okay, I made that one up. They were from Wales and were called “Caerphilly Does It.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Paranoid Android
The prototype Marvin suit.
Apart from cheese festivals, I also attend many charity auctions. I’m not a massive fan of these but people must think I love them because I’m asked to do them all the time. I find it very hard to say no because they’re always for such good causes. The problem is that they can sometimes be pretty grueling affairs – and especially toe-curling for me.
Size Matters Not: The Extraordinary Life and Career of Warwick Davis Page 23
