Simon Callow

One of Britain's best-loved and most talented actors for you today: Simon Callow. In this gem of a conversation, Gyles hears about Simon's childhood in Streatham, where he was dazzled by his theatrical grandmother but had a more complicated relationship with his "odd" mother. His father left when he was small. Gyles hears about formative teachers, an early love of theatre and literature, and music. Simon also talks about university in Belfast, Michael Mac Liammoir, drama school and how writing to Laurence Olivier landed him a job at the National Theatre. This is a fabulous episode, one of the best. We know you'll enjoy it - and our deep gratitude to Simon Callow for taking the time and trouble to record with us. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:05Speaker 02

  Gather ye rosebuds, while ye may. There's a new guest waiting with quite a lot to say. So I'm going to shut up and say, welcome to another episode of Rosebud. We do indeed have a very special guest for you. Cue the music, they're ready.

• 1:42Speaker 02

  This week, we've got an actor on Rosebud, one of my favorite actors. He's also one of my favorite writers and one of my favorite people. I've known him for quite a while, not that well, but we have a number of interests in common. Chiefly, I suppose, Oscar Wilde. I'm president of the Oscar Wilde Society, and he has played Oscar Wilde on stage. I think we were most recently together when we were in Paris last year at the Pere Lachaise Cemetery, where Oscar Wilde is buried. And we were together, me with my wife, Michelle, he with his husband, Sebastian,

• 2:23Speaker 02

  there at the tomb of Oscar Wilde, 125 years to the day. In fact, to the hour since the death of Oscar Wilde. So Oscar Wilde very much informed his youth. He is gay. That is worth saying, only because I think when in the 1980s, he became one of the first high-profile British actors to come out as gay, he described it as his biggest act of activism. But I think of him principally as a writer, because he's written some wonderful books. Being an actor, which was an exploration of the craft of acting he wrote when he was very young.

• 3:06Speaker 02

  But I have his biographies of Orson Welles, of Charles Lawton, both of which I have devoured. The Orson Welles is three volumes so far, there's more to come. He's written about Wagner. I have that book, I've not opened it. I'll confess that, because music is enormously and not so big to me. But Dickens and Shakespeare, he's written about them, because he's played Dickens, he's played Shakespeare. Have you guessed who he is yet? In the theater, his breakout moment was when he appeared as Mozart in Amadeus at the National Theater at the end of the 1970s. Famous, of course, for a number of film roles, A Room with a View, Four Weddings and a Funeral,

• 3:50Speaker 02

  with that wonderful reading of the Auden poem, Stop All the Clocks. Shakespeare in Love, which I saw again just before Christmas, and he's brilliant in that. Howard Zenn, Morris, all those great Merchant Ivory films, and of course, on theater, television. Have you guessed who he is by now? It's Simon Callow. And we're really going to talk today, I hope, not about the stuff we all know about, you know, the stage and movie career, but about his origins, what made him the person he is. I particularly want to hear about an actor called Michael McLeamore. If you don't know who he is, well, you're going to discover more. He was an extraordinary character.

• 4:34Speaker 02

  And extraordinary characters are part and parcel of the story of Simon Callow. So enough from me. Let's cue that music and introduce you to Simon Callow, author, actor, director, commander of the Order of the British Empire, and a very interesting human being. Cue the music.

• 5:07Speaker 02

  Simon Philip Hugh Callow, born, I hope I've got this right, 15th of June, 1949.

• 5:15Speaker 03

  Indeed.

• 5:15Speaker 02

  The question is, what, Simon, is your very first memory?

• 5:22Speaker 03

  Well, I think my very first memory, and I am sort of suspicious of memory generally, but anyway, I think my very first memory is me tottering down the hall of my grandmother's house in a Chantong shirt, running towards my grandmother, who was the sort of salvation of my life, and just the joy of going into her room to see her. That's it. And there's no real kind of punchline to the memory at all. It's just that there she was, this extraordinary,

• 6:03Speaker 03

  copiously built woman, who I utterly understood and understood me utterly, and who I see more and more and more is the foundation for the basic optimism and joie de vivre, which I still flickeringly maintain in my dotage.

• 6:30Speaker 02

  So where was this? And who was this lady? What was her full name? Who was she the mother of? And why did she come to be the central figure?

• 6:38Speaker 03

  It was in Streatham in London, where I was born, in a nursing home somewhere up the road from my grandmother's house. And of course, it was a semi-detached house of no great distinction or size, but to me, it was a magical castle. And her name was Vera Agnes Gyles. Gyles was, my grandfather, Gyles, was Danish, and an inventor, and an engineer, and a thoroughly ill-humored man who dropped dead at the age of 41.

• 7:22Speaker 03

  So he was long in the past, I never met him at all. She, my grandmother, had been a singer. In fact, a rather remarkable, she possessed a rather remarkable voice. She had one of those contralto profundo voices, like Marian Anderson or something, that you very rarely hear now. Marilyn Horn had some of those notes in her voice. And she did sing, she told me, and my grandmother's historical imagination was considerable, so we mustn't take this as a fact, but she said that she sang. She changed her name to Vera Melbourne as a tribute to Dame Nellie Melba.

• 8:06Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 8:07Speaker 03

  And she sang at the Albert Hall on Armistice Day in 1919. And it is said that she managed to shatter the acoustical arrangements, such was the size of her voice. It was immense and very, very, very deep. And she would sing at parties, didn't take much encouragement. And she, her absolute star turn was to sing Softly Awakes My Heart from Samson and Delilah by Saint-Sauss. And she would work the room. That I remember vividly. She would go from, especially, she'd go from man to man,

• 8:49Speaker 03

  locking eyes with him and pouring this golden tone at him. She was, she did, she loved life.

• 8:59Speaker 02

  And she gave birth to your mother?

• 9:01Speaker 03

  Gave birth to my mother.

• 9:02Speaker 02

  And others, were there uncles and aunts?

• 9:04Speaker 03

  My mother, my aunt, and my uncle. My uncle died in the last year of the war, saving somebody, one of his, he was a captain, I think, one of his men's lives. And that's the sort of story families tell each other, but I've seen all the letters. I've seen the letter from the padre, I've seen the letter

• 9:26Speaker 02

  Wonderful.

• 9:26Speaker 03

  from the, from his, the colonel of his battalion. And he is the absolute mystery figure in my life, because everybody adored this man. He was quite short, not exactly strikingly good-looking, but the photographs show an extraordinary personality and a charm, a gracefulness about him. Everybody adored him, Tony, his name was. And in fact, my grandmother frequently, absolutely, called me Tony rather than Simon.

• 10:03Speaker 02

  Explain why your grandmother, though, is this central figure, given you had a mother?

• 10:07Speaker 03

  Ah, I did have a mother. My mother, my mother and I were very temperamentally at odds with each other, really all the way through her very, very long life. She was 98 when she died. And we, she was a good woman, and she was a woman who worked incredibly hard.

• 10:27Speaker 02

  What was her name?

• 10:28Speaker 03

  Her name was Yvonne. And she worked extraordinarily hard as a secretary all her life, but she rose to great heights. She was the secretary to managing directors and people of that sort. And she was known to be, by everybody, a difficult woman. Even as a girl, she was a difficult girl. She was, she was a bit of a tease to the men, but very scornful of them. And she was, my grandmother typically would tell everything, really, about everything, but she said

• 11:12Speaker 03

  that my mother, as a child, had had a rather curious

• 11:22Speaker 03

  Interest in uh uh there was a medical student staying in the house, there was always a lodger. And this was a medical student and he had a skeleton in his room and my mother loved this skeleton and in fact couldn't uh uh get to sleep without the skull on her pillow.

• 11:40Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 11:41Speaker 03

  This is this is a story told by my grandmother now. It's very possible that there's some embellishment going on here, but she certainly was a slightly odd woman, my my my mother, very independent and very um quite quite easily scornful of people, you know.

• 11:59Speaker 02

  And when did you feel first that you were at odds with her and so warmed more to her mother than to your own mother?

• 12:06Speaker 03

  I think it was fairly apparent from the beginning. Um, but we had quite a an interesting life, my mother and I, because to try to cover this elaborate story as quickly as I can, um, she uh uh married her brother's best friend. Tony's best friend was my father, Neil.

• 12:32Speaker 02

  Neil Callow.

• 12:33Speaker 03

  Neil Callow. Neil Callow, who was um the life and soul of the party. He was the man who reliably laughed at everybody's jokes and then went off and bought another crate of beer. He was he was a a a jolly, um, happy-go-lucky, lively man, um, and my mother took an instant dislike to him. She was my my my uncle's best friend, but she took an instant dislike to him. He became that, probably excited him uh uh more, and he started to pursue her heavily. And when uh she would walk into a room and if he was in it, she'd walk out again immediately.

• 13:13Speaker 03

  And uh eventually, um, there was a bomb raid and they all went down to the cellar. And somehow or another, they all piled on top of each other. And my father did something to my mother, which must have stirred her deeply physically. And she, being somewhat naive, thought that this was that she'd lost her virginity.

• 13:39Speaker 02

  So she felt she'd succumbed.

• 13:41Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 13:42Speaker 02

  In this stumble and tussle.

• 13:44Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 13:45Speaker 02

  Felt she'd lost her virginity and therefore felt obliged to follow it through with matrimony, even though this was a a man who she would leave the room rather than be with.

• 13:53Speaker 03

  Precisely. So she married him and then.

• 13:57Speaker 02

  And she had not lost her virginity, as far as we know.

• 13:59Speaker 03

  She had not lost her virginity, not at all, no.

• 14:00Speaker 02

  It was just a fumble in the.

• 14:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. And uh um, however, the unexpected happened, which is they got married and it turned out that he was a wonderful lover and she fell in love with him deeply.

• 14:14Speaker 02

  Oh, well, that's a good twist, isn't it?

• 14:18Speaker 03

  That's a terrificly good twist, but there are more to come. Uh, so they went, she joined him, this was, I think, forty-four or something like that. And he was in Africa, fighting in Africa. And by forty-four, I think you you you could be joined by your spouse because the war was over in that uh arena. Anyway, she was there in Africa and they, once the war was over, they stayed in Africa, living the life of Riley, as as colonials did, you know, in Lagos they were eventually. And then finally, I was conceived, this is in forty eight, and uh late autumn of forty-eight.

• 14:58Speaker 03

  And then, and of course, they came back to England, both of them, and they decided they'd try to make a go of it in England. They lived in um a bed-sitting room, me and uh the the uh the two of them. And it became intolerable. My father went back to his former job, which was an insurance salesman, which he detested, having known the glorious life of the colonials. Uh, and so he said he would go back to Africa and he would send money, and which he did. And then at the end of eighteen months, he was due for a sort of a vacation or whatever, and um he never showed up.

• 15:40Speaker 02

  Ah, and that was it? He never showed up?

• 15:44Speaker 03

  He never showed up and then eventually she got through, there was a large party thrown for him to welcome him back and he just never showed up. And so.

• 15:54Speaker 02

  I mean, literally, the the day was set when he was going to be there.

• 15:57Speaker 03

  Yes, and everybody was invited to the party.

• 15:59Speaker 02

  The wine and the beer was there, all the family were gathered. You, the little boy, aged two or three by then.

• 16:04Speaker 03

  Well, no, eighteen months.

• 16:06Speaker 02

  Eighteen months, waiting for daddy to return from Africa, and nobody came.

• 16:11Speaker 03

  No, he he, they all came, he he didn't, he didn't come back yet.

• 16:14Speaker 02

  And he was still in Africa, he just hadn't.

• 16:17Speaker 03

  She then.

• 16:18Speaker 02

  Not on the boat.

• 16:19Speaker 03

  Booked a a a a call to Africa for the next day, obviously, in those days you couldn't call straight away. And uh she said, um, I'd like to speak to Mr. Callow. And they said, oh, Mr. Callow left for Paris with Mrs. Callow uh uh ten days ago.

• 16:37Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 16:39Speaker 03

  And so my father eventually sort of crawled back to London and begged my mother for a divorce, saying, I'm sorry, it's all over, we, you know, I loved you, but I don't anymore.

• 16:53Speaker 02

  And I found a new person I love and I want to marry her.

• 16:55Speaker 03

  Well, no, I don't know whether he said that or not, because that didn't material.

• 16:59Speaker 02

  There was no second Mrs. Callow.

• 17:01Speaker 03

  No, I was thinking it was just somebody that he'd gone to Paris with. Um, and my mother, being a very strict Catholic, Catholicism was absolutely at the centre of her being, in a way that it wasn't for anybody else in my family. I mean, they were all Catholics, but very much in a, you know, eat, drink and be married for tomorrow, we confess kind of a way. And anyway, the the alimony was always very fitful. My mother got a job then when I was five years old.

• 17:30Speaker 02

  Forgive me. When did you first realise, you as a boy, that there wasn't a father in your life?

• 17:36Speaker 03

  Uh, not until much later and uh and I'll tell you how that came about. But anyway, the the the what what happened in the sequence, which was quite enough to distract me from being fatherless, was that my mother went to work in a boarding school in Goringon Thames as the school secretary. And my education, such as it was at the age of five, was thrown in as part of her salary. And it was a a boarding school uh run by um a man rejoicing, I mean, for a schoolmaster in the name of Roland Birch. And and he did, he was a great enthusiast of corporal punishment.

• 18:17Speaker 02

  No minestomen, indeed.

• 18:20Speaker 03

  Exactly. He was a, he was a um a linguist, he spoke Spanish fluently, and indeed he'd fought in the Spanish Civil War, on the other side, on the Franco side. So we had a sort of evil and war situation here. Not that I, of course, knew any of this, uh uh but until I was later told by my mother. But um I I wasn't, I was too young really to be part of the school as such, but I I was taught how to read by another sort of angel in my life, which was Roland Birch's mother.

• 18:56Speaker 02

  Ah.

• 18:57Speaker 03

  Who was an elderly Cockney woman, her suit and with the Mrs. Gamp-like sort of tincture of sherry and gin on her breath at all times, which I liked very much, it was a lovely uh warm uh sort of thing to be around. And she taught me how to read.

• 19:17Speaker 02

  So this is Mrs. Birch, mother of.

• 19:19Speaker 03

  Mother of Roland. And I I had a breakthrough, it took me some while, so I was a little bit late to learn to read. And she she said, all right, now you go and tell your mama that you can read. So I went off and found my mother and I said to my mother, I can read. And she said, you now have in your hands a key with which to unlock the riches of the world.

• 19:45Speaker 02

  No.

• 19:46Speaker 03

  That's my mother for you.

• 19:47Speaker 02

  But how right she was.

• 19:49Speaker 03

  She was absolutely right. Um, uh, and then I, there was no stopping me. Once I, once I could read, I I I would read everything.

• 19:57Speaker 02

  Unpick for a moment a little bit more of this incompatibility with your mother.

• 20:00Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 20:01Speaker 02

  Because that line you've quoted just now of her makes, draws me to her.

• 20:05Speaker 03

  Oh, yes. She she was, she had many, many virtues, but she wasn't.

• 20:12Speaker 03

  Fun. She wasn't particularly

• 20:18Speaker 03

  warm and I was, I mean, I'm putting all the burden on her. I mean, I was a sort of uncontrollable child.

• 20:27Speaker 02

  Oh, in what way?

• 20:28Speaker 03

  Not just energy, just absolutely insatiable energy and romping around and showing off and doing voices and all of this kind of thing, which of course delighted my grandmother, but on the other hand, my grandmother didn't have to live with me all the time.

• 20:43Speaker 02

  You must have had another grandmother, your father's mother. Was she part of your life?

• 20:47Speaker 03

  Yes, very much so. And I loved her very deeply too. But she was as great a contrast to the woman I called Maitre, everybody called that grandmother Maitre. My father's mother was French, from Lyon.

• 21:03Speaker 03

  And she was exactly what we all think of a French housewife to be. Incredibly busy around the house all the time, scrubbing and cleaning and spotting dust somewhere like this, you know, an eagle eye for it and in other people's houses too. Also, interestingly, she came to England when she was, I think, nineteen. She married my grandfather, Charles Callow, who was a silk salesman.

• 21:39Speaker 03

  Who had ended up in Lyon, where there's a considerable trade in silk. And there he met my grandmother, whose name was Marie Elizabeth Eugenie Leonard. Callow eventually, but born Harvey, because her father was a Scotsman. And my grandmother, I don't think had come to England until she married Charles and then then was here from her being twenty years old. And she still spoke English with an Inspector Clouseau accent to the day she died. My darling, don't stand front my light, all of this.

• 22:20Speaker 03

  And she was a very smart woman. She read voraciously in English. She read Dickens from cover to cover. She adored Dickens. But she was essentially just that thing, a French housewife.

• 22:35Speaker 02

  So these two grandmothers are the influential figures in your mind as you see it now. And your mother is a distant figure.

• 22:43Speaker 03

  Distant isn't quite right. No, not distant.

• 22:46Speaker 02

  Emotionally remote.

• 22:48Speaker 03

  Not even that, because she was perfectly capable of losing her temper. But odd. My mother was a little odd.

• 22:59Speaker 02

  And therefore you could never be totally comfortable with her. But with the grandmothers, you could be comfortable.

• 23:03Speaker 03

  She was also tremendously conscious of, as I said before, which I sympathize with her for. My uncontrollable energy was problematic. She was trying to contain me and to focus me on proper academic work. Because the only thing that mattered to her, for me, was that I should become an academic. That's what she wanted more than anything else. And of course, I realized, even then, I think I realized that it was herself that she was thinking of. She wanted to be an academic. She had this vision of me, she used to say, walking across a quadrangle in Oxford with my academic gown flowing behind me

• 23:46Speaker 03

  and students racing to keep up with me to note down the words of wisdom that were coming out of my mouth. And I realized it's her.

• 23:56Speaker 02

  It's a lovely ambition though, for herself and through you, if it could have happened.

• 24:01Speaker 03

  It could have happened.

• 24:02Speaker 02

  Given that she was a Catholic, obviously she always felt she was married to the end of her days.

• 24:05Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 24:06Speaker 02

  Did she and your father ever attempt to reconciliation?

• 24:09Speaker 03

  She never saw him again.

• 24:11Speaker 02

  Oh, really?

• 24:11Speaker 03

  Never saw him again.

• 24:13Speaker 02

  Oh, my.

• 24:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 24:15Speaker 02

  And did you see him again?

• 24:17Speaker 03

  Yes, because there's a bit I've left out, which was that, well, which actually contradicts what I've just said. What happened was that we were, I was nine. And by now, I'd, obviously, she'd left Elmcroft, which was the school where she was the school secretary. She had taken six months' leave of absence of me to go to Spain, where she'd always wanted to go. And she worked as a sort of, whatever you call it now, a governess for a Spanish family. And learned Spanish, which was amazingly enterprising of her.

• 24:57Speaker 03

  And then, and I'd gone to various boarding schools in England, unhappily mostly. And suddenly, really completely out of the blue, when I was nine, arrived one of those blue aerograms. And it was a letter from my father saying, it's been a terrible mistake. We must get back together again.

• 25:19Speaker 03

  And he was living in Zambia by then. And so my mother said to me very simply, he is still my husband. We will be going. And so I'm taking all the precautionary drugs, you know.

• 25:35Speaker 02

  And they add in the rest.

• 25:36Speaker 03

  All of that. And we took the three-day flight to Nairobi. My father drove us down, all the way down the African continent, more or less.

• 25:46Speaker 02

  This was the first time you'd properly seen him?

• 25:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, since.

• 25:50Speaker 02

  Since his departure, since you were tiny.

• 25:52Speaker 03

  I had seen him, I had seen him on my own once or twice, yeah. There are photographs.

• 25:57Speaker 02

  Through your grandmother, through Dodo the grandmother.

• 26:00Speaker 03

  Precisely, who was mortified by the way he had behaved. Mortified and felt guilt-ridden by it.

• 26:07Speaker 02

  So you knew him in that sense?

• 26:08Speaker 03

  In that sense, I did. I've met him once or twice. There are pictures of him, bearded, very bearded. Very, looking like a sort of an explorer or something like that. He was working for Shell or whatever, I can't remember. And then he went to, so he drove us down, down the South of Africa, stopping overnight at, you know, in the Luangwa Valley and things like that. I mean, I was a child from Strata, it was a really shocking experience. Shocking, I mean, exciting, of course, but truly, I mean, like otherworldly.

• 26:50Speaker 03

  And seeing the logs on the side of the river suddenly slip into the water.

• 26:55Speaker 02

  Because they were alligators.

• 26:56Speaker 03

  Alligators and the lions, we'd stay in our little rondavels at night and there'd be a fire outside and if you happened to see them at four o'clock in the morning when the fire really died down, the lionesses would come into, towards the fire with their cubs and so on. I mean, this is absolutely extraordinary. And but for the most part, and we lived in Africa for three years, my mother and I. But when she came, when we got to the house, it was immediately apparent that his idea that we were resuming the marriage was not really going to work because they were in separate bedrooms, first of all.

• 27:40Speaker 03

  And very soon after we arrived, he started locking off all the other rooms, like the front room and the lounge and so on. And then eventually, the servants, the houseboy was told not to take any instructions from her. So it seems that what he was trying to do was to get her to desert him. Therefore, he could have claimed that as a grounds for divorce.

• 28:06Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 28:07Speaker 03

  Anyway, it nearly drove my mother insane, as you can imagine.

• 28:12Speaker 02

  And your father was a drinker by then, a heavy drinker?

• 28:15Speaker 03

  My father was always a heavy drinker and, I mean, that just got worse and worse and worse.

• 28:22Speaker 02

  Can you remember the last time you set eyes on him?

• 28:25Speaker 03

  Yes, he came to England on a visit. He asked me to arrange a hire car for him. And because nobody drove in my family at all, he was a racing driver. I've got pictures of him, lots of cups on the hood of his car.

• 28:48Speaker 03

  This big beard and this cup. And he asked me to arrange a hire car for him. And I did. I was immensely proud of it because I had no experience of cars at all. I somehow got in touch with whoever it was in that day, Hertz or whatever it was. And there he arrived, my father, a shocking sight really to me. He was still wearing sort of bush shorts and he'd lost a kneecap in the war. And so he sort of lurched and was extremely bronzed and sweaty and so on. And he spoke in grunts mostly.

• 29:28Speaker 03

  And we got into the car that I'd so carefully arranged and the conversation sort of just faltered very, very quickly, particularly when he started denouncing the black population of Africa in terms which are just stomach churning to me then and even now, a hundred times worse now. Because this was, yeah, sixty-nine, right.

• 29:58Speaker 03

  So that is really the last time I saw him. And then the next, and he would write me occasionally letters.

• 30:07Speaker 03

  Very often, there was this pretence that he'd sent me a postal order, but which never materialized. Somehow, they'd always got lost.

• 30:17Speaker 02

  Where did he die?

• 30:19Speaker 03

  Well, when he died, I was working in Edinburgh,

• 30:24Speaker 03

  in the Young Lyceum Company, in the Edinburgh Festival of that year. And so I arrived off the train at Waverley, went to the stage door, and the director of the theatre, not the director of the play, but the director of the theatre was there, and said to me, "Would you, Simon, welcome, would you like to come for a short drive?" And I said,

• 30:52Speaker 03

  "Yeah, sure." I thought, "This is rather nice. On your first day in a new company, the director takes you out for a drive." And we talked of this and that. And then eventually he said,

• 31:04Speaker 03

  I don't know if you know this, he said,

• 31:07Speaker 03

  "I think your father may be not well. I mean, very, very ill. I mean, I think he might be..." And I said, "Dead? You mean dead?" And he said, "Yeah, I didn't want to be the person to tell you this." And I said, "Oh, it's all right. I know you better than I knew him. How's the season going?" And that's all the effect it had on me. And then we went to the police station, and then I gathered what had happened, which is basically he died of cirrhosis of the liver.

• 31:37Speaker 02

  And where was he when he died?

• 31:39Speaker 03

  Still in Zambia.

• 31:41Speaker 02

  And was that the end of it for you? Was that the end of it of him in your life?

• 31:45Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 31:46Speaker 02

  Is there, what, if I ask you now, do you have in you today that you got from him? Is there anything?

• 31:53Speaker 03

  I looked like him.

• 31:57Speaker 03

  I don't know.

• 31:58Speaker 02

  Well, and also, when you played Toby Belch, you decided, Toby Belch is my father.

• 32:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, exactly.

• 32:05Speaker 02

  And did you play him like, were you conscious when you played Toby Belch?

• 32:08Speaker 03

  I was, I was. And that's probably the closest I've got to my father for a long time. Because he was also very sentimental. He cried. And I, when we did our production, and we sang,

• 32:23Speaker 03

  Feste sang, you know, "Youth of stuff will not endure," and all of that. I find myself weeping, as I know he would have done in his cups, you know, the loss, nothing having really come of his life at all.

• 32:39Speaker 03

  Anyway, so that was that. So I came back to England in, yeah, sixty-two.

• 32:47Speaker 02

  Sixty-two.

• 32:48Speaker 03

  Sixty-two, when I was thirteen, having missed the eleven plus and all of that.

• 32:52Speaker 02

  So you were going to go to a secondary school, but it was going to be an independent school, was it?

• 32:55Speaker 03

  No, it was actually the grammar school. It was the London Oratory Grammar School.

• 33:01Speaker 02

  Oh, well done.

• 33:01Speaker 03

  In Chelsea.

• 33:42Speaker 00

  Hi, it's Danny Pellegrino from Everything Iconic. Twelve celebrities, one Don, and cold, hard cash. From the producers of The Traitors comes The Mob, a new Hulu original series. The iconic Parker Posey hosts this unique reality competition show where twelve celebrity contestants shake down in an Italian villa to win a share of up to $250,000. Watch the new Hulu original series, The Mob, premiering October 26 on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus for bundle subscribers. Terms apply.

• 34:15Speaker 04

  Network freedom and flexibility, that's what you want in a healthcare plan. With a Humana Medicare Advantage PPO plan, you can see any doctor in the country who accepts Medicare, including specialists. No referrals, no kidding. Learn more at gethumana.com. See any doctor who accepts Medicare and is willing to bill Humana. Humana PPOs may not be available in all areas. Benefits and costs share may vary. Humana is a Medicare Advantage PPO organization with a Medicare contract. Enrollment in any Humana plan depends on contract renewal.

• 34:49Speaker 02

  So describe the teenage Simon Callaghan. You arrived at the school age thirteen. Are you still large? Are you still, describe yourself as the fat boy from Streatham.

• 34:57Speaker 03

  Plump, definitely.

• 34:59Speaker 02

  You're plump?

• 34:59Speaker 03

  Yes, yes.

• 35:00Speaker 02

  And still full of energy?

• 35:03Speaker 02

  And how are you using this energy? Not for sport?

• 35:06Speaker 03

  Certainly not, no. Indeed, no. No, for just racing around like a lunatic and...

• 35:11Speaker 02

  Running things within the school?

• 35:14Speaker 03

  I did become, I did co-found the Literary and Dramatic Society, Red Place. Oh, and because I was passionate about classical music, because I had, my grandmother had, I think I said, this vast collection of shellac recordings. And they were the open sesame for me to a world of music, which is, probably means more to me than most anything,

• 35:42Speaker 03

  any other element of my life,

• 35:46Speaker 03

  socially and artistically. I just adore music, and I listen to it constantly. I'm very knowledgeable about it. I'm not a performer of any kind. I did ask my mother if I could have piano lessons, and she said, probably quite rightly, "No, because you've manifested no talent whatsoever up till now. And if you start now, it'll only take time away from your proper studies." Because, you know, this big idea for her was me to get to Oxford or Cambridge, become a Don, you know.

• 36:17Speaker 02

  So why did you go to Queen's University Belfast?

• 36:20Speaker 03

  My plan was to go to Trinity College Dublin, mostly because of Oscar Wilde, because by then, you know, I was aware that I was gay, or whatever one called it in those days. I don't think gay had quite caught on yet, from a very early age.

• 36:38Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 36:38Speaker 03

  A very, very early age.

• 36:40Speaker 02

  A pretty thirteen, pre-adolescence.

• 36:42Speaker 03

  I knew that I was very attracted to, not only other boys, but men. Because there was an absence of men in the family, you see. Because obviously, my grandfather had died, both my grandfathers had died, leaving behind just women. And my mother was separated from her husband. My aunt, who was an absolutely extraordinary woman, of remarkable brilliance, but harsh and combative, and hard drinking and hard swearing. But I thought she was a wonderful person, just magnificent, extraordinary woman, who had her hair done up like the evil queen in Her Snow White.

• 37:30Speaker 03

  And her fingernails painted like that. Had many, many boyfriends, but was scornful of them all. They'd all let her down, one way or another.

• 37:39Speaker 03

  Men were a very, sort of threatened species in my family. They were like, it was, hang on to them. The local priest was a regular visitor, you know, for drinks, just to get male energy into the house. And so I shared this excitement about the otherness of men, you know, of grown-up men. And so I was very, because I was, you know, a big reader and so on, I knew pretty well what I was and what I wanted.

• 38:13Speaker 02

  And you were comfortable with that?

• 38:16Speaker 03

  Well, it didn't trouble me.

• 38:21Speaker 03

  It was a little hard in my school to sort of, there didn't seem to be anybody who was gay there at all. Or if they were, they were so extreme and flamboyant and all the rest of it. I thought, "Oh, God, I really don't want to do that." And then I read a book by...

• 38:40Speaker 03

  D J West, his name was, he was a government, uh, government.

• 38:46Speaker 02

  This is a famous book. I remember the book. It was a Penguin.

• 38:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 38:49Speaker 02

  I can see the cover.

• 38:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 38:51Speaker 02

  Blue bottom half and there's some orange and red in the top half.

• 38:54Speaker 03

  Yeah. And just called Homosexuality.

• 38:57Speaker 02

  It is. I remember this book.

• 38:58Speaker 03

  And, and it's a very depressing book and it's, uh, it, it, it paints a picture of the life of gay men particularly as being utterly bleak and, and, and disconsolate. And I've always, it, it, it really, um, it, it, it, it did cast a shadow over me for quite a period. And then I read a wonderful book, an absolutely extraordinary book by Brian McGee. You remember who I, you know, who I'm talking about.

• 39:30Speaker 02

  I knew Brian McGee, an academic.

• 39:32Speaker 03

  I knew Brian very, very well by then. We were very, very close friends. Brian McGee.

• 39:38Speaker 02

  And he became quite well known through television as a kind of public intellectual.

• 39:42Speaker 03

  He was an M P, uh, all kinds of, he wrote a book called One in Twenty, which came from one of his documentaries, which was about the condition of gay people in England. And he basically said, the law as it stands is absolutely preposterous, unjust, stupid, makes people's lives miserable. People who would otherwise be perfectly happy and contribute to society. And I thought, yes. And threw the D J West out of the window and put the Brian McGee up in its place. And after that, I felt not exactly militant, but I, I never concealed my, uh, this is a very curious thing is that when I was at school, um, I was, I was very candid about, uh, being, you know, they'd say things like, who do you fancy? And who do you really fancy?

• 40:26Speaker 03

  And I'd say Cliff Richard. And I did too. He was very dishy in those days. And, uh, um, uh, they didn't seem to, didn't seem to faze anybody at all.

• 40:35Speaker 02

  Good. I mean, can you remember your first crush that was reciprocated?

• 40:40Speaker 03

  I never had a crush that was reciprocated at last. I did have, I did have big crushes. And, uh, uh, and they, the, the objects of my desire sort of probably knew that that was behind it, but nothing was ever said and it was all very nice. But no, it wasn't till I, till I got out of school and all of that, that I was able to finally, uh, uh, meet somebody and, uh, and then, then it all went.

• 41:08Speaker 02

  So you're going to Queens in Ross in Belfast because you don't get into Trinity?

• 41:11Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 41:12Speaker 02

  I mean, that's it. You failed to get into Trinity.

• 41:14Speaker 03

  No, no, it was because the British government ceased to give grants.

• 41:16Speaker 02

  Ah, because it was Ireland as opposed to Northern Ireland.

• 41:19Speaker 03

  Exactly, yeah. So I thought, oh, I'll go to Belfast. It'll be much the same. It really wasn't at all the same. But I, wonderful. I love.

• 41:26Speaker 02

  And you discovered Oscar Wilde because of this whole interest in that.

• 41:29Speaker 03

  Totally.

• 41:30Speaker 02

  And he becomes, he's the heroic figure.

• 41:31Speaker 03

  Totally, absolutely, yes.

• 41:33Speaker 02

  And when do you meet the great Michael McLeermore?

• 41:37Speaker 03

  That's in Belfast.

• 41:39Speaker 02

  Good. Explain to people who Michael McLeermore is for those that don't know.

• 41:42Speaker 03

  Yeah. Uh, Michael McLeermore was an absolutely unique phenomenon. He was, was a boy actor of some reclame, if you consider. He played Oliver Twist to Beer Broom Trees' Fagin. He was a big boy star on the West End stage.

• 42:03Speaker 02

  What was his name at that stage?

• 42:05Speaker 03

  His name was Alfred Wilmore.

• 42:08Speaker 03

  And then, so then, uh, came, uh, the, the war and, uh, he was growing a little, uh, he, he, he grew out of being a boy actor. He, he, he, he appeared in a play with Noel Coward. They were both boy actors. They, it was, whenever, um, Coward used to meet him, he'd say, and you're still three months older than I am.

• 42:31Speaker 03

  Um, uh, and, uh, Michael then, like many, he went to school, he went to the Slade School as an art student, thinking he might be a theatre designer. And there, how exactly, I, I, I'm not absolutely sure, but there he met uh, uh, someone who introduced him to the Irish movement, the, the, the, the Gaelic movement. And so he started to learn Irish, which is the most extraordinary thing for a young boy from Wilston, you know, at art school to, to have done. His cousin and he toured Europe. She had T B.

• 43:13Speaker 03

  And they went from one watering hole to another and eventually ended up in Ireland, where she somehow had Irish connections. Michael had no, no, no drop of Irish, uh, blood in him at all. And he went to, um, uh, uh, saw touring company there. And, uh, suddenly the idea of being an actor again came to him. But he had meanwhile learned Irish so well that, that he was speaking Irish fluently. He'd adopted an Irish accent and he'd invented this name, Michael McLeermore, which is an unprecedented name in Irish. You know, I don't think anybody else has ever called McLeermore, but anyway, there he was.

• 43:53Speaker 03

  Uh, called Michael McLeermore. And, uh, he wrote the, one of the first modern plays in Irish, uh, Diomed O'Grona and, uh, uh, was clearly a very good actor, rather wonderful actor. And he met the sort of, uh, partner of his life, Michael Hilton Edwards. And they together decided to form a company which became the Gate Theatre in Dublin.

• 44:18Speaker 02

  Now bring yourself into this story because he is one of the figures, I think.

• 44:23Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 44:23Speaker 02

  Knowing you, who is a formative figure.

• 44:26Speaker 03

  Totally.

• 44:27Speaker 02

  And how did you meet him and why was he formative?

• 44:30Speaker 03

  Uh, I, I, I, I knew who Michael McLeermore was because of my obsession with Wilde. I'd read everything about Wilde. I came across this in the public library where you could, uh, get, uh, gramophone records to, to borrow. Uh, I came across this thing called The Importance of Being Oscar, which was, uh, on two albums, two, two twelve inch, uh, vinyl albums. And it was the most extraordinary. I, I, I was enchanted by what I heard. Because McLeermore, and this is just the voice of McLeermore, uh, simply plunged you into the life of Oscar Wilde and, and, and had filleted the life so brilliantly that you understood really, I think,

• 45:16Speaker 03

  uh, the essence of Oscar Wilde and, and what had happened to him and, and, and what, what he was as both a man and an artist. And so I knew these albums, these records, had listened to them again and again and again. And there was something called the Irish University Drama Association. And this year it was held in, there, there was an annual competition. And the, at, uh, the university, I was part of the Drama Society, of course, which was responsible for our involvement in the, uh, the competition. Uh, they said, um, uh, we've asked Michael McLeermore to adjudicate it. And I said,

• 45:56Speaker 03

  well, then I'm going down to Dublin with a tape recorder to interview him for the, for the student newspaper. And, uh, I, uh, rang the bell and I was ushered in. And then suddenly McLeermore appeared wearing a, a dressing gown and, and wearing heavy street makeup. I mean, extraordinary with a toupee, a palpable toupee, toupee. And then just erupted into this phenomenally brilliant conversation. I'd never heard anyone.

• 46:28Speaker 02

  And he is seventy and you are twenty, sort of.

• 46:31Speaker 03

  I suppose he was seventy, yes. Hmm, hmm, yeah. Uh, exactly. And, um, and the, the whole phenomenon and, and he was very, uh, he didn't treat me as if I was, uh, uh, uh, seventeen at all. He treated me as if I was his oldest friend. And, uh, he said, you know, I've, he said, I said, there were all these, um, Beardsley's on the wall.

• 46:55Speaker 02

  Aubrey Beardsley.

• 46:55Speaker 03

  Aubrey Beardsley. Wonderful, wonderful Beardsley. So, so I once seen them reproduced and here were the originals. And, um, I said, oh, this is, this is, this is, this is, he said, ah, yes, he said, is it? That idiot woman, Brigid Brophy, says that, uh, as she holds her fingers up in the air, it's, it's a phallus, she said. Well, I've never seen a phallus like it and I've seen a few, I can tell you. We were into suddenly intimacy of it was like being in some fabulous club or something. It was just absolutely amazing. And I had this ancient

• 47:38Speaker 03

  tape recorder with me, huge great big box like things I'd lugged all the way down. And it was jittering through and I said, I'm sure it'll be all right. So I got back to London, completely intoxicated by his personality and discovered that I hadn't only half recorded or whatever. So I then basically made the interview up, you know, and published it and it gets great prominence in gown and the paper gown. And then Michael sent me a letter saying, many congratulations on your marvelously accurate interview with

• 48:17Speaker 03

  me. I've never been so accurately quoted in my life, from beginning to end, more or less. And then when he, when he, when he actually came up, I said, and now I must be his amanuensis, because he had cataracts at that time and they were growing out, as they used to say. And so he couldn't really even see his own handwriting. So I went round with him to every event we sat there and I wrote the, you know, I wrote down his judgments, you know, he dictated them to me. But he used to sit in his hotel room with

• 49:00Speaker 03

  this kind of terrible, cheap, plastic wig. He said, Ah, yes, he said, my wonderful black tresses, all my own, every one of them. So he was, he was a cornucopia of anecdote and naughtiness. It was a lovely combination. And but and very, there was a great seriousness about him too. He and Hilton had made this theatre together and we, but one of the duties I had was to take Michael around to lunches and so on.

• 49:33Speaker 02

  So how long were you with him, working for him?

• 49:35Speaker 03

  Just a week, just a week. And Tom Stoppard was, the very young Tom Stoppard, he'd just had success with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. And Michael said to him, Oh, Tom, he said, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, he said, how did you do it? I understand how you found the comedy, but the pity and the terror. I don't know, I felt as if I was next to Henry Irving or something. I mean, it was just absolutely astonishing. And of course, I was looking after him in his dressing room. And that was a fascinating experience

• 50:13Speaker 03

  because all he did was he wore a rather 80s and 90s dinner jacket, smoking jacket, really, and a white shirt and patent shoes. And but they had to be impeccable. And I was, you know, I was taught by him how to iron it and how to pack it and all of that. And he was full of bonhomie and wonderful, wonderful stories and naughtiness and to begin with. And then as the clock ticked, he began to get nervous and more nervous. And then the

• 50:54Speaker 03

  story stopped and then he stopped talking altogether. And then because of his cataract, I had to take him down the little corridor and he asked me to push him onto the stage, push him actually onto the stage. And as we went down that corridor, he took me by the hand and dug his fingernails into my hand while crossing himself, Jesus, Mary and Joseph, Jesus, Jesus, Mary and Joseph, Jesus, spare me, spare me. And then he'd literally, I'd push him up the stairs and he'd say, Look, there goes that bloody fool, Oscar Wilde, the gentleman said to his companion. And Oscar Wilde turned around and he said,

• 51:37Speaker 03

  it's extraordinary how quickly one becomes known in London. And he was in it absolutely. And I slipped round the front and watched him beguiling this audience of sort of Ulster people, like, you know, literally farmers and, and, and, and, and people whom he made feel sophisticated. They became sophisticated. They laughed. They understood all these wonderful jokes of Wilde's through the medium of Michael. Michael had sort of somehow made it all live for them. It was an extraordinary lesson.

• 52:29Speaker 05

  Welcome to 215 Maple Drive. We just put this property on the market.

• 52:35Speaker 00

  Love the crown molding.

• 52:37Speaker 05

  Oh, wait until you see the walk-in closets and the bathroom tile.

• 52:40Speaker 00

  Does it have Verizon FiOS? You know, 100% fiber internet?

• 52:44Speaker 05

  No FiOS, but it looks like it's got cable. Let's check out the kitchen.

• 52:48Speaker 00

  No FiOS? Yeah, no, thank you.

• 52:51Speaker 05

  Don't you want to see the rest? Okay. Bye bye.

• 52:54Speaker 03

  Get Verizon FiOS because when you're moving, it's 100% or nothing.

• 52:58Speaker 00

  Hi, it's Danny Pellegrino from Everything Iconic. 12 celebrities, one Don and cold hard cash. From the producers of The Traitors comes The Mob, the new Hulu original series. The iconic Parker Posey hosts this unique reality competition show where 12 celebrity contestants shake down in an Italian villa to win a share of up to $250,000. Watch the new Hulu original series, The Mob, premiering October 26 on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus for bundle subscribers. Terms apply.

• 53:31Speaker 04

  Network freedom and flexibility. That's what you want in a healthcare plan. With a Humana Medicare Advantage PPO plan, you can see any doctor in the country who accepts Medicare, including specialists. No referrals, no kidding. Learn more at gethumana.com. See any doctor who accepts Medicare and is willing to build Humana. Humana PPOs may not be available in all areas. Benefits and costs share may vary. Humana is a Medicare Advantage PPO organization with a Medicare contract. Enrollment in any Humana plan depends on contract renewal.

• 54:05Speaker 03

  So you sought out this heroic figure from the Irish theatre, though he was not Irish at all, and you then sought out a heroic figure from world theatre in writing to Laurence Olivier, is this right? That's absolutely right, yeah. And why had you written to Laurence Olivier?

• 54:22Speaker 03

  Well, because I was, I left school not having the remotest idea of what to do. I'd had these, entertained these ideas, perhaps we all do, of one hand being a diplomat, I thought. But then I realized that it was just the canapes and the champagne that I was wanting to be a diplomat for. There'd be a lawyer, perhaps, but I realized it was just standing in court in my wig and gown and saying, I submit, my lad, and so on. And so I really, honestly, I just had no real idea about what to do. And I was, meanwhile, passionately in love with the theatre. I'd read every play that I could get my hands

• 55:03Speaker 03

  on. I took myself into the West End to see plays. Above all, I took myself to the National Theatre at the Old Vic. We even went there with the school those days.

• 55:13Speaker 02

  And you saw Robert Stevens and Roll Under the Sun, all those?

• 55:17Speaker 03

  All those people, Maggie and Much Ado About Nothing and so on, and so on, and all these wonderful ones. And it was glamorous. The National Theatre at that period was unbelievably glamorous, in a way that no other theatre in London. The Binky's Day had sort of started to fade in the West End.

• 55:32Speaker 02

  The 1950s, all that glamour had gone.

• 55:34Speaker 03

  All of that had sort of gone, faded away anyway. But the National Theatre was this strutting group of fantastic actors, many of them young, some of them among the greatest actors of our time, Edith Evans, Michael Redgrave and so on, and Olivier himself at the centre of it all. And it was a dream, a centuries old dream of creating a National Theatre and all that. And I, so I went there very often. And one day I just had this sort of revelation. I thought, well, this is extraordinary because what is wonderful about this building is that everybody who works there knows how extraordinary what's going on on the stage is and is there to serve that. It sort of inspires them. They're all, and it was, you

• 56:18Speaker 03

  know, it was the first time that ushers in the West End had worn uniforms and all that kind of thing. And I just thought, God, what a wonderful, what a wonderful phenomenon. That's, that's all I thought. And so I sat down and because then my great dream was to be a writer. And I'd sold all my records and had my little typewriter and so on.

• 56:37Speaker 02

  And you sold your records and ought to be able to afford to buy a typewriter.

• 56:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I, and I, and I.

• 56:42Speaker 02

  And what were you going to write?

• 56:43Speaker 03

  Well, what else would I write about but me?

• 56:46Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 56:46Speaker 03

  And even I realized how tedious that was after a while. But anyway, I went to the, to the Old Vic and saw this. And so went to heaven, typed out a three full scap page letter to Laurence Olivier, explaining to him what a wonderful theatre he had. And I think I might have ended with the phrase such as, it makes one feel proud to be British, which is a perfectly wonderful thing to say to Laurence Olivier, who was a deeply patriotic man. And by return of post, them was the days, I got a letter back saying, well, if you like it so much, why don't you come work here in the box office?

• 57:19Speaker 02

  From Olivier? Signed by Olivier?

• 57:23Speaker 03

  And I was working in a bookshop then, and I said, I have a little letter from Laurence Olivier. And one of the women secretaries said, show it to me. I used to work for him. I'll tell you if it's his own signature. She said, that's it. That's Larry's signature, definitely. And so I got a job in the box office, which is a great place to work if to to to learn about the theatre from from the ground floor upwards, because you there are no illusions in the box office. You know what succeeds and what fails. You know what the public's saying about the even the individual actors. People are very chatty at the box office, as we were in those days. And Olivier functioned very much as the actor manager of the company.

• 58:02Speaker 03

  He was a very, you know, paternalistic figure. He he he he looked after his company. And it it was remarkable. He knew, seemed to know everybody's name. And I thought, well, he's Laurence Olivier. He's, you know, got the best memory in the business. But I discovered later, on the contrary, that he had photographs of everybody. And Joan Plaurit used to test him on it. He'd hold up a photograph and he'd say, um, Tony, Tony, no, again, starts with an S. Simon Callow, is he that boy in the box office? He'd know everybody's name.

• 58:38Speaker 02

  Good grief.

• 58:38Speaker 03

  Absolutely remarkable. Then he'd also decided that there should be a canteen in the Old Vic. He'd knocked down two store rooms, hired a very good chef, and laid on food at rock bottom prices. So everybody was there in the canteen, everybody, the whole company, because the food was so good and so cheap. And so you would find yourself sitting next to Joan Plaurit, or or or the chief sparks, or the designer of the set, or that. And suddenly, I was in this extraordinary world. And then the best of all for me was that Monday nights were dark in the theatre, so as they could rehearse on the stage.

• 59:20Speaker 03

  And I therefore could sneak in at the back of the stalls and watch Peter Brook rehearse Oedipus with John Gilgood and Irene Wirth. Laurence Olivier rehearsed The Three Sisters. The staff producer re-rehearsed A Flea in Her Ear, which was running at the time. And I discovered that, contrary to my imagination, actors don't stand around in dressing gowns, smoking cigarettes out of cigarette holders and uttering criticisms. They try to get the scene right. And and there was just a lot of this kind of, well, I don't know how to do this. What I can't, it doesn't make any sense. How can I come do this and do that?

• 1:00:04Speaker 03

  And then somebody would say, well, why don't you try coming on left instead of right? And they say, well, I'll try. And I'd say, actually, that helps. That's wonderful. I thought, what a fabulous way to make a living, solving these problems of how you release these plays, how you liberate them. So then I thought, well, I must, I suppose I'd better see if I can act, because there was no school drama in my school, no school drama at all. So I had no idea whether I could act, honestly, no idea at all. I thought, well, I could go to amateur theatre, I suppose. But I I sort of felt I instinctively knew that wasn't quite what I needed. Or I could go as various young actors of the time, like Ian McKellen and so on,

• 1:00:49Speaker 03

  had gone to university and learned to act there. Or I could go to drama school. I think probably drama school is the right thing to do. But anyway, I I I I couldn't figure that one out for myself. Instead, I went to university, thinking, well, at least I can join a drama society or something.

• 1:01:09Speaker 02

  And did you then go to drama school after university?

• 1:01:11Speaker 03

  I did. I I because I I left, I I realized that I I because I played Trigore in The Seagull and realized that I I was absolutely hopeless. And and that I'd have to, if I really was going to find out if I could act, I'd have to go to drama school. So I left Queen's University and and and I then went back into box office. The I went to the Mermaid Theatre, which is an education in itself.

• 1:01:38Speaker 02

  Bernard Miles.

• 1:01:39Speaker 03

  Bernard Miles. And that was a real revelation, actually. That theatre, which is dead now, and long dead and gone tragically, was an astonishing organisation. The the range of the repertory was absolutely unique, way ahead of the RSC and the National Theatre, but with no money, you know. But but they were doing extraordinary, extraordinary things. So I learned a lot from that, and I worked and met Bernard Miles and all the rest of it. It was a really, it was a wonderful place to be. And then the RSC in the time of Julie Dench and and and, you know, all those astonishing productions like The Twelfth Night and Troy, the Cressida, Barton's masterpiece, and and so on and so on and so on.

• 1:02:23Speaker 03

  So but all the while I was planning to go to drama school, and I I I hopped off one afternoon and went and auditioned for this place called the Drama Centre, which I I've read the prospectus of all the drama schools, and they all look like holiday camps, except for the Drama Centre, which looked like a concentration camp. And I thought, that's the one for me. I I was already feeling very old by now. I was twenty three or something like that by the time I went to drama school. And so, uh, uh, I I I left and one of the one of those lovely cleaning ladies at the Old Rich, there, just said to me, uh, so where, where, what are you doing, Sam? What are you doing at the moment?

• 1:03:03Speaker 03

  I said, well, I'm I'm going to drama school. She said, oh, she said, that's quite right. You look like one, you know. You look like an actor. So I said, I felt maybe she was right. Anyway, so I went to drama school.

• 1:03:15Speaker 02

  In you I see, and we can't go through your whole career, because we would be here for a whole series. An extraordinary and wonderful career, the breakout moment, I suppose, in the public consciousness of when you were in Amadeus at the National with Paul Schofield, playing Mozart, and then the Merchant Ivory films and all of that. But I look at your career, and you are the golden thread that links this world that you evoke so beautifully, the Michael McLeomore world, born eighteen ninety nine, the Laurence Olivier world, born nineteen seventy, with twenty twenty five. And that has been a thread throughout your life.

• 1:03:58Speaker 02

  And you've been a writer, and you've written about these gigantic heroic figures. You've done things that your heroes did. You've played Oscar Wilde, and I think McLeomore's version.

• 1:04:09Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 1:04:09Speaker 02

  You've done Charles Dickens, since you have been a Shakespearean actor. You've done a show about Shakespeare, and that's the one man show tradition, as in Michael McLeomore, but also as actually in Bernard Miles. He used to do one man shows as well.

• 1:04:23Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 1:04:23Speaker 02

  Has this life that you've led, do you feel you're a modern person, an old person? Has the golden thread that has enchanted me all the time I've seen you and read your books and loved your work, do you think it's been a disadvantage?

• 1:04:41Speaker 03

  No, I don't think so. I I have no complaints about my career. It's been a bit erratic, but that's sort of kept me on my toes. I I like that. I've I've done, I think I that's my greed, you see, again. I I I wanted to do as much of as many different things as I could possibly do. And I I've done quite a lot of the the things I thought I might be able or be allowed to do. Like I've directed operas, musicals, plays. I've directed film. I've just finished directing my second film.

• 1:05:23Speaker 03

  I've done, especially, I I'm very excited by the one man format, which I I I've done about four or five, well, actually, about ten, one one one person plays, which is not just megalomania. It's a very particular relationship with the audience. Because if there's anything, any one word that would sum up for me the quintessence of the theatre, it's storytelling. I believe passionately in stories, and I know that there's a lot of brilliant conceptual theatre around in our lives.

• 1:06:06Speaker 03

  But whether it tells a story is the crucial matter for me. And often I find the more brilliant the concept, the less clear the story. And I I I, like any actor will tell you.

• 1:06:22Speaker 03

  Long for and wait for that moment in the theatre. When it's, it's not, the thing we're not longing for is laughter or applause. The thing we're longing for is that silence where people are just focused totally on what you're telling them and they just must know how this story ends. What is it I, the, the more, in, in the one person shows, I, I've been able to kind of hold on to them from the first word to the last. Then I feel that, that consummation has occurred. It's been a really, that's, that's, it, it's not just that it takes people out of themselves, it takes them into themselves. It, it focuses them in a wonderful way.

• 1:07:07Speaker 03

  And there's nothing, I think, well, anyway, for me, more gratifying than a story well told, either on the page, on the screen, or on, on, on, on the stage itself. And for me, as an actor, it's, it's, it's, it's not about, it can be, of course, and that may be part of the story too, about splendid effects, wonderful stay, stay, stagecraft and all the rest of that, that's a wonderful thing in itself. But unless I'm engaged by the people on the stage and connected, united with them, so

• 1:07:45Speaker 03

  that I am absolutely, that we're in time present totally. When that happens, I think, then I've spent my life well, you know. That's, that's as much as I ever aimed for, and that's what I hope has happened, you know.

• 1:08:07Speaker 02

  You've certainly told your story magnificently. You're fascinated by great men who are complicated, I think.

• 1:08:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:08:15Speaker 02

  You've written about Charles Lawton, great actor, complex figure. Written about Orson Welles, great man.

• 1:08:22Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 1:08:23Speaker 02

  Complicated figure.

• 1:08:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, come on.

• 1:08:25Speaker 02

  We are called Rosebud because of the Orson Welles film.

• 1:08:28Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:08:29Speaker 02

  Um, are we right to call ourselves Rosebud? I mean, I, I saw a clip of him, of Orson Welles, rather dismissing it, saying it's become a cliche, I rather regret it.

• 1:08:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, he always said, whenever he, whenever he wanted to dissociate himself from something, he claimed that it wasn't him who did it. He would say that it was Herman Mankiewicz.

• 1:08:46Speaker 02

  Oh, yes.

• 1:08:47Speaker 03

  That idea. He's called it Dollar Book Freud. Um, uh, it, it's just, it's just, it's, it's a MacGuffin. It's a kind of a, a, a hook. Um, although I think, you know, the early scenes in Citizen Kane, the little boy who's somehow separated from his family, uh, and inherits great wealth, is not Welles's actual story, but there is, because he lost both his parents and felt weirdly guilty about the death of both of them. Uh, there's something very, uh, there's something resonant there, something resonant.

• 1:09:28Speaker 02

  You lost both your parents, in a sense. One through, literally, your father disappearing.

• 1:09:32Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 1:09:33Speaker 02

  And the other through your mother being the odd person you describe her as being. Does that bother you now?

• 1:09:39Speaker 03

  Um, well, it's just, it's literally, it's, and it can happen in families, can't it? It's just literally, we have two people that would not normally have been together. But, but because she was my mother and I was her son, then we were. And we had to kind of make the best fist out of that that we could. And, um, you know, um, I, I, I, I feel very strongly now how incredibly hard she worked, sacrificed a great deal, uh, to enable me to be properly educated. That was her big obsession. And, and it really, I mean, it was a, yeah, it was very sad.

• 1:10:23Speaker 03

  When I, when I wrote my, my first book, I, I, it's called Being an Actor, I dedicated it to her and I sent her the manuscript. I heard nothing from her at all. And I said to her, after a while, I said, um, did you get the manuscript? Yes, I got it. And I said, well, what, what, what do you think? And she said, it made me angry. She said, I thought, he can write, he's intelligent and he wastes his life on being an actor. And that was kind of, uh, it, it, I just thought, God, you really don't get it, do you, at all? I didn't feel angry, I didn't feel disappointed, I, I, I didn't, I just thought, no, this

• 1:11:06Speaker 03

  is an unbridgeable gulf. Because she just does regard the theatre as basically, the theatre, acting, et cetera, as basically being shallow and, and easy and cheap. And, and had I been, you know, uh, the head of a, a, a, a college at Cambridge, then she would have thought, if I was the master of Maudlin, I think she would have died happy. And I, I mean, she had Alzheimer's so badly that I, I don't have any idea how she, you know, was. But, uh, she did say something to me, which is probably one of the most sort of heartbreaking things that, uh, uh, my entire life was.

• 1:11:49Speaker 03

  One day, there was a sort of lucid interval, interlude in her Alzheimer's and she sort of woke up and she saw me, I was over there, and she said, oh, oh, oh, hello. And, uh, uh, she said, where, where, where have you been? And I said, well, I've been, you know, working, I've been in America a little bit and I've been in, in, in, in France, I've been in Spain. And she said, oh, oh, yes. Uh, um, uh, she said, you work very hard, don't you? And I said, well, you work very hard. And she said, did I? So I said, oh, yes, yes. You were a very hard worker and, and, and everybody knew it and acknowledged it.

• 1:12:29Speaker 03

  I said, I've got letters from people, uh, your ex-bosses, you know, saying how, tributes to you, saying how wonderfully helpful you were and how you organized everything so fantastically and how hard it was going to be to do without you and so on. And she said, like a, almost like a little girl, she said, you mean, I was of value? I mean, terrible things to hear from somebody, but, but that's, of course, that was, in a way, her, her problem of her life. She didn't think that she'd been recognized or, or, or the, or everything she'd done,

• 1:13:11Speaker 03

  although, God knows, I told her often enough, but terrible.

• 1:13:17Speaker 02

  Well, that can be your moment of sadness. A moment of joy, I've met Sebastian, your partner, now husband.

• 1:13:23Speaker 03

  Husband, indeed.

• 1:13:24Speaker 02

  Were you lucky in love before you met him?

• 1:13:27Speaker 03

  Oh, yes.

• 1:13:28Speaker 02

  Good.

• 1:13:29Speaker 03

  Very, very lucky in love.

• 1:13:31Speaker 02

  Have you overall been lucky in love?

• 1:13:32Speaker 03

  Seriously lucky in love, yes, I suppose. Yeah, though, you know, otherwise, I, the, the relationships would have endured, but they didn't. But, but they were all, they all had wonderful, wonderful aspects to them and, and, you know, and then, uh, less wonderful aspects. And with Seb, uh, it's been so, uh, much more evenly, uh, about happiness and, and, straightforward, um, love and support and, and, and tenderness and all of this. Um, I suppose I, you might say, I was ready for it, uh, uh, you know, and, and, and he was too.

• 1:14:12Speaker 03

  And so, um, it, it's, uh, it's been just an unalloyed blessing, really.

• 1:14:19Speaker 02

  Congratulations.

• 1:14:20Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 1:14:21Speaker 02

  One last question. I'm going to ask you back another day.

• 1:14:23Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:14:24Speaker 02

  If you don't mind, to talk about Orson Welles.

• 1:14:27Speaker 03

  Oh, yes.

• 1:14:28Speaker 02

  Because you're on to your fourth volume or third? Fourth volume.

• 1:14:31Speaker 03

  Fourth and final.

• 1:14:32Speaker 02

  Fourth and final volume. So when you want to promote Orson Welles and encourage people to buy all the books, we might do a special Rosebud on Orson Welles and maybe throw in a bit of Charles Lawton as well. That was just two volumes, Charles Lawton?

• 1:14:44Speaker 03

  Uh, Lawton, just one.

• 1:14:46Speaker 02

  Just one volume. We might just, as a, as an amuse-bouche, a bit of Lawton and then a proper, uh, deep dive into Welles. Amazing life, wonderful life, uh, wonderful storytelling. What has life taught you? Now, you're in your seventies now, aren't you? Gosh.

• 1:15:06Speaker 03

  Seventy-six, yes.

• 1:15:07Speaker 02

  Oh, trombones can be played.

• 1:15:09Speaker 03

  [laughing]

• 1:15:11Speaker 02

  Very good.

• 1:15:12Speaker 03

  [laughing] What has life taught me? I don't know. I don't know that life has really taught me anything. Uh, um, uh, except just to embrace it, you know. I, I do try to embrace life as much as possible. I, I, I hear myself kind of saying things like, you know, that I don't want to do this anymore, I don't want to do that anymore. But the truth of the matter is that I'm a greedy creature and I, I, I, I'm, my appetite for everything is almost insatiable and, uh, I suppose it sort of keeps one going.

• 1:15:57Speaker 03

  And, um, uh, it's always, life has just been an unending series of surprises. Some, some, some of them quite tedious, but most of them really rather marvelous. And I think that does come from my grandmother somewhere, that, that feeling that, that, that her great joie de vivre was, was, was, was everything to her, even though when she was almost incapacitated and, and so on. If, you know, she'd, she'd take her bed for long, long periods of time and then at the

• 1:16:38Speaker 03

  mention of the word party, she was up on her pins [laughing] and at it, you know. That, that was what her daughters didn't like about her because they thought she was, inverted commas, just an actress. But in fact, she was, she was, uh, she was in life, she was in life, she loved it deeply. And I, I do too.

• 1:17:02Speaker 02

  Wonderful. We began with your grandmother, it's good to end with her.

• 1:17:05Speaker 03

  Yes, indeed.

• 1:17:06Speaker 02

  You will be back, Simon, Simon Cowell. Thank you so much.

• 1:17:09Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 1:17:15Speaker 02

  Oh, my thanks there to Simon Callow. What a voice. Actually, what stories. I really enjoyed that. And I'm very much looking forward to inviting Simon back onto Rosebud at some point in the future to tell us all about Orson Welles. Well, without Orson Welles, there'd be no Rosebud. And so that will be a return visit from Simon Callow at a point in the future. Fantastic. Talking about the future, we are going to be giving the outcome of our postcards competition. I don't know if you remember this, but we invited people to send us postcards. When we read somewhere that the postcard was dead, dying all over for the postcard, we said, no, we still love postcards. If you've got a postcard you want to send us, do send it.

• 1:18:00Speaker 02

  And people have sent us postcards, literally from all over the UK, but also from all over the world. From Svalbard to Auckland, we have received postcards, including some very saucy Donald McGill-style postcards. We haven't yet chosen the winners, but we will be choosing them soon, and they will be getting prizes. And that's going to be something to look forward to some Tuesday in the near future, because it's on Tuesdays that we do that kind of thing. And on Tuesdays, too, we're going to be having to have the results of our poetry competition. Larry Lamb, telling his story in poetry, has proved incredibly popular, a really popular episode. This weekend, Larry will be appearing in person at Chatsworth

• 1:18:43Speaker 02

  House in Derbyshire as part of the Queen's Reading Room Literary Festival. And he and I are going to be in conversation there, and he's going to be performing some of his poems. But people have been sending poems into us, and we've been enjoying reading them. And the best of them, in our view, will be sharing with you at some point in the near future, some upcoming Tuesday. Meanwhile, shall I share a limerick with you? It's from Steve Simmons from Worcester Park in Surrey. This is Steve's limerick. So, Rosebud, a podcast with Giles. He digs into memory files, a lovable host who name-drops the most. Some tears, but then plenty of smiles. Thank you, Steve, for your limerick.

• 1:19:25Speaker 02

  Appreciate it and enjoy it. And thank you very much indeed, Simon Callow, for being with us today. We've got more exciting guests to come next Friday. Well, I won't tell you, but I will want you to listen. And next Tuesday, surprises too. And if you want to join us on a Sunday, you always can. You simply join the Rosebud family. To do that, you go to patreon.com/rosebud and find out all about it. But for today, I just want to leave you with that marvelous message from Simon Callow about, well, the lesson he has learnt. Simply this. Embrace life. Yeah. Embrace life. And thank you for making Rosebud part of your life. Cue the music.

• 1:20:53Speaker 02

  Rosebud is a Plain Jane production, produced by Harriet Jane, hosted by me, Gyles Brandreth, with music by Phil Leopard, and recorded this week at the JW Marriott Grosvenor House in London's Park Lane. Room service.

• 1:21:09Speaker 00

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