Rising Damp (1974)

 

This Much is True by Miriam Margolyes (John Murray Publishers 2021)

 

At that time, in the late sixties and throughout the seventies, Equity was sharply divided on how best to fight apartheid. A growing list of international playwrights, including Daphne du Maurier, Samuel Beckett, Tennessee Williams, Muriel Spark and Arthur Miller signed a declaration through the Anti-Apartheid Movement in London, refusing performing rights for their plays to all theatres in South Africa where discrimination was practised on grounds of colour.

I agreed, I felt that artists and sports people should refuse to work there – we had to name and shame the South African government by boycotting all commercial artistic engagement in the country.

As an Equity Council member, I attended all the meetings. Vanessa Redgrave was never a member of the Council, but she and her brother, Corin, regularly spoke at the annual general meetings with fire and fluency – both superb speakers without notes. I first worked with Vanessa in 1972. Ted Heath was in Number 10; in Equity likewise, the right wing was in power: people like Marius Goring and Nigel Davenport and Leonard Rossiter. Leonard was a bastard: a good actor, but a nasty, spite-driven man. With all those right-wing actors flexing their muscles, the Workers Revolutionary Party faction were the great opposition, and so Vanessa became an important element in the deliberations.

Vanessa was quite retiring, except when there was anything political going on, and then she would harangue you from morning till night. I didn’t know her well but, intoxicated by her articulate conviction, I started to join her at the WRP meetings.

When you were interested in politics in those days – and I suppose for some people it is still the case – you had to go to meetings. You wanted to stand up and be counted, and I was no different. I soon became a signed-up member, though whether I joined the WRP literally because of Vanessa, I don’t know.

Not long after I became a member, the WRP annual summer camp was held in an enclosed field by the Blackwater estuary in Essex; naturally I went along. Gerry Healy, the leader of the WRP, was an unpleasant, devious chap; he was dangerous in fact. There were talks and discussions in a big tent and Gerry would lecture us all about how to move England to the extreme left. I’d never been to that sort of political meeting before, and it was not appealing. Most of the other camp attendees clearly found it rousing: I found it threatening and nasty. I realised then that this wasn’t my idea of a left-wing revolution, but the summer camp was in a beautiful place, and Vanessa and people like Frances de la Tour were there, so I stayed. In the morning, I thought I’d go for a walk with a chum. When we arrived at the fence enclosing the camp, a man with a gun was guarding the gate. He said, ‘Where do you think you’re going?’ I said, ‘For a walk.’ He said, ‘Oh, no. You can’t leave.’ I said, ‘What do you mean we can’t leave? We want to go for a walk.’ ‘Well, you can’t. That’s against the rules,’ he said. ‘No one can leave the camp.’ And he put his hand firmly on his gun. ‘All right, love, keep your hair on,’ I said and we went back to the Red House, our revolutionary hostel. Although I stayed to the end of that particular jamboree, that incident marked the end of my workers’ revolution”

"Rising Damp": A Celebration by Richard Webber (Boxtree 2001)

Eric Chappell's storytelling skills were honed in the playground through necessity. 'I started telling stories at school as a way of avoiding being bullied,' he says. 'The school I attended in Grantham was tough and if you aren't popular for something people tended to pick on you. I was quick with my tongue so kept out of trouble by being entertaining.’

Born in the Lincolnshire town of Grantham in 1933, Eric grew up in an environment not particularly conducive to budding writers. ‘I come from a working-class background and my mother didn’t really approve of writing; she thought it unwise to put something on paper in case it was held against you at a later date,’ explains Eric. ‘Being a discreet lady, my wanting to write worried her a bit.’

However lacking the household was in terms of literature, Eric had a happy and caring upbringing and adopted his father’s enthusiasm for sport ‘Dad was sports-mad and that’s where he got his drama from — he didn’t need books.’ It was Eric’s teacher back in the 1940s who helped him explore and develop his interest in story writing. ‘We had to stand up in class and tell stories, and the first time I did it I spoke for an hour — I couldn’t stop; all these words just poured out of me. I based my story on all the different books I’d borrowed from the library, although I added some ideas of my own. All the other kids enjoyed my stories so much I was asked to do it on a weekly basis.’

As the school years passed and Eric moved on to secondary education, other interests took priority. ‘Sport took over as time went on,’ he admits, 'and we did little serious English at secondary school, so any thought of writing took a back seat for awhile.’ It wasn’t until Eric had left school and started working for the East Midlands Electricity Board that he returned to his stories. 'I was in my mid-twenties and studying accountancy, which was pretty soul destroying. I wasn't a good bookkeeper. I was fine with the essays on law and economics, things like that, but struggled with my maths and accountancy. I got very depressed and failed my finals, so I thought, "Sod this! I'll do what I want to do with my life." '

'Some of us still swear by that Lenin and Dick Francis joke'

If you're not on Jimmy's long list I think you're on the wrong blog:

"I thought support might be difficult." Wonderful.

Hat tip to Andy over at Ghost of a Ne'er do Well blog for bringing this brilliant clip to my attention.

Billy Liar (1963)