The Fry Chronicles Part 8

'You were in that film they made here, weren't you?' he said to me and Kim.

'Chariots of Fire, you mean?'

'Well they've got some sort of premiere at the end of March and a party at the Dorchester Hotel and they want the Footlights to be the entertainment. What do you think?'

'It would make sense if we could actually see the film first. So we could do a sketch about it, or at least make some kind of reference?'

Hugh consulted the letter. 'They're suggesting we go to London on the morning of the thirtieth, go to the screening for film critics that's taking place in the afternoon, rehea.r.s.e in the hotel ballroom and then we'll be put on after the dinner.'

The day before taking the train to London I called my mother to tell her what we were up to.

'Oh, the Dorchester,' she said. 'I haven't been to the Dorchester for years. In fact, I remember the last time clearly. Your father and I went to a ball and it broke up early because the news of John F. Kennedy's a.s.sa.s.sination came through, and n.o.body felt like carrying on.'

On the appointed day the core Footlights team settled down in an empty cinema for the screening of the film, quite expecting to be depressed by a low-budget British embarra.s.sment. As we came out, I brushed a tear from my cheek and said, 'Either I'm in a really odd mood or that was rather fantastic.'

Everybody else seemed to be in agreement.

We hastily put together an opening sketch in which we ran on to the stage in slow motion. Steve Edis, whose ear was every bit as good as Hugh's, had absorbed Vangelis's distinctive musical theme and reproduced it on the piano.

After hanging about for hours in a small dining area set aside for toast masters in red mess jackets and what used to be called the upper servants, we were at last on.

'My lords, ladies and gentlemen,' said the MC into his microphone, 'they twinkled in the twenties and now they're entertaining in the eighties. It's the Cambridge University Footlights!'

Our slo-mo running on stage to Steve's l.u.s.ty rendition of the film score went extremely well, and from the opening explosions of laughter and applause we settled confidently into our material. At some stage however it became apparent that we were losing the audience. There was rustling, murmuring, chair sc.r.a.ping and whispering. Dinner-jacketed men and evening-gowned women were scampering towards the back of the ballroom and ... well, quite frankly ... leaving.

Surely we weren't that that bad? We had not only performed this in Cambridge but we had done evenings at the Riverside Studios in Hammersmith. I was prepared to believe that we might not be to everyone's taste, but such a ma.s.s walk-out seemed like a studied insult. I caught Hugh's eye, which held the wild, rolling look of a gazelle being pulled to earth by a leopard. I dare say my expression was much the same. bad? We had not only performed this in Cambridge but we had done evenings at the Riverside Studios in Hammersmith. I was prepared to believe that we might not be to everyone's taste, but such a ma.s.s walk-out seemed like a studied insult. I caught Hugh's eye, which held the wild, rolling look of a gazelle being pulled to earth by a leopard. I dare say my expression was much the same.

As we lumbered sweatily off stage, with Paul going forward for his monologue with the brave tread of an aristocrat approaching the guillotine, Emma whispered to us, 'Someone's shot Ronald Reagan!'

'What?'

'All the Twentieth Century Fox executives have left and gone to the phones ...'

I rang my mother that night.

'Well that's settled then, darling,' she said. 'No member of this family ever goes to an event at the Dorchester again. It's not fair on America.'

Corpsing Chorus Back in Cambridge, Brigid Larmour was directing the Marlowe Society production that term, Love's Labour's Lost. Love's Labour's Lost. This was the straight drama equivalent of the Footlights May Week Revue, a big-budget (by any standards) production mounted in the Arts Theatre, a splendid professional theatre with an alarming audience capacity of exactly 666. A combination of my persuasive rhetoric and Brigid's natural charm succeeded in securing Hugh for his first Shakespearean role, that of the King of Navarre. I played the character with perhaps the best description in all of Shakespeare's This was the straight drama equivalent of the Footlights May Week Revue, a big-budget (by any standards) production mounted in the Arts Theatre, a splendid professional theatre with an alarming audience capacity of exactly 666. A combination of my persuasive rhetoric and Brigid's natural charm succeeded in securing Hugh for his first Shakespearean role, that of the King of Navarre. I played the character with perhaps the best description in all of Shakespeare's dramatis personae dramatis personae: 'Don Adriano de Armado, a fantastical Spaniard'. Only I wasn't a fantastical Spaniard. For some reason, whenever I attempt Spanish it comes out as Russian or Italian, or a b.a.s.t.a.r.d hybrid of the two. I can manage a Mexican accent acceptably, so my Armado was an inexplicably fantastical Mexican. The major role of Berowne was played by a fine second-year actor called Paul Schlesinger, nephew of the great film director John Schlesinger.

The play opens with a long speech from the King in which he announces that he and the leading members of his court shall forswear the company of women for three years, dedicating themselves to art and scholarship. Hugh and Paul had one of those uncontrollable laughing problems. They only had to catch each other's eye on stage and they would be unable to breathe or speak. For the first few rehearsals this was fine, but after a while I could see Brigid beginning to worry. By the time it came to the dress rehearsal it was apparent that Hugh would simply not be able to get out the words of the opening address unless either Paul was off stage, which made a nonsense of the plot, or some imaginative solution to the problem could be found. Threats and imprecations had proved useless.

'I'm sorry,' each said. 'We're trying not to laugh, it's a chemical thing. Like an allergy.'

Brigid hit upon the happy notion of making everyone everyone on stage in that scene, the King, Berowne, Dumain, Longaville and general court attendants, speak the opening lines together as a kind of chorus. Somehow this worked, and the giggling stopped. on stage in that scene, the King, Berowne, Dumain, Longaville and general court attendants, speak the opening lines together as a kind of chorus. Somehow this worked, and the giggling stopped.

At the first-night party I heard a senior academic and distinguished Shakespeare scholar congratulate Brigid on her idea of presenting the introductory speech as a kind of communal oath. 'A superb concept. It made the whole scene come alive. Really quite brilliant.'

'Thank you, Professor,' said Brigid without a blush, 'it seemed right.'

She caught my eye and beamed.

Cellar Tapes and Celebration The last term arrived. Another May Ball. Finals of the English tripos. The May Week Revue itself. Graduation. Farewell, Cambridge, hullo, world.

For the last Footlights Smoker before we began work on the show itself I recruited my old friend Tony Slattery, who fitted in with the greatest ease. He tore up the audience with guitar songs and extraordinary monologues of his own devising; one girl, according to the fatalistic janitor figure who looked after the premises, actually wet herself.

'There's such a thing,' he said as he shook a canister of Vim over the damp cushion, 'as too too funny.' funny.'

I attempted to persuade Simon Beale to join us too, but he had enough singing and drama to fill his diary. I think he felt that comedy shows somehow weren't quite him. With the addition of Penny Dwyer, with whom I had worked in Mummer productions and who could sing, dance, be funny and do just about anything, we had a cast to join me, Hugh, Emma and Paul Shearer for the big one, the May Week Revue that would go on to Oxford and then Edinburgh.

I wrote a monologue for myself based on Bram Stoker's Dracula Dracula and a two-handed parody of and a two-handed parody of The Barretts of Wimpole Street The Barretts of Wimpole Street, in which Emma played Elizabeth, a bed-bound invalid, and I played Robert, her ardent suitor. Hugh and I had both seen and found hilarious John Barton's Shakespeare Mastercla.s.ses on television, in which he had painfully slowly taken Ian McKellen and David Suchet through the text of a single speech. We put together a sketch in which I did the same with Hugh. So detailed was the textual a.n.a.lysis that we never got further than the opening word, 'Time'.

Hugh asked the previous year's President, Jan Ravens, to direct us, and we began rehearsals in the clubroom. We put together a closing ensemble sketch, in which a ghastly kind of Alan Ayckbourn family playing after-dinner charades breaks down in animosity, revelation and disarray.

Performing the 'Shakespeare Mastercla.s.s' sketch with Hugh.

At some point we must have sat Finals and at another point I must have completed two dissertations, one on Byron's Don Juan Don Juan, another on aspects of E. M. Forster. I can remember neither, having knocked them both up in two frantic evenings: 15,000 words of drivel typed out at high speed.

When the news came that the English results were published I walked to the Senate House, against the walls of which huge notice-boards in wooden frames had been attached. I strained through the crowd of hysterical studentry and found my name in the Upper Second list. I had scored a dull, worthy and unexciting 2:1.

Peter Holland, a don from Trinity Hall who had supervised me for practical criticism and seventeenth-century literature, offered consolation.

'They reread you for a First twice,' he said. 'You came very close. You got good Firsts in all your papers, top in Shakespeare again. But a 2:2 in the Forster dissertation and a Third in the Byron. That's why they just couldn't do it. Hard luck.'

The hurt was more to my pride than to my plans. To be honest, Cambridge was right, I had shown I could fly through written exams against the clock, but the serious work of a dissertation, which required the kind of originality, scholarship and diligence that I either didn't possess or simply couldn't be a.r.s.ed to produce, exposed me for the plausible rogue that I was.

With Kim outside the Cambridge Senate House, celebrating our Tripos results. I was insanely in love with that Cerruti tie.

Hugh read Archaeology and Anthropology and got a far more amusing and likeable cla.s.s of degree. He had been to one lecture, which gave him the material for a quite brilliant monologue about a Bantu hut, but otherwise had not disturbed his professors, written an essay or entered the faculty library. I think he would be the first to admit that you know more about Archaeology and Anthropology than he does.

The first night of our May Week Revue came. The show was called The Cellar Tapes The Cellar Tapes, as much a reference to the underground Footlights clubroom in which it was born as to Bob Dylan's Bas.e.m.e.nt Tapes Bas.e.m.e.nt Tapes or any pun on Sellotape. or any pun on Sellotape.

Hugh came on stage for the opening. 'Ah, good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the May Week Revue. We have an evening of entertainment, of I got a Third by the way sketch comedy, music and ...'

We were under way. The Arts Theatre has one of the best auditoriums for comedy I know. Sitting in a spotlight with a leather book on my lap delivering the Dracula monologue, standing on stage with Hugh for the Shakespeare Mastercla.s.s, kneeling at the stricken Emma's bedside, pouring tea for Paul Shearer in the MI5 recruitment sketch all these moments were more pleasurable and thrilling in this theatre, on this occasion, before such an enthusiastic audience, than anything I had ever done before.

Hugh and I looked at each other after the curtain fell. We knew that, come what might, we had not disgraced the name of Footlights.

The Cellar Tapes closing song. I fear we may have been guilty of embarra.s.sing and sanctimonious 'satire' at this point. Hence the joyless expressions. closing song. I fear we may have been guilty of embarra.s.sing and sanctimonious 'satire' at this point. Hence the joyless expressions.

One night of the two-week run the word went round backstage that Rowan Atkinson had been spotted in the audience. I broke the habit of my (short) lifetime and peeped through at the house. There he was, there could be no mistake. Not the least distinctive set of features on the planet. We all performed with an extra intensity that may have made the show better or may, just as easily, have given it rather a hysterical edge I for one was too excited to be able to tell. The great Rowan Atkinson watching us perform. Only a year and a half ago I had all but vomited with laughter at his show in Edinburgh. Since then Not the Nine O'Clock News had propelled him to major television stardom. had propelled him to major television stardom.

He came round backstage to shake our hands, a graceful and kindly act for a man so shy and private. My state of electrified enthralment stopped me from hearing a single word he said, although Hugh and the others told me afterwards that he had been charmingly complimentary about the evening.

Two nights later Emma's agent, Richard Armitage, came.

'Do you see yourselves,' he asked us afterwards, 'doing this kind of thing professionally? As a career?'

It was all so sudden, strange and overwhelming. A few terms earlier I had been happy to wander on as a grizzled soldier or warty old king in productions of Chekhov and Shakespeare. I had listened to the more serious actors talking about applying for places on the Webber Douglas Academy graduate course, the path that Ian McKellen had taken after Cambridge. Since I had met Hugh and started writing sketches with him and on my own I had dared hope that I might perhaps apply one day to BBC radio for a job as a scriptwriter or a.s.sistant producer or something along those lines. About my future as a comic performer I was less sure, however. All the facial mastery, double-takes, clowning and fearless a.s.surance that Hugh and Emma displayed on stage and in rehearsal came much less naturally to me. I was voice and words; my face and my body were still a source of shame, insecurity and self-consciousness. That this Richard Armitage was prepared, keen even, to take me on and shepherd me into a genuine career seemed like astonishingly good luck.

I later discovered that, crafty old fox that he was, Richard had sent his youngest client ahead to see us and deliver his opinion. Which explained what Rowan had been doing there. Plainly he had made encouraging enough noises about us for Richard himself to make the journey to Cambridge and, now that he had seen the show for himself, to make this offer.

I accepted, of course. As did Hugh and Paul.

'Of course,' Hugh said, walking back from the theatre afterwards, 'it doesn't necessarily mean anything. He probably scoops up dozens every year.'

'I know,' I said. 'But still, I've got an agent!'

I stopped to break the news to a parking meter. 'I've got an agent!'

The silhouette of King's College chapel loomed up against the night sky. 'I've got an agent!' I told it. It was unmoved.

Cheerio, Cambridge My last May Ball, my last Cherubs Summer Party on the Grove at Queens'. May Week parties all over Cambridge, new levels of drunkenness, mooning, stumbling about, weeping and vomiting. Kim and I threw our own party on the Scholars' Lawn of St John's and got through every last case and bottle of Taittinger that Kim's parents had kindly sent down. My family came to the graduation ceremony: hundreds of identically subfusc graduands-turned-graduates milled about on the lawn outside the Senate House, all looking suddenly rather adult and forlorn as they posed with forced smiles for parental photographs and said their final farewells to three-year friendships. The shadow of the outside world was looming over us all, and that three years seemed suddenly to peel and shrink away like a snake's sloughed skin, too shrivelled and small ever to have fitted the fine and gleaming years of our ownership.

In room A2, Queens'. Graduation day: posing with sister Jo.

Kim's parents lived in Manchester but they also had a house in the prosperous London suburb of Hadley Wood, a brisk walk from High Barnet and c.o.c.kfosters Tube Stations, and they made this entirely available to Kim and me as soon as we left Cambridge. It was an absurdly wonderful and luxurious introduction to life outside university. On the television there I watched Ian Botham wrench the Ashes from Australia's grasp and felt like the happiest man in the universe.

Almost immediately The Cellar Tapes The Cellar Tapes was off to Oxford for a week at the Playhouse Theatre. After the pleasures of the Cambridge Arts, the Playhouse, with its long, narrow skittle-alley auditorium appeared wholly inimical to comedy, and our material seemed to us to fall flat. The management and technical staff of the theatre were less than welcoming, and we spent a frightened, unhappy week avoiding the hostile glares of the tab men and lighting crew and alternating between melancholy wails and hysterical laughter as we huddled together for mutual comfort and support. It was a bewildering crash to earth. Hugh was so angered by the staff's unkindness that he wrote a letter to the manager which he showed me before posting. I had never seen cold fury so expertly rendered into polite but d.a.m.ning prose. was off to Oxford for a week at the Playhouse Theatre. After the pleasures of the Cambridge Arts, the Playhouse, with its long, narrow skittle-alley auditorium appeared wholly inimical to comedy, and our material seemed to us to fall flat. The management and technical staff of the theatre were less than welcoming, and we spent a frightened, unhappy week avoiding the hostile glares of the tab men and lighting crew and alternating between melancholy wails and hysterical laughter as we huddled together for mutual comfort and support. It was a bewildering crash to earth. Hugh was so angered by the staff's unkindness that he wrote a letter to the manager which he showed me before posting. I had never seen cold fury so expertly rendered into polite but d.a.m.ning prose.

From Oxford we travelled to the theatre at Uppingham School, Chris Richardson welcoming us as two years earlier he had prophesied he would. Oxford had convinced us our show was a shambles and that Edinburgh would be a disaster, but Uppingham rebuilt our morale a little: the staff and school made a supportive and enthusiastic audience and the theatre on whose boards I had been the very first to step in 1970 as a witch in Macbeth Macbeth was a perfect arena in which to restore our confidence. Christopher was the warmest and most thoughtful host, making sure that we each had excellent accommodation, including a small bottle of malt whisky on the bedside table. was a perfect arena in which to restore our confidence. Christopher was the warmest and most thoughtful host, making sure that we each had excellent accommodation, including a small bottle of malt whisky on the bedside table.

The great William Goldman is famous for saying of Hollywood that 'n.o.body knows anything', an apophthegm that holds just as true in theatre. I received a letter from someone who had been to The The Cellar Tapes Cellar Tapes at the Oxford Playhouse and wanted to tell me that they thought it the best show of its kind they had ever seen. I tried and failed to remember a single moment of the Oxford run that I thought had gone well. I realized, however, if I was honest, that the audience did at least laugh, and there had been sustained and enthusiastic applause at the end. I suppose the rudeness of the theatre staff and the shape of the auditorium had contrasted so negatively with the perfection of Cambridge that the entire experience seemed black and hopeless. at the Oxford Playhouse and wanted to tell me that they thought it the best show of its kind they had ever seen. I tried and failed to remember a single moment of the Oxford run that I thought had gone well. I realized, however, if I was honest, that the audience did at least laugh, and there had been sustained and enthusiastic applause at the end. I suppose the rudeness of the theatre staff and the shape of the auditorium had contrasted so negatively with the perfection of Cambridge that the entire experience seemed black and hopeless.

Caledonia 3 Before long we arrived at Edinburgh, where we found ourselves sharing St Mary's Hall with the Oxford Theatre Group, whose own show was on immediately before ours. They were friendly and self-deprecating and charming. St Mary's was a large venue with temporary seating banked high. It turned out to be perfect for the show. We received favourable reviews and found ourselves sold out for the two weeks of our run.

We performed two sketches on the radio for a BBC Radio 2 Fringe round-up programme presented by Brian Matthew, who interviewed us afterwards. It was my first time on the radio: performing the sketch was fine, but as soon as I had to speak as myself I found my throat restricted, my mouth dry and my brain empty. This would be the case for years to come. Alone in my bedroom I could say things to an imaginary interviewer that were fluent, amusing and a.s.sured. The moment the green recording light was on I froze.

One night Richard Armitage left a note to say that someone from the BBC would be present and would like to see us. Two days later he told us to give some time after the show to two people from Granada Television. The following night Martin Bergman, who had been President of Footlights in '77'78 and whom I had seen in Nightcap Nightcap, came to see the show too. They all had offers that made us dizzy with astonishment.

The man from the BBC asked if we might be willing to record The The Cellar Tapes Cellar Tapes for television. The two from Granada, a florid Scot called Sandy and a pert young Englishman call Jon, wondered if we would be interested in developing a comedy sketch show for them. Martin Bergman told us that he was arranging a tour of Australia. September to December, Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra and Brisbane. Did we like the idea? for television. The two from Granada, a florid Scot called Sandy and a pert young Englishman call Jon, wondered if we would be interested in developing a comedy sketch show for them. Martin Bergman told us that he was arranging a tour of Australia. September to December, Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra and Brisbane. Did we like the idea?

On the penultimate night of the run, as we were executing our final bows to the audience, their cheering suddenly increased in volume and intensity. This was gratifying but inexplicable. Hugh nudged me; a man had walked on stage from the wings behind us and was coming forward holding his hand up for silence. His presence only encouraged more cheering. It was Rowan Atkinson. For a moment or two I thought he had gone insane. His reputation for timidity was already established. It made no sense whatsoever for him to be here.

'Um, ladies and gentlemen. Do forgive me for interrupting like this,' he said. 'You must think it most odd.'

These innocent remarks elicited greater laughs from the audience than any they had favoured us with all evening. Such is the power of fame, I remember thinking even as I looked on bewildered and intrigued by this peculiar invasion. Of course, Rowan had a way with words like 'odd' that did make them very funny.

'You may know,' he continued, 'that this year sees the inst.i.tution of an award for the best comedy show on the Edinburgh Fringe. It is sponsored by Perrier ... the bubbly water people.'

More laughter. No one can say the word 'bubbly' quite like Rowan Atkinson. My heart was beginning to hammer by now. Hugh and I exchanged glances. We had heard of the founding of this Perrier Award and of one thing we were absolutely certain ...

'The organizers and judges of the award, which is to encourage new talent and new trends in comedy, were absolutely certain of one thing,' Rowan continued, echoing our conviction. 'That whoever won it wouldn't be the Cambridge b.l.o.o.d.y Footlights.'

The audience drummed their feet in appreciation, and I began to fear for the safety of the temporary structure supporting them.

'However, with a mixture of reluctance and admiration, they unanimously decided that the winner had to be The Cellar Tapes The Cellar Tapes ...' ...'

The auditorium exploded with applause, and Nica Burns, organizer of the award (after thirty years she still is. Indeed she funded it herself when the sponsorship dried up), stepped forward with the trophy, which Rowan handed to Hugh.

Rowan Atkinson presents Hugh with the Perrier Prize cheque. Edinburgh, 1981.

The Vice-Chancellor placing in my hands a piece of paper that testified to my status as a BA (Hons.) was a small thing compared to this.

We had done it. We had put on a show and we had not disgraced ourselves. Indeed, we seemed to have done better than that.

Later that night, after dinner with Rowan and Nica and the people who looked after Perrier's PR, we trailed drunkenly home to our digs.

I lay awake almost all the night. I am not romanticizing the moment. I remember how I lay awake and where my thoughts took me.

A year and a half earlier I had been on probation. For almost all of my childhood and youth I had been lost in the dense blackness of an unfriendly forest thick with brambles, treacherous undergrowth and hostile creatures of my own making.

Somewhere, somehow I had seen or been offered a path out and had found myself stumbling into open, sunlit country. That alone would have been pleasure enough after a lifetime's tripping and tearing myself on ugly roots and cruel thorns, but not only was I in the open, I was on a broad and easy path that seemed to be leading me towards a palace of gold. I had a wonderful, kind and clever partner in love and a wonderful, kind and clever partner in work. The nightmare of the forest seemed a long distance behind me.

I cried and cried until at last I fell asleep.

Comedy Enough time has pa.s.sed for the 1980s to have taken on an agreed ident.i.ty, colour, style and flavour. Sloane Rangers, big hair, Dire Straits, black smoked-gla.s.s tables, unstructured jackets, New Romantics, shoulder pads, nouvelle cuisine nouvelle cuisine, Yuppies ... we have all seen plenty of television programmes flashing images of all that past our eyes and insisting that this is what the decade meant.

As it happens, resistant to cliche as I try to be, the eighties for me conformed almost exactly to every one of those rather shallow representations. When I was tipped out of Cambridge and into the world in 1981, Ronald Reagan was beginning the sixth month of his presidency, Margaret Thatcher was suffering the indignity of a recession, Brixton and Toxteth were aflame, IRA bombs exploded weekly in London, Bobby Sands was dying on hunger strike, the Liberal and Social Democrat parties had agreed to merge, Arthur Scargill was about to take up the leadership of the National Union of Miners, and Lady Diana Spencer was a month away from marrying the Prince of Wales. None of that seemed especially peculiar at the time, of course, nor did it seem as if one was living a television researcher's archive package.

I emerged from university a thin, tall, outwardly confident graduate for whom everything seemed new and exciting, if wildly temporary. Sooner or later, I was convinced, I would be found out, and the doors of s...o...b..siness would be slammed in my face, and I should have to set about answering my true vocation as a teacher of some kind. In the meantime I could not deny that it was larky and lovely to be riding this transitory cloud of glory.

Carry on Capering The Perrier Award resulted in a London run of our Footlights show. Well, let us not overstate the case. 'London run' suggests something rather grand: in fact we played as the late-night afterthought in a converted morgue in Hampstead called the New End, postal codes away from the fizzing neon of Shaftesbury Avenue. Not that we were complaining. The New End was to us as exciting as the West End. This small theatre had made its journey from abandoned hospital mortuary to leading fringe venue seven years earlier under the auspices of the excellent and pioneering Buddy Dalton and was as glamorous in our eyes as the London Palladium or the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane.

The Cellar Tapes followed every night for a week the main evening show, Steven Berkoff's followed every night for a week the main evening show, Steven Berkoff's Decadence Decadence, which starred Linda Marlowe and of course the brilliant and terrifying actor/author himself. The impossible delight of knowing that Berkoff snuck into our dressing-rooms and stole our cigarettes was almost as thrilling as watching him scrawl 'c.u.n.t c.u.n.t c.u.n.t c.u.n.t c.u.n.t' all over Nicholas de Jong's Evening Standard Evening Standard review of his play and pin it defiantly to the wall in the theatre lobby. Berkoff had a hard, restless menace that he was to bring to the wider world's attention two years later when he played Victor Maitland, the cruel c.o.ke- and art-dealing villain of review of his play and pin it defiantly to the wall in the theatre lobby. Berkoff had a hard, restless menace that he was to bring to the wider world's attention two years later when he played Victor Maitland, the cruel c.o.ke- and art-dealing villain of Beverly Hills Cop Beverly Hills Cop. Given his fearsome reputation it is something of a miracle that such a parcel of poncey Cambridge wags as us got away without verbal, at the very least, a.s.sault, but despite his manner Berkoff's first loyalty is to the theatre and to actors. Even freshly graduated revue artists in tweed jackets are admitted to the pantheon. His ire, aggression and insult are reserved for critics, producers and executives.