Well I always liked to be in something that was having a go at the established view of things,
I enjoyed that I liked being upfront knocking stuff down and that was a pleasure.
I liked the quickness and the wit of it and the sharpness of the dialogue and sub wilden,
well sub is unfair I suppose, a Neue Wilden quality of it,
and the fact that you could make what is ultimately a very standard kind of comedy format about a subject so,
in those days outrageous and rude.
I mean my involvement with ‘The Leather Boys’
was because I had sympathy towards the predicament of homosexuals at the time
and I wanted to play a gay man who wasn’t camp, you know and I had rows with the producer about it.
Then when we came to do Sloane, of course the thing about Sloane is that he’s not gay, he’s nothing,
he’s just got a salami in his trousers which is negotiable.
I did a radio version of it when I played the old man.
Kemp?
Yeah, and it was softened.
The thing about Sloane is that he’s lumpen, he’s not a lightweight,
when they made that atrocious film, god rest them, they made Sloane a lightweight and he just isn’t like that.
Sloane is kind of monosyllabic and he’s heavy, he’s lumpen, leaden… he’s a geezer.
It was a lot more analytical in New York I mean they do this method stuff
and in fact one of the best speeches that Sloane had was cut because I couldn’t justify it in Freudian terms.
This director he said ‘tell me what this speech is about?’
and I said ‘well it’s like a machine gun isn’t it’ and he didn’t like that at all,
but in actual fact it is like a machine gun.
It’s a physical thing in the middle of the play suddenly Sloane starts this speech that goes ratter tat tat
and it’s all about having it off with people,
what was it ‘six press ups on a tomb belonging to the family by the name of Cavanaugh’.
You know and how he got involved with a dodgy photographer, all that kind of thing,
wonderful but they cut it so I was a bit peeved.
Well it’s lovely because he’s sympathetic, he’s understanding, witty, mercurial,
I loved the quickness of his mind and it wasn’t pretentious.
When we were in New York the director needed another line to fill in to come down the stairs
and Joe said ‘oh right anybody got a pencil or pen?’,
‘Hey a writer that hasn’t got a pen’.
You know it’s that kind of…… ‘just give us a bloody pencil’ and wrote down a very lovely line.
I remember the only thing I disagreed with Joe about
was that he wanted Sloane to be wearing leather jodhpurs,
you know I was very vain about my legs in those days, I was quite slender in those days
and I said no I wasn’t going to wear leather jodhpurs.
I thought they’d make me look dumpy and I’m going to wear John Michael trousers, which I did,
which in a way I regret I should have gone along with him.
But I had a lot of respect for Joe I really did,
you know and he was so full of life and I loved the dialogue like in ‘Loot’,
you know and in ‘Sloane’ I mean it was, the thing I liked about it was that it was so contemporary.
You know we felt like we were speaking the language that we spoke.
Not very much except the opening night the director and Joe and I
went around the back doors of the newspapers offices
picking up the reviews and they were very distressed because they were so awful.
I mean in actual fact the first thing to come out are the television critics
and they come out about half an hour after you’d come down,
you know and we were in a bar watching them and we’re being slaughtered
and Joe was crying and he was very distressed, very unhappy, broke his heart a bit.
I liked Joe he was a human being, he was a decent man and he had a wonderful humour and warmth
and he was fighting his fight and to fight the demond of homophobia with a west end comedy was brilliant
and I’m very proud to have been a part of it.
I don’t know, I mean obviously the battle with the illegality of homosexuality has gone.
I think people like Joe would have been very unhappy about that
because half the joy of it was the illegality of it,
bit like drugs, if they legalised drugs it’d take all the fun out of it.
I certainly loved that place, the air round Twickenham was like wine.
Then one day I take a trip to the old man’s grave, hick jackets in profusion,
ashes to ashes alas the fleeting, the sun was declining.
A few press ups on a tomb belonging to the family belonging to the name of Cavanagh
and I left the graveyard.
I thumbs a lift from a geezer that promises me a bed, gives me a bath and a meal,
very friendly, all you could wish.
He was a photographer, he shows me one or two experimental studies
an experience for the retina and no mistake.
He wants to photo me for certain interesting features I had that he wanted the exclusive right of preserving.
Well you know how it is I didn’t like to refuse, no harm in it I suppose.
Then I got to thinking I knew a kid once called McBride that happened to, oh yes,
so when I gets to thinking of this I decide I’ve got to do something about it.
I gets up in the middle of the night looking for the film see.
He has a lot of expensive equipment about in his studio see,
well it appears that he gets the wrong idea runs in gives a shout,
the long and the short of it I loses my head which is the thing I never ought to have done
with the worry of them photos and all and I hits him, I hits him.
He must have had a weak heart, something like that I should imagine.
Definitely should have seen his doctor before that, well I wasn’t to know was I, I weren’t to blame.
It’s brilliant, how could they cut it? How could they cut it? Only a humourless…..
Absolutely fantastic…
How could they cut it?