MOAB IS MY WASHPOT by Stephen Fry

Author:Stephen Fry
Language: eng
Format: epub

The cover shows Ian Carmichael as Bertie Wooster in the B.B.C. series ‘The World of Wooster’ (Producer: Michael Mills, by arrangement with Peter Cotes.

Photographer Nicholas Acraman)

Many years later I worked for Michael Mills, who was a formidably shrewish and frightening man. There was very little he had not done in the world of Light Entertainment and he did not take kindly to unpunctual actors. I was booked for a part, very early on in my ‘career’ on a half-hour comedy called Chance in a Million which starred Simon Callow, whom I was desperate to meet, since his book Being an Actor had been a huge inspiration at university. I had not known that Teddington Lock, where Thames TV studios had their being, took well over an hour to get to from Islington, where I was living at the time, and had arrived at least half an hour late. Michael Mills, who was the kind of man who wore spacious cardigans and half-moon spectacles that dangled on black string, gave me a withering look and told me that he would be writing to my agent about the unprofessional hour at which I had arrived. He has died since I believe and I never got a chance to talk to him about the making of that 1960s ‘World of Wooster’ series.

It is strange to touch this book now and know that it was handed to me, lazily and charmingly, by Rick Carmichael more than a quarter of a century ago. Stranger still, I suppose, in the light of the fact that I was to spend four years myself playing Jeeves in another television adaptation of those same stories.

‘Anything else?’ Rick said.

‘Oh!’ I jerked up from my reverent gaze at the book. ‘Oh, yes. The Unbelievable String Band is better than Jethro Tull.’

Carmichael smiled, ‘Er, I think you mean “The Incredible String Band”, don’t you?’

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Damn. Yes.’

‘Right,’ said Carmichael. ‘You tell Guy that Carol King is better than Fairport Convention.'

I can’t remember how many times I shuttled between Carmichael and Caswell delivering insulting messages on the subject of their favourite music, but it meant that somehow I became more or less accepted early on by these two and by Rick’s best friend, Martin Swindells, who was known as Mart and sometimes as Dog. They were also friendly with a boy called Roger Eaton, who was red-haired and called Roo. They were cool, this group, Guy, Rick, Mart and Roo. They knew more about rock music than I thought I could ever, ever learn. They were cool and they were amiable. They were not interested in status, ambition, gossip about the staff or schooly, status-bound things. They didn’t take joy in teasing the weak or sucking up to the strong. They liked music and they liked fun. One of them, I won’t say which in case their parents are reading this, showed me the first ever joint I had ever seen. He didn’t let me smoke it, but he showed it to me.

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