Ask Me if I'm Happy by Peter Bowles

Author:Peter Bowles [Bowles, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781847377685
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

CHAPTER 11

ON BEING DIFFICULT

At an early point in my career I seemed to develop a reputation of being ‘a bit difficult’. This is okay if you are a star but can hold you back from becoming a star if you start before you are, if you see what I mean.

I remember after the read-through of one of my early televisions, in which I had a small part, a number of cuts were made as the reading had been too long. None of these affected my part, but I couldn’t help pointing out to the director as everyone happily applied the blue pencil, that if certain of the cuts were made, the story wouldn’t actually make sense. The director was very, very angry. Actually, because he saw I was right, but he certainly wasn’t going to admit it. When we all got up from the table, the leading actor, a much more experienced older man, kindly took me aside. ‘Peter,’ he said, ‘listen, this is only television. Nobody cares. The viewers certainly won’t care, even if they notice, which I doubt. I have a mushroom farm. That’s what I care about. But as far as television is concerned I just take the money and run, and that’s my advice to you, old chap.’ I hope you agree I didn’t take his advice. My kindly advisor ended his career playing in a well-known soap for about twenty years. He must have been a very contented mushroom farmer. It’s all a matter of choice – if you’re lucky enough to get it.

I think often it’s a case of where angels fear to tread. Fools, that is. In an early Armchair Theatre TV play, after rehearsing the part of a top art connoisseur in a rehearsal room for three weeks, I arrived at the studio to discover that the ‘set’ of my home was totally kitsch, appalling paintings, terrible furniture. I felt strongly I couldn’t act in it and said so! The director was almost speechless. ‘Look,’ I said, ‘I have spent three weeks trying to be as believable as I can. That’s my job. It will all be destroyed the moment I walk on that set.’ I’m afraid they didn’t record my scenes that day. The set was refurnished that night and the scenes shot the next day at, I suppose, great expense to the TV company. I would have made a terrible mushroom farmer anyway, but I did get a reputation for being ‘a bit difficult’. I have worked quite often with actors who I have been warned are ‘a bit difficult’. They invariably turn out to be the ones who actually want to get things as near 100 per cent right as possible. Not 98 per cent but 100 per cent, and none of them as far as I know were particularly keen on mushrooms.

The only exception to that I have come across was Michael Crawford, who seemed to want to get things 100 per cent right for him and not necessarily for the scene.

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