More Cock-Eyed Optimism by Nigel Quiney

Author:Nigel Quiney
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: eBookPartnership.com
Published: 2014-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 33

COAST TO COAST

US 1980

Starred: Dyan Cannon, Robert Blake

After I returned from the USA in 1966, when I met Gillian Thorpe for the first time, we did not meet or even keep in touch. She was very busy and I was too. However, one day, I think in June of 1967, Richard Perfitt and I were chatting and catching up with each other’s news, when he told me that Gillian was going to be returning to Hollywood for more film work and her husband, Ted, wanted to drive across America in his new Lotus Elan sports car and was looking for someone to accompany him and share expenses. He would drive from New York to Los Angeles, on a route to be decided, and meet up with Gillian at the end of the drive. I pricked up my ears. What a fantastic thing to do.

In nano-seconds, I had responded and asked Richard if he would speak to Ted and ask him if he would consider me as his passenger as I had not yet firmed up a summer holiday. I hoped that maybe Gillian might remember me from the previous year and that this would put me in good stead to be invited.

A few days later, I received a call from Ted and we discussed his forthcoming adventure. No doubt in that time he assessed my enthusiasm and I discovered that he had not yet been able to find anyone to accompany him and before our conversation was concluded he had asked me to join him on the trip. I immediately agreed.

The extraordinary thing about the whole arrangement was that we only met up once before Ted departed and that was when he drove down from Highgate to my studio to check the size of my holdall, which would have to be stowed in the small space behind the front seats of the little Lotus. Everything else was decided on the telephone. Ted would be driving his sports car to Southampton to pick up the Queen Elizabeth for the Atlantic sailing to New York. In those days, a car was just another piece of luggage to be stowed below deck and there was no extra charge. Can you imagine? I was to fly to New York and meet up with Ted and we would drive in a southerly direction the same day. And that is exactly the way it happened.

Meeting, firstly, Gillian in 1966 and then Ted in 1967 was one of those casual affairs which turn out to be life-changing. It never occurred to me that Ted and I might not like each other or that we might not get on. After all, we were going to be with each other for at least a week in very close circumstances and what would we have done if we had taken an instant dislike to each other?

As arranged, I met up with Ted for the very first time at his hotel in mid-town Manhattan. I loaded my small holdall into

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