LOOK, I'M STILL HERE (From Home & Country Magazine, December 2004, article courtesy of Leila) - THE MORSE SAGA (Interview with Melanie Thaw, December 19, 2004, article courtesy of Leila) - Melanie Thaw has seen her family life writ large in the Christmas bestseller. But it was she and her sisters who prompted their mother to be so searingly honest about John Thaw, she tells Margarette Driscoll.
SWEENEY TODDLES OFF (by Ross Benson, 1978, article courtesy of Sharyn) - Waterman and Thaw hang up their handcuffs.
Television’s toughest policemen are quitting the crime beat.
“The Sweeney” is signing off duty after running in top viewing figures for the last four years.
THE NEW REGAN IS A KNOCK-OUT (by Chris Kenworthy, Saturday, June 3, 1978, article courtesy of Sharyn) -
John Thaw, just can’t make a quick enough get away from rough-‘em-up Inspector Regan of The Sweeney.
It is only a week since he filmed his last appearance as Regan in the final series of The Sweeney to been seen in the autumn.
But he has already started work on his new television role.
WHAT'S REGAN'S NEXT CASE? (by Victor Davis, April 21, 1978, article courtesy of Sharyn) -
“ME? I’M GOING HOME TO BABY SIT.”
For a man who has elected to take the boot without the redundancy John Thaw looks diabolically cheerful. “Nah, I’ve no qualms – honest!”
He won’t be copping a bung from the Social Security either. “I’d rather do without it. I stopped going down to the Labour about 12 or 14 years ago. I couldn’t stand the depressed atmosphere and all that hanging around waiting for a handout.”
JOHN THAW: "TV MAKES YOU A STAR" (by Sheridan Morley, The Times, Tuesday, Nov. 7, 1978, article courtesy of Theresa) -
“I go to fires. I don’t file prose. I file facts.” Thus Dick Wagner, the traditionally hard-bitten Australian journalist representing one aspect of the reporting trade which is the subject of Tom Stoppard’s new play “Night And Day”, opening at the Phoenix tomorrow. In that role, and in what must be regarded as his most important theatrical assignment to date, is John Thaw, an actor probably best known for 52 episodes of ITV’s “The Sweeney”:
BODY & SOUL, AN INTERVIEW WITH SHEILA HANCOCK (by Anna Shepard, The Times, Feb. 5 , 2005, article courtesy of Leila) -
Smiling through the years: Actress Sheila Hancock, 71, likes to put her faith in humanity - and the power of new make-up. WILLIAM SABATIER - THE FRENCH "MORSE" (by Theresa Healy, with Martine Meyer, February 2005)
Inspector Morse was a huge success from the very first episode. But what millions of TV viewers never knew was that for most of this high-quality drama’s 13-year run, its star John Thaw was an alcoholic. The little black bag he used to carry his script to work was also a handy repository for supplies of vodka. Now his widow, actress Sheila Hancock, has revealed how one of our most popular actors fought his addiction and found new happiness in her compelling story of the couple’s 28-year marriage. The Two of Us—My Life with John Thaw (Bloomsbury, £17.99), is both a double biography and tender account of a passionate love affair that endured until the actor’s death from cancer in 2002. It paints a warts-and-all portrait of a complex man: enormously talented but with a fragile sense of his own worth; ill at ease with celebrity yet dedicated to serving the public with his work; loving and romantic but emotionally scarred by his mother’s desertion in early childhood.
Now 71, Sheila Hancock OBE cuts a striking figure, tall and elegant with fine eyes and bone structure undiminished by time. She talks candidly and with humour about the couple’s turbulent relationship, coming to terms with loss and facing the world as a single woman. Her book is moving, funny and remarkably frank. But truth was the only option, she explains. ‘As I wrote it, I kept thinking of John. He wasn’t at all like the characters he played but he did have total honesty and the camera saw that. His great thing as an actor was always to pare it down, pare it down, and he had a horror of sentimentality, so I tried to tell the story as honestly and simply as I could. But I did edit the book’s extracts from my diary during the period of John’s illness and death, because they were so raw and sometimes obscene—and probably libellous, too!’
John Thaw’s addiction never affected his work. But at home his unpredictable Jekyll and Hyde personality put his wife and the couple’s three daughters (all now actresses) under enormous pressure. ‘The family was falling apart but we kept up a good front, as do so many others in our position.’ The girls—their daughter Joanna, Abigail, daughter of John Thaw’s first marriage and Melanie by Sheila’s marriage to actor Alec Ross—came to dread what Sheila christened the Back Treatment. Walking away from difficult situations had been John Thaw’s chosen weapon of self defence from the day his adored mother walked out of his life when he was seven. After years of stormy partings and reconciliations, Sheila grasped that only he could help himself. She suffered agonies as her beloved husband hit rock bottom alone before finally seeking help. A therapist treated the deep-rooted depression which fuelled his destructive habit, and the nightmare was over.
‘I wanted the book to show what can be achieved if people offer the right kind of support to someone with an addiction,’ says Sheila. ‘For us and for John it was a miracle and without it we wouldn’t have had those last, happy years.’ She thought hard before using their personal letters in her memoir but believes they are a testament to what they meant to each other. ‘You are the love of my life,’ John wrote in a Valentine card to Sheila, a week before he died. Hers to him read "I hope you know how much I love and cherish you.’
Today, she says, simply, ‘God, I’m so lucky to have had him, however difficult things became.’ But their first meeting, in the late 1960s, was unpromising. Sheila, by then married with a child, was a busy actress already famous from leading roles in the TV series The Rag Trade and West End hit, Rattle of A Simple Man. John, still relatively unknown and nine years her junior, played opposite her in a romantic stage comedy. Brooding and uncommunicative, he seemed unimpressed by his glamorous, mini-skirted co-star.
But when Sheila demonstrated a comic routine she had devised to zip up her dress onstage, John wept with helpless laughter. He reminded her irresistibly of the father she adored and the ice was broken. Later the young actor confessed he had been overawed at the cast’s expertise and hardly dared speak. By the end of the show he had fallen in love with her and when Alec Ross died from cancer, their reunion was inevitable. The newly-weds had much in common. Both shared working class roots, an education at RADA and a passion for their profession. At seven Sheila was already so enamoured of acting that she welcomed the Second World War air raids which disrupted lessons.
As a distraction she was allowed to entertain her classmates with impersonations of stars of the day such as Cicely Courtneidge and Evelyn Laye. ‘It was my chance to shine,’ she writes. ‘I must have been the only person in Bexleyheath who wanted the bombs to fall nearby.’ Her subsequent successful and varied career on stage and screen included an appointment as first female artistic director of a touring company at the Royal Shakespeare Company—an experience described in her previous memoir, Ramblings of an Actress. She recalls how Germaine Greer’s ground-breaking work The Female Eunuch galvanised her into awareness of feminism and a demand that the BBC’s all-male executives offer her more challenging roles than dizzy blondes, desperate for a man.
‘There’s nothing now that women can’t do or say but in those days we were only allowed to be funny as long as we stayed charming and didn’t rock the men’s boat,’ she observes. Her father had instilled a social conscience in his daughter, who campaigned for years on every kind of good cause me. John and I became quite reclusive because we were so entwined with one another, so now I go out of my way to cultivate new experiences. I just want to fill my life with interesting things and that crowds grief out of your mind. There are moments when it grips you, of course, and you just have to let that happen but don’t indulge it—I’m a great believer in pulling yourself together.’
She has drawn strength from her Quaker beliefs, and work, too, is a great healer. Her recent television appearances include EastEnders, Bedtime and Featherboy and a new production of The Anniversary at the Liverpool Everyman, in which she played a ghastly matriarch, was a sell-out. ‘People stopped me in the street to talk about my performance and that did me a power of good. I enjoy playing evil characters—people think I’m rather nice so I like to shock them by taking the part of someone utterly awful.’
John Thaw was Sheila’s soulmate and a hard act to follow: they thought alike, enjoyed a good old grumble and loved spending time together at their homes in the Cotswolds and France. ‘I do miss physical love, the cuddles and morale boost of someone thinking I’m wonderful on a daily basis,’ she says quietly, ‘but I’m taking on board the fact that I’m an older woman— there are a great many compensations. I hope my grandchildren will get something from me, because I can tell them I’ve been through lots of things and look, I’m still here. ‘But then John would say that’s my Messiah complex at work again,’ she adds, ‘so I must be careful.’
Part of the proceeds of The Two of Us will go to the John Thaw Foundation (PO Box 38848, London W12 9XN), which aids young people who need a helping hand. from anti-apartheid to homelessness.
The actor Peter O’Toole once said of John Thaw that his features “simply fell into a kind of brood in spite of him”, and that perhaps gives a clue to his enduring appeal. It was impossible to know what was going on behind his melancholy smile, and the sense of ambivalence about life that he exuded enabled him to create a string of characters with steel and sadness about them: Jack Regan, the tough-talking boss of The Sweeney, Inspector Morse and the enigmatic Kavanagh QC.
When Thaw died at 60 in February 2002, his family were “shocked, overwhelmed” by the enormous public response but it seems that, nearly three years later, his hold on the public’s affection is as great as ever. The Two of Us, a tender, honest account of their long and stormy marriage written by his wife Sheila Hancock has become the surprise Christmas bestseller.
The book, which has sold more than 500,000 copies, vividly describes Thaw’s secret alcoholism and his final months ravaged by a rare and devastating cancer. It also goes a long way toward explaining why he became the man he was. Abandoned by the mother he adored when he was seven, he carried an emotional wound that never healed.
The story has touched a raw nerve. Hundreds of people have written moving, often very personal letters to Hancock describing their own experiences of abandonment or unhappiness. Uncovering the detail of his early life has also deeply affected his children. “I wish we had known all about it when he was alive because it explains so much,” says his adopted daughter Melanie in her first interview. “We knew in a general sense that he’d been betrayed and he was protecting himself from some hurt in his early life but it was never specific enough for us to understand."
“Dad never talked about his childhood and it made it difficult for him to relate to us because we had so much, comparatively. In one way he really wanted it for us and gave us the good education, the lovely life, the lovely homes, but part of him always thought ‘bloody hell’.”
Hancock says he showered her with jewellery and she still roars around town in a Jaguar sports car he gave her and that they called Mavis. “He was incredibly generous and that was his major form of expression,” says Melanie. “It was a way of saying what he couldn’t say in words.”
Hancock and Thaw met in 1969 when they played together in So What About Love? on the London stage. Hancock was a big star at the time, married to a fellow actor Alexander Ross — Melanie’s father — and appearing weekly on television in The Rag Trade, a popular sitcom. Thaw was an unknown, nine years younger and not long out of Rada. She swept in to meet her new leading man in a full-length red fox fur coat. First impressions were unpromising:
“He barely turned my way when I said ‘Hello’. He flicked his eyes in my direction and grunted. He didn’t get up. ‘Okay, you rude little bugger,’ I thought.” But in rehearsals, and on a pre-London tour of the play, they struck up a rapport. They “drove over moors and visited galleries and enjoyed food and wine together. We relished each other’s company”. By the end of the run, Thaw had declared his love but Hancock refused to have an affair. Although she was attracted to Thaw, she did not want to ruin her marriage to Ross or disrupt life for her five-year-old daughter Melanie. They went their separate ways.
Some months later Ross was diagnosed with oesophageal cancer, the same rare, aggressive form of the disease that would kill Thaw. After Ross died, both Hancock and Melanie were bereft. Hancock admits that even though Melanie was so young, she leant heavily on her for emotional support. “It was just me and mum against the world for a few years, which was quite hard going,” says Melanie. “It’s hard, carrying that sadness between you. As a child you believe you’re holding your mother up. I know now that that’s rubbish, but that’s how it felt at the time.”
Then, three years later, Thaw came back into Hancock’s life. “To have a knight in shining armour come along and take that off my shoulders was fantastic. He was a real saviour to me. In a perfect way he eased himself into my life. He was a jolly, lovely person then, who always had lots of Mars Bars.”
Melanie, now 40 (nicknamed Ellie Jane by her mother and sometimes “Smelly Drain” by the rest of her new family), was 10 when Hancock and Thaw married on Christmas Eve, 1973. He had a daughter Abigail from a previous marriage who was the same age and Hancock was pregnant with their daughter, Jo.
“It was a fantastic day,” says Melanie. “They got married in Cirencester in secret, pretending he was marrying the nanny or something, but people found out anyway. We drove up to London because mum had a show that night and it was on all the newspaper billboards: ‘TV star weds’. Richard Briers had done up her dressing room in celebration. It was all very exciting.”
Melanie called Thaw “John”, then “dad” when he adopted her. “It was made a big deal of by my parents. That’s when I changed my name to Thaw,” she says. “It was a big gesture from him and one that was very important. It’s what made us all a proper family.”
Melanie and Thaw spent much of the next few years together. Hancock was still the star of the household (Thaw’s first entry in Who’s Who read simply, “See Sheila Hancock”) and he did a lot of the parenting. “He’d pick me up from school in London and we’d drive down on a Friday night in his MG,” says Melanie. “Mum would join us late on Saturday night after a show."
“He was great fun then, he really was. He was just a laugh, a natural comic. He’d pretend to trip over, he was a big practical joker. He was completely different person then, light-hearted and fun to be with.” What Melanie did not know was that there were already demons lurking under the light-hearted exterior. They kept it from the children, but Hancock was aware of her husband’s unhappy past right from the start. When So What About Love? played in Manchester, Thaw’s home town, he refused to go to the after-show dinner and, next day, was moody and taciturn. When Hancock tackled him about it, he told her “some bloody aunt” had left a message saying that his mother would like to see him.
His mother had deserted him, he said, and he felt nothing for her and had no desire to see her. Hancock was “shocked by his cold dismissal”. That, and his rage over his ex-wife attending one of the shows, “showed an unforgiving side to his nature that I did not find attractive. In fact, it frightened me in its violence. I could see already that he was not someone to tangle with.'
Thaw had been born into a working-class family in Manchester. His father Jack was a long-distance lorry driver. His mother Dorothy is described by Hancock, who spent months after her husband’s death unearthing long-lost relatives and clues to his background, as “a barmaid, a feisty peroxide blonde, smart and knowing, who got on well with everyone. Perhaps too well with some."
They were very poor. As a child Thaw’s favourite toy was a coconut brought back by one of his uncles during the war. His father was often away working and his mother would sometimes disappear, leaving Thaw and his brother Ray alone. Her behaviour stirred up local gossip. Eventually it became too much and Dorothy felt forced to leave and took the boys to live at her father’s house. But rows started between her father and Jack and the family were on the move again, this time to a council estate in Burnage.
Shortly afterwards Dorothy threw a party for Ray’s fifth birthday, then disappeared for good, setting up home with a sticky tape salesman. Jack was furious and cut her out of his and his sons’ lives. Behind his back Thaw, then seven, dressed himself and his little brother in their best suits to try to get her back. She gave them sixpence each, told them to go away and shut the door.
In her book Hancock tries to understand Dorothy, this sparky, intelligent woman who felt buried alive, stuck in a house with two whining kids. But Thaw never forgave his mother. His hurt never diminished and remained as a canker that ate away at him as he grew older. His sullen air at their first meeting and the anger over the mention of his mother on the subsequent tour showed he could be moody, but as time went on the balance of his moods swung so that he was down more often than up. To the outside world he was a glittering success. As Hancock’s star began to wane, so his was in the ascent. The Sweeney made him a star and by the time Inspector Morse came along he was instantly recognisable. He hated it.
“I think he was so light-hearted and fun when I was a child partly because he wasn’t famous them,” says Melanie, an actress and interior designer. “Being well known, being recognised, was definitely a weight on his shoulders and we were very conscious of that. If we ever had to go out in public we’d be protecting him constantly."
“It was so tense because we knew he hated it and we knew if anyone asked for his autograph he’d growl at them. People were so familiar. In the Sweeney days they’d come up, play fighting, which wasn’t meant to be but felt quite aggressive. He couldn’t go anywhere in the end. It’s fine for some people — mum’s always been brilliant about giving autographs and talking to people — but he couldn’t handle it and we’d end up withdrawing and not going anywhere because it was too hard.”
When the role of Inspector Morse was offered to him in 1985, Thaw was in two minds about taking it. He had already played a number of police officers and a morose lover of classical music and real ale who was a failure with women did not seem likely to appeal to the public. It was to become a career-defining part, but while Thaw was able to hold his life together while filming, at home he was increasingly withdrawn.
In the evening after his first drink he would be a on a high, Hancock records. But after going upstairs for a shower he would grow uncommunicative and dour. “Where he had once been funnily cynical, he became at times viciously cruel, not only to myself but to our daughters, who came to resent and fear him.”
“Certainly his mood would affect our lives,” says Melanie. “We were good at passing it over because your instinct is to protect an alcoholic, so you let them get away with behaviour that would be unacceptable in anyone else.” Hancock knew that Thaw was a heavy drinker and smoker, as her first husband had been. But she had no idea of the extent of his drinking until she discovered an empty half-bottle of whisky on top of the wardrobe in the spare room, then found more and more hidden bottles. She tried to help him by persuading him to go to Alcoholics Anonymous: he came back from his first AA meeting very drunk.
It was her daughters who persuaded Hancock to be completely open about this time in the book. “Initially she was trying to protect everybody but that didn’t work,” says Melanie. “I had very mixed feelings because I was not sure about a book telling the story of our family life being out there. But once I saw it I knew that if it was going to be done, it had to tell the truth. Sanitising the story was unfair on dad because he wasn’t a sanitised person: there was lots of depth there. That was mum’s feeling, too, but she felt she needed permission from us to go ahead.”
Over the next few years Thaw continued drinking. He and Hancock rowed, separated and got back together several times. “It was very tiresome,” says Melanie. “They would split up, which was obviously a huge deal for us, then get back together and not bother telling us. They were really difficult times. We were always in touch with mum but dad would sometimes isolate himself.”
Eventually Hancock persuaded him to see Beechy Colclough, a therapist who had treated a number of celebrities. Almost overnight Thaw stopped drinking. It was “like a cloud lifting”. But just as Thaw was returning to his old self, another cloud descended: oesophageal cancer, diagnosed in June 2001. Hancock’s diary entries over the next 20 months, until his death, are the most poignant of the book.
Right to the end the man hallmarked by gloom refused to believe that he was dying. In February 2002 they took a walk together round their country garden. In her diary she records him saying: “ ‘I feel I’m on holiday, kid.’ The steroids have put him on a high. ‘I’ve turned a corner, I’m sure of it.’
“He’s eating well, looks great, full of energy compared with recent weeks. My guts are wrenching. I love him, I love him, I love him. I long to pour my heart out to him, for him to comfort me, for us to talk about it. But that is pure self-indulgence on my part. His whole behaviour makes it clear he wants business as usual. And what more could we say, more than we have already?” Two days later Thaw was dead.
“I was very worried about mum for a long time,” says Melanie. “She was widowed, she was on her own, she needed companionship.” The Two of Us, begun in defiance of a writer who had threatened a “warts and all” biography, proved to be her salvation. “She became obsessive about it,” says Melanie. “She’d take herself off to Manchester and come back ecstatic because she’d unearthed a fifth cousin somewhere. It was a form of therapy.”
The book has certainly touched a nerve. Hancock, 71, who is about to open in The Anniversary at the Garrick theatre in January, has been deluged with mail from people living with alcoholics or having marriage problems. Melanie says that she spends whole weekends sitting with piles of mail: “It’s her reason for existing now. Looked at from outside it seems so unfair to lose two husbands so tragically, but it’s made her what she is. “She has a zest for life I envy. She’s still a positive person. These things are tough to deal with but you do, don’t you?”
The Two of Us: My Life with John Thaw by Sheila Hancock is published by Bloomsbury at £17.99. Copies can be ordered for £14.39 plus £2.25 p&p from The Sunday Times Books First on 0870 165 8585 or at www.booksfirstbuy.co.uk
Stars John Thaw (Detective Inspector Jack Regan) and Dennis Waterman (Sergeant George Carter) confirmed yesterday that the next 13 part series will be the last.
Or as Carter would say to Regan. “That’s your lot Guv.”
Thaw explained “We want to quit while we are winning – before people get bored, and we get bored too!”
Said Waterman “It’s been great fun, but we’ve had the best.
You just can’t go on doing the same thing year after year – there’s a limit to the number of bank robberies and hold-ups you can solve.”
A spokesperson for the makers, Thames Television said. “We wanted to go on, but they both wanted a change of pace.
“That’s doesn’t mean we might not all get together again in a few years.”
The final series of “The Sweeney” – from Rhyming slang, Sweeney Todd / Flying Squad – is near completion.
It will be screened in the autumn. A second feature film from the show opens in cinemas next month.
In the future Thaw will concentrate on film roles as far removed from the Regan image as possible.
Waterman is planning a follow in the footsteps of David ‘Hutch’ Soul and concentrate on pop singing.
He has already released two LP records.
Thaw, 36, says. “I picked the part because it was as different from Regan as it can be.
“The first thing I have to do is break away from being stuck with the tough copper image.”
So the first thing is a part as a middle-aged boxing manager in a BBC Play For Today called Dinner At The Sporting Club – Also scheduled for the autumn.
Thaw, with slicked-back grey hair and a worried expression plays boxing manager, Dinny Matthews, whose big flight ambition is to handle a champion.
But when his most promising prospect (played by 26 year-old Billy McColl) is offered an important fight Matthews has a problem.
His boxer has not been in training and is in no condition to have the fight
The danger for any good actor in a popular and long running series is that he may become too-closely identified with his role and never be offered another.
Both Thaw and Dennis Waterman who plays his Flying Squad side-kick sergeant Carter have avoided that in the past.
It was their determination to go on avoiding it which brought The Sweeney to tan end.
Waterman, who has a parallel career as a singer, has decided to give more time to that side of his life.
Thaw is determined to fit in more stage work.
It should certainly fit in better on the domestic front.
A long-running series Thaw believes can be a strain on home life.
“I’m like a real policeman, never knowing what time I am going to get in,” he says.
“And when you are in, you are too tired to be good company!”
To make domestic matters worse, Thaw’s wife Sheila Hancock, 44, has been appearing in the West End hit, Annie.
It means they hardly see each other at all.
Thaw has been leaving for the studios at six in the morning and getting home, when he is lucky at just about the time Sheila is leaving for the theatre.
A hoarse laugh as an other contradiction occurs to him. “I’ve just moved into a new house, and taken on a big mortgage.”
I could only think that it’s a good thing John Thaw is already grey at 36.
As Monday night TV addicts have heard with widespread dismay Thaw and his side-kick Dennis Waterman, have decided to hand in their warrant cards and terminate their involvement with The Sweeney.
Other actors are open-mouthed at their daring. The Sweeney is still a heavily viewed show seen in 40 countries and the characters of Detective Inspector Jack Regan and Sergeant George Carter are still the most absorbing telly twosome in the thick-ear drama league.
A lot of tyre rubber has been burned and a great many tearaways feet have failed to touch the ground since they first muscled on their way on to the screen four years ago.
When the wrap-up comes next month for the fourth and farewell series to be shown in the autumn Thaw and Waterman will have completed 53 episodes plus the original pilot programme and two feature films.
John Thaw turns up for our talk in a leather jacket and open-neck shirt as blue as his eyes. Very Jack Regan.
Says Thaw, “Thames Television were mooting at one time that we might go until 1980. Well, the programme might go on – no one has definitely ruled that out that possibility – but Dennis and I agree we’ve had enough."
“I’ve always regarded myself as a jobbing actor not a star. I’ve made a decent living for 20 years and I’ve been in a fortunate position most of the time of not having to do rubbish.
I love the theatre and I hope to go back to doing it some."
“The fact is I got a bit jaded with Regan. I can’t get any more out of him. it is easy to lose sight of the truth of the character when you go on day after day, year after year. Everyone gets glib. You can fall into the trap of acting by numbers.
Dennis and I were both feeling at the end of the third series, so we got everyone together to have a re-think and a new brief. I suggested we should treat the fourth series like the first. The results is that we have some of the best episodes we have ever had.”
They are also delighted with Sweeney 2 the second spin-off feature film that opened in the West End this week.
The first film was a big box-office success but its stars hated it. They say it was too far-fetched. “There wasn’t a halfpenny of the truth in it. But the second one is real and funny. I’m so pleased. If they wanted to make a third I might even say yes."
“Dennis is developing his career as a pop singer. Me? I’m going home to baby sit.” Another hoarse laugh. Thaw is married to Sheila Hancock, at the moment in rehearsal for a new musical Annie.
“Sheila’s very happy I’m giving up. Long-running series have an effect on your home life. I won’t say we haven’t had the odd shouting match.
It’s just like being a real-life police man. I never know what time I’m getting in. Even then, I’m too tired out to be good company."
“Sometimes I don’t see the kids for days on end. Then there is the added complication when Sheila is in a play. I arrive home and I’d be up again and out at 6 am. Its easy to become just ships that pass in the night.
The one thing I’ll really miss is the marvellous friendship of the Sweeney crew. The rest of it I’ll face with my natural optimism. I’ve never been one to groan: “My God will I ever work again?” out of work my attitude has always been: “They don’t know what they are missing.””
John Thaw finished his drink and buttoned his jacket. Still time to turn over a few more liberty-takers before the cameras cease to roll.
“I’ve decided to give up television for awhile: it’s like the old music hall, you can be good but if you stay on too long you’re rotten. Then, out of the blue, came this call from my agent saying there was a new Tom Stoppard play on offer and would I like to read it? You don’t say ‘no’ to that kind of question, particularly if you’re an actor who has just turned down “Whose Life Is It Anyway?” and is still kicking himself whenever he thinks about it. I’ve been out of work for most of this year, as it happens, though I’m not complaining.”
Thaw is married now to the actress Sheila Hancock whose “Annie” earnings have been able to keep the family going: they each have daughters by earlier marriages and one whom they share, and the family is currently living out of suitcases in a series of service flats while they build a home of their own in Chiswick. As a result, Thaw has been more or less resident at the Stoppard rehearsals:
“They offered to let me spend some time in a newspaper office researching what it is like to be a journalist, but it’s all in the text: Stoppard writes in such depth that there’s no time or place for any sort of sub-plot or private case-study. You just have to do they play as he’s written it and that’s that. I think this one will surprise a few people, though: it’s not another of his word-plays.”
The son of a Manchester lorry-driver, Thaw went to RADA at 16, which means that after 20 years in the business he’s still only 36, a fact that many people find hard to believe. “I think I was born looking 50, but I can’t say it’s ever done me much harm.”
This week alone Thaw turns up not only in the West End but also in a “Sweeney” and a BBC “Play For Today” about boxing: in his whole working life he’s only ever had about nine months out, and he started the way he meant to continue. At RADA he won not only the Vanbrugh Award for his performance as “Mephistopheles” but also the more useful Liverpool Playhouse Award which guaranteed him a year’s work in rep while he was still in his last term of training.
“I was in the same year at RADA as Tom Courtenay and Sarah Miles – it was a transitional time after the years of the gentlemen actors, and I started off getting a lot of police work even in rep. You have to be careful not to get typecast in cops-and-robbers work, but I was lucky in that before “Sweeney” I’d already done films like “The Bofors Gun” and years in other kinds of television, notably “Redcap”. So I didn’t get as badly typecast as some have.”
“It’s a lot tougher, being back in theatre now: for “Sweeney” they’d throw three pages of dialogue at you and say “We’re doing that in half an hour” and you could, knowing it could always be shot again if it went wrong. Now if we got a single new page of Stoppard during our pre-London tour I found it very much more nervy. You can’t just sit back and let Stoppard waft over you – he has to be mined, by actors and audiences. It’s hard work, but it’s worth it.”
Thaw’s career to date, though prolific and distinguished, has been distinctly unclassical: “I knew early on I wasn’t about to be the next Oliver, not looking and sounding the way I do. Can you imagine me as Hamlet? No, nor could I. But once I got used to that, I began to develop other kinds of acting skills and now I don’t think I’d ever be happy in a permanent company. Classical work really isn’t for me: I’d like to have another go at “Mephistopheles”, though, to see if I really was that good in it at RADA, but beyond that I can’t say there are any very great ambitions – except maybe that I’d one day like to go into management, not as a director but as a real manager putting shows together.”
Above all else, Thaw is a survivor: “I’ve done a certain amount of rubbish in my time, and some work in television and on stage that I’m quite proud of. But what I’ve liked hasn’t always been what the critics have liked, and what they’ve liked of mine I’ve often thought was terrible. Harold Hobson once wrote that he dreaded my every appearance on the stage: that’s not the sort of thing you forget easily, especially if you happen to be working on stage at the time, but in the end you learn to live with it. Confidence is all you need, the confidence that you’re doing your best: doing a stage play it’s very hard to take a breather, you have to keep your attention going all the time and in the end you get knackered. Olivier once said that the brain isn’t everything: you can’t act really well until your mouth knows exactly what it’s going to say next.”
Though his stage work included “The Fire Raisers” at the Court, “Women Beware Women” at the Arts, and “Semi-Detached” with Olivier, Thaw is certain that he’d never have been offered the Stoppard play had it not been for “The Sweeney”: “Television makes you a star, and I’d never underrate it, nor do I go along with the old actors’ theory that it’s a second-class kind of life. I only wish I’d been around when the British film industry was still alive, before they opened the till and everyone started sticking their hands in the profits. Still, another five years and I’ll have been a quarter-century in the business and start getting a reduction on my Equity card. You can’t ask for more than that, can you?”
Q: You’re 72 this month and still sizzling on stage; ever feel it’s time to put your feet up?
A: Certainly not. I work for my own sense of wellbeing. I need an objective. Without it, I’d start worrying about aches and pains. As for my birthday, I’m not a marker of dates, I can’t even remember how old my children are.
Q: So is age just a number?
A: Well, it’s in the body, too. You can’t avoid gravity pulling you down. I’ve always struggled with illness: I had acne in my adolescence and endless migraines and rashes in my twenties. You learn that if you neglect your body, at any age, it gives up on you.
Q: In your new play The Anniversary you’ve played the daughter and you’re now the mother. Do you relish the role reversal?
A: It was 40 years ago that I played the role of daughter so I should be playing the granny by now. Bette Davis played the mother 40 years ago, and I’m grateful for such a ballsy part; the role is thoroughly evil so it’s enormous fun. At my age, one is often stuck with sweet old ladies and menopausal housewives.
Q: Are first night nerves a problem?
A: Crippling. Hynoptism is the answer. I’ve been having it since I did The Cherry Orchard at the National in 1983. Over the years, it has helped me to stop smoking, to get over my fear of flying and to get me through my grief when my husband John (Thaw) died three years ago.
Q: Is your body a temple?
A: I respect it; a temple would be going too far.
Q: Gym — pleasure or penance?
A: My GP thought that I was neglecting myself after John died so he recommended a personal trainer; he used to come three times a week. Now I try to swim and walk.If I don’t, I seize up. I’ve also tried Pilates.
Q: You once said you’d be happy as a lesbian; still true?
A: No. What I meant was that I can understand how two women can have a sexual relationship; it would never have worked for me. I am now facing the fact that there won’t be another man in my life, which is sad.
Q: Believe in monogamy?
A: Yes, but I’ve been fortunate. I do believe in hanging in there even if there is only a glimmer of something worth saving. Often you end up with something more profound than you started off with.
Q: Does your idealism come from faith?
A: Faith in humanity, rather than God. I’m from a Quaker family so I believe there is God in everyone. Sadly, my ideals are getting a little frayed; in old age I have come to the conclusion that the world will always be troubled.
Q: Fifteen years ago you overcame breast cancer; has it made you stronger?
A: I don’t think you necessarily get stronger with experience. I wish I could say you did. I don’t want to bang on about it all the time — I’ve had it and now I want to get over it. I’m still a patron of Cancer BACUP, a charity that runs an advice system for patients.
Q: You also lost both your husbands to cancer — do the wounds of grief ever heal?
A: Yes, or, at least, they become less painful. Life is a series of wounds; no one is spared that. You learn to pick yourself up again.
Q: Tried the therapist’s couch?
A: I have, and John benefited greatly from counselling. If I start getting indulgent or weepy, I say: “Come on! Pull yourself together.” And it usually works.
Q: You’ve an appetite for life; what about food?
A: Now I live on my own I find it all a bit boring. After the cancer was diagnosed I spent a year eating only raw food under the supervision of my doctor. The idea was not to overburden the liver because it was busy getting rid of toxins. It worked for me.
Q: Still enjoy a tipple?
A: Oh yes. I love red wine.
Q: Guilty pleasures?
A: Give me a box of chocs and I’ll eat the lot, never just one.
Q: Any others vices?
A: It used to be smoking, especially when I was directing plays. I smoke in The Anniversary, as it’s set in the Sixties when simply everybody did. I tried smoking herbal cigarettes on stage but they smell ghastly so I’m now sticking with low-tar cigarettes and trying not to puff too much.
Q: Pop any pills?
A: I’ve taken multivitamins for years. And I inject myself once a week with vitamin B12 and Iscador, a mistletoe supplement which is supposed to boost the immune system. I’m taking far more B12 than I need but I have done since I had cancer, and I’m frightened to stop.
Q: What’s in your vanity case?
A: I’m a sucker for new products. I’m constantly being persuaded that something will change my life — but it never does.
Q: Fancy a nip and a tuck?
A: Oh yes. I thoroughly approve of anything that’s going to stop you looking gloomy. If you’re brave enough to do it, good luck to you.
Q: What makes you laugh?
A: Almost everything. I’m a real giggler; it helps you through things. One of the things I miss most about John is the laughter. He’d stop me taking myself too seriously.
The Anniversary is showing at the Garrick Theatre, London WC2, until April 16. Call 0870 8901104 to book tickets. Set in South London in the 1960s, this perfectly crafted and riotously funny play centres around a formidable and domineering woman who delights in getting the better of her family. On the anniversary of her husband’s death, her beloved sons and bedevilled daughters in law gather for a party that quickly turns into an hilarious battle of wits as Mum schemes, plots and uses any means necessary to keep her chicks in the nest.
Sheila Hancock's association with The Anniversary began 30 years ago when she appeared as Karen in the original production and cult film alongside screen legend Bette Davis. Now she returns to the West End as Mum, the mother-in-law from hell, in this classic comedy.
Cast includes: Sheila Hancock, Rosie Cavaliero, Liam Garrigan, Tony Maudsley and Madeleine Worrall.
FINDING THE ‘FRENCH MORSE’ - In the U.K. documentary ‘The Mystery of Morse’ made in 1998, it was reported that over 750 million viewers across the world, had so far tuned in to the ‘Inspector Morse’ series. One of the countries to telecast ‘Morse’ was France and it is very much thanks to French actor, Monsieur William Sabatier that French television viewers still get to hear Detective Chief Inspector Morse speak his sometimes biting - and his sometimes philosophical lines.
In fact M. Sabatier is the French voice of John Thaw – not only as Morse, but also as Harry Barnett in the French version of the telemovie ‘Into the Blue’ and as James Kavanagh in the ‘Kavanagh Q.C.’ series.
As a part of ‘The Mystery of Morse’, a small extract from the French language version of an ‘Inspector Morse’ movie, ‘The Wolvercote Tongue’, was shown. It was a scene where John Thaw and Kevin Whately were performing. But their English dialogue was replaced by French voice-overs.
I recently mentioned seeing this French scene, to my French friend, Martine Meyer who is also a fellow contributor to the John Thaw Forum on the ‘John Thaw 1942-2002’ website. Martine keeps we on the website informed of all things French in relation to John Thaw.
She decided to find out more about this ‘French Morse’. It was through her research that Martine found that he was French actor William Sabatier. Martine subsequently found a chronology of M. Sabatier’s film and television performances - http://us.imdb.com/name/nm0754563/ . She found that he has had a long and varied career as an actor in France. Indeed some of these performances are available on video and DVD. M. Sabatier was also a prolific theatre actor.
Martine also found his address in Paris and wrote to him. After reading her letter, M. Sabatier phoned Martine to introduce himself. Through a series of phone calls and letters, Martine was able to find out a bit about M. Sabatier and his work as the ‘French Morse’. Here is what she learned.
WILLIAM SABATIER
Monsieur William Sabatier is a veteran French Actor who graduated from the French Acting Academy in 1948. Says M. Sabatier, “My life, not just my career WAS dedicated to theatre, television and movies.” M. Sabatier no longer acts, but has continued his voice-over work for French versions of English movies.
‘To be somebody else’s voice was something I enjoyed very much. I am not only the “sexy voice” of John Thaw, but also of Gene Hackman, Marlon Brando, Rod Steiger and Richard Harris’, said M. Sabatier.
Through Martine, I asked M. Sabatier about the process of doing voice-overs and he was kind enough to give us some insight into the interesting process of creating a French language version of an English movie. The following description from M. Sabatier was originally translated into English by Martine (with a few adjustments by myself).
A Television Company wants to reach the French market with an English movie, so they need to produce a French language version. Firstly the Television Company engages a Production Company who calls a studio that is able to do that.
Next, the Studio finds actors for the main roles and the production company’s client (the TV Company) choose the people for the main roles. But the filmmaker is rarely involved himself in that work. Two men were involved: Terence Young and Ettore Scola and it is a real pity, as the Television Company is not the one who is most skilled to be able to choose.
Then there is more work involved. Somebody has to write the French version. That writer has the translation, word for word and he has to adapt it paying attention to the way the words are articulated so that the words match the way the actors speak.
The actor is not involved in all that and has no idea about the work he has to do when he is chosen. The translation is cut into small pieces, called “boucles” in French. The original scene is shown and we [the actors doing the voice-over] record the French language version. Then we listen carefully to the result and if the director is satisfied we go on further. Depending on the people involved we create an excellent version or a poor one. I’m not joking! I work close to the action so I should know!!!
In 2004, M. Sabatier completed his work on doing voice-overs for the John Thaw character, James Kavanagh of ‘Kavanagh Q.C.’ Speaking of that series, M. Sabatier commented to Martine –
‘The series is about the English Justice System and might look strange to us in France!’.
M. Sabatier is also a bit of an artist and he kindly sent Martine an illustration he did of himself at work on ‘Kavanagh Q.C.’. The illustration accompanies this article. The picture shows M. Sabatier on the left hand side doing a Kavanagh voice over. He says, ‘I chose the cats because the technician always speaks about my “cat in the throat” (a ‘frog’ in English). This is why I presented five cats in my drawing’.
I’m sure you’ll agree that it is a striking and witty illustration. It also gives us a further understanding of the voice-over process. The cat on top of the main machine has the text in front of it. Above that is scene from ‘Kavanagh Q.C.’ showing the barristers, during a trial. I know I can easily recognise the bullish, determined profile of James Kavanagh in the left foreground of that scene!
Here is what M. Sabatier had to say about John Thaw:
John Thaw was an actor liked very much. I have to say that this excellent actor in not well known here in France. I knew nothing about him before ‘Morse’, and a few professionals here know of him. I am not surprised that he is so popular in England.
I was not lucky enough t meet John Thaw. Neither did the other actors that I did the voice-overs with, ever meet him. The French actors are not greatly involved in the production of the French version of John Thaw's work.
I am so glad to be John Thaw's voice. I feel so close o him because I also began my career through the theatre and played a lot of Shakespeare's dramas. So I feel like he is a part of me. Like a brother or a comrade. I didn't imitate his voice. I used mine.'
Martine had sent M. Sabatier the DVD of 'The Mystery of Morse' and he was 'surprised to hear that short extract of [his] voice on the DVD.' M. Sabatier said, 'I am proud to know that my work is appreciated even to the other end of the world [Australia].' He was also surprised to learn that John Thaw had had a brother in Australia.
Martine also sent M. Sabatier Sheila Hancock's book 'The Two of Us'. 'I have progressed in my reading of the moving biography of John Thaw', he said. 'It is really moving.' M. Sabatier is not a fluent English reader so his determined efforts to read this book, dictionary by his side, says something, I think, about his desire to learn more about his alter-ego, John Thaw.
Throughout her contact with William Sabatier, Martine found him to be a friendly, witty and intelligent gentleman. 'Did you notice that I have the same letters in my name, W.S.!!! as 'the Great Will!!! William Shakespeare and William Sabatier. Aren't I modest?' he joked to Martine.
Martine also described M. Sabatier as humble. This was because he was genuinely surprised that anyone would be so interested as to learn about him and his work. He was even more astounded that someone on the other side of the world, in Australia, had heard about his work and was interested to learn more.
I myself have found this whole enterprise with Martine and M. Sabatier very informative, enjoyable and inspiring. It has been an adventure! In particular, I am happy to see that John Thaw's work continues - not only to cross national barriers, but language barriers as well.
Thank you William Sabatier from all the John Thaw fans involved with this site, for being so generous with your time in answering the questions from Martine and myself; And thank you for your kind interest in all our attempts to keep John Thaw's work alive and for bringing his art to the French people. You are a Gentleman, Sir! I hope you will often 'drop-in' to visit the friendly community of John Thaw fans on this website. You will always be welcome.
Thanks too, Martine, for introducing us to this sensitive and charming French gentleman and helping us to learn more about his work. It is good to hear from you also, that French television is at the moment awash with repeats of 'Inspector Morse' and 'Kavanagh Q.C.'. I will leave the last words to Martine:
I also very much enjoyed preparing this work for English-speaking people so that they can have an idea about what is going on in other countries; They can see that John Thaw is also loved by professional actors abroad and very much missed by a French actor who loves John Thaw's acting and sensitivity. And I hope Sheila will also be encouraged by that.
(Note: All quotes from M. Sabatier were translated by Martine Meyer and occasionally adjusted by myself into more plain English. We believe our translations accurately reflect M. Sabatier's sentiments.)
