I have had an e-mail from a lady by the name of Helen Rappaport who has had a book published on the life of Madame Rachel, called naturally enough BEAUTIFUL FOR EVER, and the reason she got in touch is because she knew I had written a play of this name and on this subject way back in 1962. Considering the play, apart from one or two amateur productions, has hardly ever been performed I was amazed that she even knew about it so how did it come about? Well, he breathes in hushed and reverent tones, there is evidently a copy of it in the Bodleian. Golly gosh! Me in the Bodleian! Amazement on my eyebrow sits. The reason for her getting in touch is that there was evidently an even earlier play that John Gielgud wanted to get on and did I know anything about it? To which regretfully the answer is no so I can’t be any help there. I don’t know why she would be so interested as her book is finished but she says Gielgud wanted Margaret Rutherford for Madame Rachel, a very strange piece of casting. In that period I would have thought Flora Robson a better choice except she would probably have said, “Oh, I couldn’t possibly play a part like that. What would my fans think” When I was in that awful play at The Haymarket some years ago I tried to interest Dulcie Grey in playing Mrs Borrowdaile but got nowhere. I have to admit they are two parts that only a truly dedicated actress, rather than a star, would consider doing. I saw the first amateur production in Wales and was most impressed with the play in that it stood up gallantly to the worst kind of amateurism, bless their hearts. Anyway, Chris has ordered the book so I look forward to reading it. “No more books!” Once more it is a cry from Douglas’s heart. There is absolutely no more shelf space.
But books can be such a treasure. One that I have just finished reading, published by The Society for Theatre Research and which is just such a treasure is called, ‘A Chronicle of Small Beer’ and it has been a fascinating, I could even say enchanting, book to read. It is by a minor Victorian actress, Winifred Dolan who spent only 11 of her 81 years in the theatre, but what a feisty young lady she must have been when women were expected to know their place and, despite the Ellen Terrys of this world, their place was definitely not in the theatre, not respectable young ladies anyway. But, apart from the enjoyment of reading about her, it was also most interesting to read about Victorian/Edwardian theatre in England as such and I was particularly interested in what she had to say about plays and playwrights. “If acting is a gamble,” she writes, “play-writing is worse.” She worked a great deal both as actress and in various other capacities for the actor/manager George Alexander and writes that in his office there was always a pile of manuscripts at least two feet high waiting for consideration which meant they were kept for three or four months. Well, in my opinion and knowing how long managements take these days to read your script, if at all, and if they bother to let you know the result, that was pretty good going and all sorts of circumstances can prevent even an accepted play from being produced. She tried her hand at play-writing and went through it all so was talking from first hand experience and once again I say (you must be getting really bored with this) nothing ever changes, not in the theatre anyway. I absolutely loved this book. I wish I could have known Miss Dolan and I only wish this biography will have a wider circulation than just membership of the society.

It must be a bit depressing to have your work derided, looked upon with scorn and considered by many to be on a par with junk, even though you may be laughing all the way to the bank, many times over. I am thinking in particular of Dan Brown and Jeffrey Archer of course. Chic-lit, celebrity biographies and Mills and Boon one has to accept for what they are. I have to admit that THE DA VINCI CODE is a real page turner but the writing is not so impressive. As far as Archer is concerned he might, unknown to me, have written something truly great as I have read only one of his books. I can’t remember which one it was but I do remember at the time being terribly impressed with the research. Otherwise I thought it very poor stuff. But who knows? if he ever gets to read a Glyn Jones book he might be of exactly the same opinion. After all the positive things that have been said about DOCTOR WHO-THE SPACE MUSEUM over the years we have just come across a review on the internet that thoroughly demolishes it. So there you are. You cannot please all the people all of the time.
Is it humiliating to find that, from standing on a pedestal, your reputation as an honest man of integrity is suddenly in tatters? In this instance I am thinking of Tony Blair who, despite his running all the way to the bank, having made an estimated £20000000 since leaving his office as prime minister, if he has any sensitivity must surely look back and wonder if his life in fact has not been a failure; that he won’t go down in history as a man of honesty and integrity but simply as a money grabbing rather oily character of not much principle.
The South African playwright, Athol Fugard has said that he believes the world has gone mad and I am afraid I agree with him. I am too old now to be unduly worried about what the future might hold, not for myself anyway, though I do worry on behalf of the young generation who have to try and make good while the world lasts. If the Jihadists have their way of course it’s going to hell in a very bloody hand basket but even without that threat it would seem lessons are never learnt and history simply repeats itself. So we get back to the world of commerce and banking. The world spun dizzily towards disaster partly because of the greed of bankers paying themselves enormous salaries, bonuses and pensions and the banks fast going down the tubes had to be rescued with government money, that is tax payers’ money, that is the money from ordinary every day people. With a couple of exceptions having more or less climbed out of the cesspit thanks to this government intervention the bankers, and high profile executives who were doing the same on top of their huge salaries, are doing exactly the same thing again as if the recent past never even happened and, what is more, they’re being allowed to get away with it. ITV’s new boss has a contract worth £18m, a PR man is reputed to be worth £146m, was Jonathon Ross really worth his contract of £18000000? Guess he was one of the reasons for the TV licence being increased, Ross and BBC executives who are all on massive salaries and expenses. As for those bankers and business men, well the less said the better I suppose. The UK like Greece is in Carey Street to the tune of trillions and taxes it is rumoured are due to rise! Who would have thought it?

If there are any number of Peter Pans, there are just as many Glyn Joneses. It must surely be the most common name in Wales, equalling no doubt John Smith in England. We decided in order to differentiate this Glyn Jones from the myriad other Glyn Joneses, I use my second name, Idris. That’s all very well but up to recently; published works were just credited to Glyn Jones. From now on it’s Glyn Idris, if not on the cover then at least on the title page, as I am the only one with those two Christian names in that order. Oops! Mustn’t say Christian. Will have the PC brigade up in arms. Sorry, forenames. Interesting thing about the name Idris, apart from the fact there used to be a soft drink by that name whose motto was “Idris when I’s dry”, except the name is not pronounced I but E. There is a theory that Wales was once invaded by Arabs as Idris is also an Arab name and, even though I don’t speak the language, I have been informed that Welsh grammar is very similar to Arabic. I can’t vouch for the truth of his statement. Jones is also a bit weird as there is (again I am informed of this) no J in the Welsh alphabet.
What a washout and a strange day it was Tuesday but very Greek. First of all we went to the local police station to try and renew our resident’s permits. In fact we’ve been trying to do it for a year but it’s like batting your head against that proverbial brick wall. There is no reason why any person in the station can’t do it but no, it has to be the secretary, and the secretary is the most elusive man on Crete. We did catch up with once but he wouldn’t do it on that occasion as he wanted his coffee. Having failed there we motored up to the Health Centre to get the results of my blood test (for sintrom) only to find they’re all on strike. That is the doctors will attend an emergency but nothing else. We did get the results but took them to Doctor Elizabeth for new instructions as to dosages. It was quite wonderful. When she saw Douglas her face lit up like a beacon. What a smile of welcome! Naturally she had to hear all about his treatment in England so I’m afraid patients waiting to be seen just had to be a little more patient.
On to the town hall to try and register to vote in local elections but once more came up against Greek bureaucracy and failed to do that. So we sat outside Mikey’s on the platea for the first time this year in beautiful sunshine. Greece does have its advantages.

I always suspected there were any number of publications of PETER PAN but never realised just how many. What an industry Mister Barrie’s play has turned out to be. My musical version having just been made available on Amazon, Douglas looked up PETER PAN and gave up after twenty five pages! I’m there, I’m definitely there, but having only just been published, I’m an awful long way down the list.
But bit by bit things seem to be happening, (thanks to the internet?) or is that wishful thinking after all these years? Three different queries on THE 88 from Ireland and from Ulster a lady writes to say she has seen the DVD of DOUBLE DECKERS and if she sends me a letter would I autograph it for her? This is very interesting because, although, when questioned, she says she bought the DVD from the official DOUBLE DECKERS website, we know nothing about it and this is the second time someone is making money out of my work, and the others involved, and we get nothing for it. The previous pirated copy was being sold on E-Bay and we managed to get it withdrawn. Also a company called Cherry Records have produced a CD of the music from the show and four of the songs (lyric wise) are mine but yet again I am seeing nothing for my work. The company insists they bought the rights outright from whoever had it previously who bought it from someone else who bought it from someone else and so forth down the line. When 20th Century Music, the original copyright (note spelling John) holders were approached we were informed that they don’t keep records going that far back to which my answer is crap! Would the small amount of money that could legitimately come my way really be such a big deal as far these companies are concerned?
The latest enquiry comes from Adelaide in Australia and concerns DOCTOR WHO. I must admit I do get chuffed when this sort of thing happens, especially if I can be helpful.
Many years ago when I was in MEASURE FOR MEASURE at the Open Space, Charles Marowitz asked me if I would like to play the ghost in his following production of Hamlet and the ghost being a rather small part I turned it down. It was definitely the wrong decision. Instead of being so hasty I should have asked to see his version of the play. Evidently the ghost was a major figure and the part was definitely worth playing. What an idiot I was. What brought this to mind was reading about Gordon Craig in the Ellen Terry/Henry Irving book and coming across the fact that a Polish director, Stanislaw Wyspianski round about 1910 had made the ghost the chief character in his production of the play, so Mister Marowitz wasn’t being exactly original. Am I right in believing that Tom Stoppard’s play ROSENCRANZ AND GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD was actually the second working of that theme? That there was an earlier version? I was told this by someone but have never bothered to check it out so it may not be true. Then, on the other hand, it might be. There really is nothing new under sun.

A small pleasure or sense of satisfaction derived from writing an autobiography is the opportunity it gives of taking a little revenge on those who you feel deserve it. I think particularly of one Mary McCarthy*, of Ben (Know it all) Hawthorne, now Raymond of course and evidently a big cheese in New Zealand theatre, and Charles Osborne. Of course if they don’t get the book and read it they will never know what has been said of them but I have at least had the satisfaction of saying it. I don’t think I’ve been too vicious, certainly not as vicious as Ms McCarthy in reviewing my play “Early One Morning” when it went on at the Arts Theatre all those years ago. Admittedly the production was pretty awful but I don’t think it was the fault of the play so much as the direction, staging, and a totally inadequate actress. I haven’t got her down on my list because, poor dear, it wasn’t really her fault. She was simply a bad actress who wasn’t up to it. It happens. I suppose one of the problems with critics who have little if any knowledge of the mechanics of theatre, and that probably include a goodly percentage of them, see a play purely from an audience point of view, a personal point of view, Ms McCarthy’s expertise at the time was on the woman’s page of The Guardian and, because my play opened on the same night as two others, obviously thought to be more important, that is where the mainstream critics went and I got whoever the various papers had available to send along. Ninety percent of an audience don’t have any knowledge of the theatre either and why should they? They enjoy a play or they don’t but would probably be hard put to know exactly why it fails for them. Every night the audience is a different animal and actors to an extent have to temper their performances to each audience. I remember when I was at the Vaudeville many years ago understudying Peter Cellier and Alistair Sim of all people (Who could possibly understudy Alistair Sim and get away with it? Fortunately I didn’t have to, he never missed a performance), and I was sitting in the stalls during a performance in order to watch them at work. Derek Fowlds, who had been doing Jackanory on the BBC, was in the cast and when he appeared a woman behind me said in a loud voice, “I wonder if he’s brought his squirrel!” The animal in question was actually a most famous fox, Basil Brush – boom boom! Stupid woman. It was at this point that I suddenly wondered for a moment why I ever went into the theatre in any shape or form in the first place. Fortunately the feeling passed.

*Not the American author.

Strange how some names just lend themselves to punning. In the book on Meggie Albanesi I read she was in a Somerset Maugham play, “East Of Suez” evidently a great old hotchpotch of a play, directed by Basil Dean who had a reputation of being really hard on his actors. Surprising really considering he had been an actor himself, and in the cast was a young actor by the name of Kendell who was having a pretty torrid time until Maugham told Dean he was “burning the Kendell at both ends.” This reminded me of a theatrical story about Rex Harrison and Kay Kendall who were having an affaire and were both in a play called “Bell Book And Candle” which of course became known as “Bell Book And Kendall”.
There is a theatrical story about Dame Edith Evans which I’m sure is apocryphal though could be true I suppose. When she was at the Vic she was visited by an actress by the name of Mary Kerridge. There was a knock on her dressing room door and the timid voice of an assistant stage manager said, “Excuse me, Dame Edith, there is a Miss Kerridge on the stairs”, to which the grand Dame in that marvellous fruity voice replied, “Don’t both me with it, child, clean it up.”
Of all the cast of characters in the Albanesi book I suppose I knew the name of Basil Dean most of all because his production of “Hassan” touring South Africa when I was still a schoolboy was the first professional theatre I ever saw and I was hugely impressed by it; an enormous colourful production with special music by Delius, I can still picture it after all these years.
Big headlines in The Mail – “BBC man jailed for filming himself in bed with TV girls”. I wonder if it would have made such large headlines without those magic symbols BBC and TV. Now I know what he did was most unpleasant to say the least, one of his victims saying it left her feeling violated sick and dirty, another that it had destroyed her trust in men (?) and caused problems in her current relationship. It was a kind of rape in a way I suppose but with British jails bursting at the seams and the constant moaning about over crowding did it really warrant a prison sentence? After all, criminals who get up to much worse things are tagged (evidently for the most part ignored) let off with warnings, suspended sentences and community service and surely community service should have been the punishment in this case. All right, it was a case of voyeurism and carrying things to extremes but the British are still very leery when it comes to sex. Littlejohn puts it very nicely in his rewritten nursery rhymes for our times, “Georgie Porgie, pudding and pie, kissed the girls and made them cry, now he’s on the sexual offenders’ register”. At least in England they haven’t gone as far as throwing up their hands in horror and having conniptions at a three year old boy kissing a little girl as has evidently been the case in America. There was a time, (when I was a kid) when little boys were encouraged to kiss little girls. How the world changes.

Some time ago I thought of trying to write a chamber opera on the life of the artist Modigliani but have never found a way to do it. Maybe I just wasn’t really that enthusiastic. Other people have been though because in a newspaper article I read there have been nine novels, a play, a documentary, three films and, of course, biographies so I doubt this late in the day I will ever get around to it. It’s truly amazing when one thinks that in his lifetime he could not sell his art and gave away paintings to pay for meals and the moment he was dead they couldn’t go quickly enough at ever increasing prices. Admittedly his art is not everybody’s cup of tea but nowadays in the heyday of what is called conceptual art we have so called artists making fortunes in the most ridiculous fashion; fashion probably being the word for it. Do the emperor’s clothes come to mind?
The two journalists I miss who write for The Sunday Times are India Knight and A.A.Gill but I am compensated somewhat by another journalist whose column I read every Friday in The Daily Mail, the one English paper I take for reviews since boycotting The Times. This is Jan Moir who not only talks a lot of sense but who does it with panache and is always worth a chuckle somewhere down the line. The manager of a shop complained about a woman breast feeding her baby which has resulted in a positive furore; but if I may quote Miss Moir without breaching copyright, “This small incident has been the starting gun for a blast of instant maternal affront and Curse of the Mummy style fury. Emphasising once more that it takes a brave man – or woman – to get between the modern young mother and her perceived statutory rights. These include, as if we all didn’t know, the right to mow you down with a buggy if you don’t get out of the way quickly enough; the right to behave as if they have just given birth to the second coming of Christ instead of a farty little squirt called Sam.” I love it. She could have called it any one of a hundred boys’ names but Sam just fits the bill, like Coward’s “brittle”, and the description of “farty little squirt” is just perfect. I look forward to her column every week, that is when we can get The Mail. In the winter it’s not always available as the distributors in Xania seem sooner or later to fall out with every shop in Kalyves prepared to sell foreign newspapers. Silly really considering the hundreds of ex-pats how now live on Crete especially, or so it would seem, in this area called the Apokoronos.