Mark Lawson talks to George Cole Minder

[Music] oh most child actors are in rehab or retirement by the time they're teenagers but george cole though he first appeared on stage in 1939 at the age of 14 he's still one of the leading members of his profession 68 years later his most profitable roles have been as men desperate to make a profit first flash harry and the same trinions films and then a latter day black markets here the car salesman after daily it became an emblem of the thatcherite 80s in the long-running itv series minder but cole has remained consistently busy recently appearing in a number of tv plays about modern britain by the writer tony grounds including bodily harm a class apart and the dinner party he's one of the very few performers his careers have stretched from the era of music hall to the age of dvds one of the things that has changed a lot in your lifetime for actors is that dvd means that you can watch your own work if you want to there are box sets of minder same trillions and so on do you ever sit down and watch it always um particularly when they repeat it on television but now i've got all the dvds but um no i love it it's interesting because some actors you know can't bear to watch themselves i don't understand that i mean how do you learn about what you're doing whether you're doing it right or wrong if you don't watch so even now you'll catch yourself doing something and think i could have done that better or very rarely no but you do catch yourself um i think you know talking earlier not listening you think you should be listening a bit more earnestly than you were um but generally no i don't think i could improve very much i'm certainly not a minder i read that you you've read a book by the american actor allen alder called never have your dog stuffed and he has a whole chapter on the importance of actors listening to yeah which seems obvious but actually a lot of actors don't do it no they don't um i mean some young actors think it's a matter of learning the lines and if you learn the lines you're there you're not you know you can say your lines but if you're not listening to what the other person says you're not replying you're just saying the lines now i found that fascinating that chapter the worst part of being an actor it seems to me as an outsider is even someone as successful as you and you've been pretty much in work for 68 years now even that you're dependent on somebody giving you a job the script coming through the door do you get used to that insecurity yes you do because you don't believe it um no i think the only time you worry is if you do have a long period out of work and nothing's come in but uh i haven't had any of those now as amazed looking at the list of your credits um pretty much every year in the 68 years there's at least one thing sometimes several things yes true so you haven't you've never had periods of of worry or fear about what was coming next uh i had one period of 11 months followed by i think four days in gone to earth michael powell film but after that that was the worst i ever had and i think because it never occurred to me to take another job so i wasn't worried and i got through it anyway and you've just done a television role with donald sinden who is 84 two years older than you and actors tend not to retire they just keep going do you welcome that or have you ever felt you'd like to be in a profession where they give you a leaving party and send you off to put your feet on no no no i don't want to stop i mean i'm still enjoying every second of it and i've been doing some very nice scripts by tony grounds particularly the dinner party the dinner party please tell me you didn't go out in your vest i didn't go out in my vest you've got chicken nuggets and chips i'm 83 i'll make myself a bit of toast please don't george would you like a drink dad no he's coming upstairs aren't you george i'm all right sir i know you are mate it is quite a physically demanding job um the learning the lines for a start um the retakes the locations does that ever get does that ever feel too much well i think if it was going to feel too much it would have been so reminder because we said we shot 10 days per episode um both dennis and i were usually in most of the scenes but it was such fun and i mean when we started we had um an old green line bus which was makeup hairdressing wardrobe and places where dennis could play cards with his mates after the second series we said no we don't want that anymore we want a winnebago so very kindly they gave us both a winnie vega but that lasted for about a fortnight because we got so fed up we're going backwards and forwards to each other saying what do you think about this and what do you think about that so in the end we said cool we have a big winnie baker and he can have the front and i'll have the back and that's how we ended up and it was wonderful and he's heaven to work with i mean i've just done a um new tricks with him and his new gang and they are a lovely lot to work with we'll talk more about minded later but i just wanted because um as people get older i mean most people pass the age of about 40 they start to worry about memory and all of that but but lines and all the rest of it that has never been a problem for you no because i um when i was doing minder um i always tape the whole script um doing everybody's lines but doing mine stronger than theirs and then i had that tape in the car and going to work on the monday i play the stuff i know i'm going to do today and then going home i play the stuff i know i'm going to do tomorrow which means you don't get home dog tired and then have to sit down learning lines that's fascinating and so somewhere there there are tapes of you playing all the parts in every script you've ever done i think there i think i've taped over all of them because occasionally you you're trying to learn and something else comes through that you did in between i mean he's got the wrong script on there but um no i find that works marvelously and i talked about the length of your career if we go back to childhood born in london in the mid 1920s um your accent is interesting because in your roles you've used a lot of cockney and a lot of uh london accents um it's not your natural speaking voice what how would you have sounded when you were growing up when i met alice's sim and his wife i was oh i would talk like that with charm and i would understand what word i said and um i used to start telling them a funny story and when i got to the punch line they'd do that and i said what are you doing what are you doing that for we can't stand your vowel sounds do something about them and i think it was a case of do something about your vows hands or get out so i did something about my vowel sounds but thank goodness i didn't lose the cockney all together it became very useful i could say it made you a lot of money later rather than with you um before you met ourselves which we'll talk about in a moment but in childhood say what um your mother and father what are your members of them what were they like oh they're wonderful they're lovely um particularly as i was adopted by them um no they were marvelous except when i went away on the first job which was white horse inn and i sent my parents a telegram saying gone on stage will write nine words for six months in those days and i was about that size with pretty dark curly hair and people said years later what wonderful parents you must have had excuse me and i thought i don't know about that why didn't they come after me or go to the police or something but no i didn't see them for six months but um no they were wonderful in that they allowed it to happen how old were you when you found out you were adopted uh 13. it's traumatic for some people but what was it for you no it wasn't it was interesting and i mean the problem was to be guilty because i found a letter on top of the wardrobe when i was looking for christmas presents and i said what's all this about and my mother didn't hesitate to tell me which was very nice and i mean they they they'd given me a lovely childhood because they adopted me when i was 10 days old so they were good these days uh it's easy because of internet and various agencies but adopted uh children very often trace their parents do you know anything about your natural parents no nothing at all because there was no um adoption society in 1925 in fact if i waited another year um there was an adoption society so i know a bit more about them and they said there was simply no way of um no tracing them no you regret that i assume no you don't you've never been curious i was curious in my teens um but i thought suddenly you know what am i doing this for i've got two parents who are very nice and i love very much i don't want to find out where i'll come from because it's environment can change heredity in my opinion and i was very happy and you started you were a professional actor very young which we'll talk about in a moment but what have you done before that what had made you want to act i was in school players and also my mother played the piano and my father played the drums and we did british legion concerts and i did comic songs i also did comic songs at the end of terms school show and got into trouble with the headmaster for doing uh when i'm cleaning windows ah which was regarded as quite a saucy song at the time yes and was it a form being impersonation or no no no no i couldn't impersonate anyone those days but luckily practically everyone else had the same accent as i had and they understood me so how do you chosen that song it was you'd heard it i'd heard it i'd learned it i liked it and um when the school concert came up i thought i'll do it so i did and apart from the acting were you a good student at school yes i was i was at secondary school council secondary school and right the way through i was in the first three in the class either first second or third mostly second and third because there was a swat he always came first leaving a school at 14 which was it was allowed at the at that time but you had to you had to have permission from the school to go yes um when you left school in 1939 at 14 um the day you left which was usually a friday you had to go up to the headmaster study and meet someone from the board of trade who said what you want to do um and she said i want to be an apprentice engineer he'd say right you'll go to this firm on monday morning and they'll give you a job then i come up and say what do you want to do i said i want to go on the stage i want to be an actor i said get the back of the queue so i got to the back of the queue and by the time i got up again i didn't even get a chance to say anything i was just handed a card and said that is a butcher's immortan be there 8 15 on monday morning they want a boy who can ride a cycle as a delivery delivery boy so i don't like that idea that very much so after school i was selling papers around the streets of morden and suddenly in the middle of the star was an advertisement small boy wanted for london musical apply um helvetia club gerard street london so the next morning i uh went up to london to gerard street found the helvetia club thought i was in heaven it was full of chorus girls i was asked by the person producing what what do you do for an audition and i can still hear myself saying i'll do uh friends roman's country run by julius caesar and i think they said sorry could you say that again anyway i ended up doing that i didn't get the part but i got the understudy and i also had to go across the stage every night with two goats and six pigeons and when we were on tour i had to share a dressing room with them as well and all those decisions to leave school at 14 to go off an audition for the musical did you tell your parents about all that or just do it yourself just when yeah no i mean i thought i was going to go and then come back the same day i didn't realize i was going to have to go on a a train to a blackpool which i had to but your parents were happy for you to leave school yes yeah what would they have wanted you to do you um well they've probably been quite happy if i'd taken the job at the butchers in morden because it would be another wage coming in but um no i didn't want to do that and in fact um i think i got 28 and six a week and one pound paid for my digs and i sent home a five shilling postal order which always came back in the form of a box with a cake and sweets and god knows what all in it um and they seem quite happy and i was quite happy anyway i got there and went on tour then came into london coliseum and one day um our chaperone who was the boy the boy i was understanding his brother was our chaperone and um she said uh charles is going for an audition strand theater on whenever it was would you like to come along and watch because there might be one or two famous people there i said well yeah i like to do that so i went along with strand there's no scenery it was bare stage and the uh director richard bird was down in the stalls and there were these boys on the edge of the stage so i hung back by the exit door not wanting to get in the way and suddenly richard bird started yelling at me don't waste my time come on come on and i said i'm i'm i'm just watching so now come on come on come on thrust the script in my hand said read that and i read it it was a cockney evacuee i got the part and then he said you have to go to um oxford um today so i thought that's okay fine i'll go to oxford i've got some money and this is a play called cottage to let yes a wartime a thriller the very first spy thriller of the war yeah it never occurred to me to say to the people at the coliseum i won't be coming in this afternoon so i don't know who who dealt with the goats and so there's a dressing room full of animals yes and um i got to oxford uh i think it was a sunday uh and quite late and i was very small and carrying my big suitcase around with me and of course i hadn't had to worry about digs until now suddenly i got to find digs for myself they've got no chaperone so i went everywhere i went to the um police station no one could help me so i went to the theater and found the stage director and i was on the verge of tears he said what's the matter i said i've got no i can't get my legs i don't know where to live. and at that moment this rather handsome young man came in and said what's the matter with him and um jerry clifton the stage director said he can't find digs so this young man was playing the chewing our lead he said well you go and find him some digs and i'll take him over to the welsh pony and give him something to eat so he took me over to the welsh pony and this was you know rationing that ordered two mixed grills tipped them onto one plate said get that inside you and went back to the theater now on the monday we start rehearsing and the young man who was playing the juvenile lead didn't appear and apparently he'd been called up so i never saw him well roll forward 30 years i'm sitting in the mgm studios in l street and a very handsome young man comes over and says is that the young boy i gave two mixed girls to and i said yes it was stewart granger and what did you say to him i said i didn't know what to say i mean how he recognized me i don't know because i was i'd taken over my actor who died and i was wearing a very grey wig but someone also told him and it's quite unusual now for but there was a much closer link then between stage plays and films successful plays were filmed quite quickly and that began your film career in with cotton cottage yeah and the real significance of that is that that's where you met your great mentor alistair sim yes yeah in fact i met him in the play and um the blitz started and alice's wife was pregnant and so he they used to live in hampstead and they moved out to the country alastair was worried about the fact that i was living in london with my mother and he said you've got to get out of london and get somewhere in the country so we're going to evacuate you and your mother which they did very kindly to a place in the country it was very odd because the blitz settled down everything closed and it settled down everything opened again my mother couldn't stand the quiet of the country she'd rather have the bombs so she went back to london and we took the play cottage to let around all the army camps and by this time there was a very odd atmosphere about the blitz because people wanted him so we went back into wyndham's having run run there for nine months we now went back in again and ran i think for another nine months and that's when i um i met alistair and naomi and um got the film and uh there was a press story about how they'd adopted me which i found rather odd because i was already adopted you can't adopt twice and my story which is the right one is that i adopted them and 50 years later they spent the next 50 years trying to get rid of me which was rather difficult because i built my house next to theirs in the country so it was wonderful but did you ever know what was it he saw something in you as an actor or what was it that he took you under his wing in that way so early on i think one of the things it was both of them naomi as well that they felt that if i was going to go on being an actor i got to get do something about the cockney accent or you're going to be a cockney actor for the rest of your life and they have beautifully modulated vowels even being scots and you worked with him a lot and we'll talk about some of that but would he give you formal advice would he say this is the way to do it try this don't do that no no he uh he was quite harsh um and he would say things like he was a wonderful stage director but he'd be in the stalls and i'd be on and everybody else be on and he'd suddenly say um georgie just move a bit more to the right a little bit more that's right no i can't see you at all and that's when you began to realize that you got to start watching and seeing what had to happen but um no he's very good and he worked in a wonderful way because every play he did he put his own money in and he insisted on he didn't mind rehearsing in a room for three weeks but for the fourth week he wanted a theater a stage the set up and all the props so by the end of the fourth week you'd you'd run the play for a week it was wonderful and you talk about the atmosphere of the blitz and coming and going it must have been a strange time because you were in these plays these musicals but there was fear presumably i mean you knew that things were likely to get bad yes um it was very odd because when we were at wyndham's when it when the blitz started we all went up on the roof to watch and then we did the film at um shepherd's bush studios lime grove and we slept in the studio but again we went up on the roof at night and watched it total madness but um it was a great atmosphere then and as a young actors often aren't frightened they don't get stage fright but were you ever nervous as an actor starting so young no because i was playing a cockney evacuee who swore and i was getting paid for it so there was no fear at all i think the only time i had a frightening moment was we were playing cardiff and towards the end of the play i think in the third act in the interval i have to get into a big blanket box on the stage and a vital moment uh suddenly bang the lid up jump up and run off while i was in the blanket box they dropped a bomb very close to the new theater cardiff and i wondered should i get out now but no like the good boy i was i stayed there till my cue came but i was and one of the reasons that you'd had a chaperone was to keep you away from uh young theatrical ladies but once you didn't have one what was that a great opportunity i mean were you surrounded by young women while i was in whitehall soon i was surrounded by young women i mean prematurely developed little girls of 14 and um beautifully developed young ladies who i thought were at least 30 and i found out later or 18. but they weren't they were marvelous and then as the war developed there was a prospect of being called up presumably yeah i was called up when i was 18 in the raf um and i was in for four years um uh just before i was called up i um was asked when i was guns of playing jim hawkins in treasure island and i wanted to do that so having joined the raf or not i've tried to join the raf you then go before a board you say why do you want to join the raf and i said well i want to play jim hawkins and i'll get a deferment well you're supposed to say i want to fight and fly with the raf so again i was told to get out and go to the end of the line but um then i got um uh the raticam play which was flare path and um i got the part of boy in henry v and uh i got certain amount of deferment for that so that was the last thing i did because those those films were considered part of the war effort oh definitely henry the fifth yes yeah but um i went into the raf as a boy and came out as a man having shoveled coal and god knows what all but um it was good for me so henry v you were directed by olivier yes yeah he was wonderful i mean he he plays everyone's part but never in a way that he wanted you to do it it was always a way of explaining to you this is what how it could be played he would take his hands out and put it around his head and be the perfect mysterious quickly and it was wonderful to see the way it it all went and i i think i had one line that was a forerunner of arthur daley which was uh you uh you'll be you'll be famous boy you'll be famous and i remember walking off saying famous i'll give all my fame for a pot of ale and safety and i thought that's pure young arthur daly show me a pub i wonder about that during the war because um you've you went on to play a lot of spiffs um there were a lot around during the second world war did you see people who were useful to you later when you played those roles somebody said another performer had said that i pinched flash harry from him and i met him some time later and i said i understand you think i pinched flash harry from you and he said no certainly not i said well you're wrong because i pinched it from sid field but really he was um the cartoonist created flash harry because the cartoon in the book was him leaning at 45 angles degree around the corner with the moustache and with the hat so he made it all for you and going into the the raf because um perhaps surprisingly there are people in their 40s 50s now who've never been sent to war so you're the last generation that really have that experience but were you frightened when you were sent um well i don't think i can say i was sent to war because um i trained to be a wireless operator um and i didn't do well with the morse i couldn't learn it because i wasn't being paid enough and so i became what was known as aircraft hand general duties so um i did my square bashing then i went to blackpool and because i couldn't do the morse i had the job cleaning out the winter garden and then uh i was on parade one day and the sergeant said um come out here that's a rathbone and i didn't know he meant and then he made it very clear who he meant and um i've been told i've got to come down to uh pinewood for an ref film uh called journey together so i came down for that and unlike all the other actors like dickie attenborough and jack watling edward g brumanson uh who went home in the evening in london i was made to go back to coastal command where i was shoveling cold as soon as the day had finished so the acting in fact saved you from being sent into conflict probably um i think so yeah i mean i'm virtually blind blind in my left eye so that didn't help and um i did have trouble trying to learn dot dot dash and all that but um i ended up running a bar in um coast command headquarters then i was posted to germany where i was put in charge of another bar and that's what i did until the end of the war so i can't say i was in the war and then pretty soon after the war the act the acting career resumed yes um like when i came out i had to play bridely play with uh alistair sim dr angelus that was successful and that was very good because suddenly i was playing an adult i'd gone into the raf wearing short trousers come out a man so that saved me trying to get over one from one to the other when did your accent change when did the sims it had to change for dr angelus but i think it had changed before then um i i realized it had got to and i think i made sure it didn't and so you just consciously you just did it yourself you changed the way you said yes plus the fact that getting insulted all the time by alistair and you did many films with um alistair sim but the the the biggest were i suppose scrooge and then the saint trinions films yes yes uh yes i mean cottage stilett scrooge the green man he was in i think two of the centralians films he wasn't in all four would he give you advice on film sets i mean were you conscious of getting better as an actor yes yes you would play a scene as seen in the green man i remember and he suddenly said to me if you're going to do it like that i'm going to take it and i thought what's he mean and so i thought and the next time i did it it was quite different and he said good boy so i got i got the message so what did he mean by take it take it oh he'd have to control it if i was if i was going to be lacking energy which is what i think think he meant he'd have to uh do something about it i got the message and ended up being a lovely scene between the two of us um going mad trying to die 999. and when you were offered the first thing trilliums did you realize straight away that that was it was a very attractive character to play uh yes yeah um i i had a theory that flash harry was conceived in the bushes in that school and had never been out in the wide wide world but no it was lovely really wonderful to play i mean there was a real british film industry at that stage but what were you treated grandly as an actor what was it like no i wasn't treated grandly wasn't paid much either um i think the combination of uh the suntrinions films which were in the 50s and the radio series the life of bliss which is about the same time combined to get me recognized you were playing a young man called david alexander bliss barry uh has written in his book about the recordings of that um series which sound quite extraordinary because the the writer was rather chaotic and disorganized and tended not to finish the script by the time of the recording that's right um and it used to start off very well the bbc would say right we want four scripts before we start so they get four scripts but of course when it came to number five you'd only written 10 pages so we had to come in uh we were either at the aeolian hall or playhouse theater and go on stage start the show with an audience and then suddenly i will be handed up pages which i hadn't even seen but i had to go and carry on recording and then we had one very very bad time when we were all still there at midnight and he was downstairs writing the script and the audience had gone and i used to go down and see how he was getting on and used to have and then he'd pick up an empty water jug fill an empty glass with nothing drink it say i must go to lou and they come back and there's another page oh and barry tucker says in the book of the writer um godfrey harrison that his wife would be there frantically trying to encourage him to write yes some more pages yeah we had one actress i can't remember her name who at 11 o'clock said no i've got people coming for supper i'm going goodbye and what we'd already done had got to be adapted as we went on but it was a very successful series you know it's time you settled down and had a family pocket we must think of some nice girl for you guys don't you start i had enough of that mrs griffin don't worry i wasn't serious i know you weren't i know he'll be perfect for you pauline massey pauline messi you must have met her helen massey's sister about 24 awfully pretty she's the perfect wife for you will i be allowed to see her before i decide yes of course and you did that on television as well i think yes i think we only did one series because we had the same problem you know we were on air in an hour's time and there's still another six pages to come and you were doing more and more tv a man of our times as well in the 60s but you were you were coming to be regarded as a comic actor was that what you'd always wanted to do was that how you saw yourself uh no i i when i saw myself in david bliss as a light comedy actor and i saw myself in the central indians as a broad comedy actor and then julian bond created a man of our times and that was a wonderful part in it was 13 episodes in a a real time uh scheme in that in the first episode um he was going to be made redundant and this was a year in which redundancy became a word everyone understood whereas they hadn't probably hadn't before and he was given um a month to make up uh no three months to make up his mind either to take redundancy or go and work in australia and it was very timely um because we were dealing with strikes and we were dealing in the series with strike but these labels people use for actors because often people would describe you as a character actor whereas in fact all actors play characters so it's always seemed strange to me do they have any meaning for you those sort of labels um i think i got my first adult review in [Music] a film called my brother's keeper in which i was handcuffed to jack warner to escape convicts and the review in either picture show a picture girl said this young man has a name i wouldn't wish on a house painter and a face that makes bella lugosi look pretty it was signed bf now that could have been brian forbes probably wasn't have you ever asked brian forbes no no were you hurt by that review no i mean you can't hurt me after that um because i know i'm not as ugly as bella lugosi and i don't care what house painters think about my name exactly amazing snobbery that to pick on a name yes yeah so i suppose well what they were trying to say but in a rather rude way was that you weren't going to get romantic leads so that's what they mean by character actor right yes i think i mean you're not very pretty um yeah i think that's what they mean the um stage acting you kept going i mean quite major roles for example christopher hampton's the philanthropist which he did for two years two years and the 1970s and that again i say that's the other side of your acting range because that was you were playing an academic yeah i think that's one of the best plays that's been written in my lifetime anyway and um it was a mistake to stay in it for two years but um after the first year michael codron put my salary yeah put my salary up if i stayed for another year which i did um but it became a nightmare towards the end because i would drive up to london and find myself going into london airport for no good reason but i obviously didn't want to go to the theater and your concentration was paper thin and instead of it being stronger the longer you played it it went the other way and we were at the mayfair theater and you had to come out of the theater through the front of house there was no stage at all and i came out one day and some people were looking for something and i said what are you lost and they said glasses or a lighter or something so i said i think you'll find it's four rows further forward because i'd heard it rolled down but that's the sort of thing that you you you can't keep it up that long right through your career it's been important to keep the stage acting going because some people once they get filmed once they get tv they think i don't want to do that anymore but you've always capped both uh yes i'm not so sure that i would like to be in a uh a chance would be a fine thing be in a long run in london because it would mean driving 500 miles a week and that's a bit i don't like um so i'm very happy to do plays at places like windsor which is a lovely theater and i've done several plays there with my wife uh and as far as touring is concerned i'm quite happy to do the home counters but um i don't want to go much further because i like to get home at night and also in something like the philanthropist you you got the benefit of what the sims had done for you because you that was a posh role wasn't it absolutely yes yeah and so it's been very useful to you as an actor to have both voices the cockney and the pot yes yes and not to lose the cockney because i've needed it um and to get away with the posh the cockney is very important because it was one of the most important roles of your career um arthur daley when you were presumably what you were sent one script were you no i wasn't center script i was um what was i doing oh i was doing brimstone and treacle dennis potter play yes it had been banned from tv a very harsh play yeah i used to say to my wife as i went off to the theater i'm going up to london to spend two hours arguing with my wife it was awful and so suddenly i got a message would i meet um [Music] lloyd george taylor and lloyd yeah what's his name easton films yes anyway got a message to meet them uh at a hotel in i think german street and i said oh i can't know i've got to do this play and then it came back again and said look just come and have a drink so i thought all right and i said to my agent why have i got to meet them because i've done armchair theater for them and all that sort of thing they know what i can do there's a way to go and see them so on the way to theater we went to see them and um lloyd shirley and george taylor handed me a uh what you've got a format yeah and said read that so i read it and i couldn't stop laughing and uh they said we want to do a series of that character how do you feel um i said what wonderful i'm quite happy with having read that um and i think it was lloyd who said do you think you've got the stamina for it that was the first episode of 107 episodes so i must have had the stamina for it but it was a joy to do and so when there was a first screen when you looked at him did you get him instantly could you see absolutely when i read the format it said um uh arthur daley is is right behind the present home secretary as far as law and order is concerned his favorite film is the godfather and he dresses like a dodgy member of the citizen advice bureau and i thought that's enough for me i know exactly who that man is and i didn't get a script until we started and you also thought presumably i can use that accent that the sims made me give up yes yes and often in these big television roles um i mean inspector morse is an example for john thor or dell boy for david jason it's important that they're part of a double act that um the other actor has been important in those nicholas lindhurst or kevin wakeley that was certainly true in the case of minder wasn't it that it was a it was crucially a double hour absolutely and it was such um it was such fun to do he's a lovely actor to work with makes very good suggestions and he gives as much as he gets which is good so when you first met dennis had you worked with him or known him before we were sitting in the car in minder in the street i was sitting in the back he was in the front with a girl and he started talking about this film he was in uh called fright and i said you weren't in that film i was in that film he said you weren't i said it was it turned out that i'd only come into the film after he'd been killed and he was lying face down in the hall and i stepped over him but apart from that i did one sweeney so i didn't know him as soon as you met it worked as a combination i think we've circled each other for about three days and then realized that um neither of us were fighting for the building um and that uh we're both enjoying each other's company and did you ever get sick of each other no no because he had the front of the winnebago and i had the back and um we didn't spend much of our spare time because only an hour for lunch he's a was a great pub person and a great football person and i'm neither of those things um and if you've spent 26 weeks together you don't seek out each other necessarily when you're not working but we go and see each other i mean he came to see me in um party peace at windsor and we went to see him in my fair lady which he was absolutely wonderful and party peace um he came and he said where are you going next week i said we're in eastbourne and as he went out the stage door he said now you be careful watch out for those women in eastbourne and remember they're all older than you did you ever fall out when i'd ever have an argument over a receiver no no we used to meet in in in makeup and um you all are chatting there and work out but let's see in this scene or whether we liked it or whether we didn't and also when somebody new came in we made sure they came into the winnebago and if they had a lot of tricky stuff uh worked it through with us and they were very happy with that and we have wonderful casts they were really lovely when it started to go out in 1979 presumably quite early on you got a sense that it it it was a hit that it was working no no first of all it was delayed because thames went on they were on strike so we only did 11 and they went out and they went out in the sweeney spot and but we've got some reaction but not very much but what was interesting and this was what was so wonderful about houston films before we'd finished the first series they commissioned a second one which would never happen now no no you wouldn't get as if if you get get to number six probably and they say you're not getting 15 million viewers so goodbye and the next series we did 13. and we still didn't get in the ratings but the third series we suddenly appeared in the ratings and we went very very high and you knew something was happening because taxi drivers would say as are indoors or other of them would say you must pay that boy a bit more money it's not fair and you've sensed they're now they caught on to the characters and from then on we we didn't look back when you first did it did you the what became the catchphrases um uh indoors nice little earner did you realize when you first said them that they were no no you just thought they were the delightful phrases but uh no idea and i mean early in jaws is now in the oxford dictionary extraordinary and say you would get people would start giving you that a nice little earner you'd get those phrases back yes all the time yeah and people trying to sell me japanese savannah cigars did you ever get irritated by that level of attention yeah from people no no the only the one thing i learned very quickly you can't do window shopping otherwise you'll get buttonholed and told the details of the last six episodes of minder so you've got to keep moving the only time it got worrying is when you're going down the motorway at 60 miles an hour and somebody passes you at 70 winds down the window and says oh that's quite worrying and you quickly pull into the slow day some actors once they get involved in a hit although it's great to be in one they start worrying about how long to stay in it and their actors who have left series for that reason because they fear typecasting did you worry about that being in it for so long no no i mean you you if you're enjoying it and it's good you're getting good scripts you want don't worry about typecasting i mean it's other people and critics worry about typecasting but as an actor um and certainly at my age i'm not worried about typecasting just give me a job but you didn't mind it for so long and dennis waterman left it and you went on and he was replaced but did it remain as satisfying for you right through yes it did in a different way gary webster was a completely different animal to dennis and i but i enjoyed working with him very much tim's lost the franchise that's why it finished but we came in with mrs thatcher we outstayed it by five years on the mrs thatcher point who's gonna raise that because you probably know apart from being in the oxford english dictionary quite serious books now about british politics say that mind after daily it was all part of the thatcher revolution and that's why people liked it did you ever think about any of that i only thought about it after when people said how do you feel about doing some more now and you you have to say no it's had its time it was a time of greed and he certainly was a greedy man but people enjoyed that because they'd like to do that and get away with it and it's the same as david jason's dell boy i mentioned that they belong to that period very much absolutely yes yes 70s 80s yeah you mentioned being asked to do more um have there been an attempt to bring it back over the years no people said would you consider doing more i said no you never that well you must never say that unless you no immediately after mind did you find that people tended to offer you arthur daily type stuff you got sent a bit but not very much um most times it didn't get past my agent i mean she would look at it and tell me i say shall i send it to you and you give me an idea about it and i say no i don't think so but um no you do yeah you did um a building society adwin which which was a version of arthur daley wasn't it no it was not um when i did that uh the itc or whoever they are the the regulator at the time of wardens yes said um wrote to my agent and said george cole is not to do the elites commercial because you mustn't use a character that's on itv at the time and i sent back a message saying that is not arthur daly after daley wouldn't be seen dead in that sheepskin coat and that flat cap and still they didn't like the idea but in the end we got a very nice note saying all right we accept that the leeds man is a distant relative of arthur daly so i was allowed to do it well i started racing greyhounds now and this one's no beginner he hasn't lost a single race a dead cert money spinner that's why i call a hairy hound did you have to think hard about whether to to do adverts because that is a decision actors have to make again it comes down to script i mean the first commercial i did was for hamlet cigars and it was one of the best scripts i've ever seen that's interesting because um a lot of people cynically think that actors just do adverts for the money and don't take it very seriously but you you took that seriously as a bit of acting yes because it was a good script and also the the the leads man these were very good um sketches of of this character and i mean i think it was um early rep actually and again it it you you did uh two one minute ones and the thirty second one once a year it's a week's work and probably a year's money i mean astonishing amounts they pay for yes and you obviously didn't worry about doing things that you didn't want to do a television series i have fond memories of but probably a few people remember is don't forget to write and by charles wood wonderful which was tremendous series and uh most most of the people i know who are writers um remember that series very fondly um that was very very different from um i'd say it's the other end it's the posh academic end of your um acting but you were playing a playwright a reluctant playwright yes i mean he got fed up writing and he would lock himself in his room make a tape recording of his typing and then switch on the tape recorder and open the window and go out and do some gardening gordon want another cup of tea and when gwen watford the wife came and listened at the door all she heard was tip tap chip jack chip says she assumed he was working till she found out turn the typewriter off would you please this is the first time in 22 years you have ever tried to deceive me nonsense yes oh i've tried often why well some of them are quite pretty the stuff that's come in in recent years i mean you were offered how do you make that judgment as to what to do it is the script yes if by page five you get up to make a cup of coffee you're not gonna do it if you don't get up to make a cup of coffee it's more likely that you are going to do it but you can tell at once i mean with good writing you no problem at all but occasionally you get something that you've seen before and you don't want to do it but you're thinking what what can i do with this what can i do with this role well no before that you're thinking does this come off the page and most times it does um and you don't have any problem uh i mean charles board came off the page like nobody's business and there was no problem at all there and what was so wonderful was charles liked writing two people talking and it was good stuff but some people when they get that to direct they give you an awful lot of music over it because they don't think it works but it did work with charles every single script and as i said it's rather neglected seriously but i think you were you were a victim of bbc politics perhaps i think we were yes because the whoever was responsible um changed the time of transmission every week which didn't give it much of a chance it was sad particularly people kept saying what a lovely series it was a lot of the stuff you've done recently tony graham's it is his subject but has been about class um a lot of the dinner party is about that um and class apart is about that as i say having the two the range in your in your background having changed your voice and so on that's presumably quite an interesting area for you yes because in a class apart uh i was grandad cockney granddad and in the dinner party i was bit posh um and probably the only redeeming feature about the play was my character because they were really well the two young people weren't they were all right but the others were monsters some people in their later years get depressed they get angry they just simply don't like getting older have you felt any of that uh no i mean i don't like the fact that i'm not as nippy on my feet as i used to be um and i've never run anywhere anyway so that doesn't worry me um no you you'll get a bit slower a bit stiff when you get up from the chairs i will after talking to you you'll help me out though wouldn't you i will yeah no it doesn't worry me and i suggested earlier earlier one of the great things about acting is that you can you can simply keep going yes yeah i mean i'm i'm still going i mean the last thing i did in the theater i think before party piece was um heritage at hampstead in which i played a chelsea pensioner and that was a lovely play we went down to have lunch at the royal hospital and they're terribly funny because they say the only ones who leave here leave to get married which is extraordinary and they're so full of um vitality energy and and lovely people would be with the obe you got did that mean a great deal to you but not a great deal um it was very nice um yeah it's all right um i think anything like that i probably i didn't approve of it before i got it well no i wondered about that yeah no i i do now and who gave it to you her majesty and did she say nice little earner or anything to you when she no she said are you still doing the television work and i said yes mom i am he said i don't see you very much i'm very busy now you say you wouldn't have approved of it um before so you bit of a lefty were you no i i just think i i don't think it's right for actors to get these awards i think a lot of people in business and inventing and people like that are the ones who really deserve them but i mean we get well paid for doing something we like doing but that was nice to have and it was nice to go to the palace and take the family with me and have the car search as we went in and be slightly embarrassed because there were two pots of curry that my wife had brought up in the car for our daughter and the police wanted to know what it was [Laughter] do you have any regrets at all about your acting career no not at all no pretty happy position to be in yes very george cole thank you thank you next week mark lawson meets comedy legend barry cryer wednesday at 11. next tonight hancock and joan details coming up in just a second [Music]

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Length: 58min 57sec (3537 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 24 2020