Guinness was good for me
Pinewood Film Studios, 1973
I was cuddled up in bed with the new James Bond, Roger Moore, filming Live and Let Die. He whispered in my ear, ‘This job is nothing compared with your next one.’
This next job was in a new play, Alan Bennett’s Habeas Corpus. Starring Sir Alec Guinness, it was an end-of-the-pier, black-humoured pantomime written partly in verse, with plangent fairground musical interludes composed by Carl Davis. Recorded on a Wurlitzer, the music set the tone of the play each night at exactly 8.10pm. That’s when I knew it was time for me to scamper down the concrete stairs to make my first entrance.
On the first night, I
