In the winter of 1974, aged 29, I was playing Archie Rice’s son in The Entertainer, directed by the play’s author, John Osborne.
Max Wall, then 66, was playing Archie. We had to wait in the wings, stage left, during the interval. As the play started again, the lights came up and the dialogue started. Max told me he had a headache.
He was smaller than me, although, on his own on stage, he could look huge. I held the nape of his neck gently in my right hand and rubbed his temples on either side between the thumb and forefinger of my left hand.
The skin on his forehead rippled slightly and Max closed his eyes. It was like holding the head of the Sphinx.
We heard the cue for our entrance and walked upstage towards the light.
