Funny Girl(33)

Sophie would be an interesting test case. She was more Sabrina than Sophia Loren – Sophia Loren was an Italian film star, not a Blackpool beauty queen – but she was magnificent, in her own way. He’d thought he detected a tiny spark of something, when they first met, but then she’d trampled all over him in the Comedy Playhouse, and that was before he heard about the change of title.

Clive had not yet had a telephone installed in his flat, and had not yet been persuaded of the benefits of doing so. His parents couldn’t call, and neither could girls who had turned out not to be exactly what he was looking for. He lived off Warren Street, and if anyone wanted to reach him, they knew that they could leave a message at the Three Crowns on Tottenham Court Road with Davie behind the bar. Davie didn’t mind. He thought that writing down phone messages for Clive, and very occasionally accepting scripts on his behalf, was the most glamorous part of his job. After a couple of months of regular patronage, Clive came to the conclusion that this was true. The Three Crowns was not a glamorous pub.

Davie, who had moved down from Glasgow at the end of the war in an attempt to break a cycle of crime and punishment, was particularly keen to see Clive in a Western series – he admired both The Virginian and Rawhide equally. Clive had long since given up trying to explain that very few actors from Hampshire, especially actors from Hampshire known mostly for their radio work, had had much luck landing a part in either. Davie remained undeterred. In his mind’s eye, he said, he always saw Clive as a cowboy. Clive had always thought that Davie needed his mind’s eye tested.

Clive dropped into the Three Crowns at lunchtime on the day after the Comedy Playhouse recording to find Davie in a state of high excitement.

‘Monty called,’ he said. Monty was Clive’s agent and it was true that he didn’t call very often. ‘Do you think it’s The One?’

‘It could be, Davie.’

‘You can call him from here,’ said Davie, an offer indicating his level of excitement and his investment in Clive’s career.

The saloon bar was empty, so Clive let himself behind the bar and Davie poured him a half of bitter while he dialled Monty’s number.

‘So what’s the bad news?’

Monty had been an agent since the mid-1920s, and Clive never knew whether his best days were behind him or whether there had never been many good ones in the first place. He had approached Clive after a LAMDA performance of The Long and the Short and the Tall at Edinburgh, where Clive had made a pretty good fist of Private Smith, everybody said. Afterwards people were swarming over the insufferable Laurence Harris, who’d grabbed Bamforth for himself while the rest of them had been looking the other way; any idiot could play Bamforth and get noticed. When Monty sidled up to Clive in the bar and asked if he needed representation, Clive asked him why he wasn’t chasing Harris, like everyone else. What Clive wanted to hear from Monty was that he could see underneath the surface of performances, however flashy, to the true talent underneath. Instead, Monty said sadly that he was too old to chase after people, that he’d get trampled in the rush; he was, as he put it, ‘seeing what was left at the end’. Clive should have known then that Monty wasn’t someone with a lot of fire in his belly.

‘You always think there’s bad news,’ said Monty.

Clive didn’t say anything. He had found that this was the easiest way to unnerve Monty.

‘I can get the money up,’ he said eventually.

‘So the money’s no good.’

‘It’s BBC money. But even they can do a bit better.’

Clive stayed quiet again. If there was any bad news that didn’t involve money, he couldn’t imagine what it might be, but it was worth trying to flush it out.

‘And obviously I’m trying to get rid of the brackets.’

‘What brackets?’

‘In the title.’

‘I can’t hear any bloody brackets.’

‘Oh. Sorry. Barbara … and Jim.’

‘I’m still not hearing any brackets.’

‘Well, they’re sort of around the “and Jim”.’

‘The series is now called Barbara bracket and Jim?’

‘Bracket.’

‘What?’

‘After “Jim”. Close brackets.’

‘You’re saying that my character is now parenthetical?’

‘It’s just a little joke. To show that she’s the boss.’