A Class Apart comes to Ö÷²¥´óÐã One
George Cole plays George
There aren't many octogenarians still working hard and in demand in their
chosen profession, but actor George Cole who, at nearly 82, can be seen in
Tony Grounds's new drama for Ö÷²¥´óÐã One, A Class Apart, is one of them.
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"Actors
don't retire," he tells Jane Dudley, "they just stop getting work. The
profession tells you when it's time to go – the work stops coming in."
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That certainly isn't the case for George, whose career spans more than an
astonishing 65 years. So in demand is he that he thought for a while he'd have
to turn down another role in order to appear in A Class Apart: "I've done two
Tony Grounds scripts before [Family Business in 2004 and Bodily Harm in 2002]
and I like his scripts very much. I was slightly worried as I'd just been
offered Miss Marple and I said to my agent, this is going to be difficult;
whatever happens I'm not giving up Tony Grounds."
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Luckily, the same production company was making both dramas, so diaries were
co-ordinated and a clash was avoided. "I finish this on Sunday and go back to
Marple on Monday," says George, who clearly has no intention of putting his
feet up and taking life easy.
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"I still love it, I find the travelling quite exhausting, even when I'm being
driven, but I love the actual work," he says.
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In A Class Apart, he plays George, grandfather to Candy, a single mum who
wants the best for her son, Kyle. George, however, isn't the best role model
for the wayward 11-year-old and has spent time in prison. "George is a devil-may-care 80-year-old who's been inside for a few years – he was a robber. He's
done the crime and done his time.
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"I think he dotes on his great-grandson and I think, if he influences him at
all, it's in quite the wrong way. They're great friends but George is
irresponsible."
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One such example of this irresponsibility is when George gives
Kyle a cigarette, failing to see that there may be a problem as "it's only a
roll-up. He says what's the fuss about, they're not as bad as ordinary
cigarettes – which, of course, is rubbish."
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Problems escalate for Kyle (played by 13-year-old Sanchez Adams) when he is
offered a place at the local failing school. His mum, Candy, played by former
EastEnder Jessie Wallace in her first Ö÷²¥´óÐã One drama role since leaving Kat
Slater behind, is having none of it and stages a one-woman protest in order to
secure Kyle a place at a better school.
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"Candy sets out on an impossible task. She hasn't got the most adorable
personality, which soon becomes evident to the people she's trying to get in
with."
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While George's own schooldays may have been some time ago – in the Thirties,
in fact – he says he can certainly empathise with Kyle's situation, especially
when the boy is offered a scholarship to the local private school.
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"I went to a secondary school and I got a scholarship to the local college.
Apart from the fact that my parents couldn't afford the uniform, I didn't want
to go, very much like Kyle didn't in A Class Apart," he says.
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"There was no battle, though. I left school on the Friday, got a job on the
Saturday and was in the theatre and that was it. It was a big musical called
White Horse Inn and we toured for 20 weeks then came to the London Coliseum.
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"People often say to me, what a marvellous mother and father you must've had.
As I grew older I thought, what are you talking about, why didn't they come
after me? Why didn't they go to the police? I was 14! A child of 14 wouldn't
be allowed to do that today, no way.
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"I went up to Leicester Square on Saturday morning, auditioned and got the job
in White Horse Inn and they said you've got to go to Blackpool today and I
thought okay, fine. I had money from my newspaper round and bought two sticks
of make-up, a small suitcase, a clean shirt and a toothbrush and toothpaste
and that was it. I sent my parents a telegram saying 'Gone on the stage, will
write'. Sending a telegram in those days was nine rows for sixpence."
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That was when George was a young, impressionable teenager and he hasn't looked
back since, having starred in over 40 films, including the St Trinian's movies
and Scrooge, alongside his mentor, Alastair Sim, and had myriad TV roles, in
shows such as Blott On The Landscape and, of course, Minder, in which he
played the original dodgy dealer, Arthur Daley, alongside Dennis Waterman's
long-suffering Terry.
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"You can't do something for nine series, 107 episodes,
unless you love it. I loved every minute of Minder, it really was wonderful;
it wasn't like work at all," he says.
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Nowadays, George is obviously a master of his craft but, when he was starting
out, he was shown the theatrical ropes by some of Britain's greatest actors.
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"When I got the part in Cottage To Let [George was a young evacuee in the play
which was subsequently turned into a film] we rehearsed in Oxford and I
arrived very late at night. I had no chaperone and I tried to find digs but
couldn't, so I ended up back at the theatre, practically in tears, and I spoke
to the stage director. A very handsome young man came out and asked what the
matter was, then said to the stage director, 'You find him some digs and I'll
take him across to the Welsh Pony to get him something to eat'. This was
during the War and he ordered two mixed grills and tipped them on to one plate
and said, 'Get that inside you!'
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"We started rehearsing the next day and this handsome young man didn't appear.
Apparently he'd been called up and I never saw him again until 20 or 30 years
later when I was having lunch at the restaurant at MGM in Elstree. This
handsome man came over and said, 'Are you the little boy I gave two mixed
grills to?' and it was Stewart Granger. Extraordinary!"
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It's also well documented that Alastair Sim was George's great friend and
mentor; the pair appeared in nine films together in which their comic timing
was second to none.
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"I don't think you can teach timing, it must be intuitive.
And I think when you admire someone as much as I admired Alastair Sim, you are
watching and listening to everything he does and, without realising, you're
assimilating quite a lot.
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"I met him in Cottage To Let, too, and we came in to London to play it as it
was a big hit. Then the Blitz came and Alastair moved out of London and I was
living with my mother at that time, in Tooting, and Alastair suggested that we
move out of London, too. We found a place quite near them and, by then, all
the theatres had closed down so we took the play round all the Army camps.
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"I left my mother back in Oxfordshire and she couldn't stand the quiet so she
moved back into London. To cut a long story short, the press had a thing about
the Sims' adopting me and my contention is, no, I adopted them and they spent
50 years trying to get rid of me, which was rather difficult as I built my
house next to theirs!"
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Having been taught by the best, it's only fitting that George is now able to
offer advice to today's up-and-coming actors, and his great-grandson in A
Class Apart, played by young Sanchez, is one of the lucky recipients of this
wisdom.
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"He's a lovely, smart boy," says George. "If I could say anything to
him it would be learn to listen. There's a book by Alan Alda I was given for
my last birthday, called Never Have Your Dog Stuffed, and it's got the most
incredible chapter in it for actors and it's all about listening – not
learning lines and delivering them, but learning to listen and then to answer.
That's one of the things that Alastair Sim taught me: ‘to listen'."
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And if Sanchez Adams heeds that advice, he's sure to go far in the acting
world.
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