‘“Fisher!” he said.
‘And he gave me a little booklet and it was the Gilbert and Sullivan script of The Mikado.
‘“You’re playing Pooh-Bar,” he said.
‘“But sir,” I said. “Sir, sir, sir! Why me? No, no, I haven’t done anything!”
‘And inside I was like, “Naw, why’s he picking on me?” I couldn’t believe it. It was punishment. I mean, you were in real trouble with your peers if you got involved with that kind of shit. It was only the As and Bs with their leather shoes polished that did that – and it was all right for that section of school to be involved in poncey things like am-dram, but not me.’
At break time Gregor went and knocked on the staffroom door and pleaded with Mr Ball. Told him he couldn’t, wouldn’t, didn’t want to … any wild excuse he could grab out of the air, twisting and fidgeting in desperation. But Mr Ball refused to take no for an answer and was obviously gifted with natural psychology; he persuaded the aghast teenager that he’d be really good in the role. Flattery works for all actors and it worked for the boy who was yet to become one.
The reluctant player dodged his mocking mates, duly turned up at the hall for after-school rehearsal and started speaking his lines.
‘Speak up, Fisher, for God’s sake, we can’t hear you!’
Mr Ball, at the back of the hall, appeared quite gruff, but as with a lot of big men he was actually a gentle person, sensitive enough to cajole and flatter and bully his unwilling star into delivering his lines. The Grand Pooh-bar was a haughty character in this hugely popular comic opera, written in 1885, which satirised the self-importance of British politics and the pretensions of the high-ranking establishment. Set in Japan, to avoid censure, the operetta involved a lot of fun and farce dressing up in kimonos. The Grand Pooh-Bar is designated Lord High Everything Else and the name has survived in common parlance for mocking those with huge self-regard. So too has the expression ‘short, sharp shock’ from one of Pooh-bar’s jolly songs, just made to be chanted by rowdy schoolboys with painted white faces and chopsticks stuck in their hair.
To sit in solemn silence in a dull, dark dock,
In a pestilential prison, with a lifelong lock,
Awaiting the sensation of a short, sharp shock,
From a cheap and chippy chopper on a big black block!
Not only did Gregor enter into the spirit of the whole thing, he made an extraordinary discovery: he could get a laugh. Not only that, he could make lots of people laugh at one time; could have a whole hall-full of grown-ups cheering for him, their faces split wide open with pleasure. He remembers it still, the wave of warmness that swept over him from the hall, that feeling of – ‘Oh, this is good, maybe I’ve found something I can do after all.’
An audience of about 300 turned up for the production in the school hall – all the mums and dads and aunts and uncles of the cast, plus Cis and his unofficial sisters, Una and Margaret. It was obvious to everyone but Gregor that he was the star of the performance; what he clearly remembers, however, is coming on to take his bow and being annoyed when Mr Burnett, the pompous headmaster, stood up before everyone, the VIPs, school inspectors, councillors, and basked in his reflected glory.
‘This boy,’ he told them, ‘is only 13.’
I thought, ‘You don’t even like me, you hardly know me, you two-faced little shit.’ … He really bugged me.
After The Mikado, he told himself, I’ll be an actor, without a clue how difficult it would be. But that actually was the start of Gregor’s career. His star quality was evident. He then acted the part of Reginald Bunthorne (‘a Fleshly Poet’) in Gilbert and Sullivan’s Patience, soaking up the applause, loving that unfamiliar sense of, ‘Oh, everyone wants me.’ The school also put on a production of a Noël Coward comic one-act play, Hands Across the Sea – how sedate and inappropriate were the 1960s am-dram choices of a tough secondary modern in working-class Scotland! In this Gregor was called upon to mimic a colonial English accent – ‘How was India, old boy?’ – ‘Oh, very large’ – and his power of mimicry was also given its first chance of an outing.
I was terrible at accents then, but I thought I was very good; it was amateur night out. I’m sure it was dreadful. There may have been, if I’m kind to myself, a talent there – but it was very raw, a diamond in the rough. Very rough.
Then, very swiftly, it was the summer of 1969, he was 15 and faced the shock of his life: on the other side of the school gates with an O-Level in art and apart from that no prospects, no future, no qualifications, no apprenticeship, no college to go to. He remembers thinking, quite seriously, ‘You’ve messed that up, haven’t you?’
Before he left, he saw the careers officer. Gregor waited in the corridor outside his office in a queue of other gormless teenagers, picking their noses, counting their spots, facing the rest of their lives.
‘Next!’ shouted the teacher.
Someone had briefed the man.
‘What are your interests? I hear you’ve been doing these school plays.’
‘Yeah, yeah.’
Mumbling.
‘Have you considered acting?’
‘Dunno, sir.’
‘Well, take this. It’s the prospectus for the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama.’
Gregor left the office with the prospectus, but it was the word ‘Royal’ that put the wind up him; put him right off. If it was Royal, especially with a capital ‘R’, they wouldn’t want him. He took it home to show to Cis and told her the careers teacher had told him to apply – he didn’t say he wanted to apply there. Hedging his bets, shielding himself, anticipating failure. His mother wasn’t keen. He didn’t blame her; she came not just from a different generation but a different world – one where working people said, get yourself an apprenticeship. The family were worried about the cost of further education, despite the fact there were full grants available. In the end, Cis came round a bit. She and Gregor agreed he should apply. But he couldn’t do so until he was 18 and there was the small matter of finding work until then.
What followed was a succession of dead-end jobs. First, Thomas Thomson Tapes, a company now long gone, which made the equivalent of Elastoplast, which they shipped to Africa. For £9 a week he was a machine operator; and it was a simple fact that machine operators making Elastoplast in those days, long before Health & Safety, used to go home drunk every night from the fumes.
Even at 16 going on 17 he realised he didn’t like it; he was also shrewd enough to see that it could go on for the rest of his life. Working lives were decided that way, if you let it happen. But there were enough jobs available in those days for young men to sample different industries before they committed. He decided to go for a more glamorous job at Shanks in Barrhead, a nearby town. John Shanks, a plumber, had patented the ballcock and filling valve for a flushing toilet, and his company, which might be said to have helped change the world more than most, was internationally famous. But making loos had its limitations and for Gregor the U-bend was a dead end too.
His job was pot boy. The lavatory pans were made by pouring molten porcelain into a mould and the pot boy’s role was to make sure the liquid didn’t spill out of any of the holes, by blocking them with a little clay pot. And then he had to remove the pan and put the two parts of the mould back together again, making