4. The Agent Comes of Age

As I arrived in Hanover Street for my first day at London International, I bumped into my new boss, Laurie Evans, getting out of his chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce. Laurie was a tall, bespectacled, balding man of sixty, who looked more like a family solicitor than an actors’ agent. A creature of habit, he was always soberly dressed in well-tailored grey suits and plain ties, with not a hint of the flamboyance normally associated with the theatrical world.

‘I made a fatal mistake when Tony joined me,’ he muttered. ‘I didn’t close the partition on day one, and by day two it was too late. It’s not just that he never stops talking, but it’s all such boring stuff: weather, traffic jams, short cuts, all that sort of thing. You know what I mean?’

Having never had a chauffeur, I didn’t really but nodded politely in agreement. I would certainly have been far too embarrassed to close the glass partition on my chauffeur; I found it difficult enough with cab drivers. Being in the back of cabs with well-known faces always brings out the worst in cab drivers. There is a lot of winking, I-know-you looks, and so-what-are-you-up-to-then-behaving-yourself? jokes.

As we went up in the lift to the top floor, Laurie explained that I would be working for him, his partner Robin Fox, as well as for a new arrival from the States, Otis S. Blodget.

‘Blodget’s a bit of an acquired taste, but you know Robin of course.’

I knew Robin, father of the Fox brothers, Edward, James and Robert, through the Keystone Cops. Robin was a contemporary of Laurie’s. Tall and dashing with a lethargic manner that belied a very keen business mind, he called his clients ‘ducky’, something I would never have dared to do.

I had been taken to Scott’s by Laurie and Robin for Laurie to give me the once-over. After lunch I had a long chat with Tony through the open partition, while Laurie and Robin talked business to Lew Grade on the pavement outside the restaurant.

‘I’m going to avoid Berkeley Square when I take you back to the office,’ he said. ‘There’s a road works on the Piccadilly side near Hay Hill; the traffic there this morning was a nightmare. It took us twenty minutes to get from Mr Evans’s flat to the office. Normally it’s a ten-minute run. Still, it gave us a chance to have a chat. I’ve been with Mr Evans for ever, but I still don’t feel that I really know him.’

Laurie and Robin offered me the job in the back of the car, as Tony was trying to avoid a build-up of traffic in Old Bond Street, and I started work a month or so later.

Laurie’s assistant, Frances, gave me a tour of the offices laid out over three floors of a sleek modern building on the corner of Hanover Street and Hanover Square. I was introduced to the other agents and then ushered into Otis S. Blodget’s room. Mr Blodget’s secretary seemed to be clearing up some papers under his desk, and both looked startled at our sudden appearance.

‘Mr Blodget, this is Michael Whitehall, your new assistant,’ Frances beamed.

Blodget stood up and strode around his large desk to shake my hand. I noticed that his fly buttons were undone.

‘Dick Blodget, but call me Dick. Come on in and take a seat,’ he boomed.

Blodget’s secretary Diana, a nervous girl with unruly hair, scooped up an armful of letters and disappeared. Blodget explained that he had recently arrived from New York. The company had been taken over by an American agency, and he was the advance guard. Laurie and Robin still ran the show, but he was there to keep a watching brief. We were both new boys, he said, giving me a wink. I hoped he didn’t think I was going to be the company sneak. I also hoped that he’d realise his flies were undone. I didn’t think I knew him well enough to make allusions to ‘open stable-doors’ and ‘flying low’.

‘I’ve got a lunch meeting with Deke Hayward at the Ivy. He’s head of production at AIP. Why don’t you come along?’

‘How are the testicles, Deke?’ asked Dick over the potted shrimps. Mr Hayward went into all the gory details: pain in the left one, swelling in the right one, and then two days in the London Clinic while they drained the fluid from both. I sat in silence. Had I got it wrong yet again? Did I really want to be an actors’ agent? Was Nora right? Surely a barrister wouldn’t have had to sit through this? Dick and Deke then got down to business. A film Deke was making needed a beautiful girl to play the lead - preferably blonde, big tits, long legs, ideally English (but could be dubbed). Had we got anyone?

‘Michael?’ asked Dick.

I hadn’t even seen the client list, and certainly not the big-titted-blonde section.

‘I’ll come back to you, Deke,’ I said.

‘What about Ingrid Pitt?’ said Dick. ‘You’d get distribution with Ingrid, Deke. Michael, fix it for Deke to meet Ingrid.’

‘Right,’ I stammered.

During lunch at Les Ambassadeurs, Ingrid, whom I had only just met, accidentally touched my knee under the table and gave me a broad smile.

‘I want to be Michael’s client,’ she said to Dick.

‘Of course Ingrid, a very good idea.’

Deke was much taken by Ingrid, and the fact that she was a thirty-two-year-old Pole didn’t seem to worry him, even though the part of Mary McPhail was written as a seventeen-year-old Scottish peasant girl.

Dick then told us one of Laurie’s stories about John Gielgud, who was invited for the weekend to an Elizabethan manor house near Stroud, owned by friends of a friend. Although not overly keen on staying in other people’s houses, he was assured that he would be enchanted not only by his hosts but also by their beautiful house. He was not disappointed.

Staying in the Chinese Room, a grand boudoir facing the garden with antique silk curtains and rare hand-coloured Chinese wallpaper, his light was out before midnight. A few hours later, he awoke to discover that he was in urgent need of the lavatory. The room was pitch dark, and in trying to reach for the bedside lamp he knocked something over on the table. Feeling his way to the door he flicked on the light switch and was about to open the bedroom door when he realised that his hands were covered in black ink. He looked over to the table by the bed and saw that he had knocked over an inkwell. The full horror of what had happened hit him; across the priceless antique Chinese wallpaper was a trail from the bed to the door of inky handprints. Too devastated even to attempt any kind of explanation for the ghastliness of this grisly scene, he quickly packed his bags, crept down the stairs, and drove home.

Some years later, he was invited to tea at a nearby house. He arrived early just as the house party were heading off for a post-lunch walk. To his horror, in the middle of the group, putting on her Wellingtons, was the lady of the house, the woman with the Chinese wallpaper. They both pretended they hadn’t met before, and John opted to wait in the drawing room until they returned from their walk. Relaxing in a comfortable armchair in front of a blazing fire he nodded off. When he awoke, he heard a strange muffled whine coming from the seat of his chair. He got up to put a log on the fire, and as he was about to sit down again he noticed a small white furry ball protruding from underneath one of the heavy damask cushions. He lifted the cushion to reveal his hostess’s white Chihuahua, which had clearly been suffocated under John’s weight. He picked the dog up, shook it and then put it down on the floor. It was clearly dead. John grabbed his hat and coat and headed for the car. The story seemed to have no relevance to our meeting, and probably wasn’t even true, but it did take the pressure off me for a bit.

‘Let’s have supper one evening soon,’ Ingrid purred, as I headed back to the office.

I later explained to Laurie that having just got married (my first marriage, not the one in Withyham), I wasn’t really looking for anything extra-marital just at the moment.

‘It’s important for the film,’ said Laurie. ‘Ingrid is having an affair with a big cheese at the Rank Organization. If she does the film, it will get distribution. We also represent the producer, director and writer as well as Ingrid, so it’s important she’s kept sweet.’

‘But what if the man at Rank finds out? He won’t be pleased.’

‘It’s not a physical thing with him; for God’s sake, he’s in his seventies. He just likes having her around, and I’m sure he’ll appreciate the help,’ said Laurie.

This really didn’t tally with Laurie’s earlier advice: ‘Fuck William Morris’s clients by all means, but don’t fuck ours.’

Ingrid and I had supper, and back at her flat I tried, with great difficulty, to parry her advances, while not causing offence. My non-existent client list needed at least one name on it. But how far was I willing to go to achieve it? I tried to get the conversation round to Hitler’s seizure of Danzig and the Polish Corridor in 1939. Ingrid would have none of it: the only corridor she was interested in was the one leading to the bedroom.

‘I think we need to get our relationship on a business footing before we move on to the personal area,’ I said. ‘It’s not going to be easy for me, Ingrid, but I’m sure it’s the right way forward.’

***

One of my early learning curves was ‘looking after’ ladies of a certain age - Dorothy Lamour, Dawn Addams, Jill Bennett, Honor Blackman, Glynis Johns, Rachel Roberts, Coral Browne, Adrienne Corrie and Shelley Winters. A formidable bunch.

‘Extend all courtesies,’ insisted Miss Lamour’s LA agent. ‘She’s a great lady and absolutely no trouble.’

The technical term for keeping an eye on an overseas client while they’re in London is ‘servicing’. And Miss Lamour certainly needed servicing on a regular basis.

As I waited to meet her at Heathrow, I was expecting Bob Hope and Bing Crosby’s romantic interest in The Road to Rio. The apparition struggling with her suitcase would have been more comfortable on a Zimmer frame than in a sarong. She was now in her mid-sixties, though time hadn’t been kind to her and she looked ten years older. On our way to the hotel, she explained that her visit was a social one; she had some distant relatives living in Wales who were coming to London to see her, but she would also like some meetings with casting directors and producers while she was in town. She became rather curt with me when I broached the question of her ‘playing age’.

‘I play forty,’ she told me very firmly. I remember hearing a snigger from the elderly cab driver.

‘Really enjoyed you in The Jungle Princess, Dorothy,’ he said, as we arrived at the Dorchester. It was a film of which I’d never heard. ‘Nineteen thirty-six you made that. My parents took me to see it at the Empire in Leicester Square.’

Miss Lamour looked a little flustered as I was left wondering, ‘If she plays forty now and The Jungle Princess was in 1936 - forty years ago - how old does that make her?’ But I thought it might be best to leave the subject alone until we got to know one another better.

‘Who?’ said Maud Spector, doyenne of casting directors. ‘Surely she’s not still at it?’

‘Well, she’s in London for meetings and I thought you might like to see her.’

‘I’ll get back to you,’ said Maud, and didn’t.

In fact the only meeting I managed to get her was with a TV producer who was planning a remake of Great Expectations and thought she’d make a terrific Miss Havisham.

Miss Lamour was not amused; and returned to the States without even saying goodbye. Well at least I wasn’t expected to service her, which was more than could be said about Dawn Addams. Now, she definitely had servicing on her mind.

‘Dick tells me you’ve always been an admirer of mine,’ she said as we left the office on our way to lunch. ‘How very flattering.’

Flattering perhaps, but really unfair, as Dick knew. He told me that Miss Addams had recently come through a very messy and public divorce (from an Italian prince), and was in a highly charged emotional state. I went rather further than I had planned to with Miss Addams, but I felt it was all part of my learning curve and, to an extent, Dick set me- up for it.

‘Get yourself some clients,’ said Laurie one Monday morning after a fraught drive from his house in Sussex with Tony, who had taken a detour around Kingsfold due to resurfacing on the A24. ‘Servicing other people’s clients won’t get you anywhere.’

‘We should have gone A264,’ said Tony helpfully once they were on the A23.

Laurie had a smart flat just behind Berkeley Square where he stayed during the week and a beautifully lacustrine, manicured estate on the edge of Horsham in West Sussex for weekends. His clients, Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud, Ralph Richardson, John Mills, Kenneth More, Albert Finney and Rex Harrison, were regular guests. He was primarily an actors’ agent. ‘Actresses are very time-consuming,’ he once warned me, although he did find time to represent the occasional Dame. The agent Freddie Joachim took this a step further and wouldn’t look after actresses or married couples at all. ‘Too difficult,’ he said.

One of my early duties was to extract Laurie’s clients from commitments they never had any intention of fulfilling, usually arranged at social functions and often involving personal friends. It was my job to ensure that no blame was ever attached to the actor; these broken promises were always the result of a misunderstanding or confusion over dates. Not true, of course. Actors tell people what they want to hear, which is usually ‘yes’; though the agent can always be blamed further down the line when the ‘yes’ turns to ‘no’.

Seasons at obscure reps, plays written by unknown writers, unfinanceable films and appearances at book festivals and poetry readings - this was my world. I took care of the radio interviews while Laurie looked after the Hollywood movies.

‘But Sir Laurence said he’d definitely be there,’ said the organizer of the Aberystwyth Arts Festival. ‘I met him outside the Old Vic last night; I suppose you’ve talked him out of it.’

‘Albert Finney was born in Salford, you know,’ said the President of the West Manchester Christian Union. ‘He told me he’d consider it an honour to open our new reading room next month. What’s made him change his mind? You no doubt.’ And so on.

But looking after other people’s clients was not the route to the top, as Laurie kept reminding me - although he probably hadn’t envisaged that my first big client would come off his own list. Kenneth More was a legend, but by the mid-1970s, a slightly fading one, and Laurie wasn’t returning his telephone calls with the alacrity that he’d come to expect. His move from boss to assistant wasn’t an easy one, but it did at least absolve Laurie from the responsibility of suggesting Kenny for jobs. Laurie didn’t like suggesting clients for jobs.

‘Producers then think you owe them a favour. Let them ring you,’ he said.

And it did show that I was listening. Laurie had talked to me a lot about unsettling other people’s clients, with a view to ‘poaching’ them. For example, at a glittering first-night party in the West End, I’d ask an actor about his agent.

‘Is she OK?’

‘Yes, fine. Why?’

‘Only that - no forget it.’

‘No, please, what do you mean, “OK”?’

‘Well it’s just that I’d heard, I’m sure wrongly, that she’d started drinking again.’

‘What do you mean again? I didn’t know she drank?’

‘Look, forget it. I should never have mentioned it, not after all that earlier trouble.’

‘What earlier trouble?’ And so forth.

And later.

‘Are you up for the new Lean movie?’

‘What movie?’

‘I’m sure your agent’s suggested you for it. You’d be perfect for the young lead. All my clients have already met for it.’

‘I’ll get on to my agent in the morning.’

‘I certainly would, or why not call tonight?’

‘I don’t have her home number.’

‘What! I don’t believe it. Who are you with again?’

And then, the more direct approach.

‘I gather your agent’s leaking clients.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes, I hear Johnny has gone.’

‘No?’

‘I think so, and Vanessa.’

‘God, I’d no idea. Who else?’

‘I honestly can’t remember and I may be completely wrong, but I hear there’s been a pretty major rush for the exit. A shame, because I really like...’

And, if you’re lucky enough to meet the actor on a film set.

‘Well at least they’re paying well.’

‘I’m not being well paid.’

‘Really? Maybe I was just lucky, but I got a great deal for Nigel. Obviously it took time, but I got there in the end.’

‘My agent said he’d had to take what they offered. Take it or leave it they said.’

‘That does surprise me. Who are you with again?’

Laurie told me that, in the old days, good agents in London were very rich: they all had villas in the South of France and would go away in August. He discovered that their clients, who were in the theatre or films, couldn’t get away in August and were very easy game. He would take them out to lunch and say: ‘It must simply be awful not having your agent around, is there any way I can help?’

So I followed my mentor’s example and took on Kenneth More and Harry Andrews, another of Laurie’s clients in need of attention. Shortly after Harry moved over to me, he invited me to dinner at his house in East Sussex, which he shared with his actor friend, Basil Hoskins. I was nervous about staying the night at their strictly ‘men only’ cottage, though I was delighted to discover Harry’s lady housekeeper in residence. Harry’s housekeeper had been in love with him for years, and although the bedroom department was strictly reserved for Basil, she always escorted Harry to film premieres, awards ceremonies, and even appeared with him on ‘This is Your Life’. It was clear over dinner that neither of them was wildly enthusiastic about my being there. I was Harry’s new agent, relatively young - well certainly twenty years younger than they were - and heterosexual, a bonus in my favour as far as Harry was concerned. To have been able to seduce a young straight man who was also his agent - well, cats and cream weren’t in it. Nevertheless, it was not to be, despite a huge amount of attention going into the sleeping arrangements. I was particularly pleased that I had packed some thick winceyette pyjamas and a woollen dressing gown.

Having specifically asked Harry not to wake me in the morning with a cup of tea, as I had brought my alarm clock, he burst into my bedroom at nine o’clock with a huge tray of breakfast: bacon and eggs, toast, fruit juice and assorted pots of marmalade and honey. As I struggled to sit up in bed and do up my pyjamas at the same time, I caught Harry’s hand with my elbow. He gave me a leering smile.

‘Good morning Manager,’ he cooed. ‘A little surprise for you.’ At which point, he lost his footing and tumbled on to the bed. The tray flew out of his hands, and I was covered with tea, juice, toast and pieces of bacon, which Harry attempted to retrieve from under the sheets. I leapt out of bed, grabbed my dressing gown and started pulling the soaking sheets off the mattress; at which point Basil appeared at the bedroom door.

‘So what are you two up to?’ he asked. ‘Breakfast in bed, eh?’

And so the client list continued to grow, with a few more cast-offs and hand-me-downs - Patrick Macnee, Anton Diffring (the Nazi officer specialist), Honor Blackman, Mark Burns - and some new clients of my own, such as Dinsdale Landen. Dinsdale was riding high in West End plays, such as The Philanthropist, Alphabetical Order, London Assurance and Plunder and television series in between. But like most actors, Dinsdale hated being out of work and he had a gap in his schedule that he was anxious to fill.

‘I’d really like you to meet Cameron Mackintosh,’ said Dinsdale. ‘He’s young, enthusiastic and really nice, and wants me to do a tour for him.’

‘But is he any good?’ I asked. ‘I’ve never heard of him. Do you really need to go out on some random tour for an unknown producer?’

‘Well, at least meet him,’ said Dinsdale.

‘Does he have any money? Will we get paid?’ I asked.

Dinsdale persevered, and I finally made an appearance at Dinsdale’s house in Putney. Sitting on the banquette in his sitting room was Cameron. He leapt up. Cameron was indeed very young, very enthusiastic and very nice; but in my newly acquired judgement, he had the look of a loser about him. We had a jolly lunch talking almost exclusively about Dinsdale’s career, and Cameron left us on the warmest of terms.

‘I’ll call you tomorrow, Cameron,’ said Dinsdale encouragingly.

Dinsdale was eager to know what I thought of his new friend.

‘He’s really nice, isn’t he?’ he said. ‘And very enthusiastic about me.’

‘And very young,’ I said. ‘Do you think he knows what he’s doing? And do you really want to do a fifteen-week tour of Dandy Dick?’

‘No, not really, unless you think...’ said Dinsdale.

‘Do you want to ring him, or shall I?’ I asked.

‘Maybe it would be better if you did,’ he replied. ‘I’ll write to him later.’

As we walked to my car, I told Dinsdale that I thought that Cameron was far too star-struck. He looked like someone who’d come a cropper very easily and, of course, if the whole thing went wrong, it would be entirely my fault. Dinsdale concurred. He knew I was right. We’d pass on Dandy Dick.

I read recently that Cameron is now worth over £500 million, and has houses in London and New York, as well as a thirteen-thousand-acre estate in the Scottish highlands, a farm in Somerset and a vineyard in Provence. I’ve got a house in Putney with a large mortgage and a matching overdraft. The look of a loser indeed.

A few days later I was walking across Putney Common with Dinsdale when we were approached by an attractive middle-aged woman.

‘I know you, don’t I?’ she said to Dinsdale; the usual form of address when meeting an actor whose face you recognise.

‘You’re off that TV show aren’t you? What’s it called? You’re Linstall, aren’t you?’

Dinsdale gave the lady a charming smile. ‘Dinsdale Landen, actually.’

‘That’s it, Dinstall. Ooooh, you’re one of my favourites. I love that series you’re in.’

‘Oh, “Pig in the Middle”, you mean,’ said Dinsdale helpfully.

‘No, the other one’.’

Dinsdale couldn’t remember another one.

‘May I introduce my manager, Michael Whitehall?’ said Dinsdale.

I was not used to being introduced to people as their manager. Kenneth More told me that his first agent always asked him to refer to him as his manager, especially when they were abroad. ‘Agent always sounds common,’ he told Kenny, ‘particularly on the continent.’ Dinsdale evidently thought it sounded a bit common in Putney too.

‘Oh, I’m such a fan,’ oozed the lady on the common. ‘Do you live locally?’

‘Yes, I do.’

‘Well, I’m the licensee of the Arab Boy pub, and if you’d like to drop in one evening, it’ll be drinks on the house.’

Dinsdale, always up for a free drink, accepted graciously.

‘Come on Thursday, after eight o’clock.’

We said our goodbyes, and as we continued our walk, she called after us, ‘Thursday’s our gay night, Linsdale! You are gay, aren’t you?’

Dinsdale swung around. ‘I’m most certainly not gay, madam. Whatever gave you that idea?’

‘I’m sorry dear, I just assumed.’

Dinsdale stomped off in a huff. I laughed.

‘You may well laugh, Michael. The only reason she thought I was gay was because I was with you.’

‘Me?’ I said. ‘What’s it got to do with me?’

‘Well, you’re so camp, everyone thinks you’re gay.’

‘Oh charming, Din, many thanks.’

‘No, I’m serious,’ he said.

And as we walked over the common arguing, the lady publican followed our progress clearly thinking, ‘a couple of old queens and no mistake’.

***

One evening, when Dinsdale was starring in Dennis Potter’s Sufficient Carbohydrate at the Albery Theatre, the stage doorman rang through to his dressing room.

‘There’s a Mr Shenko who would love to meet you.’

‘Who?’ asked Dinsdale.

‘He’s Russian. You know, Dinsdale, he’s been in the papers. He’s that defective pilot’

Dinsdale vaguely remembered a Soviet air force plane landing in England. When the man arrived backstage with an entourage of friends, Dinsdale regaled him with stories of his exploits in the RAF during National Service. The Russian looked bemused as he left his dressing room. Perhaps he didn’t understand English very well, thought Dinsdale. He subsequently discovered that the man was in fact the political poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko, who had recently defected from Russia.

Laurie’s client David Tomlinson was pestering him, and one thing Laurie did not like was being pestered by his clients. Ideally he would have preferred it if they didn’t ring him at all, apart from the ones who worked all the time, like Larry and John and Ralph. Frances had told Mr Tomlinson that Laurie was on the other line; I’d told him that Laurie was out at a meeting; the office secretary Anne-Marie was so terrified, she had told him that Mr Evans was off sick, a rather over-dramatic invention of which Laurie would certainly not have approved.

I soon learned that agents will do almost anything to avoid talking to their clients.

He’s in a meeting.

He’s on the other line.

He’s out of the office.

He’s ill.

He’s dead.

When clients ring, it inevitably leads to talking about work.

‘What’s happening?’ the actor asks. The agent then grabs the nearest trade paper - Variety, Screen International, Broadcast or as a last resort The Stage - and rattles off lists of films, television and theatre productions, none of which the client is remotely right for; but it does show he is earning his 10 per cent, even if at present it’s 10 per cent of nothing. The interview is always a good stopgap.

‘Never be frightened of your clients,’ Laurie told me. ‘They need you more than you need them.’ Some of the other agents in the office took a different view. Kenneth Carten, a sixty-five-year-old, unmarried, chain-smoking, highly strung, ex-studio talent scout, much respected in the business as he had discovered most of the film stars of the day at obscure reps and drama schools, was terrified of his clients. Whenever the telephone rang he leapt out of his chair, covering himself and everyone else in cigarette ash. I remember Kenneth once telling me: ‘Get them an interview, and don’t worry if they’re wrong for the part. OK, they won’t get the job, but at least they’ve had the interview and won’t be able to complain that they “haven’t-been-up-for-anything-for-months”, well at least not for a few more months.’

The legendary actress Athene Seyler, then in her nineties, was put up for a job by Kenneth. The young director at the interview didn’t know who she was.

‘So tell me Athene, what have you been up to?’

‘Up to?’ replied Athene. ‘What do you mean, this morning?’

Kenneth appeared in my office one day waving a television cast breakdown in front of me. ‘There’s a part here for a twenty-five-year-old French-speaking waiter,’ he said, licking his lips.

‘Yes?’

‘Suggest Peter Sallis.’

‘How old is Peter?’

‘Forty.’

‘But he’s supposed to be twenty-five.’

‘Don’t worry. Peter can play younger.’

‘And he speaks French?’

‘No, but if they offer him the part he can always learn it. Just suggest him and for God’s sake get him a meeting!’

The real problem, Kenneth told me, is when the client wants more money. ‘Get me more money, but don’t lose the job,’ are instructions that one dreads getting from a client.

‘I’m not working for that,’ they huff and puff.

‘Right, I’ll try and up it, but if they won’t increase their offer, shall I turn it down?’

‘Oh no. I’ll do it for that, but try and get some more.’

So now you start the tricky process of pretending to the producer that your client won’t take the job unless he pays him more money, while knowing that the actor will do it at any price.

‘He loves the part, loves the script, loves the director, the producer, the casting director. He loves everyone. It’s just the money he doesn’t love.’

If there really isn’t any more money, and the job looks as if it might be going away from you, you can then say that, although the money stinks, he’ll do it, because he loves the script, loves the part, etc. etc. etc.

The easier one, of course, is when the actor really won’t take the job unless he’s paid more money. No loving required here, just a straight ‘I’m sorry, the money’s shit - an insult. He’s so hurt with the offer that I think he’s gone off the whole idea.’ Hopefully this angle will winkle out an improved offer and make the actor feel less hurt and insulted.

A lurking danger, to the negotiating skills of the agent, is if the producer goes round the back door to the actor personally, and the actor buckles under the pressure of flattery, blackmail, or whatever other angle the producer dreams up, and accepts the job. The agent then gets all the blame and the actor comes out smelling of roses, although, unfortunately, not of money.

David Tomlinson was keen to speak to his agent. Laurie said, ‘See if you can help him, Michael. I’m out for the rest of the day.’ I couldn’t, and Tomlinson was getting agitated.

The following morning, Frances came into Laurie’s room. ‘It’s Mr Tomlinson on the line again, Mr Evans.’

‘I can’t believe this. I will not be hounded by bloody David Tomlinson. Tell him I’m out of the office for the rest of the week.’

Frances returned.

‘Mr Tomlinson says will you turn round and look out of the window?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous Frances, I’m not here. How can I look out of the window?’

‘Please, Mr Evans.’

Laurie looked out of his fifth-floor window across Hanover Street to the building opposite. There, waving at Laurie, was David Tomlinson, who had asked the people in the office over the road if he could stand in the window to play a joke on a friend. David left the agency soon afterwards. Some years later, I met him at Shepperton Studios, and he mentioned that he didn’t have an agent. Indeed he hadn’t had one since he’d left Laurie. I was a great admirer of his work, although I’d heard that he could be difficult, especially when it came to money, but I thought I had nothing to lose by inviting him to lunch.

As we left the restaurant, he said, ‘Well, what do you think? Would you like to be my agent?’

‘Yes,’ I replied, ‘I think we could work very well together.’

‘I agree; by the way, I don’t pay commission.’

‘Right,’ I said. ‘So what’s in it for me, David?’

‘Well, you’ll have the prestige of having me on your books.’

‘OK, David, leave that one with me.’

I left it.

Laurie had asked me to look after a famous actress of her day, who had had a brief Hollywood moment in her twenties; she was now in her mid-forties and was finding life a bit of a struggle. I couldn’t get her arrested and when she asked me to have lunch with her at the Caprice, I thought the sack could be on the way.

After she’d nervously pushed a few scallops around her plate and we’d run out of small talk, she announced rather too loudly, ‘I’m leaving you!’

The party at the next table stopped talking.

‘I can’t say I’m altogether surprised. Who are you leaving me for?’

‘Jeremy Conway,’ she replied.

By now we’d clearly picked up a couple of other tables, who were waiting for the next revelation.

‘I should have guessed,’ I replied. ‘Jeremy’s very good.’

‘Or Joy Jameson. Having had a man looking after me, I thought perhaps I should give a woman a try.’

The restaurant was riveted.

‘Joy’s good too,’ I said, ‘but I wouldn’t have thought right for you, especially if you’re looking for a long-term relationship.’

The wine waiter seemed to be hovering longer than he needed to.

‘Well, I wish you luck with whatever you decide, and please remember, if things don’t work out with Jeremy or Joy, you can always come back to me,’ I said.

When we left, I almost expected a round of applause.

It was the end of my first year at ICM, and as I was pouring myself a cup of coffee in the boardroom prior to our 11 a.m. meeting, Dick said, ‘Michael, have you heard Stanley died over the weekend?’

‘He was only in his sixties,’ spluttered Kenneth, opening up his second cigarette pack of the day. ‘No age.’

Stanley was a leading actors’ agent, much respected in the business.

‘Had he been ill for long?’ I asked.

‘No, it was all very sudden,’ said Laurie. ‘I’d no idea he was unwell.’

‘Poor old Stanley,’ said Robin.

I took a sip of coffee.

‘Who did he represent?’ I asked.

A loud cheer went up around the room. Bets had been laid on how long it would take between my being given the tragic news of Stanley’s demise and my asking about his client list. The period of mourning had been even shorter than anyone had predicted. I had clearly come of age.