A huge blow hit me after completing my last Bond film–the death of my mother. She died on 22 June 1985, and I was not there. I received a call in France to say she was in hospital but it turned out to be too late for me to be able to get there for her. It was her heart. I was devastated, as was my poor father. I spent a week with Dad afterwards. His world had been shattered and he was totally lost.
Even before I left, I became rather irked to see the spinsters and widows of Frinton descending upon the house and my helpless father, who could not so much as boil an egg.
‘Can we help you, George?’…‘Anything we can do, George?’…‘Can we cook you a meal, George?’
All perfectly innocent and neighbourly, you might think, but they were in fact jostling for the position they saw as vacant, as became evident very shortly afterwards when one particular lady moved in and then persuaded my father to marry her in order that she could care for him and keep it ‘all above board’. He maintained he was very happy.
After I achieved some success in life, I regularly put aside a little money for my mother to help her eke out her pension. When her will was read, we discovered that she had saved all of my contributions and never spent a penny. She left it all to be split between my children.
My father continued to enjoy his retirement years in Frinton, and whiled away many hours in his workshop at the end of his garden–turning wood and making models, and suchlike. I know my mother often said to him, ‘Come on, George, let’s go for a walk.’
‘Lil,’ he’d reply, ‘I’ve done enough walking in my life. Now the end of the garden is as far as I go.’
I think it was around summer 1994 when Dad called me in France.
‘That was very bad last night, son.’
‘What was, Dad?’
‘There was a talk show on television and they said that you were on the way, but you never got there. That’s not good, son. Not good at all.’
‘What show, Dad?’ I asked.
‘It was on the BBC,’ he replied.
Anyway, I called Doris Spriggs–my wonderful assistant who looked after us all for twenty-nine years, before Gareth Owen took over on Doris’s retirement in 2002–and she said she’d find out. It turned out to be the Alan Partridge Knowing Me, Knowing You chat show with Steve Coogan, a spoof show and the joke in that episode was that I didn’t get to the studio in time for the recording. Doris got me a tape. It was a hysterically funny send-up. I called Dad to explain.
‘Yes, but it’s still bad, son, still bad,’ he said.
As he got older, Dad’s hearing started to deteriorate. I bought him various hearing aids, but like most deaf people who wear them he would boom his voice when talking. I was in a restaurant in Frinton with him, and told him a funny story. He shouted, ‘YES, SON, VERY GOOD. THAT REMINDS ME OF ANOTHER ONE.’
‘Sssh, Dad! You’re shouting,’ I said.
He then started telling me a joke, gradually increasing the volume. ‘There’s this woman WHO IS HAVING IT OFF…’
‘Dad! Crank it down a few decibels.’
I visited him and his new wife as often as I could; however in late 1997 his health took a turn for the worse. This time I was there, with my darling Kristina. I don’t know how I would have coped without her love and support.
After my mother’s death I decided it was time to take a little time off and re-evaluate things. I’d always enjoyed producing and working behind the scenes, and when the opportunity arose to option James Clavell’s Tai-Pan, I jumped at it. John Guillermin signed on as director, and together we began developing the script, raising the finance, talking about casting–it even reached the point where sets were being built in Croatia. Then the finance fell through. The whole production collapsed. Months if not years of my life had been wasted. I didn’t get a penny in fees either. Dino De Laurentiis later bought up what assets were left in the company and went on to make the film a few years later.
I remained good friends with Cubby in my post-Bond years, and often visited and dined with him and Dana. I occasionally met Timothy Dalton at their house after he took over the role, though I had never seen either of Timothy’s films. I’m often asked if I have seen subsequent 007 adventures, and what I thought of subsequent Bond actors. I always replied the same–‘Sorry I’ve not seen them’. That saves lying!
Well, I did, in fact, see a reel of Pierce’s first one, Goldeneye, when I visited my son Christian at Leavesden Studios, where he was working with the location department. I had a chat with Pierce, saw a few old friends and then they ran some of the film for me. I thought he looked terrific. In 2002 I was invited to the Royal Premiere of Pierce’s fourth film Die Another Day, which also marked the fortieth anniversary of the first Bond adventure. My daughter Deborah had a small part in the film as a BA air hostess, so that was a double excuse to attend. George Lazenby, Timothy and Pierce were also present and we were all presented to Her Majesty the Queen. I was somewhat disappointed that Kristina was not allowed to be in the line-up with me and that we former Bonds were kept down the line from the current one. How soon they forget.
In the early 1990s, after winning a long-drawn-out legal battle with MGM–whose new management were selling off the TV rights at knockdown prices–Cubby began suffering ill health. It was a very sad time. He was too ill to produce Goldeneye and handed the reins over to Michael and Barbara. A short time after the film’s release, he sadly died. I lost a great friend and mentor that day.
There was a memorial service at The Odeon, Leicester Square shortly afterwards, presented by Iain Johnston. It was a huge event for a huge man–in heart that is.
Many people spoke including me, Timothy Dalton and the newly announced 007, Pierce Brosnan. Sadly, neither George Lazenby nor Sean Connery attended, though I know Sean had not remained on the best of terms with Cubby.
Some years previously, I attempted to bring Sean and Cubby together at a party at our house in LA, hoping they might settle their differences. I should add that, a couple of weeks prior to the party, there had been a newspaper article in which Sean was quoted as saying that if Cubby Broccoli’s brain was on fire, he ‘wouldn’t piss in his ear to put it out’.
At the party, I sat them both down with a drink. I heard Cubby–who was very much a gentleman Don Corleone–say, ‘Sean, did you really say if my brains were on fire you wouldn’t piss in my ear? I found that very upsetting.’
‘Cubby,’ replied Sean, ‘I’d gladly piss in your ear any time.’
End of conversation!
In 1986, entirely unworthy and unjustified, the Friars Club of New York announced that I was to be their ‘Man of the Year’. It was an honour previously bestowed on the likes of Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr. and Tom Jones. It was a great honour but I did wonder if they’d asked me by mistake, instead of Sean Connery. Fortunately, they did mean it for me and I was thrilled to be ‘roasted’ by so many of my distinguished friends and peers. I myself attended a number of such ‘roasts’ to other people. One of the most memorable for me was also in 1986 in LA.
Milton Berle, the famous actor who was perhaps best known as Uncle Miltie, asked what I was doing one evening.
‘Nothing in particular,’ I replied.
‘Right. You’re coming with me,’ he said. ‘We have a roast to Arnold Schwarzenegger.’
This was long before Arnie was governor, of course, and just after he had married Maria Shriver. I guess he was then best known for having starred in The Terminator. I later worked with Maria Shriver by the way, and for ABC Television, at the time of the Duke of York’s wedding to Sarah Ferguson in 1988. Maria was a presenter for the network and I was a sort of witness and commentator on the wedding with her: presumably they thought me the expert on British royalty? I’ve known a few queens in my time, so maybe I was.
As far as I recall, at the roast it was a completely male audience, apart from–at the rear of the Beverly Hilton ballroom–what looked like a solitary female silhouette. All of the invited speakers were huge hulking musclemen, who spouted choice comments such as, ‘Wouldn’t half like to give Maria one, Arnie’. All in good spirits, of course.
Milton Berle took to the stage. Ah, I thought, the voice of respectability.
His opening line was, ‘Arnold Schwarzenegger’s schlong is so big, it has its own heart and lungs.’
Oh-oh, I thought, I’m not in for a Salvation Army evening here.
Back in Gstaad for the winter, I received a call from The Dame Edna Show asking if I would appear. I love Barry Humphries, so readily agreed. But I laid down a proviso–I wanted to appear with Les Patterson, his bad-taste alter alter ego, whom I absolutely adore. They agreed, but said as it took many hours in make-up, Barry proposed we film a Les Patterson sequence on the Friday and then the next day pick it up for the Dame Edna chat sequence.
Denis Healey was also going to be on the show–he didn’t know that he was the man who effectively made me leave the UK–and they asked if we’d both maybe do a song-and-dance routine with Les Patterson?
OK, why not? It was to be ‘You’ve Either Got or You Haven’t Got Style’.
I arrived at the studio and met Les Patterson for the first time, resplendent in his food-stained suit.
‘’Ere, Rog, watch this. You’ve gotta make it shine, old mate,’ he said. With that he started ‘adjusting’ something in his trouser leg.
‘Props, bring me the Vaseline, will you?’ He then popped some Vaseline on the trousers over the false penis strapped to his leg, polished it up and said, ‘There you are, it stands out from the front.’
It was so damn funny.
We did the song and dance, received a huge applause and resumed the next night for the chat with Dame Edna.
The next thing I knew, Andrew Lloyd Webber called me. He’d seen the show and wanted to discuss me starring in his next West End production, Aspects of Love. I was flattered and, cutting a long story short, agreed. I was introduced to Ian Adam to begin my vocal training and joined the lovely cast, headed by a young Michael Ball. It was like being in rep again. Trevor Nunn was directing and Gillian Lynn choreographing. Over many weeks rehearsals we came up with a pretty good show.
Advance bookings were looking good and we were all feeling excited. However, as the opening drew nearer I started having nightmares about forgetting my lines and having to sing without a note to key me in. I guess it had been many years since I was last on stage, so I was feeling a bit jittery. At the final run-through I sensed Andrew wasn’t happy. Maybe he was having those same nightmares about me? The long and short of it was that Andrew didn’t want me to open in the show.
I was very, very disappointed and felt very sad. It was agreed that I would issue a statement saying I was backing out. I guess I can still say that I appeared in a hit West End musical…through all of its rehearsals!
I’d known Willy Bogner for a number of years, going back to The Spy Who Loved Me. He called me up one day and said he had an idea for a film, could we talk? Sure, I said. At that point, my older son, Geoffrey, was thinking about pursuing a career in acting and Willy knew this. ‘There’d be a part for Geoffrey, too,’ he said.
The film was Fire, Ice and Dynamite and we shot in St Moritz. It was the first film I’d shot in five years and news reports said I had come out of retirement to make it. See! If you’re not on the screen on a regular basis, they assume you’ve retired. I had, of course, been busy with Tai-Pan, but nobody realized that.
Geoffrey had rather a good part in this film, and after it he went on to make a couple of other movies in America. But he soon rather wisely decided it wasn’t going to be an actor’s life for him. He turned his attentions to the music industry instead, and was signed by EMI. His first (and only) record did quite well, before he began pursuing another interest. In 1999, Geoffrey and a friend joined forces to open a restaurant in London’s Mayfair, and soon turned it into one of the must-eat places in town. I don’t think the film bug ever quite left Geoffrey though, and he grew restless to return to the business–though on the other side of the camera. In 2004 he and Bill Macdonald acquired the film rights to The Saint and set about bringing Simon Templar to the small screen once again. Not an easy process, but hopefully it will prove a rewarding one for him.
Immediately after working with Geoffrey on Fire, Ice and Dynamite I found myself working with my daughter Deborah, who had just graduated from LAMDA, on a Michael Winner film. My old mate Leslie Bricusse co-wrote a script called Train of Events which was a vehicle (forgive the pun) for Michael Caine and myself. When Michael Winner joined as producer and director, things started moving, with the new title Bullseye!. Michael Winner was hilarious to work with, but he screams at everyone on set. He never did with me or Caine, as the truth is he’s scared of us. I used to warn people joining us for a day or two what they were in for but would reassure them we were all on the same side, and told them to watch for the red rings forming in his cheeks, which were the sign to take cover!
Winner was a great bon viveur, and would send location scouts out to find the best restaurants in the area, and we’d always dine supremely. Food has always been a passion of his, as it is mine–see the waistline for proof.
The original story was set on the Orient Express travelling through Europe, but by the time the financiers had cut every corner possible we ended up on a train going through the Scottish highlands.
There was one actress on the film though who had, shall we say, ideas above her station and asked why she was not getting as many close-ups as Michael and I. This served to anger Mr Winner, who shouted, ‘Close-ups? Close-ups! Another word out of you and I’ll cut you out of this film like butter–no one will know you were there!’
Bullseye! wasn’t a bad film. It wasn’t the greatest either, but it did have funny moments. It was huge fun to make and I think my ‘blind piano tuner’ was one of the funniest things I’ve done on film. I love dressing up.
From the Scottish highlands, I moved immediately to New England in the United States to start another film, my third in two years. Breakfast in Bed, as it was known then, became Bed and Breakfast and was a rather intriguing project featuring three generations of women in one family and how their lives changed when a stranger was quite literally washed up on shore. Colleen Dewhurst, Talia Shire and Nina Siemaszko were those three generations. I was lured in as an executive producer, which is a ploy producers often use to get actors to work on a film for a scaled-down fee in exchange for a piece of said film. I should have held out for a better fee and given up the credit. So much for profit participation.
One of the nicer things that happened was when the commander of the Maine State Police Force came down to visit the set and he made me a captain in the police. I have the badge to prove it, along with the power of arrest! Be warned.
When one of the world’s great beauties calls you and asks if you would like to go somewhere with her, what do you say? No? Of course not! You ask where and when?
The ‘where’ was Amsterdam, and the ‘when’ was the first week in May 1991. The ‘beauty’ was my near neighbour in Switzerland, Audrey Hepburn. She told me that I was going to co-host, with her, the Danny Kaye International Children’s Awards for UNICEF. I said that I would arrive there on the morning of the transmission but she said no–I had to be there the day before in order to take part in a press conference.
‘Dear Audrey, I don’t know enough about UNICEF to handle a press conference; I know that UNICEF looks after children…’
‘Roger,’ she interjected. ‘The press will not want to talk about UNICEF, they will want to talk about movies!’
She was right, they did–but she wouldn’t let them. Every question that was asked, Audrey turned around to the problems facing the world’s children. She was so passionate and so eloquent on the subject that I felt compelled to learn more about the workings of this organization–the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund. The next day, we taped the show with some quite extraordinarily talented children. Though I had known her for many years, I couldn’t quite believe that I was on stage co-starring with the wonderful Audrey Hepburn. I felt so honoured and humbled that she had asked me–little realizing that she was, in fact, intent on recruiting me.
Audrey’s amazing passion for UNICEF, I discovered, stemmed mainly from her being helped as a child by the organization at the end of the Second World War.
‘They came to the aid of thousands of children like myself, famished victims of five years of German occupation in Holland,’ she said. ‘We were reduced to near total poverty as is the developing world today–for it is poverty that is at the root of all their suffering–the not having, not having the means to help themselves. And that is what UNICEF is all about–helping people to help themselves–giving them the aid to develop, thereby allowing them to become self-reliant and live with dignity.’
On our way back to Switzerland, Audrey suggested that I might like to attend a seminar taking place in Geneva shortly afterwards. There, I would have the opportunity of hearing and meeting some other goodwill ambassadors, and hearing UNICEF staff discuss the various programmes and goals. I accepted without hesitation.
In Geneva, I talked with Sir Peter Ustinov–a longtime ambassador–and lunched with one of the great minds of UNICEF, the executive director, James Grant. I knew that I wanted to help, but how? Mr Grant asked me to meet him in New York, at UNICEF headquarters to discuss just how I could help. Audrey smiled, knowing her job was done. I attended a meeting in New York with Jim Grant, along with an old friend and his wife, Harry and Julie Belafonte. They too spoke with the same passion as Peter and Audrey did. I didn’t need any further persuading, I wanted to get involved and help.
I said I needed to learn first-hand about the problems, and about how UNICEF was trying to solve them–I needed to go into the field. Jim agreed, but said first it was necessary for me to sign a contract and become an accredited representative of the organization. By signing on the dotted line, I became a ‘UNICEF Special Representative’. I discovered it came with an added bonus–a salary!
Yes, I am paid the princely sum of one US dollar per year. It has to do with something about the legality of a contract and insurance. The main advantage of it is that I don’t have to give my agent ten per cent. It is the smallest pay packet that has ever come my way: mind you, there are those who believe that it would have been a more than adequate fee for some of my movies.
I decided to take my son Christian with me on my first field trip; he had just turned eighteen and I thought that apart from improving his knowledge of geography it would allow him to see what privileged lives we led in the developed world. Our first stop was Guatemala.
The regional director for UNICEF in Central America, Per Engebak, met us at the airport and Horst Cerni, who was on the UNICEF staff in New York, accompanied us for the whole of my inaugural trip. Horst was of German origin, while Per was a Norwegian. I was beginning to see how the ‘UN’ in ‘UNICEF’ really did mean United Nations. Having dropped our bags at the hotel, Per took us to the UNICEF office to meet the local committee staff and for me to be briefed as to what I would be doing and what was expected of me. I was told we would be visiting daycare centres where working mothers left their babies, after which we would travel north of Guatemala City to Santabal, in the El Quiche area, where we would inaugurate a new water system.
There were also a few trips planned to communities where the ladies of the villages made a living from weaving cloth, which is sold in major US cities–the profits coming back to those communes to fund a village store that stocks basic food items such as flour, meal, sugar and oil. We would then, I was told, return to Guatemala City where I would be shown Mezquital, the slum area. I would visit many of these favelas over the coming years in my trips around the world, and it never becomes any easier to see people living in absolute and total poverty.
The Guatemalan leg of my first field trip concluded with an audience at the Presidential Palace; followed by a fund-raising dinner at which I would have to make my very first UNICEF speech, but thankfully the area office said they’d provide some notes for me to refer to.
It was to be quite an itinerary.
The first day and the care centre at La Verbana witnessed my first ever contact with children as a UNICEF representative. I wished that I could have been as funny as Danny Kaye was when he met with children. I felt awkward in being asked to pose for pictures with them all as I thought that the press would see it as ‘just another film actor trying to get his picture in the papers’. It took many years of travelling and posing before I started to feel comfortable.
The journey to the El Quiche area seemed to take forever–it was a very long, bumpy and hot drive, interrupted by frequent stops to allow me to find a convenience. My film-location experiences of alien food always taught me to find the quickest route to the ‘thunder box’–or else. That first journey introduced me to the most primitive of ‘glory holes’, inhabited in the main by giant spiders, mosquitoes and snakes.
On our arrival in the village of Santabal, we were greeted by what appeared to me to be literally hundreds of singing and dancing children. That day was a ‘feast day’; with music, dancing and then the turning on of the first tap that anybody in that remote part of the world had ever seen. UNICEF had supplied the know-how and the equipment, and the villagers supplied the labour in laying PVC tubing from a water source high in the surrounding jungle-covered hills. To the cheers of the children and exploding firecrackers, I turned the tap and clean, drinkable water came spurting out. I felt as if I’d performed some sort of miracle. I was filled with gratitude to Audrey for her introduction to this new world.
Later that day we were entertained by a group of health workers who performed a playlet illustrating, to stress the importance of sanitation, the washing of hands which–with their standpipe in the centre of the village–was not now such a problem. What happened if food was prepared with unclean hands was demonstrated hilariously, with much rolling around on the floor, clutching of guts and screams of pain. It was a very effective message.
The next day we visited another village where I learned about ‘ORT’ or ‘OR’ salts. ‘Oral Rehydration Therapy’ is, as it suggests, a treatment for the rehydration of diarrhoea-related dehydration. In other words, it gets fluids back into the system. It is commonly used around the world, but in the Third World it has saved millions of children from the effects of diarrhoea–which is still one of the leading causes of death. UNICEF distributes these salts in the developing world.
One fascinating fact is that practically anywhere one goes in the world you can always find a bottle of Coca-Cola or Pepsi. It’s true! UNICEF was quick to recognize this, and the distributors of these drinks have been tremendously helpful in getting OR salts to the remotest corners of the world. James Grant, the then executive director of UNICEF never went anywhere without a packet in his pocket. He would produce it at the drop of a hat, and wade into a lecture on this simple, effective treatment, ‘And it only costs twenty-five cents a pack. Save the life of a child for just a quarter!’ was his war cry. He would often add, ‘It is also a good cheap cure for a hangover!’
The next day, back in Guatemala City, we visited the slum area. For the first time in my life I witnessed poverty such as I had never seen before, nor thought possible. It was a heart-wrenching experience.
There was no running water, no sanitation and no electricity. Entire families existed–I don’t think you could call it living–in shacks built from waste materials.
There I learned of how UNICEF endeavours to immunize all the children against diseases such as measles, polio, tetanus, tuberculosis, diphtheria and whooping cough: these run rife in shanty towns and areas of extreme poverty. Not one child can afford to be missed, as failure to give at least one dose of the measles vaccine, for example, would result in an estimated 1.6 million deaths worldwide.
The following day, after very little sleep thinking about the sights I had witnessed in the slums, we paid an official visit to president Jorge Serrano Elías. So how does middle-aged English actor get into a president’s palace, you ask? The answer, I believe, is that every president has a wife and in many cases children who have seen 007 movies or The Saint, and they’re curious to meet you, if only to see whether you actually have your own teeth! That’s when ‘celebrity’ proves useful–if I can use what celebrity I have to open doors for the betterment of children’s lives, then my career in movies has produced an added bonus.
The meeting started off very formally, with the president sitting stage-centre, officials sitting to his left and the guests facing him on the right. Then we all posed for photographs with, of course, the shaking of hands. We thanked the president for his country’s co-operation with UNICEF, and congratulated him on the daycare centres that we had seen. At that point, the First Lady arrived. Magda Bianchi de Serrano was very charming and attractive and we spoke about her involvement with mothers and children and their issues. I’ve discovered that president’s and prime minister’s wives–in practically every country–are very active in supporting their country’s impoverished children.
After tea, we said our farewells to the president and acknowledged the fact that we would be seeing his wife again that evening for the fund-raising dinner, where I was very relieved to put my first UNICEF speech to bed, so to speak. I then put myself to bed, ready for an early rise to fly to El Salvador.
Arriving at El Salvador’s international airport reminded us that this was not exactly a peaceful paradise. Military uniforms were very much in evidence and the drive to the capital, San Salvador, was made under military escort. On the outskirts of the city stood a large circular hotel, its walls pitted with bullet and shell holes; there wasn’t one unbroken window in sight. Apparently, this hotel changed hands between the rebel and government forces with great frequency.
Before I left for the trip, a friend of mine, Emilio Azcarraga, who owned Televisa, the biggest Latin television company in Latin America, suggested that I really shouldn’t go, but if I insisted, he would be happy to supply some bodyguards to look after me. I declined the offer, saying that I was sure UNICEF would do that job, but then in El Salvador I started to wonder whether I should call him–and take him up on his offer after all!
Our first field trip was to the Travesia region, to visit the Hospital Benjamin Bloom. Many years before, while living in England, I had visited the burns unit at East Grinstead Hospital and I shall never forget the smell of burnt flesh. As we got out of the car that morning in San Salvador I recognized that very same awful smell, and tried to prepare myself for what we were about to see.
There was no way I could have prepared myself, though, for seeing a young girl with various limbs missing, propped up on the bed and moaning to herself, an eerie sound that seemed to come from the bottom of her soul. She was not conscious of our presence and the doctor said that they didn’t know what she was thinking, or if she was even conscious of her surroundings. She was possibly still in shock over the landmine that had killed her sister and destroyed most of her young body with its blast.
We then moved into a sluice room that was being prepared for an expected cholera epidemic, where everything could be hosed away down the slightly sloping floor into the central drain. Hearing how many human lives were expected to end in this room was a spine-chilling experience. I felt sick, but dared not show it.
Next came the children’s ward.
We received a heart-warming greeting from the unfortunate youngsters–a few were standing, others were in wheelchairs and some were still in their beds, with those in front holding a banner with a greeting to ‘El Santo’. I did not feel like a Saint that day. It was shocking to see so many young children with horrendous burns, and a number with a limb missing; yet all with smiles on their little faces.
One of the doctors took me to a cot on the far side of the ward where there was a baby of indeterminate months, desperately, heart-breakingly thin, with pallid skin and an IVF drip attached to her arm, which itself was barely as thick as the tubing. The doctor, speaking in Spanish, said that this sad little creature might last another twenty-four hours; she was suffering from acute anaemia and had been brought in a few days before, ‘If only we had received her sooner,’ Per chokingly translated.
Christian remained at my side, regarding the horror in silence.
We were relieved to step out into the heavy Salvadorian air, with eyes blinking from holding back tears. I felt so full of rage against my fellow man. How could man be so inhumane that he could create weapons that tear children’s bodies and lives apart? I was angry at the ignorance of parents who had not had the sense to seek help for their offspring before they could waste away with malnutrition. Most of all, I think my fury was aimed at the governments that allowed the manufacture of mines designed to resemble a child’s toy, and at the governments that would not create a worldwide ban on such things.
With heavy hearts, we got back into our cars and drove on to visit a house that, with UNICEF financial and practical support, supplied a day refuge for street boys; a shelter where they could wash and maybe get a change of clothing, try their hands at making wooden boxes that would carry shoe cleaning equipment in order for them to earn money instead of having to beg or steal. They were also given a midday meal. Sadly, however, they could not be accommodated overnight and the majority slept rough on the streets.
We shared a meal with them, and Per translated the answers they gave to our questions on the circumstances that had brought them to the centre: parents dead; parental abuse; no food at home for them and their maybe ten brothers or sisters. Too-large families, I’m sad to say, are the common problem factor in the poorest areas of the world.
We visited a number of similar establishments and that evening as we made our way back to the hotel, Per apologized to me. He said that he had a problem translating some things because he was choked up. He thought that after the number of years he had been with UNICEF, he would have become hard-headed.
‘That’s the answer, Per,’ I said. ‘When you become hard-headed you get out!’ I have now been working with UNICEF for nineteen years and have yet to meet a hard-headed person within the organization.
That evening, I was a guest at another fund-raising dinner. After the First Lady, President Alfredo Cristiani’s wife, Margarita, had spoken, I told the other dinner guests of our reactions to what we had witnessed that day. I said we would leave their country with the fervent prayer that they would soon find peace, and that all Salvadorian children would live in good health and with the prospect of bright futures.
We retired to the bar for a nightcap with President and Señora Cristiani. The señora did not stay long but the president was quite willing to continue bending elbows with us. He was a tall, handsome, distinguished gentleman who wanted to talk about his days in the USA studying at Georgetown University. I looked at my watch and saw that we would only have about four hours’ sleep before our early departure.
‘Señor Presidente,’ I said, throwing protocol to the wind. ‘I’m afraid we have to make our excuses, as we fly in the morning to Honduras.’
He asked at what time. I told him we had to be up at half past four in order to get to the airport for the seven o’clock flight–it was a long drive to the airport. He gazed down at me with a smile and beckoned to an aide. He said something in Spanish, the aide clicked his heels and left. The president then told us that there would be two helicopters in front of the hotel at six in the morning.
‘Gracias, and the next drink’s on me, Señor Presidente!’
Surprisingly bright and fresh at six o’clock the next morning, we were in front of the hotel, and there, as promised, were our helicopters. I flew with Christian and Per in the president’s own helicopter, while poor Horst Cerni had to settle for the other one, which had no doors and was obviously only ever used for low-level flying and combat. We did fly low, as it happens, and very fast due to hostile forces in the woods below. Have no fear James Bond is here!
The airport in Tegicugalpa may have changed since we landed there in 1991, but I know that our landing was quite scary. It seemed to me that the airstrip finished up a few feet from the base of a cliff that rose up into the sky. The pilot’s foot was on the brakes before we’d even touched down, or maybe I was still recovering from the late drinks with the president and the helicopter ride?
As ever, the routine was to drop the bags at the hotel, meet the local UNICEF staff and pay a visit to a facility, this time run by Save the Children. Here, street children had classes in reading and writing and rudimentary mathematics. I sat with a maths class and found that they were all smarter than me! Again, as in San Salvador, the boys also had the opportunity to do woodwork and, of course, they were all making shoe-boxes.
The next morning we had an early meeting with President Rafael Leonardo Callejas Romero, which went very well and in discussing our itinerary–which was to finish with a day off–he suggested that we might like to visit Roatan, located near the largest barrier reef in the Caribbean Sea (the second largest worldwide after Australia’s Great Barrier Reef). Furthermore, he said, he would take us there in his own plane. Things were really looking up and I could see that being a UNICEF representative had other benefits too.
Having bid our farewells to the luxury of the presidential offices, we next headed for the region of San Pedra Sula, where we were to again spend some time in the slum area. I was horrified to see that the walls of one of the shacks were made from X-ray plates; one can only imagine the exposure the inhabitants had to radiation. As with other favelas, there was no running water and certainly no sanitation. Gutters dug in the earth carried rotting vegetation amid the human effluence, and any scraps were being picked over by rabid-looking dogs. UNICEF and other NGOs had a presence in the area, with health clinics taking care of children and young pregnant mothers, who were old before their time. It was very difficult to leave this minor hell knowing that we were going back to our comfortable hotel. We sat silent in our people carrier on the journey home
The following day we were escorted to the airport and boarded the presidential plane: but this was no Air Force One, or even Two, Three, or Four. It was a twelve-seater, with twin propellers that spluttered into life as soon as the president was aboard. As we headed westward, the president explained how he had acquired his aircraft: it had strayed into Honduran airspace while ferrying drugs to the USA, and the air force had been scrambled to persuade the intruder to land immediately–with further encouragement added by a few bursts of gunfire, which actually put a couple of holes in one wing. We were assured that the repairs were perfect and that the plane was as good as new.
That evening, we were invited to dine aboard a presidential yacht–not our flying host’s but that of his neighbour, President Jorge Serrano Elias from Guatemala. He had sailed to Roatan for discussions with President Callejas Romero. The yacht, like the plane that brought us there, had also been confiscated from drug runners. Whether it had bullet holes in the hull I do not know. In any event, we had a delicious dinner, retired to our hotel, and left the presidents to get on with their affairs of state. The next day we left for Costa Rica, and then on to Dallas where we had a three-hour stopover, during which a press conference had been arranged. I spoke to the assembled media and the UNICEF Dallas staff of the things I had seen. I spoke of my reasons for having become a volunteer and for making this first field trip. I think I said that all I had previously known about the situation in the developing world had come from the fact sheets that were compiled by UNICEF and the World Health Organization. They were merely statistics, however, the one that stood out and shook me most was that 40,000 children die every day from preventable causes. But I wanted to put faces to those numbers and, as horrifying as it was, I succeeded. I saw hundreds and thousands of faces: sad ones, smiling ones, hungry ones and expectant ones. All those faces made me determined to continue in my capacity as a representative of the world’s leading organization that cares for children and mothers.
Returning from Dallas to my summer home in St Paul de Vence in the South of France, I realized how damned fortunate we who lived in Europe are–especially those, like myself, who because of a little luck are able to lead such privileged lives. We have ample food on the table, a roof over our heads, excellent health services and most basic of all, with just a twist of the wrist, a limitless supply of safe drinking water. I can now never leave the tap running while cleaning my teeth; if I ever forget, I see the dozens of taps that I have been able to turn on in the developing world, and see the women and children without that most basic facility, who have to carry water, sometimes for many, many miles.
It was without the slightest hesitation that I answered the next request from UNICEF–to visit Brazil. It was not, of course, my first trip to the world’s fifth largest–and fifth most populous–country. I had seen Brazil through the eyes of the privileged tourist when making Moonraker twelve years earlier.
This trip took me to the capital city of Brasilia, a very impressive architecturally modern city. UNESCO has named it as a World Heritage Site, and quite rightly so in my opinion. Our UNICEF group was shown into the elegant office of the president, Fernando Collor de Mello. A tall, handsome man, who was sincerely interested in UNICEF’s work in his country. His support of our programmes for lay midwives and measles eradication was to win Brazil a UNO award for its ‘best in South America vaccination programme’ and, in 1993, a year after he had left office, Collor’s project Minha Gente (My People) also won a UNO award.
We were invited to participate in a discussion called ‘The Rights of a Child’–which set the minimum standards a child should expect from their home country in terms of education, healthcare and so forth–along with a large number of parliamentarians, which for us was most encouraging.
From Brasilia we moved to Fortelaza in the state of Ceara–possibly an even lovelier spot than Rio–where I heard one of the ugliest tales ever.
A nun was brought to the UNICEF office to meet me. Accompanied by two children, a boy and a girl of approximately twelve years, the nun started to relate the children’s stories. They were street children. The girl was the eldest of a family of ten brothers and sisters. She chose not to live at home because of the abuse she was threatened with by her stepfather. At the age of eight she had been raped by a policeman. Policemen in Brazil have name-tags on their uniforms. This brave officer of the law had removed his; he did not want his victim to identify him. Being a policeman’s son I felt even more outraged. She now lived on the streets and went with men, or rather scum, to earn a little money. After four years of abuse I asked what she had to show for it? What did she do with the money she earned? She took it and gave it to her mother, she said.
‘Do you ever keep any for yourself?’ I asked.
‘Yes, to buy food. I want to save some to buy a bicycle too.’
I found it very difficult to continue, but I had to listen to the boy’s story. It was more or less the same pattern, he too was forced to go with men. These ‘men’ were usually foreigners, and mainly European paedophiles. To this day I am filled with disgust at the behaviour of my fellow man.
The Sister of Mercy then made an extraordinarily profound remark. ‘It is strange,’ she said. ‘The world is talking about saving the rainforests, but what is the use of a forest without children to live and play in it?’
I gave the UNICEF rep two hundred dollars and asked him to make sure that the girl got her bicycle. But I know I can’t go round the world buying bicycles.
Rio, with its Copacabana Beach, its Sugar Loaf Mountain, and its luxury hotels, was just a façade behind which there was–is–great poverty; poverty that I had not seen when filming there. This time I met many of the street children, who were despised by the local shopkeepers and, I learned, sometimes became victims of the death squads who were allegedly employed to discourage youngsters from harassing shop customers.
UNICEF had just appointed a very talented Brazilian entertainer, Renato Aragão, as a national goodwill ambassador. Together we were able to exchange some useful ideas and opinions relating to the welfare of children. We visited one home run by the local Catholic Church, which supplied shelter for street boys. The one thing that struck me was how these youngsters wanted to be close to visitors, not to pick their pockets but to be close and feel some affection. All through Central America and Brazil I had been impressed by the aid given by the Catholic Church to youngsters and their support with health clinics. However, in view of overpopulation and now the worldwide HIV/AIDS epidemic, I could not agree with their attitude to contraceptives.
In Brazil, it seems almost every child is born with a football at the end of his or her foot. It’s played everywhere–from stadiums to dusty fields and paved areas. In a favela I saw it played with a ball made of paper and string. I went along to see Renato and a group of his show-business friends play one of their regular games against a team of professionals, to raise money for children’s projects. Worldwide, football has an important part to play in the welfare of children: for the young themselves it is great exercise, it teaches team spirit and it is also used in the rehabilitation of children in unfortunate circumstances, particularly those who, even as young as eight, have been taken and trained by militias to maim and kill. Over the years I have participated in the opening of dozens of makeshift pitches that townships in the developing world have put aside for their young.
UNICEF has had a long affiliation with soccer around the world and uses games to create UNICEF awareness as well as raise funds. In 2002 I was at Old Trafford to watch Manchester United play Boca Juniors from the Argentine. The event was in aid of UNICEF, of course, and, together with Sir Alex Ferguson, both teams and I came out of the tunnel on to the great pitch. It was an extraordinary sight for me to see sixty thousand spectators gathered in the stands. I was handed a microphone and I announced that Sir Alex had become a goodwill ambassador. I presented him with my own UNICEF badge and then told the crowd that I had participated in many ‘stadium waves’ but had never seen one from a player’s point of view, so would they start a wave for Sir Alex? What a sight! What a roar!
Manchester United has done so much for children around the world. The UK National Committee for UNICEF works in partnership with the club and has raised millions–the match that I attended raised an incredible half a million pounds.
I started off 1992 in my capacity as a UNICEF representative with fund-raising trips to Kiel and Berlin–where I had not been since shooting Octopussy in 1983. The wall was still standing back then, however in 1992 I was able to cross freely into East Berlin without passing through Checkpoint Charlie.
I have written about ORT and the twenty-five cent packets James Grant always had in his pocket. Now, my UNICEF colleague from New York, Horst Cerni, and I were in East Berlin visiting the factory that made and packaged the salts. In less than a year I had seen them in use, being distributed and now manufactured. On top of that I was now helping raise the money to purchase them. You might say I had gone the full circle.
I travelled with Audrey Hepburn to the Hague for my second Danny Kaye International Children’s Awards. Greg and Veronique Peck came along, as well as Joel Grey, Ben Vereen and Natalie Cole. There may well have been more stars there, but after Greg and Audrey, the stars of Roman Holiday, who needs to mention more?
I should have been more aware of Audrey’s failing health at that time. She was always desperately thin, but now she seemed to be very fragile too, and had to sit down quite often. What Audrey knew herself about her deteriorating condition, I do not know. I do know, however, that it did not deter her from continuing her field trips–the following month she went to Somalia and Kenya.
Audrey’s dedication to UNICEF was recognized and rewarded when, in December 1992, she received the Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the USA. By this time she was at home in Tolochenaz. Her remaining pleasure was being able to walk in her garden but that was taken away from her, as her dear friend from UNICEF, Christa Roth, told me, by the paparazzi and their long-distance lenses revealing her wasting disease. When she saw those images she knew that she could never walk in that garden again. How cruel and irresponsible the press were to publish such photographs.
On 20 January 1993 the world’s children lost their greatest champion. Audrey died at home, with her sons Sean and Luca and her devoted companion Robert Wolders with her to the end. Four days later, on 24 January, Audrey was laid to rest in the village cemetery in Tolochenaz, in the canton of Vaud. The burial followed a service in the village church, at which Sean Ferrer read Audrey’s favourite poem ‘Time Tested Beauty Tips’, by Sam Levenson.
Alain Delon was at the funeral, he said that he had never met Audrey but thought that she was such a lovely human being he felt compelled to come from Paris just to pay his respects. Mel Ferrer, Audrey’s first husband, was there too and it saddened me greatly to learn of his death earlier this year.
Audrey had asked me to do a couple of things for her, as she didn’t feel she’d be able. I had no idea that it would be death that would stop her. One was to receive a doctorate and the other to receive the World Service Medal from the Kiwanis. The latter event took place in Nice in June 1993.
The Kiwanis International is an organization of service clubs, of which there are about 8,000 in ninety-six countries. Their main object is to improve the quality of life for the world’s children, and it was little wonder that Audrey had been selected for their World Service Medal. That day in June marked the beginning of a new chapter in my work with UNICEF. David Blackmer, Kiwanis’ International Director of Public Relations, had been in discussions with UNICEF regarding a project that Kiwanis could be involved with, such as Rotary International’s Polio Elimination Project, which had been very successful. They came up with IDD: Iodine Deficiency Disorders.
In its most extreme form, the lack of iodine in our diet can be the cause of hypothyroidism, a severe lack of thyroid hormone, which used to be known as cretinism. It also raises the risk of stillbirth and miscarriage. In adults, the goitre, or enlarged thyroid gland, is an obvious sign of iodine deficiency, but the lack of iodine in childhood reduces intellectual ability, resulting in an IQ ten to twelve per cent below the norm. We only actually need the equivalent of a teaspoon of iodine throughout our life, but it does have to be spread out. I learned that, in 1990, thirty per cent of the world’s population lived at risk of IDD; 750 million people suffered from goitre; and 43 million had brain damage. These were people who lived in mountainous or flood-plain areas, where erosion bled the soil and crops of sufficient iodine.
This was to be my project–encouraging Kiwanis worldwide to support the initiative and raise at least $75 million for salt iodization equipment and awareness. It also fell on my shoulders to speak with presidents and ministers in affected countries, so they could understand the seriousness of iodine deficiency. After all, what chance had a country if its population lacked ten per cent of their brain cells?
The most simple method of combating this scourge is by iodizing salt, then by encouraging people to buy only that salt. The first two countries in the world to iodize their salt were Switzerland and the USA. Now so many more do, in no small part thanks to the Kiwanis. I’m proud to be associated with them.
In the spring of 1993 I took my daughter Deborah with me to the windy city, Chicago, for a fund-raising event and to raise UNICEF awareness. While there, my old friend and publicist Jerry Pam asked me to record a guide to the Forbidden City in Beijing. I thought, in addition to a few dollars, it would mean a free trip to the Far East! Ever the ponce, I readily agreed. However, the nearest I got to China was a taxi ride to an address on Michigan Boulevard. I then had to walk up ten flights of stairs and sit in front of a microphone, trying to sound authoritative in describing this great place–which I’d never seen. It was only in 2002, a few months after we were married, that Kristina and I, in Beijing for UNICEF, were able to listen to my guide as we moved around that extraordinary structure. Would you believe it–we didn’t get lost once!
Back in 1993, meanwhile, I spent the summer travelling–for both UNICEF and work–to and from London, the USA, Athens and Nice. Along the way I met with the Kiwanis for events, attended the Montreal Film Festival and finally ended up at a big fundraiser in Los Angeles. It was while I was in LA, that my very good friend and doctor Steven ‘Stevo’ Zax insisted that I should pay more attention to my health–I hadn’t told him I was a closet hypochondriac.
Apart from having a mutual friend, cardiologist Selvyn Bleifer, run his rule over me and make sure that my heart kept the correct time, Steven also had his urologist, Rick Erlich, make regular checks on my PSA–prostate-specific-antigen–with tests. PSA is a protein produced by the cells of the prostate and, via a blood test, you can use it as a biological marker for the early stages of prostate cancer. I’m told that when the PSA level starts to rise on subsequent blood tests then it is time for a further investigation. That investigation–apart from the finger up the rectum–can also mean taking a number of microscopic samples, through a needle penetrating the prostate gland and taking eight to ten particles for biopsy.
Needless to say, it’s as painful and irritating as it sounds–a pain in the arse, you might say.
I had two of these well-meaning investigations, and on each occasion Rick called me the same evening and said all was OK; or else Stevo would ring me in the morning to confirm a clean report. The day after the third such test I remember it was a sunny September morning in Beverly Hills and I was about to start my morning workout, when I heard a ring at the door. Stevo was standing there with a faint smile on his face. He said he’d decided to come by the house instead of phoning because the news was not good. We went into my study. Strangely, I started to feel so sorry for him, as he had bad news to impart and clearly did not know how to start to tell me. His eyes began to well up with tears and I could only make a joke, saying something fatuous.
‘Well, we have got a little time,’ said Stevo. ‘This operation can’t be done until you give four units of blood in reserve; that’s going to take a month.’
I felt very calm. After all, he hadn’t said I had cancer, only that I was going to give a couple of pints of blood ready for an operation.
Whoa! Just a minute, what operation exactly?
Stevo then explained that they would open my abdomen and remove the offending prostate. Only then would they be able to check whether the cancer had spread to other tissues or the bones.
Cancer. The dreaded C word. I had cancer.