Simon Callow

Rosebud with Gyles Brandreth

Gyles Brandreth conducts an intimate interview with actor and author Simon Callow, exploring the formative influences of his early life. The conversation traverses

Key takeaways

• Simon Callow's grandmother, Vera Agnes Gies, was a foundational source of optimism and joy in his childhood.
• The sudden departure and eventual death of his father, Neil Callow, in Zambia left a significant void in his early life.
• A handwritten letter to Laurence Olivier directly led to Callow securing a job at the National Theatre box office.
• Meeting Michael Mac Liammoir in Belfast profoundly influenced Callow's passion for Oscar Wilde and the Irish theatre movement.
• Callow reflects on how literature, specifically works by Brian McGee, helped him navigate his identity as a gay man.

Main topics

• Childhood in Streatham
• Family dynamics and parental relationships
• The influence of theatrical legends

Notable quotes

Embrace life.

Conclusion

A moving and historically rich dialogue that illustrates how personal

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) Gather ye rosebuds, while ye may. There's a new guest waiting, with quite a lot to say. So I'm going to shut up and say welcome to another episode of Rosebud. We do indeed have a very special guest for you. Cue the music, they're ready. Speaker 1 (0:37) This week we've got an actor on Rosebud, one of my favourite actors. He's also one of my favourite writers and one of my favourite people. I've known him for quite a while, not that well, but we have a number of interests in common. Chiefly, I suppose, Oscar Wilde. I'm president of the Oscar Wilde Society and he has played... Oscar Wilde on stage. I think we were most recently together when we were in Paris last year at the Père Lachaise Cemetery where Oscar Wilde is buried and we were together, me with my wife Michelle, he with his husband Sebastian, there at the tomb of Oscar Wilde 125 years to the day, in fact to the hour. since the death of Oscar Wilde. So Oscar Wilde very much informed his youth. He is gay. That is worth saying, only because I think when, in the 1980s, he became one of the first high-profile British actors to come out as gay, he described it as his biggest act of activism. But I think of him principally as a writer. because he's written some wonderful books. Being an actor, which was an exploration of the craft of acting, he wrote when he was very young. But I have his biographies of Orson Welles, of Charles Lawton, both of which I have devoured. The Orson Welles is three volumes so far. There's more to come. He's written about Wagner. I have that book. I've not opened it. I'll confess that because music is enormously not so big to me. But Dickens and Shakespeare, he's written about them because he's played Dickens. He's played Shakespeare. Have you guessed who he is yet? In the theatre, his breakout moment was when he appeared as Mozart in Amadeus at the National Theatre at the end of the 1970s. Famous, of course, for a number of film roles, A Room With A View, Four Weddings and a Funeral, that wonderful... reading of the Auden poem, Stop All the Clocks. Shakespeare in Love, which I saw again just before Christmas, and he's brilliant in that. Howard Zenn, Morris, all those great Merchant Ivory films, and of course on theatre, television. Have you guessed who he is by now? It's Simon Callow. And we're really going to talk today, I hope, not about the stuff we all know about, you know, the stage and movie career. but about his origins, what made him the person he is. I particularly want to hear about an actor called Michael McLeomore. If you don't know who he is, well, you're going to discover more. He was an extraordinary character, and extraordinary characters are part and parcel of the story of Simon Callow. So, enough from me. Let's cue that music and introduce you to Simon Callow, author, actor, director. commander of the Order of the British Empire, and a very interesting human being. Cue the music. Simon Philip Hugh Callow, born, I hope I've got this right, 15th of June 1949. Indeed. The question is, what, Simon, is your very first memory? Speaker 1 (4:17) Well, I think my Speaker 2 (4:19) very first memory, and I'm sort of suspicious of memory generally, but anyway, I think my very first memory is me tottering down the hall of my grandmother's house in a Shantung shirt, running towards my grandmother, who was the sort of salvation of my life, and just the joy of going into her room. to see her. That's it. And there's no real kind of punchline to the memory at all. It's just that there she was, this extraordinary, copiously built woman who I utterly understood and understood me utterly and who I see more and more and more is the foundation for the basic optimism and joie de vivre, which I still flickeringly maintain in my dotage. Speaker 1 (5:25) So where was this and who was this lady? What was her full name? Who was she the mother of? And why did she come to be the central figure? Speaker 2 (5:33) It was in Streatham. in London, where I was born, in a nursing home somewhere up the road from my grandmother's house. And, of course, it was a semi-detached house of no great distinction or size, but to me it was a magical castle. And her name was Vera Agnes Gies. Gies was, my grandfather Gies, was Danish. and an inventor and an engineer and a thoroughly ill-humoured man who dropped dead at the age of 41. So he was long in the past. I never met him at all. She, my grandmother, had been a singer. In fact, she possessed a rather remarkable voice. She had one of those... Contrato profundo voices like Marian Anderson or something that you very rarely hear now. Marilyn Horne had some of those notes in her voice. And she did sing, she told me, and my grandmother's historical imagination was considerable, so we mustn't take this as a fact, but she said that she sang, she changed her name to... Vera Melbourne as a tribute to Dame Nellie Melba. And she sang at the Albert Hall on Armistice Day in 1919. And it is said that she managed to shatter the acoustical arrangements such was the size of her voice. It was immense and very, very, very deep. And she would sing. parties didn't take much encouragement and she her her absolute uh star turn was to sing softly awakes my heart from samson and delilah by sans sauce and um she would work the room that that i remember vividly she would go from especially she'd go from man to man locking eyes with him and pouring this golden tone at him and she was uh she did um she she loved And Speaker 1 (7:54) she gave birth to your mother? Speaker 2 (7:56) Gave birth to my mother. And any others? Were there uncles and aunts? My mother, my aunt, and my uncle. My uncle died in the last year of the war, saving somebody. He was a captain, I think, one of his men's lives. And that's the sort of story families tell each other. But I've seen all the letters. I've seen the letter from the Padre. I've seen the letter from... from the colonel of his battalion. And he is the absolute mystery figure in my life because everybody adored this man. He was quite short, not exactly strikingly good-looking, but the photographs show an extraordinary personality and a charm, a gracefulness about him. Everybody adored him, Tony his name was. And in fact, my grandmother frequently absentmindedly called me Tony rather than Simon. Explain why your grandmother, though, is Speaker 1 (9:00) a central figure, given you had a mother. Speaker 2 (9:02) Ah, I did have a mother. My mother... Speaker 2 (9:07) My mother and I were very temperamentally at odds with each other, really all the way through her very, very long life. She was 98 when she died. And she was a good woman, and she was a woman who worked incredibly hard. What was her name? Her name was Yvonne. And she worked extraordinarily hard as a secretary all her life, but she rose to great heights. She was the secretary to managing directors and people of that sort. And she... was known to be, by everybody, a difficult woman. Even as a girl, she was a difficult girl. She was a bit of a tease to the men, but very scornful of them. And she was... My grandmother typically would tell me... everything really, about everything, but she said that my mother as a child had had a rather curious interest in... There was a medical student staying in the house. There was always a lodger. And this was a medical student, and he had a skeleton in his room. And my mother loved this skeleton, and in fact couldn't... get to sleep without the skull on her pillow. This is a story told by my grandmother. Now, it's very possible that there's some embellishment going on here, but she certainly was a slightly odd woman, my mother. Very independent and very quite easily Speaker 1 (10:52) scornful of people, you know. And when did you feel first that you were at odds with her? So warmed more to her mother than to your own mother. Speaker 2 (11:01) I think it was fairly apparent from the beginning that we had quite an interesting life, my mother and I. Because to try to cover this elaborate story as quickly as I can, she... Speaker 2 (11:20) married her brother's best friend. Tony's best friend was my father, Neil. Neil Callow. Neil Callow, who was the life and soul of the party. He was the man who reliably laughed at everybody's jokes and then went off and bought another crate of beer. He was a... Speaker 2 (11:45) jolly, happy-go-lucky, lively man. And my mother took an instant dislike to him. She was my uncle's best friend, but she took an instant dislike to him. He became, that probably excited him more, and he started to pursue her heavily. And when she would walk into a room, and if he was in it, she'd walk out again immediately. And eventually... Speaker 2 (12:12) There was a bomb raid and they all went down to the cellar and somehow or another they all piled on top of each other and my father did something to my mother which must have stirred her deeply physically and she, being somewhat naive, thought that this was, that she'd lost her virginity. Speaker 1 (12:34) So she felt she'd succumbed Speaker 2 (12:36) in Speaker 1 (12:36) this tumble and tussle. Felt she'd lost her virginity and therefore felt obliged to follow it through with matrimony, even though this was a man who she would leave the room rather than be with. Precisely. So she married him. And she had not lost her virginity, as far as we know. She Speaker 2 (12:54) had not lost Speaker 1 (12:54) her Speaker 2 (12:54) virginity, not at all, no. Speaker 1 (12:55) It was just a fumble in the air, Speaker 2 (12:57) I shall say. Yeah, exactly. However, the unexpected happened, which is they got married, and it turned out that he was a wonderful lover, and she fell in love with him deeply. Speaker 1 (13:09) Oh. Well, that's a good twist, isn't it? That's a terrifically good twist, but there are more to Speaker 2 (13:15) come. Speaker 2 (13:17) So they went, she joined him, this was I think 1944 or something like that, and he was in Africa, fighting in Africa, and by 1944 I think you could be joined by your spouse because the war was over in that arena. Anyway, she was there in Africa, and once the war was over they stayed in Africa, living the life of Riley as colonials did, you know. In Lagos they were eventually. And then finally, I was conceived, this is in 48, and late autumn of 48, and then, of course, they came back to England, both of them, and they decided they'd try to make a go of it in England. They lived in a bed-sitting room, me and... the two of them. And it became intolerable. My father went back to his former job, which was an insurance salesman, which he detested, having known the glorious life of the colonials. And so he said he would go back to Africa and he would send money, which he did. And then at the end of 18 months, he was due for a sort of vacation Speaker 1 (14:32) or whatever, and he never showed up. Speaker 1 (14:37) And that was it. He never showed up. He Speaker 2 (14:39) never showed up. And then eventually she got through. There was a large party thrown for him to welcome him back. And he just Speaker 1 (14:47) never showed up. I mean, literally, the day was set when he was going to be there. Yes, and everybody was invited to Speaker 2 (14:53) the party. The Speaker 1 (14:53) wine and the beer was there. All the family were gathered. You, the little boy, aged two or three by then. No, Speaker 2 (15:00) 18 months. 18 months, Speaker 1 (15:01) waiting for Daddy to return from Africa. And nobody came. Speaker 2 (15:07) They all came, but he didn't. He didn't come back. And he was still Speaker 1 (15:11) in Africa. He just hadn't got on the boat. Speaker 2 (15:13) She Speaker 1 (15:13) then Speaker 2 (15:13) booked a call to Africa for the next day. Obviously, in those days, you couldn't call straight away. And she said, I'd like to speak to Mr. Callow. And they said, oh, Mr. Callow left for Paris with Mrs. Callow 10 days ago. Speaker 2 (15:34) And so my father eventually sort of crawled back to London and begged my mother for a divorce, saying, I'm sorry, it's all over. I loved you, but I Speaker 1 (15:47) don't anymore. And I found a new person I love and I want to marry her. Speaker 2 (15:50) Well, I don't know whether he said that or not, because that didn't materialise. There was no second Mrs Callaghan, as Speaker 1 (15:56) far as you know. Speaker 2 (15:56) No, I think it was just Speaker 1 (15:57) somebody that he'd gone to Paris with. Speaker 2 (16:00) And my mother being... Very strict Catholic. Catholicism was absolutely at the centre of her being in a way that it wasn't for anybody else in my family. I mean, they were all Catholics, but very much in a, you know, eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow, we confess kind of a way. Anyway, the alimony was always very fitful. My mother got a job then when I was five years old. Speaker 1 (16:25) Forgive me, when did you first realise, you as a boy, that there wasn't a father in your life? Speaker 1 (16:31) Not until much Speaker 2 (16:32) later, and I'll tell you how that came about. But anyway, what happened in the sequence, which was quite enough to distract me from being fatherless, was that my mother went to work in a boarding school in Goring-on-Thames as the school secretary. And my education, such as it was at the age of five, was thrown in as part of her salary. And it was a boarding school run by... A man rejoicing, I mean, for a schoolmaster in the name of Roland Birch. And he was a great enthusiast of corporal punishment. No menest omen, indeed. Exactly. He was a linguist. He spoke Spanish fluently. And indeed, he'd fought in the Spanish Civil War on the other side, on the Franco side. Speaker 2 (17:28) Sort of evil in war situation here. Not that I, of course, knew any of this until I was later told by my mother. But I wasn't, I was too young really to be part of the school as such. But I was taught how to read by another sort of angel in my life, which was Roland Birch's mother, who was an elderly Cockney woman, her suit, and with the... Mrs. Gamp-like sort of tincture of sherry and gin on her breath at all times, which I liked very much. It was a lovely, warm sort of thing to be around. And she taught me how to read. Speaker 1 (18:12) So this is Mrs. Bertram, mother of Speaker 2 (18:15) Roland. And I had a breakthrough. It took me some while, so I was a little bit late to learn to read. And she said, all right, now you go and tell your mama. that you can read. So I went off and found my mother and I said to my mother, I can read. And she said, you now have in your hands a key with which to unlock the riches of the world. That's my mother for you. Speaker 1 (18:42) But how right she was. She was Speaker 2 (18:44) absolutely right. And then there was no stopping me. Once I could read, I would read everything. Speaker 1 (18:52) Unpick for a moment a little bit more of this incompatibility with your mother. Yes. Because that line you've quoted just now, it draws me to her. Speaker 2 (19:00) Oh, yes. She had many, many virtues, but she wasn't fun. She wasn't particularly... Speaker 2 (19:13) warm, and I was, I mean, I'm putting all the burden on her. I mean, I was a sort of uncontrollable child. Speaker 1 (19:22) Oh, in what way? Speaker 2 (19:23) Oh, just energy, just absolutely insatiable energy and romping around and showing off and doing voices and all of this kind of thing, which of course delighted my grandmother, but on the other hand, my grandmother didn't have to live with me Speaker 1 (19:37) all the time. You must have had another grandmother, your father's mother. I Speaker 2 (19:40) did, I Speaker 1 (19:40) certainly did. Was she part of your life? Speaker 2 (19:42) Yes, very much so. And I loved her very deeply too. But she was as great a contrast to the woman I called Mater. Everybody called that grandmother Mater. My father's mother was French, from Lyon. And she was exactly... Speaker 2 (20:03) what we all think of a French