Читать книгу Botham’s Century: My 100 great cricketing characters - Ian Botham, Ian Botham - Страница 7

There is, of course, a perfectly innocent explanation for the moment I was stopped by police on Wimbledon Common with a six-foot blow-up doll of Mr Blobby and the star of soft-porn movie classic Confessions of a Window Cleaner.

I’d been invited by actor and bon viveur Robin Askwith to appear in pantomime with him during one of those winters when that other seasonal cabaret, the England cricket team, had set off on tour without me. ‘Squiffy’ – as he is known to his mates – has been a good friend for many years.

On the 1990–91 Ashes tour of Australia, when David Gower and John Morris were fined by the England management for hiring a Tiger Moth and ‘buzzing’ the Carrara Oval, it was Squiffy who responded by chartering a plane that flew over the Adelaide Oval during the fourth Test a few days later, trailing a banner which read ‘Gower and Morris are innocent.’ Gower thought the stunt was hilarious; needless to say, tour manager Peter Lush was less amused.

Anyway, during this 10-week stint treading the boards at Wimbledon, I decided a life-size inflatable of Mr Blobby – a character enjoying popular appeal on a madcap Noel Edmonds TV show – would make a perfect Christmas present for my youngest daughter, Becky. After the performance one night, Squiffy and I took the short-cut back across Wimbledon Common as usual to our hotel at 1 am … with this conspicuous, pink-and-yellow latex lunatic for company. Some of the looks we got from late-night revellers swaying home from the pub were priceless – and then came a flashing blue light.

I can’t remember exactly how the conversation went, but once the police had established there was nothing sinister about our behaviour, they released all three of us – Squiffy, Botham and Blobby – without a caution and they accepted that the blow-up doll was all part of the pantomime buffoonery. Back at the hotel, Mr Blobby took up residence in the doorway between our adjoining rooms and he scared the life out of one night porter who brought us sandwiches on room service, only to find this rubbery monster answering the door. Becky? She loved her Christmas present. She thought it was mind-blowing.

Panto with Squiffy was always a lark. He’s one of the funniest men I’ve ever met – a natural comedian. But he is also one of the vainest. Every morning, from the room next door, I would hear him asking, ‘Mirror, mirror, on the wall – who is the fairest of them all?’ And after a couple of strokes of the comb, the same voice would reply, ‘Why, Squiffy, of course!’ He was also paranoid about catching colds or the ‘flu, in case his speaking voice disintegrated into a croak, and he did more for the sales of Lemsip and Sudafed than anyone I’ve ever known. Just one sniffle, or one cough, and Robin was convinced he had contracted some weird, incurable disease.

For all the sachets in his medicine cabinet, however, Squiffy is a talented guy and great company, serious enough about his work to be a thorough professional, but also modest enough to laugh at himself. He is probably best-known for those Confessions films. One night, after appearing together in Dick Whittington at the Theatre Royal in Bath, we returned to our hotel, turned on the TV and there he was, helping a young lady out of her clothes in a re-run of Confessions of a Window Cleaner.

Keen student of the acting business that I am, I was only too glad to watch the master at work on the small screen – to see if I could pick up any tips for my own dramatic presence in pantomime, of course. But those films have aged so quickly, and the music sounds so tinny, that they just appear barmy now: within 10 minutes, Squiffy and I were laughing so much we could barely breathe.

Living these days on the tiny Mediterranean island of Gozo, next door to Malta, Squiffy has a private yacht which is his pride and joy. Whether I would set sail with him further than crossing the Serpentine in Hyde Park is another matter!