Robert Gorelangton

The actor Ed Stoppard is kicking off the year in some nice period costumes. One of our brightest young actors, he’s back at 165 Eaton Place in the new BBC Upstairs Downstairs (reviewed on page 60) playing the diplomat Sir Hallam Holland. It’s got gas masks, the Munich Crisis, cocktails, a dead pet monkey, the odd conchie servant and, not least from Ed’s point of view, some great clothes. ‘In this series I get to wear jodhpurs and hacking jacket, naval uniform, black tie, white tie and a dressing-gown that would make Hugh Hefner green with envy. It will look sumptuous — more so than the last series.

If you don’t like Simon Callow, you probably don’t like the theatre either. He is as theatrical as a box of wigs. Who else would bark ‘come!’ when someone knocks on his dressing-room door? There he is with a glass of wine, a boom of good cheer, having peeled off his side whiskers after his lushly enjoyable one-man show based on two rediscovered Dickens stories, Dr Marigold and Mr Chops. But that tour is now over and Callow (probably still best known for his part in the film Four Weddings and a Funeral — the funeral was his) is going straight into another Dickens, his new version of A Christmas Carol. The actor-writer who has cornered the market in Dickens works likes Dickens. He has a book coming out next year, his 13th.

The J.B. Priestley flame is kept alive today by his son Tom, who resides in the same Notting Hill flat he has lived in for more than 50 years. His father — novelist, dramatist, scribe, broadcaster, socialist (who died in 1984) — was glad that Tom, now 79, hadn’t chosen the same life. ‘The only time he came here to the flat he said, “Don’t be a writer. Dreadful business.”’ Tom is a retired film editor who manages the literary estate. He is the offspring of J.B.’s second marriage to Jane Bannerman, the divorced wife of the humorist writer Bevan Wyndham Lewis. There was one more Mrs Priestley after her — Jacquetta Hawkes, the distinguished but flinty archaeologist.

John Major is half way through a book about the rise and fall of the music hall. His father, Tom, was a song-and-dance man who formed a double act with his wife, Kitty. John’s brother Terry was a trapeze artist, and the former prime minister must have come close to going into the family trade. Parliament’s gain was, in John Major-speak, showbiz’s not inconsiderable loss. Oh, yes.   Tom Major was a name in his day, although the fag-end of the music hall he knew is deader now than even the madrigal. The generation of halls that emerged in 1850 were very rapidly gone. Only one survives, in the East End of London, off Cable Street in Stepney.

Robert Gore-Langton on a stage adaptation of the Erskine Childers classic Riddle of the Sands The Riddle of the Sands was published in 1903. It was an instant bestseller and has never been out of print since. It’s the story of two young Englishmen who, while sailing off the German coast, unearth a fiendish plot to invade Britain. The book is often cited as the first ‘factional’ spy story, one that launched a genre. With its mass of authentic, verifiable detail it set the trend for Fleming, le Carré and the rest. The book includes maps, charts and tide timetables.

Hergé’s Adventures of Tintin is at the Playhouse Theatre, London, 6 December to 12 January; 0870 060 6631. The first time I saw Hergé’s Adventures of Tintin on stage it starred a West Highland white called Chester, playing Snowy. The dog’s is a walk-on part only; he’s rapidly substituted for a talking actor with a shock of white hair. But talk about canine ego-trips! He belonged to the show’s musical director, who told me that Chester soon started to ‘autograph’ the scenery every night before making a stage-door appearance where kids would queue up to stroke him. Chester lapped it up. He was not, it is true, a fox terrier as per the Tintin books, but then again no fox terrier I’ve ever met is all white like Snowy.

It’s a good month for the Great War. At the National Theatre this week a new play by Michael Morpurgo tells the story of the war seen through the eyes of a horse. Staged with huge puppet nags, War Horse sounds on paper like the theatrical lovechild of Equus and Birdsong. Up in Bolton, with a good deal less hype, they are doing another war horse — Oh! What a Lovely War. It was first staged in 1963 by the radical Theatre Workshop, in the East End. The Great War satire was aimed at the political edification of the working class, but sadly for the Revolution it quickly attracted posh nobs from Kensington, transferred to the West End and became a huge commercial hit and finally an all-star extravaganza film in 1969. The show remains a legend.

Warren Mitchell is lying on an air mattress in rehearsals. He’s 81 and in constant pain, made worse by a recent operation. Warren Mitchell is lying on an air mattress in rehearsals. He’s 81 and in constant pain, made worse by a recent operation. He looks very tired, very old and I wondered, hauling him up off the floor by his wrists, whether he’d make it through our interview, let alone a ten-week tour. Why on earth isn’t he at home with his feet up instead of rehearsing all day long? Doesn’t his wife object? He says, slowly and with effort, ‘Yes, my wife does object; she says, “You’re not fit enough, you should retire, you’re mad!

Whatever happened to poor old Blackpool? The last time I went it was alive, busy and reasonably full of life. The place today is a windswept vision of destitution and bleakness, home to roaming bands of stag and hen weekenders, fat people with limps and aimless geriatrics waiting to be mugged. A town once synonymous with aspiration and elegance struck me as a deeply seedy place, notable for its lovebites and sick. It is, however, cheap. This presumably explains why, despite its dramatic decline, it’s still Britain’s most popular seaside resort. There are legions of beyond-parody hotels where you can stay for £20 a night or less — including all the grease you can eat for breakfast. Not that there’s much to do in town.