More Rosebud - Larry Lamb, a Life Story in Poetry

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1:29Hello again, I'm Giles Brantford. This is Rosebud. It's actually more Rosebud, and I'm not alone. I'm here with my producer and friend, Harriet Jane. How are you today, Harriet? I'm a bit tired, Giles. Yeah, you don't look it, but you have every reason to be tired, because last night, let's tell everybody, Harriet and I were out on the razzle-dazzle, and we went to a party. we're podcasting this from the west end of london we're in mayfair at grosvenor house last night we were in piccadilly visiting i think it claims to be london's oldest bookshop hatchards there was a party to which we had been invited because one of our former rosebud alumina the brilliant and beautiful Rachel Sterling was there being funny and fabulous launching her book celebrating her mother Diana Riggs life she was there Jim Broadbent who you've appeared on stage with when we celebrated last year Winnie the Pooh and so Jim Broadbent was there there were stars of stage and screen well Rachel Sterling is a brilliant actress John Lithgow who was in London and on Broadway with her in the play about Roald Dahl.

2:44He was there. But what excited us? We found ourselves in a corner, this very, very noisy, exciting party with a young person. And they told us their name. Should we reveal what their name was? Yeah. Tuesday. We found a person called Tuesday. And I thought, oh, how marvellous. We always begin on a Tuesday saying, it's Tuesday. It's more Rosebud. It's Tuesday. And I thought, how amazing if we could get someone who is Tuesday to say, it's Tuesday. So I produced my phone and said, if you don't mind, would you say to us, it's Tuesday. It really is. Because that's how we can introduce our rosebud. Because we normally say, it's Tuesday.

3:30This is more rosebud. So it was a very noisy room. but this is a very special person and a unique introduction to more rosebud this tuesday it's tuesday it really is well thank you tuesday it is indeed tuesday this is more rosebud and it's more rosebud with a special guest and the special guest is an actor it's larry lamb now how do you know larry lamb well i mean obviously he's a big part of gavin and stacey he's Gavin's dad and he's married to Alison Stedman he's brilliant in that and then he was also in EastEnders wasn't he and he's George Lamb's dad and George Lamb when I was younger was kind of a very dishy TV presenter so I know him as George Lamb's dad I don't think George Lamb is a TV presenter anymore I think he runs some sort of biodiverse farm in the south of France which sounds fabulous.

4:24Larry Lamb is also of course a fine classical actor. I know I haven't seen him do that but I bet he's brilliant. He is brilliant. I've seen him years ago I think when he was the Royal Shakespeare Company. I mean he really can do the lot. He's got a great presence and a great story and I said to him oh I love you. Well and a fascinating childhood. And a fascinating. A difficult childhood. Challenging childhood. Yeah. And I said to him would you please do Rosebud. You're a great actor. And he said well I'm doing other things now Charles. I said what are you doing? He said I'm writing poetry. I said Larry Lamb the poet.

4:54He said yeah Larry Lamb the poet he said could I do my rosebud in poetry and you will remember he volunteered to audition yeah and Larry Lamb came to Grovenhouse we had to the park room here we had tea and he performed to us he did it was amazing it was truly amazing and he began we sat down with him to have tea and he just sat forward and performed for us a famous 1930s Stanley Holloway monologue a comic monologue called Albert and the Lion and we were mesmerized we laughed he got us on his side and then I said to him well how are you going to tell your life story through poetry and he began to read some poems he linked them with his stories and I thought this is remarkable because it's a different kind of rosebud but it still rang true to us didn't it yeah well and the poetry is excellent isn't it it really is first division stuff yeah so we met up with him again at the fleet festival off fleet street there's an audience there because we thought let's test it with some real people people came along including was it a couple of larry's ex-wives yes i think it was maybe one ex-wife and one ex-partner the mother of george lamb and yeah i mean extraordinary various people in the audience they were quite it was quite i mean i think seven of the people in the audience could have been former partners or wives.

6:21They're all on very good terms. On great terms. Well, he's very likeable, isn't he? Oh, gosh. He's very charming. He's very charming. He's irresistible in many ways. I'm sure Larry's listening to this. You're irresistible, Larry. You are irresistible. And I'm going to be seeing him again soon. The reason we're doing it now, we're putting it out today, is because this weekend, Larry is going with this story, with his poetry, to Chatsworth House, which is in Derbyshire, the home of the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire though I think the house is now run by their son and which is hosting this weekend the Queen's Reading Room Festival Oh wonderful You know this charity of which I'm a trustee which is Queen Miller's Project for encouraging the joy of reading and it's basically a literary festival but all human life will be there including Larry Lamb and I thought well also National Poetry Day is coming up people do like to write poems it's a good way of expressing yourself but Larry Lamb writes wonderful poetry he really does and he tells his own story so we went to the Fleet Festival in London I sat down with Larry Lamb and I said tell me your story what Larry is your very first memory and as you'll discover please listen to this you may think oh god poetry Larry Lamb trials what's going on here just give it a listen I think you will be very pleasantly surprised amazed and occasionally moved and we hope inspired yeah if anybody wants to send us a poem that actually is a poem about memory about your first memory why not maybe i should say limited to 14 lines no longer than a sonnet would be quite fun and we might read them out brilliant anyone anyone we like what's our address for writing into hello at rosebudpodcast.com hello at rosebudpodcast.com So, it's Tuesday.

8:18It's more Rosebud. It's Larry Lamb. Cue the music.

8:41This is Larry Lamb. I'm Giles Brandrup. But this is a very different episode of Rosebud. This is Rosebud on the road. We've come to the Fleet Street Quarter Festival of Words with a final event. It's their third festival. They were sweet enough to say this was the highlight of the festival. I'm not surprised because it's Rosebud. I'm particularly not surprised because it's Larry Lamb. On Rosebud, we've interviewed all sorts of interesting people, many distinguished actors, and a number of distinguished poets. We've had Simon Armitage, the Poet Laureate, as a special guest. we've had oh one of my favourites Pam Ayers wonderful Pam Ayers we've had Roger McGough as a guest so we've had some interesting guests actors and poets we've never before had an actor who is a poet and that's going to be the difference about this podcast because Larry is going to tell us his story in his own words some of them will be like a conversation but others of them will be poetry and before I ask you the very first question Larry I've got two questions to ask you.

9:44One is, Larry Lamb can't possibly be your real name, so what is your real name? And two is, when did you get into writing poetry? Lawrence Douglas Lamb was on my birth certificate, but my father was of a generation where if you were in the forces and you were a lamb, you were automatically Larry the Lamb. So he, Ronald, his brother Alec and Bill, they were all Larry the Lamb amongst their people in the forces. This is because there was a wireless series called Adventures in Toy Town. Exactly, exactly. And Larry the Lamb. Yeah, so Larry the Lamb and then I said to this agent that had taken me on I said, what do you think about my name?

10:30I think maybe I'd prefer to be called Lawrence Lamb and she said, look, if I look down a list of names which agents of people always do all the time If I see Lawrence Lamb, I'll just keep boom, boom, boom, I'm reading. If I see Larry Lamb, I won't forget it. Very good. So that's it. Commercial. You've got a rebirth. Good. Larry Lamb it is. How did you get into writing poetry? I, in 1983, I was getting myself ready to go on my first ever great big on-location job all around the world. I was pretty fit at the time, but I really began to work on it. I stopped drinking, I was running, I was doing everything to get myself as fit as I possibly could and all of a sudden this stuff started to come out of me.

11:12Poetry started to erupt but all observations of me as a little boy which was you know really not a good world to be born in for me back then and so the poems came out and they got put in a file and up in the attic and about 30-40 years later I found them and a very good friend of mine was a wonderful poet called Hussein Manawa sitting right there and he said I've got to read these and he read them and he said look um we've got to do something with these so he really encouraged me he also taught me how rap and street poets work in in different rhythms mine was all you can talk a gin and beer when you're caught safe out here and you send a penny fights and order shot it but when it comes to slaughter you'll do your work on water and you'll learn to lick the boots of him that's got it that was poetry to me right all rhyming couplets and I began to realise that within that narrative the story you're telling there are other rhythms there are other rhymes and that became real voyage of discovery for me two a year and a half ago so here we are 18 months in and you are on Rosebud the only person I know who's done an autobiography in fully in verse is the late great Sir John Betchman poet laureate so you're following in distinguished footsteps he's a bit of a rap poet you know when you read his poetry he'll hold on to a rhyme like three, four, five lines.

12:33You're following him, boom, and there it comes. Brilliant. Good. Well, he's brilliant. Brilliant. I think you're brilliant. And I think this is going to be, well, it's going to be a unique episode of Rosebud because it's your story told largely in poetry by you. So, Larry Lamb, born on the 1st of October, 1947. What, Larry, is your very first memory? it was a blazing row between these two people who were my parents and we were living in the upstairs of my maternal grandfather's house in Enfield out on the edges of London and I remember the staircase and I remember a laundry basket it's really it's kind of a scene that's there I probably was three.

13:23We only lived there for so long because they were a bit peripatetic. We were, you know, everything wouldn't go wrong and we'd move again, you know. I've got a poem here that I wrote about it and it's called A Random Coupling. Someone had to bear the blame for giving the party where mum and dad met. Clearly dad's neighbour, Georgie Clark, it was his fault they'd gone and made love in the dark down the park at the end of dad's road years later red-faced dear old mum had confessed that indeed yes that was where my life had begun on a bench in that park where my dad had played with his mates as a boy but then only for fun this though was serious teenagers both as the war had started they'd learned from the movies about love and marriage but this flash of passion was nothing but that.

14:15No princess, no prince, no golden carriage, a story not destined for a happy ending. On the upper floor of her parents' home, forced into marriage, going nowhere like two caged beasts with their newborn son, not planning a future, just desperate to run, both of them. All they shared was hatred and me, a boomer, certainly born with a bang. Wow.

14:46Tell us about these two people. What were they called? And is that poem true about how they met? Yeah, Ron and Jesse, they both went into the forces. They went to do their bit. They were born a few years apart in the 30s. And she went off to be, she was in the land army. She was cutting pit props in the timber core up in Norfolk. He went off to train as a, whatever he could be in the RAF, and finished up a radio operator air gunner, a wireless operator air gunner a WAPG as they called him and it didn't do either of many good and him particularly he was very very disturbed by it he'd had a terrible upbringing with a bullying father he was a middle son of five and so he got he got a lot of grief from the father who was a raging drunk and so Ron and Jesse went to a party at Georgie Clark's house my dad's neighbour Georgie Clark.

15:43My mum and her friend Rini turned up at this party. Somebody must have told them there was a party going on. It was New Year's Eve 1946 going into 1947. And as it says here, it was Georgie Clark's fault. They went to make love in the dark in the park at the end of the road. I remember doing a job. I had a job in Edmonton. I had to drive out to Edmonton to go to to do a commercial job in an old factory system out there on the edge of what's now the North Circular. And I got there very early and I thought, you know what, I'm going to drive down the old street where I lived with my nan once the whole family had sort of busted up.

16:27And I pulled alongside of the park and I looked through at this hut that had been a part of my life when I lived there for a while and I went to see my mum and my mum was a very straight old-fashioned educated working-class woman you didn't swear around her you didn't talk about sex whatever you did nothing like that that was horrible and I said to her mum and I explained what had happened how I'd felt really quite strangely moved by something there and as I started to explain what had gone on she just began to go bright red and basically i said did my life start in that park and it did and that's what happened and like the part you know and nine months you know nine months later when i was born in the interim they'd been married they'd been forced to marry they were living in her parents home on the upstairs and they already hated each other with such bitterness i remember saying to my mother that my father had died, you know, years later, and she said, good, I beat him.

17:40So, was there any happiness for you when you were small? Because you've done, I know there's a poem about your holidays. Yeah. I mean, were there moments of happiness, or was it all? There were always moments of happiness, aren't there? There were funny, you know, funny little bits. I remember my father had decided that for some reason or other, he wanted to make some brawn. I don't know whether, well, I'm sure people of a certain age know that, you know, you take, it's what they call a fromage de tête in French, but it's a chopped up pig's head. You take all the bits of meat out of the pig's head, chop them all up, and you make a sort of a jellified pâté, right?

18:18So he's going to make some brawn. So he bought half a pig's head, and he came home with the half a pig's head, put it on the kitchen table, dug out the one eye, put it there, put it there, and ran around the garden chasing my mother who was screaming like a banshee woman she just was freaking out completely so there were little things i remember that's about the biggest laugh you're going to get well that's certainly a most unusual memory yeah he went on family holidays what did you i mean as a child yeah were you the only one of their union no no no i had a brother who was a year younger but the weird thing is that when my brother and i spoke about those years together he somehow managed to keep out of the firing line.

19:00I was the one, I was the one in the middle. I was the one that, I was the elder boy, you know, so I was the one that. Well, you were the reason they got married. That's it. If you hadn't been conceived, the shotgun wedding wouldn't have taken place. That's it, that's it. So it all, I mean, I have another little poem that gives you an indication of what it was like when we had a potentially jolly time. Good. Because they were always of a family sort of, you had to have a holiday. No matter, there was a war going, you know, You've got to go on a family holiday, right? And so I wrote this one called A Cozy Nook.

19:34In a caravan named Cozy Nook, parked in the pouring rain, as it drummed down, I realised yet again I was trapped in a family holiday, but with no chance of a getaway, age seven. Exactly when life should have held at least one or possibly two moments of fun each week, I'd figured out that I was being robbed of what a little boy's life should be, but trying to calm the two of them had become a full-time job for me. Constantly sampling the atmosphere, sniffing out any approaching flare-up still in its formative stage, calculating when we'd feel the furnace blasts of his next rage. Anything could trip the wire, unleash the beast, let loose the fire, the war damage all bottled up in him.

20:22a cup of tea too hot or cold could send him off years later as I'd told the tales set the scene it struck me just how brave I'd been when I would throw myself between them pleading having run out of distractions dragging them apart from roaring and screaming each in the other's face the embarrassment the disgrace the clock was ticking though looking back now of course I know I still had two more years to go before it would all blow apart but for the best and I could rest for my duties and start preparing for the test still to come and number one farewell mum. Wow you are literally because I know your mother I think leaves when you're about nine so you're up to the age of nine here you're physically intervening in some of these rows are you?

21:14Oh yeah yeah because as we're going on all the time. I mean, I remember coming back. I'd gone off to do something. I'd know, taken off on a school trip. And I came back from this thing. And the way the house worked was you open the front door into the hallway, and then there was a little living room, but there was a pair of glass doors at the end of it. And I looked through the glass doors because I could hear my mother weeping with a cone of tea leaves on her head and the steam coming off the tea leaves and the tears mixing with the tea as it drained down her face he got the tea she got the tea wrong and a lot of it boom went on ahead so there were sort of scenes like that why do you think he behaved like that what was there in his story because his father was a real victorian tantrum throwing male that's what you did to get attention you threw a tantrum and boy did he know some tantrums it's quite possible the tantrums have been passed on they're a learned thing you learn tantrums and you learn how they work and what how did he earn his living how did he earn his living he when he came out of the air force he but he went back into the gas company as a gas fitter and then he went and did night school he was you know with all his faults he was a highly intelligent man with a great lust for knowledge and travel and all the things that i've you know picked up from him and poetry and then he started to study to be a draftsman you know and so he was drawing plans that were handed down to him by the people that wanted something designed and that's what he was he was a draftsman but had different jobs but then he somewhere or other they managed somewhere or other they managed to get a fish and chip shop in harlow newtown so suddenly i'm a fish shop boy yeah was that quite fun yeah it was you're kind of out there you know you're out there yeah and that and selling fruit and vegetables on a on a market store which he then did as well and you helped you helped out yeah give me your sweetest your best memory of him because there must be some let's have a moment for ron of a good memory of you and ron that's a very interesting question it's it's it's not easy to summon them up my dad like all his brothers had an instinct for comedy they were all comedians and so the only day everybody got together all this extended family got together there in Edmonton at my nan's house it was the center of it all was when they all got together and they would all banter and banter and the banter was very very hot and very funny and so those it's times like that that I remember at his best because he was amongst the four or five, the five boys, he would come out with his call because he had an instinct for picking a joke out of anything, a lot of which I've got from him.

24:07But you were protecting your mother. Your mother was everything to you. Yeah. You looked after her. And then when you're nine, she leaves? What happens? That's it. Here we go. Well, then, so I wrote this poem because that was the kind of pickup to everything else and I called it Nan. I'd have been about nine, my brother eight, my baby sister only just born, without any warning things at home now so bad, mum finally grabbed the baby and ran, away from it all but mainly from dad. Not a trace of a note to say goodbye but even at that age it was obvious why to me in an empty house. But then to the rescue came Nan.

24:46Having lost two babies and raise six more, sending three of them off to fight in the war, Nan knew all about mothering. Forget the seaside, the sweet shop, the zoo, I was moving into 192. Those mystical numbers fixed to her door, a place that had always meant so much more than a tiny old house in a grubby old street. There, you stepped back in time. There, love, song and laughter reigned. There, Nan ran it all. and at last I felt safe.

25:23Well, I think that applause is not just for your poem, it's for Nan as well. Yeah, Nan was special. Who rescued your childhood. Tell us though what happened to your mother. She went with what happened, literally what happened. We lived in Harlow and they had the fish and chip shop. There was a patch of land next to the fish and chip shop because this was a town in development. There were all sorts of spaces ready to do things and in Harlow they were building a new pub in each area. So there was a space that was eventually going to be a pub, a site. It was our playground. My brother and I used to play there.

25:53That was it. And all of a sudden, the building started. Now, this was getting at a crucial stage in their relationship. They'd probably been... They managed to stay together nine years. So this would be about eight years into it. And so there were a gang of guys working there every day. And one of these guys, a big, burly, old country labourer, he heard rouse going on in that fish shop next door and he took a shine to my mum and she took a shine to him and that was it. Bob's your uncle. So they ran off together. They ran off together. Leaving your dad and the two boys, you and your younger brother.

26:29Yeah, but the fortunate thing was that my dad realised something had to be done with these two boys so he took us to his mother, to Nan. Lived at 192. Yeah, and we moved into 192 together. And so, of course, all his tantrums, the level went right down. There was no way you were pulling tantrums around her. She'd had a lifetime of tantrums from her husband. So, like, tantrums were right off the menu. And he knew that. And he behaved like her son because he was now a little boy again. Went back to being her son as well as being the father of these two boys. And so, you know, life continued and it was far jollier.

27:09Did you see your mum at all? Did she get in touch? Yeah, we saw my mum at the bus stop every two weeks. That's what we did. We went to the bus stop. And saw her off the bus. Yeah. I wrote a little poem about that. Funny you should say that. And I called that poem Waiting. At the stop around the corner to my nan, where every other Saturday, if things went according to plan, my brother and me would wait patiently. Well, at least I did. He wasn't always so happy about it. for our mum and our baby sister to turn up from wherever they got the bus. We never knew and for us not knowing where she lived was part of the pain of separation.

27:48Bus stop or occasionally the station up the road was where we'd meet her and greet her with a kiss. Although I can't quite summon up an image of this as even though I'd have been only nine or ten this whole bus stop kiss routine had a sadness to it back then that couldn't have been more embarrassing. But I certainly learned how to wait sometimes for an hour or two as there was no way she could get a message through to us if she'd missed her bus one of the ones that would crest the hill and we watched them until we could read their numbers betting whether she'd be on the 231 the 144 or the 102 no way you ever knew but those few numbers remain fixed and forever lodged in my brain from all those Saturdays waiting for my mum to come.

28:37Oh, my God.

28:42You mentioned the baby sister there. Was that a baby sister by your father? Yes, she ran off with the baby. And she took the baby, left the two boys. So she disappears. There you are. Do you have friends outside the home? You're at school by now. Yeah, I was at school. I was about to go to grammar school. I'd always been you know a bright boy and was reading my mother had always made sure I'd read ahead of my age and so I got into the best grammar school in Edmonton the problem was there I was so emotionally smashed I just couldn't deal with it I couldn't deal with it I didn't study I didn't know how to study all I wanted to do was escape so as soon as I was old enough I started to get jobs and the jobs were to earn me money because money meant escape because I'd had enough of living around her and him and then he got a job in harlow newtown back again there um as a draftsman and so we went to live my brother myself and him the three of us together but he was really embittered by what had gone on you know he was a deserted man he felt you know cuckolded you know that was the problem it was all that did your mother stay with the man she met oh forever forever and they actually were happy?

29:55Yeah, yeah, they were happy. Did you get to know him and like him? He was, as a stepdad, he was okay? Yeah, but I mean, we never, I never lived under their roof. No, no, that was all, I mean, we weren't even, we didn't know where she lived. We weren't allowed to know anything about. So here you are, living now with your dad. He's an unhappy and bitter person, but at school you feel you're a mess. You're not working as you should do. But do you have friends at school? Do you have some good friends? I had some friends at school. Can you remember the best friend at all? No, I didn't really have a best friend at school.

30:23I didn't I was I was always a loner from the moment my mother when I came I have this memory this vision of walking along this chain link fence on the field of the school that I was at going home not knowing was going to happen what was going to be going on there and going home and that was it there was nobody there there was no note to say anything and then we were moving to Nance. That was it. And from that moment on, that's been my life. Gosh.

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33:10Were there girls at the school? Yeah, there were girls at the school, but I was very fat, ugly, pimply and not at all what they'd be choosing. Gosh. How times have changed. How times have changed, fortunately. Well done. Would I be on here if I were fat and ugly? So, I mean, did you have crushes on people? I always had crushes but nobody was interested. God, so you're this lonely boy. I was a really, really lonely and I was commuting to school. I was, you know, a bus, a bus, a train, a bus, a bus every day to get to school for quarter to nine or whatever it was and then rush all the way back home to get home to make my dad's tea.

33:48That was it. You were expected to make the tea, yeah? Yeah, that was my job. You know, did all the shopping. My nan had made sure. She knew one day when I lived with her, I was going to have to take care of a home for the three of us. Literally, there's nothing in the house I can't do. And you literally cleaned all the shoes, you did the ironing, you did the washing, you did the shopping, you did the washing up, you did the drying up, you did everything. So Nan became, is Nan the most significant person in your childhood? Without a doubt, without a doubt she is, because she saved my life. She did, she gave me some, she gave me this little hideaway of peace, tranquility, of laughter.

34:31It wasn't all about the next row. Eventually though you do, you say you were not an attractive specimen, but love does come into it, doesn't it? Love does. Because you're... Oh, a lot. What age is this? I mean, you're obviously post-12, 13. Well, I mean... And how did it come? It's very, you see, because what happened with all of that, this craziness, right? All your values, all your senses, all I was looking for was love, right? Because mum had had to go. and mum had always worked in the midst of all the rows and the fights and everything else the one thing that was always be said was don't worry I'm here everything's all right and so she but in the end she was living with a crazy man and she had to leave there was nothing else she could have done I mean he was potentially dangerous and so off she went and that was it and and so there's a little poem here that I called Loverboy, which sort of in a way answers that.

35:37Nan had done her best to nurse me through the loss of mum. Even though she wasn't dead, I had to mourn as though she'd gone. As her firstborn now ejected from her life, she might as well have been. No more all-embracing love for me, this lost, abandoned son. Having mourned her, having learned to face the fact she wasn't there, it didn't mean I'd overcome the need to have her love again. So profoundly had she planted it within my soul, I couldn't bear the hunger for it, eating at me anytime, anywhere. A friendly female glance could set me off to fall in love again. Like to dance? Let's get married.

36:16What's your name? Just like that. So desperate to find what I'd learned I had to do without. I'd say that and mean it fall in love at the drop of a hat wow this is the legacy of this childhood trauma what you've just described this this need for love this is the legacy this is what happened this is this explains we may touch on this if there's time I don't know if there's any poems about this you've had three wives and I think four strong wife substitutes seven marriages seven marriages yeah three official and four extending for anything from three to 15 years we we collect these on rose blood we've had gaddy oldman who's had five wives there you go so but i think that's that's that's serious that is quite serious um uh marrying five times is i mean i can remember doing it the third time to my with my glorious my glorious son's glorious mother and i thought i can't go through this ever ever ever again.

37:18I can't because I'm just, I'm telling lies here just in front of everybody I know. And so that was it. And then, you know, I realised, you know, over these years of living with all these glorious women and I've been so lucky because every one of them was, that's why I wrote that autobiography about 15 years ago and called it Mummy's Boy after having a row with the publisher about what I'm going to call it. And they'd put it through their titles department. I said, you've got a titles department? So what do you think I'm going to call it? and they gave me a list and I said I'm not calling it any of that and they said what are you going to call it I said I'm calling it mummy's boy because that's what I've been it's these mummies in my life that have carried me on so this is the legacy of the trauma you lose your own mother your nan is wonderful but she is your nan so you are a serial father in love with people absolutely and if they are ready to mother you and there's a bit of the other thrown in and it's all it's all you know it's all it's that it's that that sort of figure of a person that I was looking to replace but in the same way that what went on was that it just wouldn't hold I was always looking for fault that's the problem and so it would never hold together but be not because of them because of me and that's what he did as well you know pick pick pick pick pick pick pick and that's what his father had done pick pick pick pick pick accusing somebody of being you know unfaithful i mean craziness and for kids to live amongst craziness it's like there's a there's a poem i wrote here excuse me it called learning to doubt once you've been around unkindness as a kid you remember every bit of who did and said what to who, trying to work out what to do when the two people you love more than anyone or anything say exactly what they're not supposed to.

39:19Things that people who don't like each other say, and you listen scared, knowing there's no way people who really care for each other would or could say things like that. And it's even more confusing when they tell you that they didn't mean it, but you've seen it and heard it all before, like the last time trying to believe them to the sound of the slamming of a downstairs door. Every time they say they love each other, the more confused you are as you try to work out all these things that don't ring true. What are you supposed to do as yet again they tear your little world in two, you always hoping for peace and picking up the pieces for the rest of your life oh my before we take the story on and you leave school just unpick a little bit of that and the legacy uh and how you've got through it you've obviously by writing the poems it's helped clarify it have you had other help over the years obviously your seven wives have helped you they have they've kept me steady in terms of I find these poems have been a great big emptying of the psychological cupboard.

40:34But I went every week for several years with a fantastic Jungian psychiatrist. And then I spent three months going every day to a fantastic, equally fantastic, but different Freudian. Up a road from the Tavistock, that was it. and we really went into me and my dad. Not so much with my mum because the thing that was really hanging over me was my dad. You unpicked your childhood with your father. A lot of it, a lot of it. What I'm keen to know before we move on with the story is having done this learning curve, you haven't explained to us quite clearly what you're getting from your seven wives, why towards the end of it do you not think well actually I don't want to go on repeating this I have a good relationship why am I not making it work for longer than four years, seven years because these have all been long relationships this is not short affairs I'm not talking about just affairs I didn't really have any affairs we didn't have time with seven wives honestly I want to get married yeah what's your name so I did write a poem about it and it's called Trying to Live the Dream Okay.

42:22setting sun however it hadn't stopped at one every time I'd found her she who would definitely fit the bill it still always finished up running the same route ending the same way reality creeping in day by day the vision dissolving slowly and sadly fading away to tears and heartbreak for both of us and me having no answer as to why I had to say goodbye to all we'd built and once again wreathed in guilt walk away the dreamed of end the blissful one the sunset one still there but with me unable to bear to say anything but sorry oh

43:06the risk you're taking larry in sharing that poem and sharing this conversation is here you are a hugely attractive human being if there's somebody here at the fleet street festival who thinks well actually I rather fancy him you know a bit of a silver fox he's not that he looks much younger than he is um but she knows now it's going to end in tears I mean do not produce these poems at the first date that's all I'm saying all right now the thing is interestingly having lived with the mother of my two daughters for 15 years yeah then being separated for about seven or eight, nine years. We finally finished up under the same roof.

43:48Having a really interesting pally life, which it, oh, you know, it just... Are you back together now? Yeah, we live together. As friends? As friends, but literally as friends. And it's just really, I can really, really recommend it after living through the first episode of it. This is all together. You know, but yet again, a really extraordinary woman. Because putting up with somebody like me is not easy. You know, that's all there is to it. This is an educational podcast. I mean, we are all learning a lot about love and life. Okay, go back to you at school. You don't do very well because of all this at school.

44:28Just came out with beer. All I could do was French. Oh, well done. That was it. Got a French O-level? Yeah, I got a French O-level. and then I've lived in and out of France for 40 years. Off and on as a result of that. So you leave school at what age? I left school at 17. I went off to a sixth form college and then my uncle offered me a job in the waste paper business and that was it. I was out of there. And I thought to myself, well, this company he runs as a business in Germany, as I've learned, you know, reasonable French and I like doing that whole thing of doing, you know, speaking in a foreign language really, I found that fascinating.

45:05and so they had a business in Germany so I went to the German Cultural Institute and I did basic German and then I found a job in Germany selling encyclopedias to American soldiers. Of course I'm now seeing this you can be another person you can be free yeah when you're speaking in French or German yeah one thing I think most fascinating about Larry when I first met him it happened to be a day when he was talking like me. And do your received pronunciation. Talk to me like... I rather enjoy speaking just like you. It's such a different way of looking at things. I live with a really lovely, lovely woman who's from just your side of the fence.

45:48Now, this is very interesting. When Larry and I first met, he was talking like that, maybe to send me up, I don't know. Oh no, not at all, John. I assumed that's what he was like. Because when he talked like that, didn't he look for a moment like a distinguished barrister or a judge? He suddenly became that person. And then, and I thought, oh, I said, your East End is just so brilliant because you do that accent and all that. It's fantastic. Where did you learn that? And then you broke into it. So what I'm saying, what I'm suggesting, because when you speak French, it is impeccable. And I think it was even when you were a boy.

46:21Was there an element of when you were speaking French or even German, that you were playing someone else. Without a doubt. When I'm with my friends in France, I pick up all different accents. And so I will speak with my friends. You know, I've got friends from the South. In the South of France, they have an accent like that. They speak like that, not with an accent from the North. It's completely different. Gosh. And I do, I pick these things up. so you were a natural actor but to escape the emptiness and the trauma of being Larry Lamb the lad yeah so you go to Germany you get this job selling encyclopedias to American American soldiers who were part of the occupational forces in 1968 but you know there were a million of them there and their families were there and all the other facilities and everything there to keep that society going so naturally whenever you went to a big headquarters zone there'd be a drama group and the drama groups were very well set up and they were run by professional directors who were flown in from universities all over the United States.

47:28It was an extraordinary thing to tumble into. And so I started to work with people. The directors had already been doing it for years and a lot of the soldiers there were escaping, being in Vietnam. Almost all of them had gone low on their figures, on their scores in university and you've got to sign up. And so you get all these people that were really into drama and were looking to do something in it. So I went into an extraordinarily lucky situation. I was with serious people. And I really enjoyed it. I really enjoyed it. I found, I thought, I can do this. Can you remember the first part you played?

48:06I certainly can, my dear. And what was it? I played Henry VIII in The Man for All Seasons. But this is, my God. Big stuff. It's very big stuff. I turned up at this place up in Bremerhaven, right? And Bremerhaven was a big station where every single item that the American military and all their dependents needed to sustain their lives was all shipped in through Bremerhaven and then put on trains and sent down through into Germany. And so there were people from all over there and there was a big American community with a big American high school. And I arrived up there and went and presented myself to the guy that was running the theatre and he gave me a job.

48:45He said, well, what would you, I said, I would do anything. right he said we need somebody to do the sound and so they sat me in a booth and there was a red light and a green light and when the red light went I lifted the arm up of the this record player and when the green light went I put it down and that was it I was in show business that was it that was a big hit and so he said to me a week or two later he said look we've got a bit of a problem he said we're going to be putting on a man for all seasons it's first time it's ever been done in Germany and our local star who's one of the senior teachers at the high school is not happy that he's not going to be playing Sir Thomas More and I've offered him the part of Henry VIII and he said I don't do supporting parts do you think you could play Henry VIII well what he didn't know is I'd just recently seen the film with Robert Shaw playing Henry VIII So I gave him a very good impersonation of Robert Shaw playing Henry VIII.

49:45And that was it. So all of a sudden, I'm acting. I'm on the stage acting. Nervous, nervous to the point of complete meltdown. Because all through the rehearsals were lovely. I love the rehearsals. But nerves, nerves, nerves. Oh dear, terrible. I can remember, because I'm booted and I've got tights on underneath. and my knees were knocking like castanets. I should not control them. It was just terrible. But I pushed on through and, you know, it took me about 30 years not really to be nervous on stage. Seriously? Oh, big time, big time. I just became very good at making people think I was in charge.

50:29But of course, that's a lot of energy not to be spending what you're on there to do, which is do the part. I'm pretending Larry Lamb is at ease playing the part which is a big confusion and a waste of energy so I wasn't ever nearly as good as I might have been and as you think you eventually became

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53:07Can you remember the first time, I know we're jumping forward, we'll go back in a minute, that you went onto a stage or stood in front of a camera and did feel at ease and thought, actually, all the energy is now going into the performance? Yeah. Oh. Yeah. Yeah, I did. I did. I do remember it. I got the sack from a massive production in America run by Peter Hall and it was the most soul-destroying, embarrassing mess I'd ever been in. But this is the great Sir Peter Hall, director of the National Theatre, founder of the Royal Shakespeare Company. That's it. And what are you doing for him? I'm doing for him a whole, a play that was called, it was a series of 10 plays called The Tantalus.

53:45Oh, somewhere down in Texas. No, it was in the Rocky Mountains in Denver. Denver, Colorado. The Denver Theatre Center. And this was the big ambition of his life to produce this. It's a big thing for him. So all of a sudden I get a call from my agent, would you go to see Peter Hall and talk to him about being in this? I said, has he got the right Larry Lamb? So she said, yeah, where do you want to see you? So I go along there and I see Sir Peter Hall. He'd sent me the plays the day before, because it's 10 plays. It's the Trojan Wars is what it is. And he wanted me to play Menelaus, Agamemnon and Priam or Cree.

54:22And I always muddle about who it is like the three so these are big parts these are the mighties right the mighty Greeks there you go mighty Greeks so I go along and do this for him but in the morning I got a message on my phone to go back and see Sir Peter Hall again and Sir Peter Hall said to me look Agamemnon particularly is a great orator he's a he's a man of the people and I'm not sure about whether what we did in that reading and in that interview, in that audition, tells me that you can play Agamemnon. So I did a speech from a play called Inherit the Wind. I did that speech for him and he just looked at me and he said, we're in business.

55:08And I got to Denver about six weeks later, and three weeks later he sacked me. Because this is a mountain you're not going to be able to climb. so that's the words he said that's exactly what he said however i have to say i think it was right so anyway go back to england reboot my life i'm just about to sign a contract to go into into a show that was going into the west end and suddenly across the room in the agents office something said speak to steven and steven pimlot is directing a production of hamlet and they'd like you to play Claudius. So anyway, obviously I accepted and went to work for this extraordinary man, Stephen Pimlock.

55:53I'd worked two jobs with him before. Who was your Hamlet? Sam West. Yeah. Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant in this massive, massive sort of Bang & Olufsen style set, you know, everybody in these beautiful tailored suits. I mean it was a real backstage at the White House or a cross between that and number 10. Paparachics everywhere, right? On the first night, this is the first public performance of that show for that season, in the 2000-2001 centennial season, right? The battleman scene goes. Everything's wonderful. There's a great banging. And then I and Marty Cruickshank, my Gertrude, we come through those doors, which are about 30 foot high, and we come down and we stand downstage looking at the audience.

56:54But between me and the audience, there are 25 apparatchiks, all the way across, all looking at me and my wife. Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother's death the memory be green, and that it us befitted to bear our hearts in grief, and our whole kingdom to be contracted in one brow of woe, yet so far hath discretion.

57:27and I looked at my wife my Gertrude and she looked at me as much as saying nothing I can do to help you dear and the clock is tick, tick, tick, tick, tick and as I turn my understudy is under my nose

57:52and I realise he's speaking Chinese so what am I going to do with that and I look across stage left and I know the book is behind there with the stage manager and I know if I go there I'm going to be really in trouble so as I come back I look into the ground and I start falling through that stage five million light days a second and all of a sudden this huge steel clamp goes in the back of my head and white hot magnums pouring out on me, right? And I'm then drenched in cold sweat and I finally managed to steady it like that. And in the end I realised I've got to do something so I try and make it look as if it's all part of the act.

58:41And I kind of walked to this closed off quarter right in the end and I get behind this cloth and I think well this is it boy you either run and never come back or you better get back on that stage so I just turned and I walked back came out there like that with her with Marty looked at Marty Marty looked at me and I just launched right back into that speech not a fault just went straight on right through the whole evening right the thing and at the end I am in my dressing room absolutely slaughtered, lying there thinking I've got 15 months of this and I can't even get through the first preview.

59:25The door flew open and Stephen Pimlock flew in and he said, well, darling, that really was drama.

59:38Have you written a poem about the actor's life? because that's what happens. You become an actor. I became a maxi, as they used to call them. Tell me. As in Max Factor. As in Max Factor. Max Factor. Cockney rhyming slang. Get the maxis on here. So did you go to drama school as a result? No, no, no. So you just did the amateur groups with the... Amateur groups, but with really good people. Why did you end up in Canada? You were some of it in Canada? I was in the oil business in Libya and I'd married an American girl and went to live in America and the company I was working for sent me up to Canada to run a job and I joined a group up there in a university and became a really avid amateur actor.

1:00:21And one of my friends said, they're doing auditions at the local rep company. I went and I did an audition for Robin Phillips. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And Robin was putting together a new company. Who ran Stratford, Ontario for a while. There we go. Ontario with Maggie Smith and Jeremy Brett. All the big names. All of them, yeah. But anyway, I wrote this one because it's not really the main way my life, Brett, because I kept getting breaks that actors don't get. So I wrote one about a sort of a general look at the life of a working actor. Today I'm a baker, yesterday a faker, a week ago a surgeon, next week an undertaker.

1:00:58Reflecting on the lives I've lived, imagined, never real, and now they've raised my family but not the way I feel. A lifetime of rejection, to the point of getting sectioned, would somehow prove a true relief and come with no objection. To constantly be waiting for the job to change it all, but forced to grab at any gig, never anything too small. Every time you've got a job, always it's the one that's going to change your life for good. A new one's just begun, building castles in the air, but this time it's for real. A limo waiting out the front, a chauffeur at the wheel. Walk in that red carpet amidst the cheering from your fans, repeating in each interview your projects and your plans.

1:01:39Lobbies jammed with superstars all getting off their tits, being thrilled with every second of the glamour and the glitz. Called up to the stage still not believing that it's true. You're clutching your reward because it's that that means it is true. Thanking everybody from the bottom of your heart. Then you realise you're dreaming and your whole world falls apart. You're lying staring at the ceiling of your very own bedroom. All the five-star world has flown away, leaving yet more gloom, with a Christmas-time audition in the morning where you'll play the arse end of old Rudolph pulling dear old Santa's sleigh.

1:02:17Did it take long, though, for your career to take off? No, I was so lucky. I was so lucky. Jeremy Brett, in the company, right, he said, and we'd become real good pals, and he said to me, darling I just had a call from my agent in New York and uh and she said could I play a Belfast docker and I said to her darling I've known a few Belfast dockers but I couldn't play one but I know somebody who could because he knew I you know with different accents I had family in Northern Ireland so I could do a Northern Irish accent so playing a Belfast docker was you know within my thing and so in the end i finished up going to new york and i was on broadway and played george mcbrain in that play which was a huge hit comedians good grief i know i know so you start on broadway thanks to jeremy brett the best charlotte combs has ever been there you go oh that is extraordinary and then it we we take off from there yeah now that we haven't got much much more time and i want there's one special poem i want you to do in a moment but not yet.

1:03:24We've just got to touch a little bit on two things. One, you sort of threw in getting your first marriage and being off in the Middle East and then going over to... You had a daughter with your first wife, didn't you? I did. And you were only 21. I was. Are you still on speaking terms with the daughter? I've only ever met the daughter once. Yep. Oh my gosh. Her mother and I were divorced by the time she was born. Oh, I didn't know that. No. Wow. Does she know that? Does I have no idea. So this is a sort of a little dark corner. And you think well obviously you think about it because you wouldn't not.

1:04:02Gosh. So the legacy of your childhood really has dogged your whole life, hasn't it? Yeah, but I think it does everybody. This is a relief that I find him writing these poems, as I say, empty in the cupboard because I'm not unique. no you know there are people sitting in this room i've had a similar similar story to tell and i find that if you know if i get it off if i get it off my chest if i write a poem about it i mean we wrote one poem and i wrote a poem and and and hussein filmed me doing the poem put it online half a million people were clicking on it and all sorts of people were making the most extraordinary comments you were speaking for them now this is i mean this is why we do rosebud because we've discovered that a childhood lasts a lifetime.

1:04:50Give us the poem Collateral Damage because this essentially, in a way, is the story of your life, the price you paid for the childhood you had. Collateral Damage. Like a slightly chipped plaster figure in a gardening shop display, standing out amongst all the rest, certainly not the best and no way the pick of the day, shop-soiled, as they used to say, for damaged goods still sellable, indelibly marked at a greatly reduced price all the good ones twice what they'll charge for you because you're flawed and clearly not as good as you should be or indeed might be as despite always trying to do your best testing yourself constantly it's what lurks beneath the surface that only you see that interferes when over the years you found ways to cover up what appeared to be the fault indeed taught yourself how to look the real deal, not the bargain basement one they sold you off as, but the one you really are, emotionally scarred, but a well-repaired survivor all the same, nameless, blameless, another broken gnome from a broken home.

1:05:59Oh.

1:06:05What happened to your parents, ultimately, your mum and your dad? What happened to them? She lived on happily with that, with her husband. He married again. That lasted quite a few years, but in the end, she just could not deal with him and she left and he wandered off and went and found himself. That's Ron, you mean? This is Ron. And Ron went off and found himself a place to stay on the beach in Spain and that was it. That was the end of it. And were you, in a sense, reconciled with them? Oh, God, no. Not with him. Not with him at all? No, no, no. No. We leave Dad with Jung and Freud. Dad has been sorted out by Jung and Freud.

1:06:40Exactly. That's fine. That's it. Mum, how does that story end in terms of you and her? Mum was sort of sorted out by the American wife, Jackie Paris, who unfortunately passed away about three, four, five years ago. She worked in maternal child psychological welfare. She was a head nurse. This was your first wife. She was the second wife. Your second wife. And so she made me understand that you could understand what was going on in your head. Something I didn't realise about. You know, you could understand why you were the way. And he said to me, you know, you keep on really berating your mother.

1:07:21And I know this is coming from your father. You need to talk to your mum. And I went and I spoke to my mum. And my mum said to me, look, you know, your dad was running around. after people that were friends of mine and accusing me of being you know playing around and so what I learned was all the stuff that I'd been fed which was poison from my father which is what his father had been passing on to him because he was the same I remember speaking to my dad's older brother years he was about 90 odd and he said my dad was like that jealous, vitriolic, awful, awful, awful scenes accusing this woman of being unfaithful.

1:08:07So he picked it up and this is what happens. I want to do two more things before we finish. I want to hear one more poem and then I've got three quick questions to ask. It'll be frustrating for people who've tuned in thinking, oh, I hope we're going to hear about Gavin and Stacey, what it's like being married to Alison Stedman. I want to hear about the EastEnders years. Well, that's a different conversation. This, for me, has been much more interesting. In terms of your work, is there one part, one role that you'd like to put in the time capsule so 100 years from now people want to know what Larry Lamb was best at professionally?

1:08:43What would that be? I think in all honesty, as much as... A lot of the reason I'm here is because of the success of Gavin and Stacey. You become a kind of part of the tapestry. but it was as you know you don't really learn how to act in front of a camera you learn to act on stage and I in that part that part that I played in Inherit the Wind the film Spencer Tracy played the lead in it playing that part it was probably the most important part that I'd ever played which led on to playing in an Arthur Miller play The Price and so those were the two together with the Hamlet thing it's those roles that I want to put into a time capsule alright before I ask you my three final questions I know you've written a poem really about growing older and about your relationship with how many children do you have in all that you have the boys I have my boy and I have two daughters and I have the lost daughter so you've got four children in all but three that you know and laugh being part and parcel of raisin haven't I dear she did all the heavy lifting with George we took that for granted can I say thank you so much but well done so is this poem this is a poem about growing older about your family your children this is going to be your last poem and I've got a couple of quick questions afterwards okay I wrote this poem because it suddenly appeared to me something was going on in my life that I had to kind of understand and then, you know, bearing in mind where I came from and how my life has sort of led me on to understand more about me and to be able to kind of make amends for everything and be able to look myself in the face and think, well, you're not done bad.

1:10:40You're all right. You understand yourself and you're not really messed up. You've got out of it. You've moved on. So I wrote this poem called Weaning Us. You don't phone them just because you want to as before when now it might mean silence for perhaps a week or more, or even more. Messages you've left, still unanswered, won't even get a mention. And you'll slowly come to understand that this is the intention. They're weaning you off them, leaving you behind, forcing you to swallow it, not trying to be kind. No, this is serious. This is game changing. Cut you out, leave you out. Oh bowing out of your show because now it's time for their go and whatever you do don't start keening because they're weaning you off needing them just as you did all those years ago when feeding them day and night gave you the right to decide it's the way it goes now they're in charge new rules their rules writ large but give yourself a break and take it how it's meant it's not about not loving you.

1:11:50It's just what they have to do to start the next stage of your journey. They'll be back. They'll be there. Especially when you need their care. Hopefully.

1:12:11Thank you for taking us on this extraordinary journey through your story and your poems. Three quick questions, Larry Lamb. Tell me just what comes into your head when I ask you for a moment of joy from your life. My boy bursting onto the scene. And how old were you? How old was he? I was 32. You were 32? Yeah. And that changed you in what way? Why was it so special? Just being a father, all of a sudden, just realising I wasn't the most important thing in the world. and it took a long time for that to really get through and have you tried as a father not obviously to repeat the sins of the father yeah and you think we hope you've done reasonably well yep i think basically because this wonderful woman here stopped me repeating my father and she just said to me look if you carry on behaving like this with your boy you're going to finish up in the same relationship with him as you have with your father and you don't want that do you and just a big bell went dying and I never ever ever started to dominate him because that's what ran my life was domination and you know so from that point on I started to get myself together so a moment of sadness now what comes instantly into your head I think really my brother dying because we drifted apart and he got cancer and you know I went I went up he was in Newcastle and I they made me up a bed in the corner of the hospice room and I spent the last week of his life up there with him looking after him nursing him and he had taken out his voice box so he couldn't speak but you know we were just joking and laughing and just enjoying each other like we were little kids again and we hadn't done that for years and years and years and I remember looking that down at him he was lying there like that and he was just in a real mess and he just went I said you what you want you want to kiss and so we kissed each other on the lips and it was just lovely and then he just gradually he just gradually drifted off but we got back together again and I was absolutely determined not to drive up to Newcastle because I thought it would all go wrong and it couldn't have gone righter.

1:14:43Wonderful. Do you remember your nan dying? How old was she? Sadly, my nan, I was living in America and she got dementia and she moved in with one of my uncles and aunties and so I wasn't, I was no, I didn't hear about my nan dying for probably two or three weeks. But she's there yeah oh she's part of your story completely yeah she's been the heroine of the evening yeah one last question and that is what Larry Lamb you're going to be 80 next year it's amazing isn't it yeah well done you don't look it neither do you no I know we're both working at it oh my god there you go but you know seven wives Larry seven wives and you can actually bring them out I mean I don't know I don't know whether that would work I don't know.

1:15:34Can't work out whether it was number two or number three. You're going back home to number four. She's made supper for you. I mean, it's beyond belief. You've really got it sorted, Larry Lamb. I don't know. I think, yeah, you need to ask that question. There's going to be a follow-up podcast. I know one of them is no longer with us, but we're six of the seven. And it will be, the ratings will go through the roof. We've enjoyed hearing your side of the story. My life will go down the drain. But we want to hear from the girls. But seriously, what a life you've led and what pain there was in the early years and how brilliantly you've shared your way of dealing with it and how much I've loved your poetry.

1:16:15I've really loved it to be here at the Fleet Street Festival of Words and hear words that express so personally, painfully and occasionally amusingly. Your life story is fantastic. But what in a nutshell, Larry, has life taught you? Be nice to everybody. All the time. I wish I'd learned that a long time ago. People tried to teach me. But I got a bit stroppy at times. But I've just turned into this old, genial old boy now. And it's wonderful. I was doing a film. I was on a film set yesterday, last day of the shoot. I thought, this is just, this is my life. I'm sitting amongst all these young people, all starting off.

1:16:59And just watching them. and thinking, you know, I was one of them. And 50 years later, I'm the old boy in the group, older than everybody. And it's such a joy, such a joy. They're like my family. Well, it's been such a joy for us. Larry Lamb, thank you for being part of Rosebud. Larry Lamb, ladies and gentlemen. Bravo! Bravo! Bravo!

1:17:32Thank you.

1:18:04We'll be right back.

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