When Susan Boyle told
Christopher Fairbank that he could sing, it was unexpected praise for
the actor still most recognised for his role as fire-raising Scouse
builder Moxey in Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais' builders abroad
comedy drama, Auf Wiedersehen, Pet. In the midst of rehearsing
Scrooge for a festive production of A Christmas Carol at the Royal
Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, Fairbank had arrived early one Saturday
morning to find director Andrew Panton standing outside. As a silver
Mercedes pulled up beside them, who should step out of the passenger
seat but Ms Boyle herself.
Fairbank followed the
pair up to the rehearsal room, and offered them a cup of tea. When he
took the hot beverage to them, Panton was playing the piano to
accompany Boyle going through her scales. Panton, who is Boyle's
musical director on her forthcoming Christmas album, sang a thank you
to Fairbank, who sang back his own thanks.
“You can certainly
hold a note,” joked SuBo.
“Yes,” Fairbank
quipped back, “but I think it's just the one.”
Sprawled on a sofa
sporting anorak and trainers and with a West Ham United woolly hat
beside him, Fairbank is full of stories like this. These stretch back
over fifty years, to his first ever stage performance, when he
appeared in a primary school production of Paddington Bear. Then,
Fairbank saved the day after a fellow pupil dried and he improvised a
line that would get both of them offstage. Fairbank continued acting
while a teenager at boarding school, where, on declaring his desire
to act professionally, he was informed by a master that 'the
profession is riddled with drug addicts, alcoholics and homosexuals.'
“Two out of three ain't bad,” was Fairbank's response. By mutual
agreement between the school's headmaster and his parents, Fairbank
was eventually asked to leave.
A teenage conviction
for possession of marijuana saw Fairbank put on probation for two
years, when he opted to stay in a Liverpool hostel. Still only
seventeen, he became involved with the city's Unity Theatre, where he
performed in John McGrath's play, Events While Guarding The Bofors
Gun and John Arden's Live Like Pigs. A post drama school stint in
weekly rep left Fairbank disillusioned, and, after nine months at
sea, Fairbank drifted towards counter-cultural Mecca, The Roundhouse.
It was here that comedian and Fairbank's occasional busking partner
Chris Lynam pointed out maverick director, Ken Campbell. Campbell was
putting together his epic nine hour staging of Robert Shea and Robert
Anton Wilson's epic science-fiction conspiracy trilogy, Illuminatus!
“Ken told me to read
the books and tell him what part I wanted to play,” Fairbank
remembers.
The experience of
performing Illuminatus! in a converted warehouse turned hippy
cafe/arts lab known as the Liverpool School of Language, Music, Dream
and Pun with the company Campbell styled as the Science Fiction
Theatre of Liverpool changed Fairbank's life, and almost certainly
enabled him to tackle such an iconic role as Scrooge.
“He's an awesome
character,” says Fairbank of Charles Dickens' quintessential miser.
“The challenge is finding the line between really going down to the
depths of what Scrooge has become, and remembering that it's a
Christmas show.
“You have to base all
that in truth, and I think what do have going for me is my age. I
cracked sixty last month, and, given all the things that Scrooge is
faced with, without being absolutely literal about it, I think it's
fair to say I've had my fair share of ups and downs, and been round
the block more than once, so I haven't got to act anything beyond my
experience.”
That experience
arguably began with Illuminatus!, which reinvented the rules of
theatre, and became a smash hit sensation that featured the likes of
Jim Broadbent and Bill Nighy in the cast. Illuminatus! went on to
open the Cottesloe in the then newly built National Theatre on
London's South Bank.
“I've never
experienced anything like it before or since,” says Fairbank. “Ken
was the answer to a prayer, and opened me up to so many things. My
ideas about being an actor and the sort of work I wanted to do, it
all came together during that time. That year I spent with Ken, I
look back on it as the greatest year professionally that I've ever
had.”
In the years following
Illuminatus!, Fairbank fell out with Campbell after accepting a TV
role in a Sunday afternoon Dickens adaptation, and was sacked by the
Royal Shakespeare Company shortly before being cast in Auf
Wiedersehen, Pet. The latter stabilised a career that has seen
Fairbank become a familiar face on film and in television.
A Christmas Carol marks
Fairbank's third stint at the Lyceum, following on from the theatre's
2009 production of Sam Shepard's Curse of the Starving Class, as well
as a turn in The Lieutenant of Inishmore by Martin McDonagh in 2012.
It's interesting to note that animals featured in both shows, with a
live sheep onstage in the former, and a (fake) dead cat in the
latter. These tie in with another show in Fairbank's early days, when
he took part in Campbell's post Illuminatus! play, The End is Nigh,
and shared the stage with a pair of pigs.
“I think that was the
beginning of Ken's obsession with ventriloquism,” says Fairbank,
“which went on to give Nina Conti such a glittering career. You had
all these great long speeches, and Ken would be shouting, 'I don't
wanna see anyone's lips move!'.”
Fairbank's face
contorts as he launches into an ear-piercingly accurate impression of
Campbell. His uncanny skill for mimicry goes some way to explaining
his frequent voice-overs for assorted animations and computer games.
Fairbank's last saw
Campbell when the pair performed a marathon week-long live reading of
the entire three books of The Illuminatus trilogy on web-based radio
station, Resonance FM. With Campbell narrating, Fairbank played
several hundred characters, each with a different voice.
While only one voice
will be required for Scrooge, Fairbank remains conscious of not
taking things too far.
“Kids love a
villain,” he says, “just as long as they know they're safe, but
the minute I hear crying, seats flipping up and parents taking their
children away because they might be traumatised for life, that's when
I'll know we need to lighten up a bit.”
A Christmas Carol,
Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, November 28th-January 4th
2014
ends
Christopher Fairbank –
A Life in the Spotlight
Christopher Fairbank
was born in 1953, and grew up in the Essex village of Clavering,
where celebrity chef Jamie Oliver also hails from.
After appearing at
Liverpool's Unity Theatre, Fairbank went to RADA, which he left after
two years to work briefly in weekly rep before going to sea.
After meeting Ken
Campbell at the Roundhouse, Fairbank joined the cast of Illuminatus!,
which became a sensation in Liverpool and London.
Fairbank continued to
work with Campbell in Psychosis unclassified, which played in New
York.
After being sacked by
the Royal Shakespeare Company, Fairbank was cast as Moxey in Auf
Wiederesehen, Pet,
appearing in all four series, plus a 2004 two-part special.
Since then, Fairbank
has appeared in numerous television dramas, including Law and Order,
Tess of the D'Urbervilles and Ashes To Ashes.
On film, Fairbank has
appeared in Tim Burton's Batman, Zeffirelli's take on Hamlet, Luc
Besson's The Fifth Element and Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger
Tides.
On stage, Fairbank has
worked with directors such as Max Stafford-Clark and John Dove, as
well as with Terry Johnson, playing the late Sid James in Johnson's
Carry-On based play, Cleo, Camping, Emmanuelle and Dick.
Fairbank's voice-over
work includes Wallace and Gromit and numerous computer games.
The Herald, November 28th 2013
ends
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