All Balls and Glitter (20 page)

After that, we were always together. It was a marriage made in heaven. We both adored cooking, good food and good wine. We had similar tastes in art and design. We longed for beach holidays and appreciated spectacular views. We stuck up for each other and offered support when either one of us was broke, stressed or down. I had never been so happy.

Eventually, we moved into our own place, a very expensive studio apartment in Russell Square, which was really handy for
Miss Saigon.
The rent was £650 a month, which isn’t extortionate for London now, but back then, it was a fortune. My take-home salary was around £180 a week, and with Lloyd still at law school, it wasn’t easy.

It was a tiny flat, too, with a Murphy bed – one of those beds that folds out from the wall – and a kitchen that was literally the size of a cupboard. The stairwell cupboard in my current house has the same dimensions. The sink was so low that I had to stand with my legs in second position just to do the washing-up.

It did have a lovely big bathroom, though, and it was located in a place called Endsleigh Court, which had huge revolving doors and a very swish entrance, so it felt like we were living in a hotel. The studio flats came off the landings and it was fabulous living there – but finding the money to pay the rent every month was a constant challenge.

I was £800 overdrawn and in such economic dire straits that my bank manager would only give me money if I made an encashment call once a week, when he would give me an advance
of £50. Out of that, I had to pay £12 for a travelcard and the other £38 had to last me the entire week. We couldn’t afford to go out because I was paying back the terrible debt that I’d run up, which seemed enormous. Since then, I’ve been £125,000 overdrawn through various business ventures, but at the time, £800 felt like millions.

In those days, you had a personal contact at the bank, so you could talk to them if you had money problems. Mr Cooper, who was my liaison, was really nice to me because I got him free tickets to
Miss Saigon
. He looked after me after that.

There was a time when all we could afford to eat were sausages. We bought some of those horribly cheap packs, sixteen for 99p, and lived on sausage and mash for a whole month. To vary it, I would try to make a pie with them, but it was still just horrendous. We also made cottage pie with really cheap mince, which used to swim in fat. Actually, that was very tasty – but the calories!

Those culinary escapades put me off mince and sausages for a long time, as we always had to buy the awful economy variety, which are mostly fat and offal. They put all sorts in cheap sausages. Of course, when Britain was in the grip of its mad-cow disease scare, Lloyd and I would say to each other, ‘If anyone is going to get it from bargain-basement meat, it’ll be us.’

Oddly enough, sausage and mash is still one of my favourite meals: great comfort food.

Although we were still broke, in the winter of 1992 Lloyd and I took some time off and went on a trip to Australia for six weeks, which was wonderful. We travelled to Ballarat, so that Lloyd could meet my family, and we went to Sovereign Hill and Lake Wendouree, where we fed the swans. We visited Sydney and saw some old friends, and just generally explored the country.

Returning from that marvellous holiday meant coming down to earth with a huge bump. We’d spent so much while we were away that there was no way we could afford the rent at Endsleigh Court any more. Added to which, we came back to hundreds of
bills, final reminders and demands – we could hardly open the door for brown envelopes. The landlord said he was going to kick us out and wanted the money straight away, so I had to take a wad of cash to him in person.

About to become homeless, we rang a couple of friends in despair. Happily, they agreed that we could move in with them in Belsize Park. There were four of us sharing a three-bedroom flat for £50 a week each, which was much more like it.

Unfortunately, this solution lasted only six months because we were, unintentionally, the neighbours from hell.

The property was a first-floor conversion in Park Hill Road. It was stunning. We shared with a friend we called Lady Kath, who was a dresser at
Miss Saigon
, and Nigel Shilton, a stage manager, so we all worked at night. We would come home and put on our washing at some ungodly hour in the morning and the whole place would shudder when it got to the spin cycle. The people downstairs were renovating and they didn’t have a proper ceiling, so the noise in their apartment was awful. Even if we just walked across the floor, they grumbled. They would bang on the ceiling with brooms and we had people screaming into our video entryphone. We’d come home from work and cook a full meal and chat, which is normal for those of us employed in the theatre, but the people downstairs hated it. The complaints got so bad that we had to move out.

This time, we found a fantastic house in Pratt Street, Camden. It was a six-bedroom house, though, and we needed more people if we were going to be able to afford it. So we rang Clifford, who had been my first contact in London, and who had since become a very close friend, and asked him if he wanted to move in with me, Lloyd, Lady Kath and another friend, Cayte Williams, who is now a journalist. Nigel decided to get his own place.

The house was huge and always full of the most eclectic bunch of weirdos. Clifford – whom we nicknamed Clifftops because of his towering wavy hair that must have added, at the very least, an extra 10 inches to his already impressive 6-foot-4 frame – named it the
Heartbreak Hotel. He even painted a sign to place outside, which is still there today.

Of course, once he’d put the sign up, people thought it was a brothel. We did have a red light inside as well, which I guess did nothing to refute the suggestion. By chance, there was a lady next door who was definitely selling her body, so when people saw the ‘Heartbreak’ sign, they assumed that our house was hers. We had guys knocking on the door at all hours of the night.

The neighbourhood also boasted an old vagrant lady, whom we nicknamed Cilla because she used to sit on our windowsill and chat to us through the casements.

We were like a family. There was Clifftops, Cayte, Lady Kath, Lloyd and myself, and there was always one room whose occupants were transient, with people moving in and out. We kept the final bedroom as a communal space and general living area. It was like student accommodation, only a lot more glamorous. We painted murals all over the walls and frequently changed the decor. It was a bit run-down, but instead of dusting, we’d paint.

That approach to cleanliness didn’t solve everything, obviously. One morning, we found three dead mice at the bottom of the Dualit toaster. They were totally mummified and we had no idea how long they’d been there.

On one occasion, we painted the whole of the downstairs red and the entire upstairs blue, with white sheeting forming big fluffy clouds, and then threw a Heaven and Hell party. There were people arriving in coffins, burning crucifixes and dressed as the Ku Klux Klan. It was an insane party, but just one of the many wild times we had there.

One Christmas, we decorated the upstairs like a medieval hall and hosted another shindig. At the end of the night, Cayte came walking down the stairs, carrying a flaming candelabrum. Suddenly, one side of her hair went up in smoke. I was shouting, ‘Cayte, Cayte, your hair’s on fire!’ but she had no idea because she was so drunk.

That house was pure chaos. Jasper Conran, Ruby Venezuela and all the other queens from Madame Jo Jo’s (a Soho club with a drag cabaret) were regular visitors. We crammed so many people into the place that the ceiling would bow under the weight. I was waiting for an entire party of sixty people to fall through the floor.

One of the original Heartbreakers was Michael de Souta, whom Clifftops always called ‘Michael de Squatter’ – one, because he was on the dole, and two, because he acted more like a squatter than a flatmate; we’d only ever see him when he left his room for a cup of tea. He would hole himself up in the box room on the third floor and sit and write hundreds of songs. Every morning, like clockwork, he’d announce he’d written another one the night before.

He was a lovely man, but he always moaned bitterly about our late-night BBQs. We would have barbecues out the back all the time. The garden had a huge built-in barbie and we would break up and burn various bits of furniture that were falling apart. Michael said on one occasion, ‘The whole house stinks of smoke,’ and it did, but his complaint simply became one of our catchphrases every time we sparked up the BBQ.

It was at the Heartbreak that Clifftops and I invented ‘flick the switch’ parties. They were basically normal social gatherings … where we attempted to get everybody naked and into the bath at once. We’d say to each other, ‘Have you flicked the switch?’ which meant, ‘Have you put the immersion heater on?’ The first thing we would do when we arrived at a house party was to look for the switch, then, after a few drinks had been consumed, we’d fill up the bath and persuade everyone to climb in it.

We had quite a success rate. Very rarely did anyone chicken out. It’s surprising how many people actually do it. It starts with two or three of you in the bath and, after a while, everyone just joins in. We had about six bath parties and they were hilarious.

On one occasion, there were six or seven of us in the bath
and we ran out of booze. Everyone was saying to me, ‘Come on, Lav, get us a drink.’ So I said I would, if they all performed a certain act on me. They were so desperate for beer that they did – and the awful thing was that when I got to the fridge, there was none left.

When I went back and told them there wasn’t a drop of alcohol in the house, oh, how they screamed at me!

We always hosted over-the-top, theatrical parties. The Heartbreak had a real carnival atmosphere. Our street despised us because the music was always blaring until six in the morning and weird things often happened there, but we adored the whole adventure.

After two-and-a-half years on
Miss Saigon
, as dance captain and performer, it was time for a new adventure on the professional front. I joined a show playing at the Prince Edward Theatre called
Crazy for You
, which starred Ruthie Henshall. It was terrific to be working with her again.

Crazy
was a magnificent musical, with loads of snazzy Gershwin numbers, which I loved because they inspired wall-to-wall dancing. It opened to fabulous reviews in March 1993.

The one drawback about it was the awful Russian costume I had to wear. It included a pair of horrendous maroon tights, which featured in a serious wardrobe malfunction that beset me one night.

For someone who has always been paranoid about my arse being flabby, having to execute a tap routine on corrugated iron with my back to the audience was a regular nightmare. Imagine my horror at this performance when, as soon as I began the sequence, my tights split. My bottom was hanging out in front of the entire theatre. I was mortified. Then I came off stage and some kind soul took a photograph of it – thank you, Edwina Cox.

Towards the end of the run, Ruthie and I were offered the Australian production and I thought, ‘Here’s a ticket home. That
will be handy.’ I’d signed only a one-year contract for
Crazy for You
in London because I didn’t want to do a long stint again in a single show, having just come out of a lengthy run in
Miss Saigon
. As much as
Saigon
was a challenge, I don’t agree with staying in shows for prolonged periods because I think you stop learning.

So Ruthie and I said ‘yes’ to Australia and our London jobs were assigned to other performers. Strangely enough, my role went to Gerard Symonds, one of my best mates from Oz, who had also taken my place in
Miss Saigon
when I moved to
Crazy for You.
Gerard stepped into my shoes and then, to my horror, the Aussie production fell through. I remember coming into Ruthie’s dressing room and saying, ‘Ruthie, darling, have you heard?’ She said, ‘No, heard what?’ And I had to drop the bombshell: ‘The Australian show’s not going on. We’re totally jobless.’

Both Gerard and Helen Way, Ruthie’s replacement, had already been contracted, so there was no way she could go back to the leading role and it was impossible for me to get my dance captain post back. We were completely out of work.

Miss Saigon
offered me my old job, but I turned it down because I didn’t want to go backwards in life. Consequently, I ended up having three months off. It was a terrible worry because I had taken a major salary cut for
Crazy for You
anyway. I’d been back to chorus wages – £350 or £400 a week – so I didn’t have much spare cash to fall back on. I had to find work, and quickly.

Somewhat bizarrely, I turned to my childhood passion for creativity and became an artist. Believe it or not, I had a very successful art exhibition. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised at that outcome given my previous form as winner of the Ballarat colouring competition!

I became involved with a company called Artbite, through the efforts and contacts of the
Crazy for You
company manager Nick Bromley – who was acting as my art agent and who encouraged me to pursue my talents in the field – and my friend Suzi Rapoport,
with whom I shared a floor at the exhibition. Suzi is a dear friend of mine, and an amazing poet. We met through Clifftops, and she was always at the Heartbreak parties. I will be forever in her debt for introducing me to the world of London art.

Suzi has always been a great support throughout my years in England, and not just when I was down on my luck. She has a heart of gold. She’s the type of person you can have a fun time with and she brightens the day if you’re feeling low. It really was an honour to do the exhibition with her.

Artbite wanted a water theme to coincide with the Henley Regatta, so my whole collection was inspired by the River Thames. I did two months’ work and sold the lot in one day of exhibition. Thankfully, I made enough money to pay my rent for the time that I wasn’t employed in the theatre.

At this point, I said to myself, ‘This is the opportunity to change your life completely. This is when you start saying “no” to chorus and just go for leading roles.’ If the leads didn’t come, I reasoned, I’d choose another profession. I knew the only way I could pursue this approach would be with a major acting course under my belt, so I signed up at the Actors Centre, a training academy in the centre of London.