Events, dear boy.
Events.
That line, as you may know,
is usually attributed to Harold Macmillan,
when he was asked what most often derails a government.
His answer?
Events.
Unforeseen.
Unscheduled.
Irresistible.
Which brings me to today.
Because today was meant to be about Dr James Parkinson.
April 11th.
The man who gave his name to Parkinson’s disease.
A fine subject.
A worthy subject.
A subject we’ll come back to.
But…
Events, dear boy.
Events.
Because it turns out that April 11th is also the anniversary of one of the most famous opening nights in London theatre history.
And once you know that…
well.
You don’t ignore it.
You can’t.
So Dr Parkinson,
with all due respect,
has been gently but firmly elbowed to one side.
Temporarily.
He’ll be back.
But for now…
we’re in the West End.
It’s April 11th, 1914.
Opening night.
Pygmalion.
Or, as it would later be known to millions…
My Fair Lady.
And what follows is not just a play.
It’s an event.
A sensation.
A small explosion…
caused by a single word.
Let’s go back.
His Majesty’s Theatre.
The West End doing what the West End does best.
Dressing up,
showing off,
pretending not to care while caring very much indeed.
And behind the curtain?
Nerves.
Because this has not been a smooth run-up.
Not at all.
The play is Pygmalion.
George Bernard Shaw’s great experiment in language,
class,
and transformation.
But getting it on stage?
That’s been… lively.
For a start,
the leading lady.
Mrs Patrick Campbell.
Mrs Pat.
The woman Shaw wrote Eliza Doolittle for.
The woman he adored,
pursued,
wrote letters to,
teased,
irritated,
and occasionally exasperated beyond measure.
She is not,
let us say,
a natural cockney flower girl.
Her voice is rich,
trained,
commanding.
A voice that fills a theatre.
Which is rather the point.
Shaw wants her to act the transformation.
But it does mean that early rehearsals are a bit of a wrestling match with the vowels.
She’s working at it.
Slowing down.
Speeding up.
Trying to find a rhythm that isn’t quite her own.
And wondering,
not entirely unreasonably,
whether Shaw is having a quiet joke at her expense.
And in fairness…
there’s a case for the prosecution.
Because Mrs Pat is,
shall we say, not an obvious Eliza.
She is fifty.
Playing eighteen.
A cockney flower girl.
You can see the challenge.
That said, she had,
a few years previously,
got it into her head that she and Shaw should have a baby together.
“Think of it, darling,” she said.
“My beauty and your brains.”
To which Shaw replied,
without missing a beat,
“Yes, darling…
but what if it were the other way round?”
Which tells you everything about both of them.
She got a little dog.
A Pekingese.
And, because she was Mrs Pat,
she named it Pinky Ponky Poo.
They sent her off to America.
Hollywood.
The idea being to turn her into a film star.
She took Pinky Ponky Poo with her.
And when she came back to this green and pleasant land,
she decided to smuggle the dog into the country.
Now, Mrs Pat was a well-upholstered lady.
Generously upholstered.
And she concealed the dog about her person.
Under her stole.
All was going splendidly.
Until it wasn’t.
She was stopped.
Discovered.
And offered,
by way of explanation,
one of the great lines in the history of British theatre:
“Everything was going splendidly…
until my bosom barked.”
Then there’s the matter of Henry Higgins.
The man who will play him.
Herbert Beerbohm Tree.
Actor-manager.
Star.
A man used to being in charge.
Which is awkward.
Because Shaw is also a man used to being in charge.
And when you put two such men in a rehearsal room…
you don’t get harmony.
You get sparks.
Tree likes to improvise.
To add a bit of flourish.
A bit of business.
A touch of theatrical polish.
Shaw hates that sort of thing.
Lines are to be spoken as written. Meaning is not to be decorated.
At one point,
Tree is so rattled that when a pair of slippers is hurled at him on stage…
he reacts as if it’s real.
Stumbles.
Has to find a chair.
Momentarily undone.
Which tells you everything about the temperature in that room.
And then there’s Shaw himself.
Hovering.
Commenting.
Not always helpfully.
From the stalls at one rehearsal he calls out to Mrs Pat, in front of everyone:
“Good God,
you are forty years too old for Eliza;
sit still and it is not so noticeable.”
Which is not the sort of note most actresses cherish.
But this is Shaw.
Tact is not his leading characteristic.
And yet…
for all the friction,
for all the egos,
for all the moments where it looks as if the whole thing might wobble off its rails…
there is something else going on.
A charge.
Because they all know,
on some level,
that this play matters.
It has already been a success abroad.
Vienna loved it.
But London?
London is a different beast.
London can be sniffy.
London can be cruel.
London can decide,
very quickly,
that something is not quite the thing.
So the stakes are high.
And the curtain goes up.
Covent Garden.
Flower girls.
Voices.
Rain.
And slowly,
steadily,
the audience leans in.
Because this is recognisable.
This is London on stage.
Not prettified.
Not polished.
Heard.
And then…
the moment.
Act Two.
Eliza,
pushed,
prodded,
corrected,
handled,
had enough.
And Mrs Pat lets it go.
“Walk?
Not bloody likely!”
And the theatre does that wonderful thing.
It inhales.
A ripple.
A gasp.
A suppressed laugh.
Because “bloody” is not done.
Not here.
Not like that.
Not by a lady.
It’s a tiny word.
But it lands like a hammer.
And then something extraordinary happens.
The audience loses it.
Laughter.
Not polite.
Not restrained.
Full-bodied,
uncontrollable laughter.
It rolls through the theatre.
It builds.
It carries on.
For over a minute.
Someone times it.
Seventy-six seconds.
Which may well be the longest laugh in English theatrical history.
The play nearly stops.
Actors stranded.
Waiting.
Riding it out.
And Shaw?
Shaw is furious.
Because he didn’t put that line in as a joke.
He put it in as a point.
But London has other ideas.
It laughs.
It gasps.
It talks.
The papers are full of it.
The censors had worried about it.
The public argues about it.
The word “bloody” becomes the story.
Not the play.
Which annoys Shaw no end.
But also…
ensures that everyone knows about it.
Which is, perhaps,
another kind of victory.
Now fast forward.
Because London doesn’t just remember.
It layers.
Tomorrow,
on the Kensington Walk, we’ll be standing outside a house in Kensington Square.
It’s Kensington Square so it’s a handsome house. But not pretentious, no show-offy.
You could walk past it without a second glance.
But that was her house.
Mrs Pat.
The voice that said it.
“Not bloody likely.”
And then the next day…
Hampstead.
The annex churchyard of St John’s.
Gravestones.
Quiet.
And there lies Tree.
Henry Higgins.
The man who first faced that line.
And just next door…
Kay Kendall.
Who married…
Rex Harrison.
Yes, Rex Harrison, the definitive Henry Higgins.
Kay Kendall Harrison.
A young actress.
Bright.
Funny.
Full of life.
Dead at thirty-two.
Leukaemia.
And Rex Harrison…
“Sexy Rexy.”
Six wives.
Two of them took their own lives.
Not a good batting average for a husband.
Which brings us to a story.
Because London doesn’t just give you facts.
It gives you stories.
Rex Harrison had a fan.
A little old American lady.
Devoted.
Crossed the Atlantic to see him perform.
Waited at the stage door afterwards, programme in hand, hoping for an autograph.
He kept her waiting.
And waiting.
An hour goes by.
Finally, out he comes.
She asks, very politely.
And he says, “Sod off.”
At which point something very human happens.
She rolls up her programme…
and whacks him with it.
The stage door keeper sees the whole thing and says:
“That’s the first time the fan hit the shit.”
So there you have it.
A line spoken in 1914…
echoing into a marriage…
echoing into a film…
echoing into the way we still imagine the character today.
That’s London.
Conversations carried on across decades.
Across lives.
Across a couple of square feet of churchyard.
And here’s the thing to take away.
That word.
That shocking,
improper,
slightly thrilling word.
It doesn’t stay shocking.
It settles in.
Softens.
Becomes ordinary.
Just another part of the language.
Which is what London does.
It takes the outrageous…
and makes it everyday.
And tomorrow?
Well…
we leave the theatre.
We leave Shaw.
We leave Mrs Pat and her beautifully detonated word.
And we go to another kind of stage.
In a hospital in Barking – east London – on April 12th, 1941, a boy is born.
Bobby Moore.
Football’s greatest gentleman.
A Londoner through and through.
Brought up in a perfectly ordinary street in Barking.
West Ham United.
England captain.
And the image.
That image.
Wembley, 1966.
Hands wiped on his shorts so he doesn’t dirty the Queen’s gloves.
Lifting the World Cup.
Calm.
Composed.
Effortless.
If Shaw’s play is about how language can make a gentleman…
Bobby Moore suggests something else.
That sometimes…
a gentleman just is one.
We’ll meet him tomorrow.
And on that note,
Here endeth your daily London fix.
Compliments of London Calling.
London Walks at your service.
This is London.
Story time.
History time.
Streets ahead.
See you tomorrow.