The Michael Klinger Papers : Interview with Linda Hayden by Anthony McKenna and and Andrew Spicer 14 February 2011

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Interview

Interview with Linda Hayden by Anthony McKenna and Andrew Spicer
14 February 2011

Interview conducted in person
duration : 1:39:26

AM You’ve just remade Exposé - a friend of mine wants to know why because you’re on record as not liking the original.

LH Exposé. No, I didn’t. There’s a young producer called Jonathan Softcroft who started off by being a big fan of mine, a big fan of horror movies, And I did a television series years ago called ‘Collectors Talk’, about people and their hobbies. Bernard Cribbins did the fishing programme. And this young boy, Jonathan Softcroft into movies and , I didn’t know, just studying for his O levels, was told, ‘We’ll interview you. Who would you like to interview you?’ And he chose me which I thought was very sweet. And I met him with the film crew at his parents’ house in Brighton. And I was very impressed with all the memorabilia. He’d got everything, files of mainly horror memorabilia. So I gave him my phone number because he was a nice boy. He proved to be invaluable over the years, because anything I wanted, if I’d flicked an eyelid on a coffee commercial he’d bloody got it or could get it for me. Anyway, he was passionate about the business. He got his O and A levels and he got into the business. He’s still there; funnily enough he still lives around the corner. He always wanted me to do Exposé . It was called The House at Spoor Hill and they then changed the title. Paul Raymond, his girlfriend Fiona Richmond had a tiny bit in it. And I was the star in it with a German actor called Udo Kier. By the time it came out they’d changed it with a few soundtrack dubs on. I saw it at the screening and someone else had dubbed her voice as well, because she couldn’t act, Fiona, bless her heart, Lovely lady, but she couldn’t act. And I took on a bit and I said, ‘I don’t want anything to do with it. I don’t want to do any publicity or anything.’ And it ended up as a skin-flick in Tottenham. But, of course, it’s become a bloody cult movie. Anyway, Jonathan wanted to do it and he came to me. It did get off the ground in the end, Martin Kemp directed it. And I play the housekeeper, which is great. I was there for four days and it was fun, I enjoyed it, But they made it more of a horror. But of all the movies I’ve made that was the one I didn’t want much to do with.

I started off with Baby Love and it was very much a sex-type movie, that was the fashion. And my screen test I did topless, because that was the scene with the elderly man who played the part, Keith Barron. When she came into the study. So it was all quite near the knuckle. And there was a big to-do about that and my parents were asked did they mind. When I did the screen test I was there with a girlfriend of mine from school, a very beautiful blonde girl, a mate of mine, a very strong personality. And she was convinced she was going to get it. But before the end of the day I was being pictured and photographed and I think and I think she sussed something was going on. That ruined a good friendship. They made up their minds pretty quickly. But I think they’d done quite a lot of auditioning.

AS I was going to ask you about that. They advertised the part, as it were, in Stage.

LH Yes, I think they’d done a lot for about a year before; I think they’d been looking for some time. But, of course, the original director was not Alistair Reid. No, he was a director called Henri Souffle and he was French. And the original script – there were quite a few bits and pieces and they were all right – but were a bit, nothing nasty, salacious. And I’m not quite sure how this happened, because don’t forget I was quite new to all this, but whether they had a fall out or what happened, but suddenly Alistair Reid, and this was after I was chosen, Alistair Reid came on the scene. And after Alistair was there so many things did change, I mean, it became subtle, lots of subtleties. One wonderful scene, the scene with the boys chasing me along the river. And Michael Klinger got a friend of his involved, I think her name was Ann Leigh. She was a lady from Edgeware who did children’s fashion clothes, She is the one who dressed me for Baby Love. But this particular scene I’d got some dress that I was meant to have and Alistair went totally away from that. He had me dressed, I went out shopping with Jenny and his future wife and they dressed me in this long, white dress with a white straw hat. It went totally against type and it was quite a clever idea because the outfit that they had made up made me look very tarty, because the whole point is that she wasn’t asking for this and it happened to her, So he was clever, Alistair, he was very subtle, he was very, very good, And the scene I have at the discotheque, she did that dress which I think I’ve still got at home in a drawer. So it was very, you know, there were a lot of subtleties he created. And he was a very good director. He teamed us together again later in Something To Hide which was my all time favourite performance. I loved Something To Hide.

AM That’s a great film, a really great film.

LH It is.

AM Peter Finch is brilliant.

LH Oh, what a darling! What a darling to work with, such a man. And, of course, when I did that he hadn’t hit the high spots again because Sunday, Bloody Sunday was just about to come out. It had been made. But, of course, he had been in a dip. And Michael was great - he got him ... knowing Michael he probably knew, even if he’d only heard about Sunday, Bloody Sunday he knew it was going to be a big hit which it was. And then Network and he got the Oscar and he died. It was so sad, what a fabulous man. And it only took three and a half weeks to make that film, ridiculously short time.

AM Three and a half weeks?

LH Yes, three and a half weeks, well, it was five weeks, three and a half weeks on the Isle of Wight and two weeks in Shepperton. And it was an amazing movie to make because I had to give birth in it and I had to sit through several hours of birth movies, which I was a bit squeamish about and I was dreading it. And I remember it was a very hot day in the middle of the summer and I went down to Shepperton to see these birth movies before the birth scene, Shelley Winters was there and she’d seen some of the rushes already and as I walked into the canteen to have lunch she went, ‘Oh, my God, you had the baby already?’ So I sat through these birth movies sweating profusely in what felt like a plastic seat thinking, ‘Oh, my God!’ I was fine, of course, because it was not an operation, or anything. And this was invaluable to me, because in those days you didn’t, now you have the television, you can see things live. But in those days they didn’t.

AM It caused censor problems with the trailer.

LH Oh yes, even things like Silent Witness, you didn’t see things like that. It was all done behind - you know. But it was invaluable for me to see these, I must admit. And Peter Finch was wonderful on the day of shooting. Because every shot was on my face, obviously. It couldn’t go anywhere else. And the other person who was invaluable was Jenny, Alistair’s then wife, because she was expecting their baby, she was pregnant. So a lot of my gait and all that - we used to do waddling practice together.

AS So did you get the impression there was quite a close relationship between Michael Klinger and Alistair Reid? That he was a bit of a protégé.

LH Yes, yes, there was. I think Michael met Alistair when he was still quite young. Oh, yes, very much so. And I never quite knew why they didn’t do other things. I think, possibly, reading between the lines, and a lot of this I’m saying because I don’t know, but I think, I’m pretty sure, that Alistair was upset because he didn’t direct Shout At the Devil, who directed Shout At the Devil ?

AS I think it was Peter Hunt. He directed Gold as well, I think.

LH I think Alistair was upset because he’d worked on the script but didn’t direct it. I wasn’t around so much then. Things had sort of materialised. I was doing other things. So I think there was a little bit of a falling out there. But, as I say, I can’t vouch for that because I’m not 100% sure what happened. Baby Love was Michael’s breakaway from Tony Tenser. I didn’t know anything about Tony Tenser. I’d never met Tony Tenser and didn’t work with him until Blood On Satan’s Claw. There was always a vying between them. I think there was a great rivalry. I mean, I got on fine with Tony Tenser, but I never had much to do with Tony as I did with Michael because I was involved with his family. They used to take me into their family because I lived in Middlesex and Michael lived in commuter belt land, in Belgrave Square. And his wife Lily was an absolutely lovely character, Tony and Avril, the kids. I was very much involved with the family which I never was with Tony Tenser. But there was a rivalry there. But then Michael went on to bigger things. He always looked at the bigger picture, Michael.

AS I was interested in what you said earlier on that Michael was an archetypal Jewish figure for you. Because we asked someone else about this and he said yes, it was obvious with Michael, his Jewishness was always obvious, but with Tony Tenser, no.

LH No, actually, you’re quite right. Because I didn’t know Tony Tenser was Jewish. Because Michael was more of a family man than Tony Tenser, that was the reason. And both the children got married around the time I was around. I went to Avril’s wedding, but not to Tony’s, because I was doing Barcelona Kill. Tony Tenser was not a family man, I think.

AM Right, well, he’d left his family for a younger model, hadn’t he?

LH Yes, absolutely. Well, Michael definitely had an eye for the ladies, don’t kid yourself, but Lily was his stalwart. She was an amazing woman and yet, they’d been through some tough times together. Michael came from no money and worked his way up. I always remember him saying to me over a lunch at Isow’s, because he always used to laugh at Guido, because Guido was this beautiful, lugubrious Italian, a very soft chap. And Michael said to me, ‘The difference between Guido and me, see that glass of wine of water? I’ll fill that up and to me, that’s half full. To Guido, it’s half empty.’ That very much sums up their relationship. Guido was always miserable and Michael was always the bright one. I think that’s his thing throughout everything. In the end it did go wrong, and it was a very difficult time the late 70s.

AM That’s what makes it so interesting that Michael was such a survivor for years.

LH I know, because I worked at Elstree Studios, the second film I did was a Dracula film with Aida Young, who was a big Hammer producer there, and lovely Bryan Forbes, keeping that studio going as long as we did. And we were some of the last films there. And then we did the Confessions. I used to love Elstree and it was such a shame, but it was a really dodgy time.

AM Can I ask you about Joe Levine because my next book is going to be about him and I’ve not met many people who’ve met him. And those who have hate him because he ripped them off.

LH Well, I probably gathered that he and Michael must have fallen out somewhere along the line, I presume. I don’t know. I do remember Baby Love in particular, because when I went to New York we started out we’d flown first class on TWA and we stayed in this wonderful hotel in Central Park. And the irony was that I was in the room above Tony Newley. At the time I did the screen test for Baby Love, I was also up for the part in Hieronymous Merkin, this crazy film, Will Hieronymous Merkin Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness?

AS Never seen it. Read quite a lot about it.

LH I don’t think I ever saw it, but I was up for the part and it was a contest between that and Baby Love and I screen tested for the two. And originally I wanted that one because I adored Tony Newley. He was an absolute charmer, a real sweetie. And I remember we did the screen test in a place on the Finchley Road and Joan Collins was sitting on the set, sitting very glued to these young blonde ladies all doing the screen test. Was that a nude screen test? I think it was. It was very much of that era. It was a very romantic thing. Tony Newley was the star and I met these other people, producers and directors and the like. But Tony Newley auditioned me and about three of us were screen tested for it. And when I got home that afternoon the doorbell rang and the most beautiful bouquet of flowers arrived thanking me. I’m sure he did it for all three of them. And I think what happened was I also did the screen test for Baby Love within weeks, and I got Baby Love and I think that he’d made up his mind on the other one. So I don’t think I lost the other, he just knew that I’d got that. I know that a girl called Connie Presley got it, some Playboy Bunny - I don’t know, was she an actress? So Baby Love was made in 1968 and it was 1969 that they finally sold it and got it out there. So we made it at the beginning of 1968, yes, it was 1969 I went to America. Anyway, he’d already made a film and that came out and he was there publicising it at the same time as me. And he was in the flat below in the Hampshire and I’d got this whole suite at the Hampshire and Michael had as well. Alistair and Jenny had - he wasn’t married to Jenny yet. And all I was getting was these phone calls from Tony Newley about coming out and Michael was very busy trying to make sure Tony Newley didn’t get his paws anywhere near me. It was very funny. I was only 16. So we were both promoting. Anyway, it was for three weeks we were in New York. It was extraordinary but I just thought it was the norm, a long time in New York before it opened and everything. And when it opened in New York we then flew very quickly to Los Angeles. And when we opened in Los Angeles I was on a strip giving interviews in my bedroom. So I think things had probably struck a bit of a sticky wicket then.

In fact, because I remember Michael and Alistair and Jenny being very upset - no, Alistair and Jenny went with me first and Michael was still in New York. And Michael came across to Los Angeles with Lily a few days later and found out I’d been giving interviews in my bedroom and he was fuming, absolutely fuming. And he immediately whisked us out and we stayed in the Beverley Hills Hotel. And that was at Michael’s expense. I don’t think we realised that. Because I do remember they went out one night and we ordered this most beautiful meal, Jenny, Alistair and I and we put it on our rooms because we thought RCA were paying. And, bless his heart, it was Michael paying for it and that’s when we realised that he wasn’t going to let the boat go down. Anyway, Michael stayed on and that’s when George Skinner [?] got involved and changed the publicity and we did this whistle stop tour of England. It was a wonderful success in England, Baby Love and I spent a year touring around. And they has a wonderful idea for going to New York, again, Michael’s idea, he went to meet a furrier, I forget his name, Tony will know, Frank Levine, he was quite a famous furrier. And they made me a white arctic fox fur coat. And this hood and I pressed the thing and all the lights flashed in the hood. And they must have wondered what the hell this was. And I had the coat for a year because it was not only in New York. It was getting a bit grubby at the end of it, because I was on and off trains. I think after the New York debacle I did give up wearing the hood because somebody described me as looking like a Christmas tree. But the coat was lovely and I had beautiful knee-length, white leather boots. It became a bit of a trademark around England getting off trains and on planes in this white coat. And it was a brilliant moment. And Michael was very instrumental in all that.

AM And that’s curious, because Joe Levine was, you know, the big promoter of the post-war period. Why did he get Baby Love so wrong? Because it was quite well received in the New York papers?

LH Well, back in England it was a success. And I don’t think people were telling me too much because I was an ingénue. But it was Michael giving a launch to his own career. And the other big selling point we had, of course, somebody just before the hit, was Diana Dors. That was Michael’s idea. She was in the original before Alistair got involved with it and it was a brilliant opening, a clever idea. Because she was a very fine actress. I absolutely adored her. We worked together several years later and she was such a character. When people saw her on the screen. they hadn’t seen her like that, because, again, she was another one who’d had a lull in her career and hadn’t put on so much weight then, but she was certainly looking ... There are two sounds which take me back. If ever I hear a dripping tap I am immediately transported back to that exact bit and the other is the sound of seagulls because of that scene in Something To Hide. It was a clever idea that Diana Dors thing and they promoted it quite heavily in this country on that. I mean, she was quite well known in America and in England she suddenly put on all this weight and became a character actress and she never stopped working. So that was another thing, again Michael’s idea, he was a great publicity man. And these people, their mind is always working, And that’s what Michael was, always like that and he [Levine?] wasn’t like that I don’t think. So we had everything going for us with Baby Love. Then of course he became very famous for Carter. And that was another thing I was upset about because he had me on this 10 year contract.

AM You didn’t get Get Carter?

LH Well, Something to Hide got put back and deferred and then he did do it in 1971. He was meant to do a yearly deal. Of course, he didn’t, because the first year he took selling Baby Love, so I’ve got an agent champing at the bit. And my father obviously sided with Michael because Michael was my Svengali and Ada Foster was getting very hot under the collar and I was stuck in the middle of it all, And I have to say I went through some bad patches because, as far as I was concerned, I just wanted everything as it was on Baby Love. I had a wonderful time on Baby Love. Well, I was on the set every day, apart from the fact that I was in most of the scenes. I was in the editing bit. I was like the mascot. I watched the editing being done with John Glen, the lovely John Glen who then directed the Bond films, I was involved in virtually every aspect of it. I was very upset that I didn’t go to New York to do the deal with Joe Levine. I mean, he had to write to me and tell me. It was the loveliest thing, ‘Hi, kid, we’ve done the deal’. I’ve got the letter at home somewhere. And I was waiting with bated breath for Michael and I couldn’t concentrate on anything else. I started taking sleeping pills at night, I couldn’t sleep, which wasn’t really good for a 15 year old or a 16 year old, because I should have been doing other things. I didn’t go back to day school. he kept me around and there was this ongoing fight. And, of course, I did work quite a bit before Baby Love. I was always doing modelling jobs and television parts, I made a series with Dick Emery which never took off, unfortunately, and that was before I made Baby Love. It was a segment at the end of his variety show. It was quite a clever thing called the Ludd Family. Anne Lancaster was another character in this and Dick Emery played all those parts and I was his daughter, with like a beehive hairdo.

AM So you already knew Dick Emery?

LH Yes, I was Myrtle Ludd. It was a wonderful series and I filmed it all at Ealing Studios. And I met Peter Sellers, because Dick - I absolutely adored Dick. He was gorgeous. I had a chaperone of course because I was still at school - day school. He was another one who got on well with my father. And he was a great character, Dick. We filmed the series, we used to film the whole series and insert it into the variety show with the studio audience. Well, he did a couple of those and, unfortunately, they didn’t think it worked, because they had to keep going back, it wasn’t a long enough space in it, so the whole thing was scrapped. We filmed it all and it was never shown, which was deeply upsetting. But then, ironically, I’ll tell you who was going to do the Dick Emery part in the film, they talked about it and I was there at the lunch, Tony Hancock. And Tony Hancock died, of course, before it was made. And so they talked about Dick Emery and I said I already knew Dick. And so Dick was in my first film which was just wonderful, you know. So it was my home from home. It was like a big family. And we did the film. I can’t remember, it was a short film, about six weeks filming and, of course, after it finished filming and the editing I was like a fish out of water. I was so lucky and so spoilt with all the people I worked with. Keith Barron, wonderful actor. You know the story about how they found Keith Barron?

AM No.

LH Well, they went to look for houses to film the doctor’s house in. They had a few ideas and they went round people’s houses. They knocked on the door of one house and Keith Barron answered and said, ‘Well, you’ve come to look at my house for filming. And they went, ‘Good God, we didn’t know it was your house’. Because his wife was a doctor, you see. And, anyway, they came and looked round. And Michael thought, ‘Keith Barron, bloody good idea for the part’. So they didn’t use his house, because they liked another house, but they offered Keith Barron the part. So he was quite happy about that. But they didn’t think of him until they came to the house. And Anne Lynn, of course, irony again, she was Tony Newley’s first wife. Broke her heart, she never got over Tony Newley. She was the one he left for Joan Collins, Ann Lynn. Ann Lynn was marvellous. I don’t know if she is still around. She played the mother in Just Good Friends. I was in the pilot. She’s a fine actress. Holly ... played the housekeeper. She was a tyrant but I didn’t have that many scenes with her. So I had a wonderful stable of people I was working with. And then I didn’t do anything for 18 months because I promoted Baby Love. So it was sort of an initiation, put my foot in the hot water, then I had to sit back and wait.

AS What always slightly surprises me about Baby Love is that I’m always expecting a scene where Keith Barron would unburden himself to you in character but it never really comes. It always seems to be on the brink but - is that deliberate? Because he’s quite an unsympathetic character.

LH Yes, I think it is. Well, I think he was always on the verge because he obviously had this passionate affair with this woman who had been pretty lovely in her day. And, of course, the daughter resembled her so much it was just simmering there, because it was and the daughter knows it. I think that probably had a lot to do with Alistair as well. Because it was the subtlety. It could have been a more in your face movie. And I think Alistair put the brakes on it. Which is nothing against Michael or Guido. They had a sort of vehicle there and they knew for the climate of the time what would work and Alistair was the subtle brakes on it and I always felt that. I was sort of even aware of it at the time. And, you know, Alistair was a very good director for me for the first film. I mean, I’d done quite a bit of work, but that was a huge project. So, you know, I think to answer that question was the fact that the subtlety was there. And also, again, that Keith is a subtle actor. he can be in your face in a comedy, but I think that probably everyone was waiting for the big scene.

AM It is in the novel.

LH Yes. She was a strange lady who wrote it. Michael always told the story, he was the most wonderful raconteur, Michael. I mean, I would go to so many lunches with Michael. He used to say, ‘What are you doing, kid? Are you going to have something?’ And unless it was business where he couldn’t have someone along he would quite often take me and because I wouldn’t think two pennies about anything, he would take me along and I’d be sitting there. And he would tell these wonderful stories. He was just a terrific character to have on the table. He was funny and he tells the story of how he first met Tina Chad Christian and she had this deficiency. She had a bone deficiency and she said, ‘Could you get me a pint of distilled water?’ And he said, ‘Why, are you thirsty?’ And she had to do something that needed a pint of distilled water. I can’t tell it, because he used to tell it so brilliantly. But she was a real oddball. She came onto the set quite a few times - as I say she had a bone deficiency.

AS Had he acquired the rights of the novel before it was published - was that right?

LH I’m not sure about that. I’m not sure.

AS I think he did.

LH Before it was published? That’s interesting to know. How interesting. I’ve got the book somewhere. When Michael saw that I had a bit of a weight problem. Not when I did Baby Love, but afterwards, and I used to drink quite a bit in my youth and I was always a big eater. And I started to put on quite a bit of weight. And Michael put me on a diet (laughs). The reason being I was busy promoting his film and I was going off to all these film festivals and everything and the drink was in abundance. And I’ve never been in any way influenced by drugs, I was anti-drugs, in every department, but I wasn’t so anti-drink.

AS Did you read the novel before you made the film?

LH I did. I read bits of it. It was very, very difficult. It went a little bit above me.

AS There’s a lot of internal monologue in the novel which you have to do basically with your face on the screen, You’re not able to come up high on being manipulated in the novel as she does, ‘I put on my best face. I put on my best face.’

LH Yes, absolutely. No, I do remember that scene which I always love. The scene at the end of the movie where she walks down the stairs, And that music and I always loved that music, quite romantic. And that said it all, with the face. But a lot of it was played with the face. Again, a lot of the interpretation was Alistair, very cleverly, you know, I was only fifteen when I made that film and I was still quite an upfront 15 year old but not as much as they are nowadays. Because it was a totally different era. I was ahead of my time. I went to stage school. You know the reserve of the 1950s and 1960s. You know, I was wearing my skirt up to my armpits going down the Finchley Road, catching the bus. I mean, we were all very flirty, so it wasn’t something I was totally unaware of, the subtleties of it and just trying to sort of bring it to the screen, emotions I had never been through. It was not an easy thing to do. And it was a huge challenge and a huge part, so as I say, when you are working with really good people who didn’t give a monkey’s. And it was lovely, it was a lovely atmosphere and I have to say part and parcel of Michael Klinger. He always created a great atmosphere. he was probably a hard task master because if you didn’t want to do something his way he didn’t back down easily, but he wouldn’t have got where he was if he didn’t do, either.

AS Was he on the set every day?

LH Oh yes, he was very hands on.

AS Very supportive to Alistair Reid?

LH Yes, very hands-on producer, always was. But one of your questions asked was that the case on the Confessions. It wasn’t I mean, we didn’t see him that much with the Confessions at all, but he’d sort of gone off on another tangent by then. And I was bit upset with him, not that I said it to him, but he put Susan George in something that I thought I could have done, but what was it Peter Collinson directed, some thriller or other?

AS Tomorrow Never Comes?

LH That was the one and I was deeply upset with him. And I remember I told him, He phoned up one Saturday morning and I said, ‘I’m not very happy with you. And you’re meant to be fulfilling my contract and you’re giving it to Susan George. And he said, ‘I’ll deal with it.’ And I wasn’t happy about it. I went to the premiere of Shout At the Devil but he didn’t really fulfil his obligations to me in that way. But you should have seen the contract that arrived. I’ll never forget the contract. It was like a telephone directory. And we did get out of it. I remember Harbottle and Lewis, I can’t remember whether they were Michael’s solicitors or Ada Foster’s. And we came to a legal thing at the end. He didn’t fulfil his part of the contract and she was up in arms about it and then my Dad got in the middle and because I say he was very fond of Michael and he didn’t want anything against him. And, as I say, he was a businessman and it all got a bit sticky. I think an awful lot was kept from me, an awful lot. I was aware something was going on but there was so much else going on in my life then. I was a young, teenage, you know, sort of in quotes, ‘star’.

AM And what claims did Aida Young have upon you?

LH I went and auditioned for Aida. I think I was quite hot news and they just asked me to do it. And she was another producer, she was quite a big influence in a way, because of my weight issue. I was in Taste the Blood of Dracula and I was quite plump and she took me to lunch one day and she said, ‘Look, young lady, we’ve got to do something about this weight because it’s going to lose you parts’. And she was right, because I did, I lost a couple of films parts after Blood on Satan’s Claw. Ken Annakin I did some films for and I was up for a part in this film and he did a screen test and phoned me up personally and said, ‘You did a great screen test but you’ve got to go away and lose about a stone in weight because you looked like a 35 year old blowsy blonde. I’ll never forget it. I had to go away and lose weight. And he did another film years later, of course, I didn’t do it as I was doing something else at the time. And I remember Aida Young was instrumental in trying to get that down. But she was quite high-powered, Hammer House of Horror. I did one, Veronica Carlson did several and I was the next one in line to her. And soon after that he stopped doing them. He didn’t want to do them any more.

AS You talked about the struggle between her and Michael Klinger?

LH No, that was Ada Foster. Not Aida Young. She owned this theatre school. She was the one who started Jean Simmons’ career. Everyone went to Ada Foster. Barbara Windsor, Elaine Paige, tons of quite successful people were at Ada Foster’s stage school. I’ll tell you who else went there and I didn’t know this for years and I was at school with her. Sharon Osbourne. She was Sharon Arden at the time and I had no idea. So the next thing I did for Michael Klinger, Something to Hide, that was a very happy experience. But I think, you’ve put in your question, ‘Why do you think Something to Hide didn’t work?’ We were taking a premiere at the Odeon after the wonderful premiere we had with Baby Love. We had it at the Odeon Marble Arch and I remember getting all dolled up and arriving, my father wasn’t alive then, he sadly died before that. I remember arriving in my big limousine in my very tight trousers and saw a bus stop full of rather annoyed figures saying, ‘What is this?’ The difference between that and Baby Love was unbelievable. It was a very good film but it wasn’t really filmic. Somebody said it should have been for television, because it was very small scale. Because of the story. It was very good. Maybe more in this day and age because it would have fitted with films now because they were going through a film stage, I don’t know, with Kes and all these real life films. I don’t know, maybe it wasn’t glamorous enough.

AM Well, it’s a difficult film. There is no glamour in it at all.

LH And it’s a rather nasty subject.

AM You’re heavily pregnant and Peter Finch is just falling apart. It’s a brilliant performance.

LH Fantastic, Shelley Winters as well. One of my favourite lines ever filmed that - when he said, ‘Why are you always drunk, why are you always drunk?’ and she says, ‘Because it hides the pain, Harry, it hides the pain’. She only came in to do the film in two days. And Peter Finch was quite nervous about it, But they ended up loving each other. They were two huge talents. Sometimes huge talents can crossfire, you know.

AS Nicholas Monsarrat, was he around?

LH Yes, he came, I did meet him. And I had a signed book by him which I must keep as it’s by him. It’s a very interesting novel, terrific. Yes, it should have done more. They promoted London, England, George Skinner [?] was in charge of it. I don’t think it did anything in America, that’s probably when the fall out with Joe Levine happened, But you asked me if I met Joe Levine. I met him at that premiere of Lion In Winter and the first time I met him was in a hotel suite in, I suppose, the Dorchester, He was a small, dynamic - you know, not a big man, but big in personality.

AM Yes, it was the Dorchester because he always used to stay there until it got taken over by Arabs.

LH Right, well, he was another right character. It was The Graduate that made him, wasn’t it?

AM Well, no, it was Hercules that made him in the late 1950s, cheapo Italian exploitation film which he paid $150,000 for and then spent a million dollars promoting it. I think The Graduate was important at that stage of his career - and The Producers.

AS Returning to the weak performance of Something to Hide, was Michael very disappointed by that?

LH I think he was. I mean, I know I was. I enjoyed making it. My dad was still alive when I made it, He wasn’t there when it was finished and he never saw it. I moved down to the coast with my parents and I hadn’t got the place in town. Eventually I did rent somewhere, but I did stay with the Klingers quite a bit. After Something to Hide I did quite a bit of theatre after that. But then this Confessions thing came up. But Greg Smith had hiked this thing around for years trying to get it off the ground and Michael Klinger helped him do it, And when Michael phoned me up to tell me I’d got the part that same morning I’d had a go at him for not putting me in the film that Susan George was in, So, I mean, it was due to Michael that I met Greg Smith and I met Greg Smith in - 1972? And, coincidentally enough, Robin Askwith, who starred in it, I went out with him for about seven years. He lived near me and we knew each other vaguely through friends. His best friend lived across the road from me and his best friend had been my understudy or stand-in. And it was all quite strange that, pure coincidence. So I did the first one and Holiday Camp. I didn’t like that much. But then again I needed the money. The first one was a good one. Tony Booth, lovely guy, John Le Mesurier played my Dad, lovely.

AS There’s some correspondence where Michael indicates that he’s not entirely happy with the way the series is going, He felt it was moving away from what he saw as the family based - to what he referred to rather disparagingly as a kind of run of the mill sex comedy. Were you aware of the tensions between him and ...?

LH No, I think at that time I wasn’t as close to Michael. I was doing theatre work and I’d moved to Leicester and my life had taken a different perspective and I had a boyfriend who I was with for quite a long time and I was working. But that was a bit rich coming from Michael who started off in those kind of things. I can see where he’s coming from because I could see the difference between the first one which was the best, because I was far more proud of being in Window Cleaner. I mean, the original Carry Ons are classics now, aren’t they? The Confessions were very popular.

AM They were a kind of change for you. Because I mean, Baby Love and Something to Hide were drama. Blood on Satan’s Claw as well is really dark stuff. But that’s more ...

LH Frivolous. I was offered a lot of those types of movies after Baby Love and I was lucky enough to do Blood on Satan’s Claw, even though I had a nude scene that was a terrific picture and I had a wonderful director in Piers Haggard. Just magnificent he was, and that was the last film Patrick Wymark made. I’ve got some wonderful reviews for that, a rave review from the Times. And a lovely story about Michael Bentine. I was sitting years later in Pinewood Studios filming something or other and Michael Bentine walked up to me and said, ‘Angel Drake!’ and he was such a huge fan. And I thought it was so lovely that he actually walked across a restaurant to meet Angel Drake.

AM Baby Love is overdue for a remaster, I think.

LH It doesn’t seem as well known as Michael’s other films, only because it was Michael’s first going on his own sort of thing.

AS I was going to say the British Film Institute are going to do this series for its website and are getting a lot of these films to resurface like Pleasure Girls, which was soon after, And I think Baby Love is absolutely tailor made for that sort of thing.

LH Well, the other thing that happened to me, Jonathan Ross, before he became huge, had this company called Goldwatch or something. He phoned me up about 16 years ago now and wanted to do a thing on my career. They were interested in doing a documentary. They asked if I had any DVDs. They came, sent a bike, got all my DVDs and a lot of things which I’d got through this Jonathan Softcroft boy and my televisions and all that sort of thing. But they wanted to interview me mainly about the Exposé film. And, of course, I didn’t want to know about that and my mother said, ‘Don’t you dare talk about that!’ I said that I didn’t want that touched on and they said that in that case they weren’t interested. because they just wanted to hinge on that film, the sex thing. Anyway, it’s interesting because it is quite a cult movie.

AS Very few other British films even hint at lesbianism, whereas Baby Love is really overt.

LH Very overt for that day and age.

AS Did the censors weigh in about that at all?

LH Well, it was a bit. Certainly lesbianism was unusual. But not quite as much as it is today. And, of course, the way it was done was so brilliant. Because you had a brilliantly subtle director and a brilliantly subtle actress. And I mean that was all played by Ann Lynn’s face. She should have a been a far more famous actress than she was. But she was very good at the emotions and so on. But I think it could have been far more cut than it was. But don’t forget that we had dear old John Trevelyan in those days. Who was another one my father got on very well with. And I used to love him, such a lovely man.

AS Did he come on set at all?

LH Oh, yes, I think he did actually. Michael invited him. Michael was no fool, you know.

AS I think he’d been to his club.

LH Hmm. he probably had. No, I think they were pretty good friends. And, of course, all that - years later, working for Paul Raymond. What a character he was. A sad man. Because over the years, a friend of mine, Roger Kitchener used to be in Pyjama Tops with Fiona and I used to go to places to see it and he was always around. But he knew Michael, because they had all the strip clubs together, you know, in Soho. Raymond and he, you know Isow’s restaurant? He bought it for them and turned it into Revuebar. Isow’s restaurant, the famous Isow’s. It was wonderful. No, he took over Isow’s and made it into the Revuebar. Isow’s was there 40 years ago when I first knew Michael. he used to go there a lot. He was always at Isow’s. He had a table there. But I have to say I did so many of those film festivals with Baby Love.

AM He was a great believer in the film festival, wasn’t he, Michael?

LH Oh yes, The other thing you mentioned was Barcelona Kill. Well, that, of course, was when I went to the Cannes Film Festival with Michael and Neil Waite had a few days there. Neil wasn’t promoting anything but he went and had a wild fling for a couple of days down there. It was there that Michael, I think, sold me to De La Loma to do Barcelona Kill, supposedly. That was just after we moved down to the coast actually. In fairness to Michael I think he made a bit of money out of it and it was a multi-international cast film. And I also think he thought it would do me good as I’d just lost my Dad and then I was in Spain for six, seven weeks. So it was an extraordinary time. I was in Barcelona for the whole time which is lovely and there was a totally international cast. So we all spoke our own language which is ludicrous. The man who made it, it was his thing, He wrote it and everything. He directed it, he cut it, he edited it, he did it. You said about John Justin, well, I was lucky to have John Justin, he was a fine actor, John Justin. And he, it took him a short time to realise that it was a load of sh... actually, and that we should try and tailor it a little. Because Michael did come out, he came out for a few days with Lily. I think I was driving a Mustang at the time, it was very snazzy. I wanted to impress journalists with my Mustang. But John wanted to get a sense of what was going on. You know, here is this man putting everything on, you know. Whoa! There was a very famous Spanish bullfighter in it who was constantly chasing me and I wasn’t at all interested in him. I fell in love with the cameraman who was Spanish and didn’t speak a word of English and we had a big fling and it was lovely and smashing. And I have to say, you know, that I think it was just a bit of fun and Michael was involved in the fact that he had a percentage of the picture of - well, I don’t know. But the nice thing about that was meeting and working with John Justin, really. Because he and I were in the same hotel because we were the two English bits of it and he taught me how to - I used to never eat fish very much and he taught me how to eat fish and I just started drinking wine then. My food tastes changed in six weeks in Barcelona. I enjoyed it, it was great, lovely city.

AS So, apart from being the jack of all trades, was he any good as a director, La Loma?

LH Well, it was very hard for me to tell because it was all a bit bitty, I did see it as I revoiced it when I did my synchronised ... But it won awards in Spain. I went over to Madrid to collect an award, so it even won an award. But this was, you’re talking about 30, almost 40 years ago and I think things were very much part of the Franco thing, taking their time and suddenly they were able to channel out more of a - because there was quite a censorship thing while he was around, Franco. It was quite an interesting thing to be involved in. Well, the idea was that I would learn to speak a bit of Spanish but I didn’t, because I had an interpreter and all these people wanted to speak English. It was a shame, because I had Spanish au pairs when I was a girl and I thought I could do that but I didn’t.

AM So Michael wasn’t terribly involved in Barcelona Kill?

LH No.

AM Why did he do it? How did it come about?

LH Well, all I can remember is that we were at the Cannes film festival and he must have either met De La Loma or - because I was there. And he said, ‘Oh, I need a blonde,’ because he had some French actors, he had some Spanish, he had some Italians. All of them could speak some English and I couldn’t speak anything but English. And he had some bits, it was all very peculiar, I mean, obviously it was dubbed into Spanish at the end, everybody dubbed their own bit and it was this compendium of games, really. And because I was there and he saw me and he said to Michael, ‘I’m looking for a young English actress to be in it,’ you know, that’s how I think it happened. I wasn’t paid an enormous amount to be in it and I think Michael was still, when I think back, conscious of giving me a picture a year. Never mind, it was an experience. Is he a very well-known director over there now?

AS I don’t think he is. I mean, I’ve had no time to research that but I don’t think so. All the correspondence, or most of the correspondence in the papers is about this long-running dispute about him not preparing the English version correctly, the post-synch soundtrack.

LH Yes, well, I had to do all that because I was available. It was a bit of a one man operation. You see he had all the crew with him and that was the family. But he was one of those people who wanted to be everything. He wanted to do the whole lot. He was a bit of a - nice man. I mean, I didn’t speak enough of his language to know if he was a megalomaniac or not, I mean, he probably was, but to me, what was I then, I must have been about 19 and I did the Confessions after that, didn’t I?

AM Yes, then it was Something to Hide.

LH Yes, those were the sort of the last things I did for Michael. And then I lost touch during the years, which was very sad, because he had a lot of problems as well and I think he left London and they moved out to Elstree and he had some financial problems, as far as I can gather. I mean, I did lose touch, I have to be honest.

AS I think one of our questions is whether you were involved in any of the sort of major projects that never came off, like The Chilian Club, Green Beach?

LH No, funnily enough, when I read those the only title I remember of those was The Chilian Club but I don’t, I can’t remember whether it was because he talked to me about it or - but I do remember that being talked about. I knew Greg through all of this, I kept in touch with Greg because he was great mates with Robin while he was married to me and we were all mates together.

AM Going back to Baby Love, were you promoted as, like, a Klinger discovery? Because there was that whole thing about the talent shows which lasted months and months before your discovery, before you were, this was a Klinger ... because he was making a name for himself because Baby Love ...

LH Well, it became a bit of a thing because both of the producers on hand, I was like their baby really. They plucked me out, well, they hadn’t, because I had worked before, but as far as they were concerned, Michael and Guido, and there was a little bit of an - um - between them as to who, not owned me, but sort of, you know, because I was stopped from doing my thing and I think Guido Coen was quite, you know, he just thought I should be - they fell out a bit over me, about what should happen to me. In the end I did veer over to Michael’s side, purely because Michael was fun and Guido, with respect to Guido Coen, Guido had the bloody film studio and Michael was the producer of the film and that was his baby - and he was going to deal with it. So, yes, I was very much promoted as the discovery of Baby Love. I mean, I was on the Simon Dee show. I was a publicity object, you know. And I was very good at it considering my age. I mean, I talked a good talk, did the whole thing with everyone. I was very good value for that. Had I been on a bigger wage for the film that would have been very nice, but I got lots of fun out of it, first-class travel. In fairness, I didn’t get on a plane tourist class until I was 20 something, I mean, I done everything first class. I thought, ‘What’s this. What’s this tourist class lark?’

AM Do you think you were maybe chosen for that ability as well. To do the promotion as well?

LH I don’t think they made a decision. I was interviewed. I remember the very first interview I did after I got the film was in Ada Foster’s flat in Abbey Road. And the person who interviewed me was a man called Graham Whitworth, Michael’s publicist. He did a lot of stuff like that, Anyway, he did the publicity and he came and did this whole interview. And it started out, you know, ‘From the moment she was in her cot’ and all this rather twee stuff. ‘And her parents knew, she used to recite the book backwards.’ It was all very twee. And that thing followed me around for ages. But I did that thing after I got the part because we went to Ada Foster’s flat and I was interviewed with Ada Foster there, because suddenly Ada Foster had seen bankrolls and I was very much the little protégé. But I think that the reason they did choose me was because of what they were looking for, in effect, one that could be a little girl and could be a woman. And I was that in turns and that was what they saw in me. And I know that’s what ...

AM So, back to Joe Levine. I read somewhere that you were taken care of by Rosalie Levine. Did she act as your chaperone?

LH Well, that rings a bell.

AM Joe Levine’s wife - it said in the paper that she’s going to be looking after Linda Hayden while she is in the United States.

LH I’m not sure if I remember. I’m not sure she did that much to be honest. When we were in New York the five of us went round together, Alistair, Jenny, Michael and Lily. And Michael knew America. He had been back and forth and he gave advice to me. It was my first time and Alistair and Jenny it was the first time. So it was very much a family going round. It was nice to go on to these shows, you know, interview shows and all the rest of it.

AM And this was all orchestrated by Michael?

LH I would suppose so, I would suppose so, I know George wasn’t on board in America, so it wouldn’t have been anything to do with him. Oh no, we had some publicity guys. I remember that guy, who obviously worked for Avco-Embassy - and he was always there. What was his name? You know, a couple of publicity guys who ran Avco. So, obviously, they had the links. But Michael was always there, always around. At one point he was interviewed on a daytime - I can’t remember whether this was in Los Angeles though. I was interviewed on a daytime chat show and it happened to be one of Diana Dors’ ex-husbands who was doing the interview. I don’t remember who she was married to, it was her second husband, I think. And that was just a lunch time show, very open studio, that sort of thing. I saw Diana for years after, she and I ended up doing a Dick Turpin with Richard O’Sullivan. I’d worked with Richard over the years and I did a Ronnie Corbett series with Richard and his girlfriend, And he used to roll all the mates in. And Diana and I played a couple of old washerwomen. And she said, ‘Hell, Hayden, look what we’ve come down to. A couple of old washerwomen’. And she got the booze out. It was great fun.

AM Do you think Klinger and Tenser learned anything from each other? I mean, you worked with both.

LH Well, I suppose they learned to duck and dive, that’s for sure. I think they were both survivors. I mean, there was obviously a friendly rivalry. I don’t know how hostile it got in the end when they separated their ways. I do remember when Tony Tenser got me for Blood on Satan’s Claw. I can’t remember, there could have been a bit of a thing about that, did Michael get upset? I think somebody said, ‘Well, you haven’t got a picture for her and you might as well use her’. It still rankles in the back of my mind.

AS So could Michael have vetoed you getting that part?

LH I think possibly that would have been the case, because that was done before Something to Hide, but because he knew I was up for that he kept saying it was earlier than it was. Because he actually hadn’t got the script ready - there was a little bit of that going on. I think there was a slight friction there. I never had a relationship with Tony Tenser, I’d see him quite a few times and he was quite fun, but he wasn’t my mentor, my Svengali, like Michael.

AS Presumably he wasn’t on set, as involved as Michael Klinger?

LH No, he came to the set of Blood on Satan’s Claw a few times, but Michael, especially in Baby Love, was there all the time. He was a hands-on producer with these two films I did for him. I just think Confessions, was he that involved in Confessions? It was Greg’s baby Confessions, because Greg had hiked that around for years and got himself off the ground. And he got himself off the ground purely through Michael. It was Michael getting the money together, It went through Greg, but it was Michael’s baby. But I think everything was Michael’s baby, he was very hands on. Michael ate and drank it all. He was a showman and that’s what it was all about. He came down a few times to the set of Confessions, but it wasn’t his. Robin won the best newcomer award for that in the Evening Standard and they paid to send him on a holiday. I always remember that.

AM Yes, I remember that because there’s some correspondence about that with Michael saying, ‘I never promised him a holiday’.

LH That’s right. Yes, I think it was Robin’s agent who got involved in all that. I don’t think it cost an awful lot the holiday.

AM They went to the Bahamas or somewhere?

LH No, they went to the Caribbean.

AS So Robin hadn’t done a film before then. What else had he done?

LH He had. But Robin worked a hell of a lot before then. He was always working, But he had - he’d done If with Lindsey Anderson. Lindsey Anderson was his mentor.

AS Was Robin in If?

LH Yes, he was. he wasn’t one of the main parts. But he’d been at public school, the reason he got that part was because he’s been at public school, Merchant Taylor’s. He was expelled. And, of course, Lindsey Anderson read about it in the paper. He was always doing stuff, he was with various casting agencies. Robin was a public schoolboy. Robin’s a very bright lad, let me tell you.

AS He disguised that very well.

LH Very well. No, he is a very well read young man. But he has been very lazy with what he does. He doesn’t work as much as he did. Robin’s still a great mate of mine. He’s godfather to my daughter. He often comes to stay. He walks down the street. Everyone knows him. He’s got one of those faces which is instantly recognisable. He’s been living in Benidorm. He should work more than he does.

AM So Alistair Reid was always going to direct Something to Hide?

LH Yes, I think. I was very upset Alistair never used me again because he did quite a few televisions. But I did meet him again at the National Theatre. He left England, divorced Jenny. He’d had a son. But she was a PR girl, she didn’t direct.

AS You mentioned another director for Baby Love. Who was that?

LH Henri Souffle. A very good looking French guy, with a very glamorous French wife. It’s interesting that’s not in the papers. Michael got rid of him because I don’t think he didn’t like what he saw, or something, but ...er... it was just that little bits of it were a bit tacky and I’m not aware I thought that so much. But in hindsight I think that was what it was about.

AS But he didn’t start directing, these were rushes that you were talking about, were they, or was it the script?LH No, the script.

AM There is correspondence with regard to Something to Hide which says ‘You don’t want to be making these sleazy kinds of films again, but then you’ve got you and Alistair Reid...

LH Who said that?

AM It’s signed D. K. or something. We asked Tony and he didn’t know who it was.

LH It’s not a tacky film at all.

AM No, it could have been the subject matter. And your performance in Baby Love, this brought together something in Michael’s mind that this is what we need for Linda Hayden?

LH Possible. No bones about it, Michael knew we’d got this deal, probably he thought he could get out of it. But he rang me with Ada Foster there who was nobody’s fool, he had to come up with the goods somewhere along the line. And even though he was two years out when he made it. That’s why she made sure she pushed me for these other films. The Taste the Blood of Dracula one he was fine with, because the film had come out and that was a certain type of genre, that was a horror film and it was part of a proper series, it was quite a respected series even then, wasn’t it, Hammer? But when some of the Tony Tenser things came up that was a little bit of a ... I was offered an awful lot in between and he said, ‘Don’t do them,’ and there were a lot of things after Blood on Satan’s Claw but they were not as good as Baby Love and I wasn’t particularly mad because there was a lot of stuff around and I could pick and choose which ones of these. But then I made the switch of going into the theatre anyway. I changed agents, I left Ada Foster quite soon after that and I went with the William Morris agency. A wonderful man called Dennis Selinger, very famous agent, Sally Shuter was the lady agent there. And they were going to do big things for me but that sort of didn’t materialise and I went off to the theatre because I’d joined an agent called Peter Crouch, an absolutely fantastic agent and he said, ‘Come on, then, you started at the wrong bit, you need to go and learn your part. I’m not worried about the money. Go up to Leicester and do ‘Girl in My Soup’. Not to worry about the money.’ And that’s what he got me doing, And Nick Salmon, a big producer, was his second-in-command, a big producer in London. Somewhere along the line I was up for a big film in Italy. This guy came over specially and wanted to meet me and took me out there and as soon as I saw it I thought, ‘I don’t think this is going down the right route,’ and I put myself on a plane. And he was furious. He was a right shyster. Harry?

AM Harry Allan Towers?

LH That’s the one! How I got involved with that I do not know. The minute I met him I knew I should never have gone on the trip. I was in theatre in Coventry at the time in repertory and I had a few days off. I was in this very nice hotel, but there were all these sleazy women. And I thought, ‘Oh, my God!’ and I said, ‘I’m terribly sorry but I’ve got to go back.’ And he said something like, ‘Do you want to go on playing parts in Coventry?’ and I said, ‘Well, I do’. I can remember getting on a plane and walking out. Frightening.

AM Have you any idea why Klinger couldn’t get a US distribution deal for Something to Hide with Levine?

LH Peter Finch had done Sunday, Bloody Sunday. But I think Something to Hide was a bit low key. I think perhaps for Joe Levine as well. But Shelley Winters was a big star in America. I don’t know.

AM I think Levine might have been quietening down by then. I think he got bored with being with Avco. How would you sum up Michael Klinger’s qualities as a producer? And did he have any blind spots?

LH Did he have any blind spots? Ah, bless him. did he have any blind spots? Yes, he didn’t employ me in all the films he made! I mean his qualities as a producer are the ones I’ve already said. He had terrific charisma, was a wonderful raconteur and had huge vision. He always saw the big picture, which I think is always important, then sort out all the other things afterwards.

AM Do you have any idea why his career didn’t fare so well as it should have done after Shout at the Devil?

LH I wasn’t involved in his later pictures. I wasn’t on hand to see it. He hero-worshipped Roman Polanski. He thought he was the best thing since sliced bread.

AM Polanski is really quite critical of Klinger in his interviews.

LH Interesting, because he’s a really complicated, confrontational bloke. I was with him at the San Sebastian Film Festival and we were there a few days before she was killed. We were sitting with Peter Ustinov and I was a young blonde, don’t forget and he was quite friendly at the time. And I don’t think he did anything because we were at opposite ends of the table. And I remember I came back to London and all that Sharon Tate thing, it was terribly frightening.

AM Do you think that gave Michael the taste for highbrow movies?

LH Yes - I saw Gold and Shout at the Devil but I think those other movies we were talking about were much more his genre.

AS You were disappointed not to get a role in Get Carter?

LH Yes, because at that time I was saying to Michael, ‘ Have you got any parts?’ And I can’t remember whether he said there weren’t because Petra Markham played it, didn’t she? And I remember he said, ‘You’re not right for it. You’re too glam.’ Which I think is rubbish, because look what I looked like in Something to Hide where I wasn’t at all glamorous. Maybe it was the fact that I was synonymous with Baby Love and he wanted a change. You know, if you tag along the same actress every time it’s like having a tag with you. Do you know what I’m trying to say?

AS Perhaps you were too big a presence for that role?

LH Yes and it was all that publicity, probably. And they just wanted actors and actresses where people would just say, ‘Who’s that?’. I was up for a part in The Sweeney and I did get a part in The Boys From Brazil. So I think that might have been the reason. It was a little bit close to Baby Love, a little bit too near to Baby Love. Something to Hide was different because it was around two characters and I was one of them.

AM It’s a very different role, isn’t it? Whereas Luci in Baby Love was very provocative but the character in Something to Hide ...

LH Yes, I remember we did a lot of the location work first in the Isle of Wight and I got to know Finchy really well. There was Aletha who was the lady he lived with then, a beautiful character, She had to go back to Switzerland to pick her son up and she asked me to look after him for two days and make sure he didn’t drink too much. And I had to sit up with him until the early hours and listen to all his stories and everything. We had a great relationship, you know, it was like a family relationship. It was quite a small crew. It was a lovely time. And I’ll tell you who was on the Isle at the same time, it was Britt Ekland. She was filming Endless Night with Hywel Bennett, who I went out with many years later. Then we got back to Shepperton to do the main - because this was the actual location filming on the Isle of Wight. And then our first day in the studio was a very big scene between Peter and I, the first time he actually brought me back to the house. And I was used to doing small takes and everything. And I think Alistair said, ‘Just think of it as a theatre,’ you know. I hadn’t done much theatre, to tell you the truth. But that’s how we played it, It was a quite intense filming period at Shepperton because they had those long takes, it was very good. I learnt a lot from that film, I really did. And I have to say I thought I was very good in it. And I’m sure a lot of that was thanks to Alistair, And Michael obviously put me in it, but Alistair was there on the floor. And, of course, Peter Finch.

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