Biggins’ birthday bash
Christopher Biggins is sixty today and he celebrated last night by throwing a small bash for four hundred of his closest friends. The Landmark Hotel in Marylebone was awash with dignitaries and stuffed shirts. The atmosphere was calm and well-mannered, a little on the dull side.
So much for the Conservative Party’s Christmas party. Upstairs in the same hotel, the Biggins bonanza was adorned by the real showbusiness aristocracy: Joan Collins, Cilla, Barbara Windsor, Tim Rice, Cameron Mackintosh and Nick Mason of Pink Floyd.
Everyone had their Biggins history, which was the wonderful thing about the party. On our table, Mel Smith had worked with him years ago and known him for ever; two delightful dames from Brighton (actress Pam Parry and artist Anne Magill) had become new best friends at a charity auction; and the novelist/playwright Fidelis Morgan, first cousin of Lynda La Plante at an adjoining table, had appeared with Biggins in amateur dramatics in his adopted home town of Salisbury when she was fifteen.
We had to make do without producer Michael Codron, who failed to report to our table, and Biggins’ face collapsed through several storeys when he hopped by to find him. Still, he recovered briefly in our company, and I gave the old rogue a big hug; my arms scarcely circumnavigated his tummy and reached in vain for each other behind his bottom.
“Are you all having a good time?” he screamed. ” We were,” we screamed back — “until you showed up!” We listed our complaints. There had been far too much champagne to start with, the salmon roulade was too rich, the bangers and mash had been too tasty, the onion gravy too hot and delicious and the cheese board ridiculously varied.
And then there was the sorry matter of the forty birthday cakes, one for each table, paraded through the dining hall by the impeccable hotel staff ablaze with fireworks, covered in icing and coloured candy. What sort of a let-down was that?
Faced with these strictures and our mounting fury of delight, all the fat rascal did was chortle at the chandeliers and give an impromptu performance as Charles Penrose doing the Laughing Policeman. The cheek of it.
We were mightily relieved to see the back of him so we could get on with not enjoying ourselves. The first disappointment of the evening had been the sound of Shirley Bassey raising the roof, but she turned out to be a “pretend” Shirley Bassey, so that was alright.
Then the freakishly excellent David Bedella sang some Tony Bennett-style classics, and Kit and the Widow performed a rapid fire litany of praise for our ludicrously cheapskate host, mentioning most of the people in the room by name. What had he done to deserve this, I wonder?
So it went on, with the choice hinterland of British showbiz lining up for photographs and showing every sign of not going home for hours, possibly days, to come.
The two gays — not the Brighton belles, but Gaye Brown and Gay Soper — sparkled alongside Janie Dee, Liz Robertson, Jessica Martin, Patricia Hodge, Gloria Hunniford and Annabel Leventon (Annabel dropped by to say a special warm hello to Mel Smith and his wife Pam; Mel and Pam left soon afterwards, for some reason). And David Wood reminded me that Biggins had appeared in his Owl and the Pussycat several centuries ago, covered in fur. He’d been ticklish ever since.
On my way to the lavatory I was accosted by Lynda Bellingham for having liked Calendar Girls too much but I quickly changed the subject to reminisce about the last night we spent together in a country hotel: that was on the occasion of Biggins’s fiftieth. Where would we be for his seventieth, we mused? Denville Hall, perhaps?
That fiftieth was a smaller, more intimate affair, and other survivors at the Landmark included not only Joan and her then squeeze Robin Hurlstone (who was almost insanely anxious not to come across the scarlet diva, and was praying not to be seated anywhere near her) but also lovely Helen Worth from Coronation Street and Lesley Joseph.
Other Biggins boppers included my best friend from Oxford, Gyles Brandreth, and his publisher historian wife Michele Brown (I introduced them to each other, but not to Biggins) — Gyles assured me he would have been equally welcome downstairs with the Conservatives, despite spilling the beans about the secret society of the whips’ office during his time as an MP in the John Major years — Nichola McAuliffe in the dress she inherited from a notable West End flop, Biggins’ Southampton pantomime co-star Matthew Kelly, Regents Park theatrical grandees David Conville and Ian Talbot, and my special friend from Blackpool, Amanda Thompson, who runs and indeed owns the Pleasure Beach.
Amanda tells me they’ve had a bad year by the sea this season, but her shows will be bouncing back bigger and better than ever in two years’ time, just like jolly old Biggins himself. As we left, Celia Imrie turned up with a huge box and an empty stomach; she’d been to her son’s school play at Dulwich and missed everything, especially the pleasure of sitting next to me on our table.
Maybe that’s why she was late. And, come to think of it, why Michael Codron had taken evasive action. Well, you have to have someone to counteract the absurd amount of popularity generated by someone like Biggins. And what’s the use of a party without someone to play the pooper?