Picture, Joan Street.

Watching John Nettles in Midsomer Murders on television recently ( remember him as the copper, Jim Bergerac back in 1980s?) I was struck by how many murders there are per episode (around six, which if replicated across the UK would mean that at least 10% of the population are being murdered every year), and pleasantly reminded what a good actor, and thoroughly nice man John is.

John lives just outside Stratford in a converted 19th century barn which he bought when he moved from Jersey to join the RSC in the early 1990s. To see John on stage again I was reminded that he is an actor who spent most of his early career in the theatre and is not a graduate of the academy of acting known as The Bill

Some years ago I remember finding myself in the lounge of a hotel in Lancashire ear wigging a conversation John was having with a writer. Actually it wasn’t a conversation but a pitch by the writer for a ‘brilliant’ idea he’d had about a TV series that would feature a renegade policeman who drank too much, slept with too many women, drove an old battered car, and, much to the consternation of his superiors, always got his man. So highly original was this pitch that it was probably then that John decided to phone his agent and tell him to get in touch with the RSC, immediately.

As regular readers of my stuff will know (and mightily bored you are too no doubt) I was lucky enough to find myself in Sir Peter Hall’s 1995 RSC production of Julius Caesar, which featured John Nettles as a very cool, and very calculating Brutus. As a production it got some pretty bad notices, but if you were in the thing it was one of the most exciting, confusing, exhausting, and exhilarating theatrical experiences you were ever likely to have.

RSC spear-carriers have to be able to make costume changes very quickly and in Ceasar we had to go from being splendidly dressed senators to ragged citizens to Roman Legionnaires in a matter of minutes. Consequently the costumes for each change were laid out on the floor of the long narrow area behind the main stage with each of us assigned a dresser to help in the change. It was a terrifying and rather intimate experience but once we had done it a few times we could make those changes in less than thirty seconds and re-appear on stage without even breathing heavily. Because of the amount of kit required ( breast-plate, helmet, sword and shield, dagger, shin protectors etc) trying to be a Roman Legionnaire was the hardest work, and to help us look and act like soldiers Peter Hall decided early on in rehearsals to put us through a couple of weeks of British Army parade ground drill.

The drill sergeant Hall found was a dead-ringer for William Hartnell from Carry On Sergeant who, after making us line up and stand to attention (Hall had built a full size replica of the main RST stage in the Ashcroft Room above the Swan Theatre) gave us a thorough dressing-down for being the most slovenly, unsoldierly bunch of untrainable heaps of compost he’d ever come across.

“ You’re in the army now, my lads.” The sergeant informed us with an evil grin.

Every day for two weeks we were shouted at, made to march slowly, quickly, slowly and quickly, taught how to present arms, slope arms, and then how to present and slope arms on the march, how to fire in ranks (straight out of Zulu), and how to stand still in ranks, very still.

“ You moved!” screamed the sergeant. “ I said you moved, you with the disgusting ruddy beard!”

It eventually dawned on me that he meant me. I screamed back, “ Sorry!”

“ Sergeant!”

“ Sorry, sergeant!”

“ No one moves on parade. Is that clear?”

“ Yes, sergeant!” We all screamed back.

“ Now, I want to see you marching, and marching like you’ve never marched before. Wait for my order! Wait for it! Left turn! And by the left quick march! Left right, left right, left right…”

And then one night he didn’t turn up. Apparently he’d had a bit of a breakdown and had taken to his bed mumbling something about the declining standards of the British Army. But we could march. Look out Philippi!

Sixty-seven performances later I’ve given up marching on Philippi and was sitting in the wings eating a bar of chocolate and listening to the closing of the play, and John Nettles, as Brutus, saying his farewells…

BRUTUS: Farewell to you; and you; and you Volumnius…

But suddenly John came off stage in something of a flourish. But he doesn’t come off stage at that point, I thought. He smiled at me.

“ Alright?” he asked.

“ Yes, John, I’m fine. But shouldn’t you be on…?”

“ Hmm? On what? ”

” The stage…”

” Oh, fiddle-sticks, ” he said. Well, actually he said something much stronger starting with an ‘ F ‘.

We then heard the actor who was playing Clitus paraphrasing Brutus’ lines as if they were his own before running off stage himself and screaming from the wings:

“He has fallen upon his sword!”

John was still repeating the ‘F’ word as the other actors came off stage leaving a bewildered Mark Anthony to wind-up the play.

The audience probably thought it a very innovative way to end the play.

It cost John Nettles an arm and a leg in the pub that night.