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John Mortimer |
Age hasn’t withered Johnnie’s sharp mind
John Mortimer’s life as a writer and a lawyer has been stranger than fiction. Tom Foot speaks to him as he prepares to take to the stage
THE affable John Mortimer comes to the King’s Head this week to tell stories and jokes about his life. The former QC, who will read poetry and tell jokes, is confined to a wheelchair and confesses his frustrations of old age.
But his mind is still alive with the kind of youthful mischievousness and imagination that has made him a popular icon of the Left.
Mortimer, a prolific writer and dramatist, has always written from experience.
“All that I know is myself,” he reflects in his raspy voice.
His hugely popular Rumpole of the Bailey stories were based on his career as a top barrister.
His first job was as a screenwriter making documentaries about World War II – he wrote a novel Charade in 1947 based on that time. He has written dozens of plays including the recently revived A Voyage Around My Father, about his father, first at the Donmar theatre before transferring to the West End’s Wyndhams.
He once saw Laurence Olivier perform the play for a film.
“I watched Olivier perform the death of my father – in the actual bed he died. That was pretty odd,” he says.
Mortimer’s recent life history has been stranger-than-fiction.
Two years ago, aged 81, he discovered he had a son after a secret affair with the actress Wendy Craig.
“He’s called Ross and he lives in London,” he says. “I see him all the time. He is a tremendously nice person. I found out in 2004. Someone was writing a book about his mother Wendy Craig. She rang me up and asked if I would be embarrassed. When I said why? She said ‘because he’s your son’.
“Her husband knew from an early age. I was told two years ago,” he adds without the slightest sense of bitterness.
Mortimer took over the family law firm when his inspirational father went blind. But before that he had aspirations to be an actor.
“At school we voted for who would get which parts,” he says.
“There was a guy called Mark who we all thought was a shoo-in for the lead. I remember coming back from holiday to find that I got the part. I was talking on television last year and I met a man who said he knew Mark and he’d had a terrible life, failing everything. He put it all down to being chosen as Bolingbroke.”
Mortimer worked as a probate divorce lawyer for his family firm, where he claims to have “discovered” a young Geoffrey Robertson, now QC. Mortimer became a QC himself in 1966 bringing a different caseload to his father’s chambers.
He says: “I remember one divorce case where a man tried to prove his wife was committing adultery. He couldn’t find a man to help him with this so he dressed up in a fake beard and crept into bed and took a photo.
“He was sent to prison for perverting the course of justice in the end. Apart from that it was pretty dull. When I became a QC we got murders and interesting stuff like that.”
Strangely, considering his colourful life, he reveals he has not kept a diary.
His heroes include the poet Byron – his King’s Head performance includes a reading of the poem where the Romantic poet witnessed an execution.
He believes Byron’s mocking, scornful style is better than railing against the world.
His Rumpole stories, he explains, have always used laughter to expose holes in the political agenda.
He says: “The last Rumpole was about civil liberties and the way we are just giving them away to the terrorists. It’s extraordinary you can be taken to court without charges these days. I do think it is the greatest challenge facing us – the breaking up of the legal system I mean. It’s like the Magna Carta had never been signed.”
The next Rumpole, he reveals, is about Asbos – anti-social behaviour orders – with the ageing barrister being slapped with the controversial civil order for smoking cigars and drinking in court.
“Asbos are ridiculous,” he exclaims. “I heard one woman got one for singing in the bath.”
A lifelong Labour voter he confesses that Blair or Brown are unlikely to get his vote in the next election.
He says: “I don’t know what I’ll do. The Conservatives bring me out in a rash.”
Mortimer has been to the King’s Head on many occasions, performing there last year in a fundraising event to restore the theatre’s roof and again at the memorial for the theatre’s late great impresario Dan Crawford. He says: “Dan was charming – I met him a few times. He was a wild Irishman. The King’s Head has a very good reputation because of him. It is an absolute pleasure to perform there.”
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