Behind the hang-dog expression, Geoffrey Palmer should be pretty cheerful. His career--from Butterflies to a new television series this week to yet another of A Fairly Secret Army next month -- is secure, his marriage happy, his future assured. So what's he got to be grumpy about? Suzanne Thomas investigates.Palmer, face red from the blisterings cold outside, ponders the surroundings of the West End hotel lounge. "Now, the last time I was in here,’’ he mutters, “I was trying to sell spaghetti to the chef..."
Today, the actor who seems to be on the TV screen more than ever this year, has the airof a rather bemused businessman. And completely at odds with his high profile there is, too, a real desire to be anonymous. "It would be lovely not to have to be interviewed," he says bluntly. Later, when explaining why he will not give interviews at home, he reasons gruffly: "Why should I have everyone seeing inside my house?"
You convince yourself that it’s not that he wants you to feel uncomfortable but because he does. His manner may be slightly brusque but he’s pleasant and very amusing — in a crusty kind of way. And when the face he himself describes as "hanging about like a bloodhound" does crease into a smile, it’s genuine.
This week he begins in a new TV series, Hot Metal — "it’s about newspaper and it’s meant to be funny" — and next month returns as Major Harry Kitchener Wellington Truscott. Chap who started TV’s A Fairly Secret Army. Trying to save the nation from namby-pamby influences. Talks in short, sharp sentences. Bit like Geoffrey Palmer. Then there’s a new series with Penelope Keith being made this spring.
Yet it’s still Butterfiles, the long running series in which he plays opposite Wendy Craig, with which Palmer, now 58, is most associated.
It's all something of a trial. "Well, I’d much rather walk around and nobody say, 'Oh, hello, aren’t you Wendy’s husband?'' he says wearily. Or, ‘Haven’t you brought Wendy with you?’ when you go into a restaurant. Ha Ha. Ha,’ he barks. Thinking they’re the only person who’s said it.’’
His family—Sally, his wife of 22 years and their two grown-up children, Charles and Harriet— find his fame a little tiresome, too. But there’s no sympathy from Geoffrey. ‘‘They’d complain, ‘It’s awful when you go out and people point at you.’ They were kind of blaming me — which made me very short-tempered,’’ he glowers. ‘‘Because it only happens to them once every four months or so, but it could happen to me every day. So no, the family doesn’t like it. But they realise they’d better not say it to me because I’ll hit ‘em.’’
He admits, with neither pride nor embarrassment: ‘‘Yes, 1 can get pretty bad-tempered — and I sulk. I suppose the stock thing would be that I am tidier than my wife. That can be the cause of friction. She will take a cup of coffee, and the spoon will be here and the cup over there and the coffee’s there and there’ll be a bottle left out and fridge open — you know,’’ he says, flailing his arms. But nobody knows if I have a cup of coffee because I put everything neatly fussed away and washed up. I’m a bit of an old woman in that way,’’ he adds apologetically.
Sally was a nurse and is now doing an Open University degree. She’s a kind of eternal student — shell still be doing some bloody course when she’s 60. It's quite stimulating to live with but it’s also, ‘Oh God, have I got to do. the washing-up again!’
They married in 1963 when Geoffrey was 35. Yes, left it late in life,’’ he says and acknowledges that he is glad he did so.
Earlier, when I thought it time I should get married, it was the thing to do. Better propose in case people thought I was queer or something,” he adds in a furtive whisper. “But if I had married, then — and liked some girls very much — I’m sure I would have been treating them in a fairly beastly way. And I can be fairly beastly.’’ The hang-dog expression drops even further.
When the subject returns to. Sally, his face lightens. ‘I’m very lucky,’’ he says in a matter-of-fact way. ‘‘I mean, I don’t think there is any one else I would rather be married to. I’d hate the thought of my wife not being there — because she’d left me or gone to the thing in the sky—you know” he says awk- wardly. ‘‘I don’t know how I’d face that..."
The family lives in Buckinghamshire and usually travels to London by train, while Geoffrey lives out the irony of becoming increasingly well-known and trying to remain unrecognised. ‘‘I try to pretend I’m not there’’ he says. ‘‘And I also wear dark glasses — I don’t mean ostentatious glasses he adds hastily. ‘‘Just old AA anti-sun glasses.’’
He is glad Butterflies ended when it did. “Well, Wendy’s friendship with that other man — I mean at that age you either go to bed or you don’t. That and the fact that she was such a spoilt woman,’’ he says, talking not of Wendy Craig but the character she portrays. ‘How dare someone appear with a husband, two grown-up kids, the Volvo outside, someone to do the housework, no job; and whinge on about how tedious life is,’’ he grumbles, while describing what must indeed seem unutterably tedious to some women.
His own career hiccoughed to its present stage after National Service in the Royal Marines, a spell as a salesman with an import-export company — hence the spaghetti episode — and as a humble helper with a theatre company. Butterflies and his role as Jimmy in The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin, clinched his success.
Now his son is also working television — "as a runner, they call it. Give Dad work in a few years' time, I hope,’’ he says smiling. Daughter Harriet is taking a year off after A-levels before going to polytechnic. Their father would prefer his children not to become actors but doesn’t feel quite as adamant as he used to.
‘‘When started only people at the Labour Exchange were actors. But now, with unemployment..."
"Mind you, I’ve never been proud. I took any job that turned up,’’ be says. ‘‘I was always doing tiny bits in everyone else’s situation comedy when it was really rather a dirty word.’’
He denies being ambitious and it’s not hard to believe him. ‘‘I’m just grateful, that’s all,’’ he says. If anything, he seems embarrassed by his success, and horrified at some of the things it can bring. Take chat shows: ‘‘I refuse to do them,’’ he says vehemently.
‘‘Although I think I might be lumbered if I’m not careful," he groans. ‘‘On television I sit there crossing my legs, looking gauche, while everyone else is being funny.
‘‘And I wouldn’t appear on Blankety Blank or any of those godawful things that actors appear on. Terrible! But if they want to do it, that’s fine,’’ he relents. The discomfort apparently also extends to his family. Talking again of his children, he says: ‘‘I suppose when they were very young, they might have been quite proud of me — then I think they just got embarrassed. Really rather not mention it. They don’t want anyone to know they’re anything to do with me. "I don’t think it’s because they hate me,’’ he says thoughtfully, ‘‘but I never went to my daughters last school, for instance. She didn’t want me to. She just wanted to be her — not, ‘Cor!, Look at that bald old coot — he’s on television.’"
Which is probably akin to Geoffrey Palmer’s real thoughts about himself. But, happily, nobody else‘s.
Thanks to Maree Wilson for sending this article which appeared in the February 15, 1986 issue of Woman.