The man with the misleadingly doleful feataures has blossomed as one of television's most popular faces. Here, he talks to Valerie Ward about his secret passion.
Geoffrey Palmer is a man with
a passion. For f1y fishing!
Hooked he may be, but he contains his obsession with the kind of calm with which he has portrayed many a fictional character. You soon discover that behind the familiar, misleadingly doleful features is a self-effacing chap with a charming sense of humour, a ready smile, and an attractive, light laugh that occa- sionally erupts into a giggle.
As Geoffrey himself remarks with a dead-pan expression,”I am clearly not thought to be enjoying myself and am always being told, ‘Cheer up, it may never happen’, and ‘It can’t be that bad’. People often seem to think I’m miserable, but I’m not.”
On the other hand, there are also people who stop him to thank him for the pleasure his work has given them.”It’s very touching,” he says.
All of which highlights the hallmark of Geoffrey’s talent for comedy — his skilled underplaying for laughs. But he doesn’t confine himself solely to comedy. In a recent Inspector Morse episode he came to a sticky end as a nasty college master. And he was impressive as a Whitehall mole in Alan Bennett’s award- winning A Question of Attribution.
Over the years, he has been in some of television’s finest comedy programmes including The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin, Butterflies, The Lost Song, Fairly Secret Army, Executive Stress, Hot Metal, the small-screen versions of Alan Ayckbourn’s Absurd Person Singular and Season’s Greetings, and currently As Time Goes By, with Dame Judi Dench.
“Judi is sensational to work with,” says Geoffrey warmly. “You’re in no way aware that you’re with this distinguished actress who’s played just about everything an actress can ploy, and with anybody who’s worth mentioning. She’s a great giggler during rehearsal, and like the rest of us, she occasionaily doesn’t quite get the lines right.”
Recording the most recent series, Geoffrey was thrilled to find that the schedule meant he didn’t miss out on the best months of the fishing season (which runs from April to September). In fact, his tongue is not altogether in his cheek when he says that he needs to work from time to time to support his hobby. “I fish for trout, and I like to do it on rivers, which can make it a little expensive.”
Geoffrey has been "potty about fishing” since his wife Sally suggested he take it up a little over four years ago, because she felt he’d been working too hard and needed a relaxing interest. The London-born son of a chartered surveyor, he has never acquired the knack of relaxing by being idle. “Maybe it’s something to do with a puritanical background but I felt it was naughty to sit and do nothing,” he says. In the past, be- tween acting jobs, he’d help out with household chores, grow vegetables (as he still does), and do odd jobs around the lovely house in Buckinghamshire where he and Sally live.
A fishy tale indeed
The closest he came to “switching off” was by listening to music, or going for long country walks. In fact, until he was married 30 years ago, Geoffrey had never lived in the country. But he swiftly grew to appreciate the delights that nature has to offer.
“Sally knew that I was interested in learning to fish, so she spoke to a mutual Triend who’s a keen fly fisherman, and he suggested giving me a couple of casting lessons as a Christmas present. It’s totally absorbing and requires a lot of concentration,” he enthuses. "There’s quite a degree of skill involved that I haven’t yet mastered. Also, it satisfies the hunting instinct, I suppose.”
Geoffrey mainly fishes on the River Test in Hampshire, and on the Kennet, which runs through Berkshire and Wiltshire. But his tale of the one-that-nearly-got-away is set on the River Tweed. “Last October, just below the village of Coldstream, I caught a 20-pound salmon. The reel fell off the rod and I expected to lose the fish. But the wonderful ghillie who was with me put the reel back on. At that point, the salmon had stopped struggling, and we landed it.”
Now, with the season closed, one wonders how he’s coping. He smiles brightly and says, “Oh, I do what really boring fisherman do. I get a few hooks, set them in a vice, and sit tying bits of fur and feather around them to make flies.
“I think Sally wishes she could find something as absorbing for herself,” adds Geoffrey. But perhaps she wouldn’t have the time. When their children, Charles and Harriet, were still at school, Sally worked as a health visitor. Later she took an Open University degree, and she is now working as Arts Projects Officer at Westminster and Chelsea Hospital in West London.
Like many an actor, Geoffrey got his first taste of the profession at school. “I was talked into appearing in three school plays. Then, at the time, I was demobbed from National Service with the Royal Marines. I was going out with a girl who was in the local amateur dramatic society. To stay with her I joined, too — although I’d never seriously considered acting as a career.
After working for a year in a firm of import-export merchants, and finding it as stimulating as watching paint dry, an accountant friend got him an equally unthrilling job. But the friend had a cousin who was an actor; a man who laughed at life and seemed to have no concern for tomorrow. To Geoffrey, aged 21, that unfettered, unpredictable way of life seemed utterly compelling.
He was soon writing round to theatre companies asking, “Can I make the coffee and sweep the stage?” None of them replied. So he wrote again asking, “Can I do it for nothing?”
“So I really did sweep the stage, and I’d get sent out to find such things as a Burmese god, or a pair of size 15 army boots. After a while they paid me £1 a week.”
Geoffrey’s request for a further increase was rejected. Instead, he was invited to make his stage debut playing an ambulance man who had to carry Dame Flora Robson off into the wings. He looks back on those days with affection, but is glad they're over. “Please, please — I don’t ever want to be 20 or 25 years old again!”
Why? “Oh, all the business of the sex war and trying to find a mate. I think the game is agony, unless you’re adept at it, or think you are. I’m so glad I’m through all that.”
Much to his re!ief, and joy, Geoffrey withdrew from the game nearly three decades ago when he was working in Manchester on the series Family Solicitor. The wife of the couple he stayed with kept talking about her sister Sally, who was a nurse. One day she came to visit.
“Sally was the first and only person I ever wanted to marrry,” he says. “I proposed to her and she said no. But in the end she said yes.”
By that stage he was easing out of rep, where he was “a big fish in a small pond, which is nice because you don’t realise how small the pond is when you’re in it”. But was ambitious to swim in broader waters? He shakes his head. “I went into acting because I thought it would be better than working in an office. It’s a very nice way of life, but only because I’ve been extremely lucky. I’m really a bit retarded where ambition is concerned.”
In 1971, Geoffrey was working alongside Ralph Richardson in the John Osborne success, West of Suez. Later, among other West End appearances, he was directed by Laurence Olivier in Eden End, and by John Gielgud in Private Lives.
West of Suez was the play that opened doors for Geoffrey and ultimately led to appearances in countless popular television series. This, in turn, led to his being cast in company with the late Leonard Rossiter in The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin. As Jimmy, Reggie’s scrounging and caddish ex-Army brother-in-law, Geoffrey transformed a supporting role into such an effective scene-stealer that writer David Nobbs developed the character for him to play in the eccentrically hilarious Fairy Secret Army.
Butterflies, by Carla Lane, was the series that established him in the hearts of the public, bringing him nationwide recognition as Wendy Craig’s amusingly harassed husband, Ben.
In the wake of the programme’s enormous popularity, Geoffrey was invited to do a voice-over for a washing powder commercial. He did a test, and was told he sounded terrific. These days, of course, his distinctive tones commend many a product to us. Who else could make Vorsprung durch Technik sound catchy? And yes, he does drive that make of car.
Looking ahead
And so, what of the future? A third series of As Time Goes By is on the cards, along with other television possibilities. “People often ask me "What do you want to play?”
Geoffrey explains. “I don’t want to play anything, really. Well, I’d quite like to do some Chekhov, as I did in the middle period of my career. A couple of years ago I did a play at the National Theatre called Piano, by Trevor Griffiths, and that was an adaptation of Chekhov’s first play. But to be quite honest, I’m too scared to do Shakespeare.
“My agent says, ‘A challenge will do you good, dear.’ But I don’t want too many challenges. I don’t want too much trauma in my life.”
Or could it be that Geoffrey would rather be angling than acting?
“You’re absolutely right,” he says.
“Working at the National was perfect because very few of our performances fell on a Wednesday, which is the day I fish on the Test. The Great Prompter in the Sky obviously knew I wanted to go fishinq!”
Thanks to Maree Wilson for sending this article which appeared in the March, 1993 edition of Woman and Home (UK).