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| From HMP to the King’s
Head |
Reformed villain Syd Golder tells Richard Hodkinson
how he abandoned crime for the theatre
QUITE a number of remarkable theatrical lives find themselves
lived out along the short stretch of Islington we know today as
Upper Street. From the nation’s favourite clown, Joey Grimaldi,
slapsticking and pratt-falling his way through the early years of
the 19th century at Sadler’s Wells to the various Attenboroughs
involved in the modern Almeida Theatre, the area’s entertainment
hub has never been short of colourful thespians.
Syd Golder, it can be said with some confidence, is more colourful
than most. It would be remarkable enough that he became a theatrical
impresario, director and actor only in his 50s. It is more notable
that he was unable to take up this artistic calling any earlier
because of the demands of the “small business I used to run”.
Syd’s small business was robbing banks. And burglary. “I
was the best ‘creeper’ in the country,” he asserts
today, though without much evident pride.
He adds: “You could have been asleep in bed and I could have
spent three hours clearing out your whole bedroom and you wouldn’t
have heard a thing.”
Since his release from prison in 1972 after serving eight years
of a 15-year stretch for armed robbery Syd became a law abiding
citizen almost by accident when, equally accidentally, he fell into
the theatrical world. He doesn’t give the impression of being
a man who would have much use for a life CV, but if he had one a
summary would read: workhouse boy, war hero, communist partisan,
pilot, crook, convict, civil rights agitator, actor, director, producer,
fundraiser, raconteur of salty tales from an inglorious youth and,
latterly, author. His theatre company, Elephant, has been resident
at the King’s Head for nearly three decades during which time
Syd has produced over 500 plays and directed 120, most of them for
a lunchtime audience and all without a penny of public funding.
“I’d just got out of the nick but I had a few quid and
I wasn’t really looking for a job. Well, not that sort of job
anyway,” he says about his theatrical beginnings. “But
I saw a ad in the local paper for a handyman at something called
RADA . ‘Course, I didn’t have a clue what the initials
stood for but I went to have a look anyhow.”
That decision was the most serendipitous of his life. He lied about
his past, was offered the job and found at the country’s foremost
acting school a liberal regime and a stimulating artistic environment
which began to distract him from his criminal inclinations.
“I began watching classes and performances – everything
except movement, dancing and singing. I didn’t have a clue
about the theatre but I’d been acting for years, standing in
the dock. I used to like to defend myself – put in some performances
that Lawrence Olivier would have been proud of. Back then I didn’t
have a clue who Lawrence Olivier was, of course.”
Syd began living the straitened lifestyle of RADA’s more conventional
students, drinking with them, sharing vermin-infested bedsits and
hiding from landlords when the rent was due.
Almost inevitably, given that he had earned a reputation as an awkward
customer even in prison, his RADA career ended messily with an incident
involving financial impropriety, threats of physical violence and
the prospect of a plunge down an empty liftshaft. Needless to say,
it was not Syd who almost did the plunging. He had to go.
But despite his being too rich for RADA’s blood, the theatrical
bug had bitten and led Syd to the stage crews of provincial theatres
and then to the National during the golden period of Peter Hall’s
stewardship.
His own company was formed initially to stage lunchtime shows at
the then South London Polytechnic and took its name from the Elephant
Theatre at which Syd’s father had worked during the time when
Charlie Chaplin was a regular performer at the south London venue.
“Things took off in the early days of Elephant,” he says.
“At one point we had six or seven shows running in different
theatres. I was behaving myself by then, of course, but I never
seemed to be far from trouble.
“I almost got myself nicked trying to promote a play called
Rape at the Spice of Life on Cambridge Circus. I was trying to drum
up an audience among the tourists shouting ‘Come and see Rape.
It’s a two-hander, lasts 25 minutes, only a quid!’ Old
bill weren’t too happy about it. Had a bit of explaining to
do.” At the age of 83 Syd is still fully active as a director
with a reputation for championing new work and as a jobbing actor
– when we speak he has just returned from shooting a TV commercial
in Switzerland. Given that much of his life story falls into the
‘you couldn’t make it up’ category he has been wise
enough to record the whole story in an autobiography, Ducking and
Diving.
Syd’s conversation is littered with references to the likes
of Brenden Behan (the two were borstal boys together), fellow RADA
student Alan Rickman, childhood friend and fellow lag ‘Mad’
Frankie Fraser. Chapters on fighting with Tito’s partisans
in wartime Yugoslavia and his ‘seven times a night’ exploits
on release from prison should also make for interesting, if uncomfortable,
reading. |
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Angelino's finest are put to the test
WE came across Angelino Wines, sandwiched between two colourful and
aggressively self-promoting Australian wine sellers, at Islington’s
London Wine Event at the end of October.
Its owner is Farrell Anglin, whose imagination was caught by a lecture
on the history of wine making at Southgate College.
FULL STORY
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