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Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Sheridan Morley R.I.P.

There's a wonderful obituary of Sheridan Morley, the writer, broadcaster and theatre critic who has sadly died at the age of 65, in the Daily Telegraph.
Morley was a kind man but could be scathing in print.

"If you can bring yourself to imagine Liberace as King Lear," he wrote after an evening at Cliff Richard's musical Heathcliff, "you will perhaps have some concept of what takes place in what is indubitably the worst musical since Mel Brooks's Springtime For Hitler."

He also had a wonderful store of anecdotes involving some of Britian's theatrical legends.

Morley recalled an occasion in the 1980s when, walking along Piccadilly with John Gielgud, they spotted Margaret Thatcher, then at the height of her powers, coming towards them. As they both knew her slightly, they stopped. Gielgud asked where she was now living. "No 10, Downing Street," replied the Prime Minister with some surprise. "Oh, you women!" exclaimed Gielgud, full of admiration. "Always so clever at buying the right kind of property!

Once, when Morley was crossing Leicester Square with Noel Coward, they saw a poster for an adventure movie starring Michael Redgrave and Dirk Bogarde entitled The Sea Shall Not Have Them.
"I fail to see why not," Coward remarked. "Everybody else has."

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