Michael and His Grandmother

From "The Ray Martin Show."

Ray Martin: But you mentioned your Grandma, going along. She was obviously, she's the critical factor in your whole life, isn't she?

M: Yes, My grandmother was the one that told me I should sing and I said but Nan..Y'know, I'm making people laugh, don't you li..she'd LOVED Some Mothers, she'd just used to sit there and she was proud, the neighbors suddenly y'know all the neighbors were knocking on her door, she was never lonely. And uh mind you then I did a series after that called Chalk and Cheese which I think came out here for a brief stay. And I grew a beard and played this really rough guy and she said, "I'm sorry, but I don't know why you did this? I don't see anything FUNNY in it, and I can't watch it." And we'd sit there watching television like sitting there like that and she'd be in front of the telivision to the side facing me and she wouldn't look at the program, so you've got friends 'round watching the....and she's just sitting there going... for half an hour. She's a very strong minded lady. But she was RIGHT, it ran for 7 episodes and that was the end of that. But when she came to the theater where I was doing Billy, Drury Lane Theater, and I had this fantasy sequence in Billy Liar. It's enormous theater, great history, and I'm standing there and my family run on and with machine guns in a fantasy sequence and they all machine gun me and I suddenly wake up and say, "Aw piss off the lo' o' ya." And I suddenly hear from the Royal Box.. "Michael!! Michael!! I've never heard you use language like that in my LIFE! If your mother was alive to hear this"....and I'm sitting there and I'm in the middle of this show and all the guys with machine guns are going hohaha and I'm going, I'm dying... I'm dying.

Ray: And there's granny.

M: And there's granny up in the Royal Box and she got a round of applause and she said, "Thank you, thank you," and sat down, she never knew.

Ray: Did she ever come again?

M: Oh yes, I mean, I couldn't keep her away. At this time her sight was going but her hearing was just fine. And she sat..it was a play called Flowers for Algernon which was done as a movie called Charley with Cliff Robertson about a mentally handicapped man and a mouse and the mouse was.. was turned into a genius by these.. these injections and it's a long scientific process and the man then follows. And then slowly he regresses and ends up back where he started as a mentally handicapped, seriously mentally handicapped man. It's a beautiful story and very tender. And in the middle of the building, becoming a genious, there's no orchestra, the orchestra's behind, and I'm right down on the edge of the stage sitting singing to Cheryl Kennedy, my leading lady, and RIGHT there in the front row is Nan... and I can feel, I know she's there, she's just sitting, looking up, adoringly, I can FEEL it, I just can feel it, I didn't need to look. And I had to sing "War and Peace," a synopsis of War and Peace and Gulliver's Travels in 6 minutes. This is the hardest number I've ever sung and ever will have to sing most probably. So I start it and I sing and I sing and I sing and da da and Natasha this and that. I finish the song, and this long note goes on and on and on and the band keep going and I hold it until I run out of breath, 45 seconds, and then my next line to Cheryl is Did I do good? And I heard..."You did WONDERFUL, darling! You were Wonderful! " But...but... but it's not gonna run! All in the middle of the show! and we came off in six weeks! Amazing lady! And right up to the end when she went, the last thing she said to me was... no matter what I said about playing comedy or anything she says, "You have to sing, you have a lovely voice."

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