An Evening with Terence Stamp

I had the pleasure of Terence Stamp's company recently when I went to see his new film Song for Marion at the Cameo Cinema, and what excellent company he turned out to be, looking very fit and handsome for his seventy four years. Just a youngster really. He's a superb raconteur. I  reckon he could have gone on for much longer than the forty minutes the Cameo deemed fit to allow him. How often do the idiots think he's going to be coming to entertain us? An hour should have been the minimum, and even that would not have been enough.

He used to share a flat in London with Michael Caine in the sixties when they both started acting. Which seems to have been a lot of fun. Caine told him he was pleased to have another Londoner on the scene as he was fed up with all the Northeners, Welsh and Scots he was having to work with. Which sounds par for the course from Caine. He spoke about some of his best films, or at least the ones the audience asked him about, including Billy Budd, Far from the Madding Crowd and The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. He says he had to be convinced about the latter but once he got into his dress he loved it. I reckon Priscilla and Far from the Madding Crowd were his best movies, not that I've seen them all, but what does that matter between friends.

I enjoyed Song for Marion too, though not one of the great movies of the year, well worth a couple of hours of anyone's time. He plays Vanessa Redgrave's grumpy husband, and looks after her as she dies of cancer. She joins a choir and he thinks they are all nuts. Once she dies of course he joins the choir and I'm sure you can guess the rest. Vanessa made me cry and then Terence gets me going again. I really will have to do something about all this lachrymose business. Must get a grip, or maybe its too late to do anything about it now. When one is reduced to tears by the toys in Toy Story 3, what hope is there.

Christopher Eccleston was good as the son, with a difficult relationship with Stamp. Probably another movie could have been made out of that. So all in all a very good movie, heartwarming, and an excellent evening with the main man.

I was going to tell you about No and the times I saw Wilco Johnson, who has just announced that he is dying of cancer. But more of that later.