The Finest Green Salads Known to Humanity
The waitress, clearly besotted by the celebrated actor seated opposite me, puts gentle pressure on the circular black pencil in her left hand and commits to paper the words he delivers with a theatrical gesture: "Get the man some bangers and mash".
Flustered, 15 minutes late and with last season's checked shirt stuck to my back with sweat, I catch my breath and realise my status perfectly encapsulates the antithesis of my dining partner.
For Paul McGann is an actor who can stall a car and make it look cool; it's a trick he memorably pulled off in The Oxford Student's number one cult film, Withnail and I - to the opening bars of Hendrix's All Along The Watchtower. And here he sits, the faintest hints of a Liverpudlian accent occasionally penetrating his muffled, enthusiastic delivery - further distorted by the effects of a strikingly expensive green salad. But there's a distraction.
"What do you call her, Peter? That beautiful girl from Texas? The Scottish one with the black hair? God, she's gorgeous."
In fairness to McGann, Sharleen Spiteri's entrance must have provided a welcome, if brief, respite - a healthy diversion from my relentless Withnail and I-based interrogation. It is my favourite film.
Crafted ('made' is too crude a term) in 1986, the film details a fortnight in the life of two 'resting' (unemployed, and unemployable) actors living in 1969 Camden Town squalor, including their brief sojourn to 'the country'. It is the masterpiece of Bruce Robinson, who apparently based McGann's character, 'I' (or Peter Marwood), on himself.
It was RADA-trained McGann's first serious acting job, and is the work of which he remains most proud.
"As a job of work it's still the best thing I've ever been in", he tells me. "It's a right of passage thing really. We have here this marriage between a nearly man and his friend. And it's not the action or the acting; it's the writing. The script of Withnail should be a model for any aspiring scriptwriter. It was ready to be made. Ready, not cobbled together.
"It's an awful premise for a film. No violence, no women, no sex. It's just two young blokes talking. You know, that's it."
McGann has a wonderful habit of allowing his words to be slurred by the force of his gutturally plosive enthusiasm. Matters become gloriously acute when he begins to speak of the brilliance of Robinson.
"If you read a lot of scripts now the dialogue is interchangeable. Bruce's scripts aren't. There is proper characterisation, people have to realise this. There's wordplay, it's a lyric, when, for instance, Danny says things like: 'If I spiked you, you know you'd been spoken to.'" McGann impersonates Danny, the drug dealer played by Ralph Brown, so precisely I have to pinch myself. It's hard to resist a mutual reeling off of the film's many classic lines (personal favourites include: "Stop saying that Withnail, of course he's the fucking farmer" and "We've gone on holiday by mistake"). Yet this is an interview; I somewhat begrudgingly permit him to elaborate on Danny's role.
"Danny is the political character of the piece. But he's been brain bummed by all this stuff, it's not worth a cent. It's set in the sixties and it shows".
Robinson is clearly a hero to McGann, but the production of Withnail was less than smooth, and was a surprisingly serious process given the incessantly comedic nature of the end product.
"It was only in the Lake District when I realised, 'this guy's a fruitcake'. Bruce stood on a chair on the first day in front of the whole crew - about 70 people - and said he was new to directing, and shouted: 'For fuck's sake, if I'm going to make a mistake, pipe up'. They loved him for it.
"Making comedy is such a serious business. You know if they laugh now we're dead later".
McGann is so completely charming and energetic that it took me until a few hours after the interview to recognise just how much bile he had reserved for an Executive Producer of Withnail, Denis O'Brien, who, according to McGann, pushed for filming to be halted after seeing a rough edit of the first week's efforts.
"It's terrifying to think it almost didn't get made. Denis looked at the films and said: 'This isn't what you told me. What I'm seeing isn't funny'. The thing was, we were acting serious. I think what he expected was 'acting funny'.
"We would have worked for nothing, and that goes without saying. But all the pressure was on us, and we felt that pressure.
"The pair of us were like pigs in shit - and we have been ever since. You're always fond of the first film you did".
To McGann, there is nothing more funny than working on a serious drama, or more serious than making comedy. He draws from a seemingly vast pool of hilarious anecdotes, including the very serious nature of getting Richard E. Grant, allergic to alcohol, sufficiently drunk to play the permanently-inebriated Withnail. He tells how the café scene, in which Withnail and Marwood offend the elderly tea drinkers of Penrith, had to be re-shot many times from different angles, due to the sensitive OAP extras walking out in disgust - as well as detailing the fun he had with brothers Joe, Stephen and Mark whilst filming a tragic drama about the Irish potato famine, The Hanging Gale.
Paul McGann is a brilliant actor - a true gentleman, replete with spark, originality, wit and humility. As we part our ways he lets a backward glance from the stunning waitress go unnoticed, and takes my number instead.
"We must go for a drink the next time I'm in Oxford - I'll be in
touch." I've a feeling it'll be two large gins, two pints of cider. Ice in the cider, naturally.
14th Oct 2004