SMOOTHLY TO THE MANNER MOULDED

Sunday review sections. Plastered across the back page was ''The Old

Smoothie'' (Jameson's triple distilled) and a huge picture of Bowles

nursing a large one. We will not hold it against him, although I do

think we should be told what a man who proudly boasts of being half

Scots is doing extolling ''the exceptional smoothness'' of Irish

whiskey.

In the meantime, though, let us simply say that there is no offence

under the Trade Descriptions Act because Peter Bowles is indeed an old

smoothie. A class act. Charm personified. There aren't many big-name

actors around who would welcome you to their palatial pads of a Sunday

morning, with a glass of the finest fizz in a flute that is personally

monogrammed.

Peter Bowles? Arguably the best-known face on TV? Well, he's to the

manner born, isn't he? A bit of a toff? It all comes out in the posh

doesn't it? Actually, no. Bowles may have cornered the telly market in

upper-class bounders in blazers and turned suave, snobbish insincerity

into a lucrative sitcom art form, but he is in truth a pretty ordinary

working-class chap who happens, through a talent to amuse, to have done

rather well for himself, perhaps because of his upstairs-downstairs

childhood and a deeply thrawn desire to achieve.

His parents were in service on the Beaverbrook estate in

Nottinghamshire and the family lived in a cottage in the grounds. His

mother, a Newton Stewart lass, was brought up in Wishaw, and as a girl

trained as a nannie with the Duke of Argyll's family. ''When she came to

England, she was nannie to Lord Beaverbrook's daughters and my father

was valet to Lord Sandwich's son, Drogo Montagu, and then my father was

a sort of butler to Lord Beaverbrook's daughter and that's how my

parents met.'' When Bowles was six, his father became a chauffeur with

Rolls-Royce and the family moved to a two-up-two-down in Nottingham.

Some interviewers have made much of the tin bath and the clog shop on

the corner.

Educated at Nottingham Grammar School, Bowles was a bright boy who got

into RADA at 16, where his contemporaries were Albert Finney, Peter

O'Toole, Alan Bates, and Richard Briers. The scholarship was renewable

each term, and Bowles had to appear in front of a board every few months

to have his work assessed. The result was that while Finney et al hung

on to their flat, working-class vowels, Bowles lost his. ''I did what I

was told; I had to. It was absolutely mandatory for me to lose my

accent. I think I could have been taught in such a way, though, that I

could have hung on to my own accent and done received pronunciation like

any other accent, Cockney or Midlands or whatever.

''So, yes, I was a bit lost. I felt I lost something of myself when I

lost my accent. I denied a part of myself. Happily, though, I have

recovered from that. But, you see, I was terribly deferential to

authority then.'' Also, he points out, his parents made the most

tremendous sacrifices in order to send him to drama school, so he had to

do well. ''That was what their generation did. I first got into RADA on

a pass or entrance and there was one scholarship to be given at the end

of the first term to the best student of the 120 on the intake. My

parents could afford to send me for only that one term and my mum went

out at night to pay the fees.

''My father worked during the day and my mother worked in a hospital

at night. Then I won the scholarship which meant my fees were paid, but

they looked at it at the end of every term so I couldn't do too much

wrong. My mum still had to keep going out to work to keep me there, so

they made this huge sacrifice -- my father by not having his wife at

home with him every evening and my mother by working so very hard.''

But Bowles also worked. ''I used to wash dishes at the Grosvenor House

Hotel from seven every evening until two in the morning, then go home

and sleep and be at college at 9.30am. I thought nothing of it,'' he

recalls. ''Indeed, I enjoyed it enormously.'' Nowadays, he notes,

students send begging letters to rich and famous actors such as he in

order to pay their fees. He helps where he can, but says it is something

he would not have dreamt of doing while he was polishing plates along

with his vowels -- ''it just wasn't the sort of thing one did. How times

have changed,'' he says, popping another champagne cork with practised

ease.

As to the RADA voice, which is treated with such derision today, well,

he bemoans the fact that so few young actors can speak received

pronunciation. ''I think actors now are actually starting to speak a bit

'off', to give themselves some sort of political correctness. They seem

to think that you have more street-cred if you talk 'loike that'. The

greatest example of this, of course, is Nigel Kennedy.'' And, he asks,

elegantly crossing his long legs, stylishly encased in cream slub silk,

have I noticed that actors today have no idea how to move or how to wear

costumes? ''When I went to RADA, we were told how to sit, how to stand,

how to move. We had dancing classes. We were shown how to deal with

cigarettes and lighters and pouring tea, the whole etiquette of society

of the twenties and thirties. Nowadays, even if they have lovely

figures, they still wear their costumes as though they were sacks and

they throw their legs about all over the place. They have no idea how to

sit.''

Peter Bowles will soon be giving a masterclass in all of the above, as

well as displaying his dazzling skills as a farceur richly gifted in

comic timing, when he tours Noel Coward's 1939 comedy, Present Laughter,

prior to a West End opening. He will play the supremely egotistical

actor, Gary Essendine, ''complete with all of Coward's curlicues''.

Essendine is one of those actors so much in love with himself that if he

were chocolate he would devour himself. Surely there are no actors

around today who are that self-obsessed?

From above the rim of his champagne glass, Bowles somehow manages to

keep a straight face long enough to remark that, well, every interview

he has ever read with an actor, particularly American ones, creates the

lasting impression that actors are entirely self-obsessed. Which is

exactly what appeals to him about this play. What Coward has done, he

thinks, is to present a very true portrayal of ''the genuine neuroses of

actors. The true self-doubt.''

On the surface, Gary Essendine is an extremely selfish, arrogant man

who is always going on about his timorous belief in himself, remarks

Bowles. The result is he is always watching himself acting. And that is

actually very true of actors. They are like that. Surely not? Oh yes,

there is this thing of taking off the mask and finding another mask

underneath, and it can be quite disturbing. Nevertheless, he declares,

actors should not be taken seriously. The theatre is full of half-mad

people. And nobody who is involved in it minds one bit. ''To outsiders,

we are a very neurotic bunch. Going up for jobs and being rejected can

have quite a devastating effect, you know, so actors tend to live on

their nerves. Also, you have to retain a certain childishness. And that

can look a bit ridiculous when you are fully grown, you know.''

Surely Peter Bowles, the actor, no longer lives on his nerves? Surely

he has it all? He has been happily married for 35 years to Susan

Bennett, a former actress, and mother of his three grown-up children,

two sons and a daughter. Their enviable and rather grand seven-bedroom,

three-bathroom house is filled with exquisite furniture and a stunning

collection of modern British paintings. In the driveway where gravel

crunches expensively underfoot there are several sleek motor cars. But,

no, he does not have it all. The thing Peter Bowles so patently lacks

and longs for is credibility as a serious actor. There are still theatre

people around who see him only as an empty Savile Row suit, an actor who

can shoot a cuff as neatly as a comic punchline. And this galls him.

Tall, urbane, and extremely intelligent, 57-year-old Bowles obviously

feels that fate has bowled him a googly in the shape of TV success. It

is clear that he remains nakedly ambitious to be a successful classical

actor as well as a famous TV face. Is he still ambitious? ''Oh yes,'' he

replies, ''very much so. Because success was such a long time coming.''

He is not a man who gives up easily, he says. In his early years, he

reminds you, his career was halt and lame, it limped along. He played

villains in The Avengers and Danger Man, he gave his all in such movies

as Antonioni's Blow Up and Richardson's The Charge of the Light Brigade.

But he was truly a late starter.

On leaving RADA, he was told that because of his extreme height he

could expect to get along very nicely by playing policemen. A casting

director told him he was too tall to play Englishmen and that he should

go away and learn Spanish and Italian. Another told him he was too posh.

Then when he was in his forties, he hit the big time. He was nouveau

riche but nice in the sitcom, To the Manor Born, opposite Penelope

Keith. He starred as Major Yeates in Channel 4's first-ever drama

series, The Irish R.M., and then in another long-running comedy,

Executive Stress, which was followed by the series with James Bolam,

Only When I Laugh. He was the smoothie-chops Fleet Street gossip

columnist in Lytton's Diary, the stuck-up Judge in Rumpole of the

Bailey, and the consummate con-man in Perfect Scoundrels.

And yet, and yet. No Chekhov, no Ibsen, and no Shakespeare. None of

the roles which give your average thespian intellectual clout. ''I came

into this business expecting to be a classical actor,'' he says, barely

able to conceal his chagrin. ''All my thoughts at RADA were to be a

classical actor. But the classics are done by the big companies or by

the directors from the big companies and for reasons best known to them

I have never been asked. And I do know that one of them -- because it

has been fed back to me -- has said that it is because I have had

enormous popularity through television, and that seems to worry them. I

think for some people I have a very powerful image, and some directors

prefer to mould actors their way.

''Although I was a supporting actor until I was 43 or 44, I have

always been a bit of a maverick; I have always spoken my mind. I have

always been fearless. And I suppose that they are nervous of me, and I

suppose that, yes, I do have a very strong image.'' His answer to this

is to create his own work because the one thing he knows for sure is

that the name Peter Bowles can put bottoms on seats. He has also made

something of a second career out of putting forward ideas for entire TV

series, such as Lytton's Diary and Perfect Scoundrels, both of which he

devised.

His ambition does not stop with television, though. He has even had

the nerve to step -- brilliantly, as it happened -- into Olivier's shoes

by playing Archie Rice in John Osborne's The Entertainer. ''Some people

were rather cross about it,'' he says, looking mildly perplexed.

Opposite Michael Gambon, ''the greatest actor of the day'', he played in

Alan Ayckbourn's Man of the Moment. Last year he starred opposite

Patricia Hodge in Rattigan's Separate Tables. He has toured Simon Gray's

Otherwise Engaged, in which he starred as well as directed, and then

Gray wrote the hilarious TV comedy film, Running Late, with Bowles

specifically in mind. But we await his Uncle Vanya, his Master Builder,

with some impatience, and he hints that something so intellectually

respectable as Chekhov or Ibsen may yet be on the cards with Sir Peter

Hall directing.

Meanwhile, he has thought up two other television series, which he is

also co-producing. One is a comedy drama series exploring the myth of

the country-cottage. The other is First Loves Found about a father and

daughter who set up an agency to find other people's first loves. ''I

have always been fascinated about what has happened to my first love.

You know, where she is, how she is, if she is still alive. Just where is

she now? The idea for this series opens up a whole Pandora's box of

drama. Think of films like The Third Man or Bad Day at Black Rock, they

are about people walking into a situation and tapping someone on the

shoulder and saying, 'Excuse me, this is the past . . . ' ''

The opening 90-minute episode for this series, with Bowles playing the

leading man, has already been written. So what about his first love?

Tell me more . . . He would rather not discuss her, he says, evasively

but with characteristic charm. ''If the series is done, I will talk

about her quite a lot. Indeed, if the series is done, I hope to go on a

journey with someone who is responsible as a writer and we'll try to

find her. My first love was . . . '' he pauses, dramatically. ''Yes, it

will be a fascinating story I have to tell. Because my first love was a

very strange affair.''

* Present Laughter is at the Theatre Royal, Glasgow, from August

29-September 3.