The death last week of Norman Painting, who played Phil Archer in Radio 4’s The Archers, naturally made me think about the two occasions when I spent any length of time in his company. The last occasion was in 1993 when I visited him at his home at Warmington, near Banbury, to interview him (about what I cannot recall and the library clipping is missing).
I remember the occasion chiefly as a consequence of having had our dog Holly with me. Why I took her along is a mystery, too. Perhaps I was starting to see myself, then aged 42, as a possible successor to the celebrated Oxford journalist John Owen who had died the previous year. He went almost everywhere on his journalistic duties (imagine it now!) with a canine accomplice, first Sebastian and later Barnabas These, I think, must have been better behaved as news hounds than dear Holly. The reason I remember her being with me chez Painting is that she took it upon herself to wee, in considerable quantity, in the middle of our host’s sitting room carpet. As one well used, in radio terms at least, to the mucky world of farming, Norman made light of the episode. He cheerily told me “not to worry”, “no problem at all”, as he set about mopping up the mess. I suspect, though, that he was rather cross, Our previous lengthy meeting had been a full ten years earlier in December 1982 when I interviewed him for an article to coincide with the publication of his autobiography, Reluctant Archer.
We met at The Dewdrop in Summertown, which struck me as being a passable substitute for Ambridge’s Bull. To digress momentarily, it is a sad comment on the state of the licensing trade in Oxford – which John Owen for one would be horrified about – that The Dewdrop is now the sole surviving pub in an area of Oxford that once boasted many. The Woodstock Arms, The King’s Arms, The Red Lion, The Cherwell, The Friar Bacon – gone, all gone.
Norman had almost been a goner, too, having the previous July suffered a serious heart attack. For some moments he was technically dead in the intensive care unit at Banbury’s Horton General Hospital. Three weeks of care followed there, followed by months of recuperation at his home.
His absence from The Archers was explained by Phil’s having taken a trip to Hong Kong. During his time away, the focus of the plot had rather shifted from his fictional family – and he did not like it much.
“Might as well call it the bloody Grundys and be done with it,” was his comment, which he told me was strictly off the record. So, too, were his slightly bilious observations about Trevor Harrison, the actor behind Eddie Grundy, who was then enjoying some success as a country and western artist.
These were to the effect that having been shown the ropes, as it were, in radio terms, the young actor was now proving rather too much his own man. It was instructive to hear Trevor paying his mentor a generous tribute last week.
Speaking of the tributes, in all of them, I noted, the impression was given that Norman was always happy with his role as Phil. This is not entirely true, as was made clear in a passage from Reluctant Archer that did not go down well with some at the Beeb.
He wrote: “I am not knocking the show, but I find it hard to believe that the character I have played for 30 years should have developed into such a petty-fogging, penny-pinching misery. He has become a moaner.
“He should really be more up- market. After all, a man with his land holding should be worth a million or more these days, at least on paper.”
Norman had just penned the last words of the book when his heart attack struck. Ironically, these had been about his hopes for the future.
“My sword is still bright,” he wrote, “my will as keen as ever. I say with Browning, ‘the best is yet to be’.”
I rather doubt at the time if he expected to be rewarded with a further 27 years of living, and of playing the perhaps marginally-less-grumpy Phil.
As almost everyone has said in the past week, he will be much missed.
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