Michael Simkins: Only the posh can afford to begin an actor’s life

Sir Peter Bazalgette’s warning about the predominance of posh schools (and Eton in particular) in delivering the current crop of young British actors will give older luvvies plenty to talk about as they microwave their heat ’n’ serve lasagne in the green rooms of theatres across Britain.

Once upon a time the principal qualification for getting an acting job was to know how to step through a pair of French windows or smoke a Balkan Sobranie. Then in 1956 came Osborne’s seminal Look Back In Anger, and overnight the fruity vowels of the Home Counties were replaced by the dialects of towns such as Salford and Leeds as an entirely new breed of actors took centre stage. Now, it appears, the wheel is turning full circle.

Bazalgette points out that while only seven per cent of children attend fee-paying schools, an unnatural preponderance seem to get leading roles on stage, film, and television. Yet perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised at the latest swing of the cultural pendulum.

I attended a state school in Brighton in the 1970s. Having appeared in several school plays I was summoned by my economics teacher, who having heard I had a talent for acting, pressed a crisp five-pound note into my hand (equivalent to nearly £50 now) and instructed me to use it to travel up to London with a friend of my choice to see a play at Rada. Nowadays any teacher attempting an act of similar philanthropy would probably be reported.

After my successful audition, my course was funded by my local education authority, which in addition to paying all my fees threw in an annual rail season ticket and living expenses: all of it gratis. But with state education now predicated on obtaining decent exam results in core subjects such as science, technology, engineering and maths, any cultural activity regarded as slightly off-piste is too often forced to fend for itself.

Then there’s the sheer quality of drama facilities at private institutions. Private schools, able to tap rich benefactors, now boast theatre facilities that wouldn’t look out of place on the South Bank or the Barbican. No freezing classroom or hastily cleared dining hall for them in which to strut their stuff. Instead, they enjoy purpose-built drama studios with sophisticated lighting systems, soaring fly towers and sound systems out of your average multiplex.

And when all is said and done, who except the wealthy would contemplate a career in such an over-subscribed profession? Back in 1978, entrance to the business was still strictly regulated, and the annual Spotlight directory, with the mugshot and contact details of every British actor, ran to a mere four volumes. Now you’d need to build a studio theatre with strengthened shelves just to house the compendium, so bloated has it become.

With the average actor allegedly earning less than £5,000 a year, it’s too often only those who can rely on parental help who can even contemplate a tilt up the greasy pole of the stage.

When, in his peerless critique of the middle classes, Joking Apart, Alan Ayckbourn wrote the line, “Some are born with a silver spoon in their mouths — you, Richard, seem to have an entire canteen of cutlery,” he little realised quite what artistic resonance his words would one day have in the profession he has for so long adorned.