YOU’RE HOSTING AN IMAGINARY DINNER PARTY AND CAN INVITE ANYONE IN THE WORLD, LIVING OR DEAD, TO YOUR HOUSE FOR ONE NIGHT ONLY...
WHO WOULD BE ON YOUR INVITATION LIST – AND WHY?
“I’d like to go back in time and invite Anthony Hopkins and his then wife Jennie, because he and I were great friends when we worked together at the National Theatre in the 1960s. They only divorced in the last couple of years and he’s now remarried. They were very kind to me.
“Everyone was a bit of a drinker in those days. Apparently, he’s given up drinking now and is not so interesting. I always thought he was terribly funny. He used to say I was very solo, a drifter, and he used to pretend he envied my life.
“But really, Jennie was so good for him, he didn’t mean it. He was very strange and had a marvellous imagination which made him compelling. It’s a quality stars have. I haven’t seen him since 1972. Maybe he’s changed a bit.”
WHAT FOOD WOULD YOU SERVE?
“Hopkins used to like Italian food, so I would make sure he had a wonderful spaghetti carbonara, with a fantastic, big booming 13 and a half per cent red wine, with little sips of water in between. We both loved that.
“None of this 12 per cent stuff. It’s amazing the difference in impact between 12 and 13 and a half per cent. It sounds so little. It was lovely to get squiffy with Hopkins.”
WHICH MUSIC WOULD YOU PLAY?
“As I’ve now got a piano, Hopkins could play that. He’s a very nice pianist. He’d play something terribly melancholy. The thing is, when you’re drinking heavily with loving friends, is that even if you play jolly music it becomes melancholy.
“When old friends gather together, tears are not very far away. He’d play some Chopin or something like that. Sometimes he used to talk through the music and describe what he was feeling. It was wonderful.”
WHO WOULD YOU HAVE AS THE LACKEY IN THE KITCHEN?
“That’s a very hard question because you might think of somebody you didn’t like, as a way of paying them back. But when you’re with people you love, you don’t want a lackey there to overhear or witness it. So I would be the lackey. In fact, when I was with Hopkins, I was the lackey because I was always terribly impressed by him.”
WHICH AFTER-DINNER JOKE WOULD YOU TELL?
“Two Yiddisher chaps are having chopped liver in a New York restaurant. The waiter is Chinese and speaks wonderful Yiddish.
“These two chaps are very impressed and, as they leave, they say to the owner, ‘cheers Rosenberg, that was great chopped liver’.
“He says: ‘Good, I hope you’ll come again.’ And they say, ‘we will, we will, and the Chinese guy – he speaks great Yiddish.’ ‘Shh, not so loud,’ says Rosenberg, ‘he thinks he’s speaking English!’ Hopkins would laugh at that.”
HOW WOULD THIS UNLIKELY EVENT COMPARE TO THE WAY YOU NORMALLY ENTERTAIN FRIENDS?
“It would actually be an approximation. My wife, when we do have guests for dinner, is a very good entertainer and cook. I’m an excellent second man preparing things, and I do like serving people, so it would broadly be the same.
“But in the dream one I’ve been talking about with Hopkins and Jennie, that’s a fantasy in which it would be just like when we were young again.”
Thank you, Tom.
click here to GO to
Tom Baker's Article Thirteen Page
click here to GO to
Tom Baker's Article Fourteen Page
click here to GO to
Tom Baker's Article Fifteen Page
click here to GO to
Tom Baker's Article Sixteen Page
click here to GO to
Tom Baker's Article Seventeen Page
click here to GO to
Tom Baker's Article Eighteen Page
click here to GO to
Tom Baker's Article Nineteen Page
click here to GO to
Tom Baker's Article Twenty Page
click here to GO to
Tom Baker's Article Twenty-One Page
click here to GO to
Tom Baker's Article Twenty-Two Page
click here to GO to
Tom Baker's Article Twenty-Three Page
click here to GO to
Tom Baker's Article Twenty-Four Page
click here to GO to
Tom Baker's Article Twenty-Five Page
click here to GO to
Tom Baker's Article Twenty-Six Page
click here to GO to
Tom Baker's Article Twenty-Seven Page
click here to GO to
Tom Baker's Article Twenty-Eight Page
click here to GO to
Tom Baker's Article Twenty-Nine Page
click here to GO to
Tom Baker's Article Thirty Page
click here to GO to
Tom Baker's Article Thirty-One Page
click here to GO to
Tom Baker's Article Thirty-Two Page
click here to GO to
Tom Baker's Article Thirty-Three Page
click here to GO to
Tom Baker's Article Thirty-Four Page
click here to GO to
Tom Baker's Article Thirty-Five Page
click here to GO to
Tom Baker's Article Thirty-Six Page
click here to GO to
Tom Baker's Article Thirty-Seven Page
click here to GO to
Tom Baker's Article Thirty-Eight Page
click here to GO to
Tom Baker's Article Thirty-Nine Page
click here to GO to
Tom Baker's Article Forty Page
click here to GO to
Tom Baker's Article Forty-One Page
click here to GO to
Tom Baker's Article Forty-Two Page
click here to GO to
Tom Baker's Article Forty-Three Page
click here to GO to
Tom Baker's Article Forty-Four Page
click here to GO to
Tom Baker's Article Forty-Five Page
click here to GO to
Tom Baker's Article Forty-Six Page
click here to GO to
Tom Baker's Article Forty-Seven Page
click here to GO to
Tom Baker's Article Forty-Eight Page
click here to GO to
Tom Baker's Article Forty-Nine Page
click here to GO to
Tom Baker's Article Fifty Page
click here to GO to
Tom Baker's Article Fifty-One Page
click here to GO to
Tom Baker's Article Fifty-Two Page
click here to GO to
Tom Baker's Article Fifty-Three Page
click here to GO to
Tom Baker's Article Fifty-Four Page
click here to GO to
Tom Baker's Article Fifty-Five Page
click here to GO to
Tom Baker's Article Fifty-Six Page
click here to GO to
Tom Baker's Article Fifty-Seven Page
click here to GO to
Tom Baker's Article Fifty-Eight Page
click here to GO to
Tom Baker's Article Fifty-Nine Page
click here to GO to
Tom Baker's Article Sixty Page
click here to GO to
Tom Baker's Article Sixty-One Page
click here to GO to
Tom Baker's Article Sixty-Two Page
click here to GO to
Tom Baker's Article Sixty-Three Page
click here to GO to
Tom Baker's Article Sixty-Four Page
click here to GO to
Tom Baker's Article Sixty-Five Page
click here to GO to
Tom Baker's Article Sixty-Six Page
click here to GO to
Tom Baker's Article Sixty-Seven Page
click here to GO to
Tom Baker's Article Sixty-Eight Page
click here to GO to
Tom Baker's Article Sixty-Nine Page
click here to GO to
Tom Baker's Article Seventy Page
click here to return to
Tom Baker's Article One Page
click here to return to
Tom Baker's Article Two Page
click here to return to
Tom Baker's Article Three Page
click here to return to
Tom Baker's Article Four Page
click here to return to
Tom Baker's Article Five Page
click here to return to
Tom Baker's Article Six Page
click here to return to
Tom Baker's Article Seven Page
click here to return to
Tom Baker's Article Eight Page
click here to return to
Tom Baker's Article Nine Page
click here to return to
Tom Baker's Article Ten
click here to return to
Tom Baker's Article Eleven Page
click here to go to A Comprehensive INDEX of Tom Baker Article Reprintsclick here to go back to Tom Baker's Entry Pageclick here to go back to Tom Baker's Front Page
click here to POP to
TOP
Midi file this page: The Beatles: "If I Fell".