All Balls and Glitter (14 page)

I was subpoenaed to appear in court. Cecily was so upset that she couldn’t take the stand. I had to tell the whole story, which was quite nerve-racking. The court came to the conclusion that his blood alcohol level was four times above any safe limit and he
had just stumbled into the car – what was amazing was that he could walk at all.

Tragically, he had lived just across the road from where the fatal accident had happened. His family had been waiting on the other side of the street and seen him walk out into the oncoming traffic. You can imagine how distraught they were as I was describing the collision in court. I said, ‘It was like a brick through the windscreen,’ and they were shouting, ‘That’s my father. You killed my father.’ It was horrible.

Curiously, Ces has never, before or after these two events with me, had any other car accidents. After the incidents, I decided not to get my driving licence. I tried to learn when I first came to the UK and I got L-plates, but I was just too nervous behind the wheel. I don’t want to be responsible for the death or injury of anyone. That’s what bothers me about driving, and since those two accidents I’ve been a bit funny about it.

The court case came up as I was performing in one of my favourite shows of all time.
Sugar Babies
is a revue-style musical comedy, a tribute to the old burlesque era. I was in the barbershop quartet, which sang, tap-danced and acted in the comedy skits. I also understudied the MC, who was compère for the evening, played the straight man and sang a few songs to link the acts.

During the run, I was laid off work with suspected glandular fever. I’d been dieting again and had lost loads of weight, which lowered my immune system. My glands were really swollen and as one of the boys in the production had already been diagnosed with the illness, I was signed off from performing until I learned the outcome of my blood tests, in order to protect the rest of the cast. Fortunately, the results came back negative; I was just severely run down.

Then I hit another problem. While I was laid up, I ate and ate and did no exercise. Suddenly, I’d ballooned in size.

A helpful friend suggested that I attempt the Scarsdale Medical Diet, which is a high-protein, fat-free regime. I tried it, and it was
really effective. I ended up living my whole dance life on that diet.

I would have half a grapefruit in the morning, lunch was tuna with vegetables, and dinner would be a chicken breast with broccoli or green beans. I lost loads of body fat under the regime. You are only meant to stay on it for two weeks, but I was on it constantly, which was terrible in retrospect. You could have two boiled eggs a week, and five olives as your treats. Of course, I was dancing every night as well, so I slimmed down very quickly.

The Scarsdale proved a godsend. Thereafter, at any point throughout my dancing career when I got worried about my weight, I’d turn to it for salvation.

I’ve always been an all-or-nothing guy. Often, when I wasn’t eating, I would suffer from attacks of dizziness. Even on the Scarsdale, which doesn’t allow any sugar, I would get giddy spells. You are allowed fruit twice a week for lunch, on Tuesdays and Saturdays, so if my blood sugar level dropped on those days, I’d whack a banana in my gob, but what my body was really craving was carbohydrates, because I was working out so much.

The weight issue really has plagued me for my entire life. It’s horrific. At my heaviest, I have been 106 kg (16 stone 10 lb). The lightest was 72 kg (11 stone 5 lb).

I tried to keep my dance weight at 75 kg (11 stone 11 lb), but I remember, on one occasion, standing on the scales and watching the needle go to 83 kg (13 stone 11 lb). I nearly had a heart attack. I couldn’t believe how heavy I was. I’d gone up to a 34-inch waist and I thought that was an absolute disgrace. I really beat myself up about it.

The worst thing was that it didn’t take anything to make my weight start to soar.

Dancing is wonderful exercise and it seems strange that my weight could yo-yo even in the middle of an intense show. But it did. Even dancing my arse off every night, I could pile on the pounds. It drove me insane and I worried about it every single day.

Just after
Sugar Babies
, I was cast in a show called
Starkers
, in which I had to strip completely naked. After landing the role, I went home and took off my clothes in front of the mirror. I scrutinized every inch of my body. I still wasn’t happy with what I saw. The diet had worked and I was thinner, but I looked way too puny.

So, I started going to the gym; I knew I had to build my muscle tone. That’s when I began to achieve my healthiest weight. I was eating an enormous amount of food, to maintain the bulk, but it was the right kind. I would eat a whole chicken for dinner, snack on nuts, and eat some dairy products too. By the time the show opened, I was at the peak of physical fitness and happy with my body for the first time.

As a young dancer, whenever I was unsure about my future, or wanted to make a decision, I would read tarot cards. I enjoyed it. I did a sort of DIY apprenticeship for about two years and learned how to meditate on them, so I would use them as a guidance tool mostly. Occasionally, however, they have been known to throw up a prediction that comes true.

In 1987, I was living alone in a tiny one-bed apartment in Rushcutters Bay, Sydney, dancing in
Sugar Babies
. It was a particularly quiet night and no one from the production was going out for drinks, so I made my way home directly after the show.

I was wide awake, as I always am after a performance, and needed time to wind down. Generally, I have a glass of wine and eat some food before watching telly or reading, but this particular night, I thought I would do some work on my tarot reading, the studying of which took up a fair amount of time, as you have to get to know the cards and learn what each one means to you. I decided to give myself a reading.

As soon as I began, cards appeared that had never come up before. A lot of them were major arcana cards, which was not good. Everything was leading to a death or loss in the family. I
couldn’t make head nor tail of it, as I didn’t think any of my relatives were seriously ill.

Lo and behold, only two days later, my nanna Constance passed away at the age of eighty. I didn’t tell anyone about the cards’ prophecy, as at that point it may have freaked them out and, of course, it’s easy to say after the fact. I use the tarot not as a way to tell the future, but to understand the past and present.

I still love doing readings with other people and I find they open up and discuss things that they perhaps wouldn’t normally talk about. It interests me – not because I’m Mystic Meg and like crystal balls and wearing big hoop earrings, but because I really enjoy talking to people about their lives and learning how they feel about things.

In fact, it’s benefited me enormously as a director and choreographer because I can help the performers to connect with their characters and the episodes they experience. You have to appreciate what makes people’s brains work in order to direct. The more life knowledge you have, the more you can understand certain extreme situations, be they a rape scene or the motives behind a murder.

Of course, more often than not, plots are about happier things, such as falling in love, but you still have to understand the way people act when they first meet, and how silly they get, or why a person says one thing, but really means another.

I have always picked up on atmosphere easily. If I walk into a room, I can instantly tell who is sleeping with whom, who has had an argument and who is unhappy. I can tune into the aura surrounding them and generally I’m right. It’s nothing mystical – more a power of observation. I learned as a young actor to observe everything you possibly can and absorb it, so I tend to people-watch and then I come up with a whole story of what I think has happened. It’s part of being creative; you paint a picture in your head and tell a tale. The tarot is a fantastic tool in understanding why people do what they do and discovering what
might be around the corner, because you can change your future, which I love. You are responsible for your own happiness, so you don’t have to wallow in self-pity.

My attitude is that when you’re down on the wheel of fortune, there’s only one way to go and that’s up.

Life is about making a series of decisions and, for me, the tarot cards are a way of forcing yourself to take time out, reflect on the dilemma and make a choice – by yourself. At some point, we all come to a fork in the road and don’t know which way to go, and the majority of people will ring a friend or partner and talk it over, which means that they are persuaded by someone else. But that other person might want something from you in the life path they’re recommending, so I listen to myself, and my inner voice, and that’s what the cards have taught me. I take advice from people, and listen to them, but the decision is my own.

The tarot is a quiet way of evaluating, and asking yourself questions. It doesn’t tell you which way to go –
you
have to decide – but it can tell you, ‘If you take the left fork, it will lead you here. The right will lead you here. What do you want?’ Hopefully, after a reading, you discover what it is that you aspire to and as soon as you know that, you just have to decide how to get it.

When I first started out in show business, tarot really helped me to choose my path. It opened up my mind to the limitless possibilities of what I could be in life.

The one thing I never did predict was that I’d end up on a national television programme judging a ballroom competition!

‘C
ome to Paris,’ said Magatha, for the second time. He was dancing at the world-famous Lido and had been trying to persuade me to join him. I’d just finished
Starkers
and had decided to try my hand at straight acting. I couldn’t do that if I was cavorting in Paris every night.

‘There’s a contract going here. You should come,’ implored Magatha again, but I wasn’t interested.

A few days later, I was walking up to King’s Cross in Sydney and I suddenly thought to myself, ‘I could be strolling along the Champs-Elysées and speaking French right now.’

The third time he rang, I said, ‘Yes.’

I bought a tape to help me to learn French and signed an eight-month contract with the Lido. Thanks to Magatha’s recommendation of me to the creative director, I didn’t even have to audition. The night before I left Sydney, in June 1988, Mark and I threw a party in the apartment we shared and my friend Robert Berry gave me a spectacular Eiffel Tower cake, with Lido-like feathers sticking out of the top.

Getting off the plane at Charles de Gaulle International Airport, I was horribly jet-lagged, but very excited. I’d been overseas before, of course, with Mr X, but I’d never been to a foreign-speaking country, so it was quite bizarre. It felt strange that I couldn’t just walk into a shop and ask for something.

Although I’d listened to my tape, I couldn’t understand
anything or speak French very well. The lessons had been full of words and phrases like ‘
Le douanier
’, which means ‘customs official’, and ‘
Je n’ai pas un passeport
.’ How often does anyone need to say, ‘I don’t have a passport’? As time went by, I learned pidgin French at the Lido, but when I arrived, I couldn’t talk to anyone or request a single thing.

I felt very isolated. In Paris, in the eighties, the people weren’t very English-friendly and hardly anyone spoke the language. It was quite a challenge for me to get by. The hardest thing was having your own apartment because, if something went wrong, you had to sort it all out in French. It’s not easy having a conversation about plumbing in a language you hardly know!

My flat was absolutely tiny. It comprised one room with a bed and a kitchenette, which had two little rings on a hob for cooking, and there was a separate bathroom. It was in the 15
^th
Arrondissement, which isn’t too far from the Eiffel Tower. It was the only place I could afford. Most of my other friends, including Magatha, were in the 9
^th
, so I really wanted to live there, but I didn’t think it was worth trying to find new accommodation for just eight months. I’d inherited the apartment anyway, in a manner of speaking. Flats for the Lido cast got passed on: when one person left, another moved in.

Despite the size of my Paris home, I really enjoyed living by myself. As there was no TV and little to do, I wrote a lot more and sent countless letters to everyone at home. You’d be forgiven for thinking that this letter writing was my sole way of expressing myself in English while I was away, but in fact the rest of the cast were largely American and Australian and we only ever spoke in English, except when we were communicating with the dressers. That’s why it was difficult to learn French; there was just one native girl in the entire company.

During rehearsals, Magatha threw a party at his place. I drank way too much – a whole bottle of cheap cooking brandy, so my good friend later informed me. The next day, I was doing a
number where I had to run on stage carrying a palm tree, climb up to the top and then sing – or mime – ‘Happy Holiday’. I reached the top of the tree and thought, ‘Oh my God, I’ve got to go and lie down.’

I staggered back to my dressing room and was groaning, ‘It must be food poisoning. I have never been this ill in my entire life.’

It was alcohol poisoning, sadly. I was so incapacitated that I had to be sent home. What a great start to my Lido career – luckily, the opening night went without a hitch.

While the incident didn’t stop me from partying, I never made myself that sick again – although I did have a long, boozy lunch once that almost led to disaster. It had been my intention to have a bit of a kip before the show, but, inevitably, we all kept drinking. Then I went to work. In between the dances, we had to run up a flight of stairs, swap outfits and run straight back down again. I was so slaughtered that I couldn’t do the costume changes; one of the other dancers, whom we called Olive, had to dress me.