‘Nanny’ was a very good idea and structure for a series. It sold around the world and was also fun to make. In all I directed 110 TV shows and only once did I have a problem with an actor and it was during ‘Nanny’.
The scene was Nanny and the four children having dinner in the nursery with their aged grandmother played by an aged star who shall remain nameless and only had this one scene. As the youngest child was only 4 years old by law I only had half an hour to work with her. Rehearsals went fine but on the take the grandmother suddenly stopped half way through. She said she wanted to start again. We started again and again she stopped questioning the lighting, which was the same as rehearsals and was fine anyway. I rushed down on to the studio floor and stormed onto the set then quietly and with a smile asked her to leave the set as I wanted to talk to her. Once off the set I let rip. “It is obvious what you are doing. You’re attention seeking like a spoilt Hollywood actress in the 1930’s. You are behaving childishly and those children are not. You are simply just one of my cast now get back onto the set and behave yourself.” There were several nods as I went back to my gallery, thank heavens it went that way.
The BBC started to transmit Nanny once a week every Saturday but we took two weeks to make an episode. Inevitably transmissions started to catch up with production so that at the end in the hotel in Birmingham beside the studios we watched Nanny on air at the end of which the presenter said “…and next week Nanny does…” We all said ‘I bloody hope so, we haven’t shot it yet.’ The next day we started the two day shoot. After that came the 1.5 day edit which finished at 12.00 then I drove the tape 200 kms. from Birmingham to London to use in the music recording session in the afternoon and then 200 kms. back to Birmingham with the music tape for the dubbing session 09.00 the next day. By now it was Friday. It was transmitted the next day on Saturday. Thus the schedule could be hair raising. Stress after the studio shoot was often released as when in a Greek restaurant as we were smashing plates on the floor as is the custom. Wendy who had left reappeared with arm full of snow balls and started a snowball fight around the tables.
Maggie Boyd was my PA during ‘Nanny’. A larger than life character and quite outrageous but as a PA very efficient. She came from BBC Scotland where she was PA on their Late Night News and often spent far too long in the club bar afterwards. One midnight she fell into a taxi to go home and slurred to the driver “Take me to the Zoo”. “It’s shut madam” “I live there”. Indeed she did. She lived with the head of the Zoo. They had a much loved and well known old male lion who died. Her husband called a London taxidermist to stuff it and put it in the foyer. An old dusty taxidermist in a crumpled suit with a leather bag full of strange implements arrived. Maggie could not resist it. “Do you stuff animals often?”. “Madam, we do not call it stuffing”. “What do you call it then?” “Mounting.” Exit Maggie fast and doubled up.
We had a stage manager called Tony Vandenend who was quite brilliant as a studio SM but hopeless in real life. Before the studio shoot in Birmingham we always stayed in a hotel close by.
Tony was put in a bedroom the other side of the dinning room and somehow managed to organise breakfast in his room. The next morning room service arrived. “Mr Vandenend, your breakfast”. “Thanks, just put it outside my door”. Nude, Tony cautiously opened the door. Nobody there. He bent down to pick up the tray. His door slammed shut, locked. So there he was, nude holding his breakfast in the corridor. Reception would have a spare key so he walked down stairs and entered the dinning room full of the rest of us. Shocked silence. To his everlasting credit he slowly crossed the room pretending that there was nothing unusual. “Good morning everyone. Hope you all slept well. Nice day isn’t it”. Now nude in front of the receptionist who almost fainted. “I am so sorry to bother you but I have locked myself out of my room. Would you be so kind as to give me a spare key. Thank you” He then walked calmly back through the full dinning room. “Silly me. I locked myself out of my room. See you all later”. He got a round of applause.
Michael Custance